TheThoughtfulCoder.com

What to check when ClientBuildManager.GetCompiledType returns null

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 02:53:45 GMT

The ClientBuildManager is a .NET BCL class that facilitates compiling ASP.NET markup files outside of IIS. I did run into an issue using this class which others may hit as well.

I compiled some ASP.NET MVC .aspx views and tried to get the type using ClientBuildManager.GetCompiledType, but the GetCompiledType function returned null. Hmm…I could see the compilation was working because the assemblies were seemingly generated correctly.

It ends up that the type would not load because the calling project did not reference all the assemblies needed to load the type. The ClientBuildManager compiles the web components in a separate application domain. When trying to retrieve the type, the assembly is loaded into the calling application domain, and then the type retrieval is attempted. If the type can not load no error is thrown, instead you get a null return value.

So make sure the application using ClientBuildManager references all assemblies referenced by the web application you are compiling.

I hope this saves someone some time. It took a bit of head banging to figure this one out. I had to debug down into System.Web to figure out what was going on :-(

Navigate from interface to implementation in Visual Studio using CodeRush

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:41:58 GMT

One feature of CodeRush from DevExpress which I use a lot when navigating code is the ability to navigate to a function/method/property implementation from a variable that is of an interface type. I do a lot interface programming (OK OK I get a bit interface happy) and this navigation feature rocks.

The default shortcut keys to bring up the Navigate/Jump To menu is Ctrl + Alt + N. I prefer to bind the Navigate command to Ctrl + E, as it is a bit quicker to type when your fingers are in home position on the keyboard. I show how to update the binding in the screen cast embedded with this blog post.

With the cursor on a function/property of a variable of some interface type, bring up the Jump To menu.

If you pick Implementations from the popup menu, you’ll be taken to the class implementation of the interface function/property. If multiple implementations exist, then a popup menu displaying the various choices will be displayed.

I created a screen cast to show this feature in action:

I’d suggest experimenting with the other Jump To options as well as they come in handy when navigating code.

I hope this helps!

Extract and implement interfaces in Visual Studio using CodeRush

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:33:18 GMT

A CodeRush feature that comes in very handy from time to time is the ability to easily extract and implement interfaces in Visual Studio.

This tip involves using the Refactor command included with CodeRush/Refactor Pro. The default shortcut key is Ctrl + ` . Personally I prefer to map the Refactor command to Ctrl + R for a more convenient key stroke. I show how to do the mapping in the screen cast embedded later in this blog post.

Extract an interface from a class

You can easily extract interfaces from an existing class. With the cursor on a class, bring up the Refactor menu and select Extract Interface.

This will create an interface that contains the public properties and methods of the class. You can then move the interface to it’s own file by using the Refactor menu once again and select Move Type to File.

Create an interface implementation

You can very quickly create and interface implementation. With the cursor on an interface, bring up the Refactor menu and select Create Implementer.You can choose to create an implicit or explicit implementation.

You can quickly move the implementation to a separate file the same way as shown above for extracting an interface.

I created a screen cast to show this in action:

CodeRush/Refactor Pro is a rock’in Visual Studio add-on from DevExpress.

I hope this helps!

Shortcut to popup intellisense in Visual Studio

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:13:32 GMT

Visual Studio tip: if the cursor is located after a variable followed by a dot without intellisense showing, press Ctrl + Space Bar to bring up intellisense. One common use of this shortcut is if the wrong property or function is chosen you can quickly select the property or function, delete the selection, and press Ctrl + Space Bar to popup intellisense to pick the correct one.

I created a short demonstration to show the shortcut in action:

I hope this helps!

Shortcut to popup function/method parameter help in Visual Studio

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:35:50 GMT

Visual Studio tip: if your cursor is located between the parenthesis in a C# function/method you can use use Ctrl + Shift + Space Bar to bring up the function parameter help popup.

I created a short video to demonstrate how the shortcut works:

I hope this tip helps!

