Custom software developer. IT consultant. Geek.
Archive for January, 2009
Battle of the sweatshirts – Apple vs. Microsoft
Jan 19, 2009
A few weeks ago, I went to my friend Josh’s house to help him hang some drywall. There was an interesting and entirely unplanned/coincidental dichotomy in the sweatshirts we chose to wear that day (I’m on/in the right, needless to say). Let me say that an electrical/computer engineer and an information systems consultant make a mean drywalling team. We were also aided by a physicist who, due to recent surgery, could not raise his arms above his head or lift more than five pounds. Pretty funny stuff…
VS2008 Web Server Here Shell Extension
Jan 15, 2009
I ran across a great article on Phil Haack’s blog regarding a registry tweak you can make so you can right-click on any folder and launch the Visual Studio Web Server (aka Cassini) against the directory. This is very handy if you are working on a website locally and want to spin it up without completely opening Visual Studio. Here’s the code you need:
32 bit (x86)Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\VS2008 WebServer] @="ASP.NET Web Server Here" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\VS2008 WebServer\command] @="C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\microsoft shared\\DevServer \\9.0\\Webdev.WebServer.exe /port:8080 /path:\"%1\""64 bit (x64)Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\VS2008 WebServer] @="ASP.NET Web Server Here" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\VS2008 WebServer\command] More >
Windows 7 Beta: Adding and removing programs
Jan 9, 2009
I was playing with the Windows 7 beta today and made an interesting observation… Microsoft has made it easier to find where you remove programs!
First, a bit of background… In Windows XP and before, we used to have “Add/Remove Programs.” Now that frustrated people, because they said “Who ever uses that to add a program?” Of course, the IT Pros out there said “Hey, that’s where we can publish programs using Group Policy,” which was followed by a collective “Huh?” from everyone else. … So in Windows Vista, they renamed that to “Programs and Features.” Now that made a lot More >
Hilarious video – Macbook Wheel
Jan 7, 2009
The Onion never fails to disappoint me. To coincide with MacWorld, they have a great parody video out about the “Macbook Wheel”.
Why my Zune did not have a happy New Years Eve
Jan 1, 2009
So yesterday, on December 31, 2008, everyone with one of the original 30GB Zunes (I have two) found their precious portable media players frozen at a startup screen. Of course, in today’s blogging world, this hit the news quickly and Microsoft found themselves swamped with support calls and demands to fix the problem (wouldn’t that be a great way to wake up?).
This morning, I saw that a user over at ZuneBoards.com has found the bug in a reverse-engineered version of the Zune 30 source code. This is just such a classic programming “oops” that I had to post it for other More >