Selecting text in Visual Studio with CodeRush

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 05:18:15 GMT

I created a screen cast to show how to use CodeRush’s SelectionExpand and SelectionReduce commands. This is one of those “I can’t live without” features that I use when editing code. These keyboard commands allow quick selection of blocks of code which speed up your code editing time.

Use it and code on!

Quickly change function/method visibility using CodeRush for Visual Studio

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 03:35:08 GMT

Using CodeRush from DevExpress you can very quickly change function/method visibility without typing the visibility text :-)

In a code file, if your cursor is anywhere within or on a function definition, you can use the left Alt key plus the up and down arrow keys to cycle through the various visibility modifiers.

I created a short screen cast to show it in action.

I hope this tip helps :-)

Visual Studio unit test runner using CodeRush from DevExpress

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:45:08 GMT

CodeRush is one of my can’t live without tools :-) I created a short screen cast to demo the unit test runner that comes with CodeRush from DevExpress.

I use it to run my unit tests at home and work :-D

Why is PowerShell losing my carriage returns and line feeds?

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:41:03 GMT

I was assigning the output of Git to a variable in a Windows PowerShell script and it looked as if I was losing the carriage returns and line feeds in the output. What is actually happening is the output of the executable is being broken out into an array of strings.

The following shows an example PowerShell session with an explanation following.

Running the git program returns output that is delimited by line breaks.
Assign the output of the program to a variable.
Write-Host the variable and the line breaks are gone >:-{
You can see the variable is actually an array!
You can create a string using the .NET String.Join function.
Now Write-Host of the variable has the line breaks.

I created a short screen cast to explain this as well.

I hope this helps. Code on!

Show Git repository status on a Windows PowerShell prompt

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:36:53 GMT

Hmm… I want to show the status of my Git repository on my Windows PowerShell prompt. I found a post on Stack Overflow that gives a good example of showing Git repo status on a PowerShell prompt, but I customized it a bit to show data I want to see.

Git status on my PowerShell prompt when the index and working directory are clean:

When there are differences in the Git index or in the working folder then the prompt will look like the following:

The meaning of the status is documented on the git-status man page for the --s, –short, or --porcelain argument. I’m using git status –porcelain, as it not supposed to change in the future. Please note that I replace the space in the status with a dash.

The script for the profile.ps1 file follows:

$Global:CurrentUser = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
$UserType = "User"
$CurrentUser.Groups | foreach {
      if ($_.value -eq "S-1-5-32-544")
      {
         $UserType = "Admin"
      }
   }

function prompt
{
   # Fun stuff if using the standard PowerShell prompt; not useful for Console2.
   # This, and the variables above, could be commented out.
   if($UserType -eq "Admin")
   {
      $host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "" + $(get-location) + " : Admin"
      $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = "white"
   }
   else
   {
      $host.ui.rawui.WindowTitle = $(get-location)
   }

   Write-Host("")
   $statusString = ""
   $symbolicref = git symbolic-ref HEAD
   if($symbolicref -ne $NULL)
   {
      $statusString += "GIT [" + $symbolicref.substring($symbolicref.LastIndexOf("/") +1) + "] "

      $status = git status --porcelain #--untracked-files=all
   
      if ( $status )
      {
         $matches = [regex]::matches([system.string]::join("`n", $status), "(?m)^.{2}")
         
         $statusTotals = @{} # Create hash table
         
         foreach ( $match in $matches )
         {
            if ( ![string]::IsNullOrEmpty($match.Value) )
            {
               $matchValue = $match.Value.Replace(" ", "-")
               
               if ( !$statusTotals.ContainsKey($matchValue) )
               {
                  $statusTotals.Add($matchValue, 1)
               }
               else
               {
                  $statusTotals.Set_Item($matchValue, $statusTotals.Get_Item($matchValue) + 1)
               }
            }
         }
   
         foreach ( $dictEntry in $statusTotals.GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object Name)
         {
            $statusString += $outVal = [string]::format("{0}:{1} ", $dictEntry.Name, $dictEntry.Value)
         }
      }
      else
      {
         $statusString += "nothing to commit (working dir clean)"
      }
   }
   else
   {
      $statusString = "PS "
   }

   if ($statusString.StartsWith("GIT")) {
      Write-Host ($statusString + [System.Environment]::NewLine + $(get-location) + ">") -nonewline -foregroundcolor yellow
   }
   else {
      Write-Host ($statusString + $(get-location) + ">") -nonewline -foregroundcolor green
   }
   return " "
}

You can place your profile.ps1 file in your ~\Document\WindowsPowerShell folder.

I created a short screen cast to go over the Git PowerShell prompt as well:

Hope you like it :-) It has brought me much Git PowerShell happiness :-D

Moq – Use Setup arguments (parameters) in the Returns of a mocked function

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:18:25 GMT

It can be useful when mocking a function with Moq to use parameters passed into the Setup of a mocked function in the Returns function.

I created a unit test to illustrate the basic idea:

  
[TestFixture]
public class TestFixture1
{
   public interface ITest
   {
      int Func(int x, int y);
   }

   [Test]
   public void Test()
   {
      Mock<ITest> mockTest = new Mock<ITest>(MockBehavior.Strict);

      mockTest.Setup(x => x.Func(It.IsAny<int>(), It.IsAny<int>()))
         .Returns((int x, int y) => { return FuncData(x, y); });

      ITest test = mockTest.Object;

      Assert.AreEqual(5, test.Func(2, 3));
      Assert.AreEqual(3, test.Func(1, 2));
   }

   private int FuncData(int x, int y)
   {
      return x + y;
   }
}

The main idea is to use a lambda expression in the Returns function that specifies the arguments that can be used in whatever way is needed.

I created a short screen cast to demo how this works:

I hope this helps! Code on :-)

A way to Pass data from an ASP.NET MVC View to the Master Page

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:05:35 GMT

There is no clear cut mechanism provided by the ASP.NET MVC framework to pass data from a view to it’s master page. I’ve been using a technique that I’m reasonably happy with, which I’ll describe in this blog post.

For starters, my example will be using the ITypeInstanceDictionary provided in the TTC Tools. Please read my blog post pass data from an ASP.NET MVC controller to view to learn more. The code shown in this blog post is included in a demo web application on the TTC Tools GitHub page.

There are many scenarios in which you want to drive master page values from the view. For example: some CSS styling that exists in the master page will be dependent on the view. Personally I feel this should not be driven by the controller, as there are many situations in which CSS styles are purely display driven.

I’ll summarize the basic concepts for passing data from the view to it’s master page.

Create an interface that is used by the master page for use in the master page markup code, and allow the view to override these values.
Setup the master page view data at the top of the master page
Follow up the master page code with a content place holder.
This content place holder will be used by the view to override any master page data values.

My example code will show how to override the pages body element id in the master page from a view.

The following code snippet shows an example master page implementation:

The view can override master page view data by creating a content control for the master page’s content place holder which follows the setup of the master page’s view data.

The ASP.NET MVC view engine rendering execution flow will start at the top of the master page and then flow into the content place holders. This allows the view to override the master page view data before it is used later in the master page markup code.

I created a screen cast which might help explain this technique in a bit more detail.

If you need any further explanation or have any questions please let me know. I hope someone finds this useful :-)

Pass data from an ASP.NET MVC Controller to the View using the TTC Tools type instance dictionary

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:40:22 GMT

The default mechanism for passing data from an ASP.NET MVC controller to the view is to use the ViewData property of the controller and view which is of type ViewDataDictionary. The ViewDataDictionary is a string indexed collection of type object. My main issue with this mechanism is two fold. I’m not a big fan of string indexed collections and I don’t want to have to cast to get at the type of the class instance in the collection.

The next option is to use the Model property of the ViewDataDictionary. The Model property of ViewData allows a strongly typed way to pass data from the controller to the view. The question becomes what type should be used? One choice is to use a specific type for each controller action and view, but this gets a bit cumbersome. Instead I propose using a collection indexed by type which is assigned to the Model property of ViewData.

I created a project called TTC Tools which houses the ITypeInstanceDictionary, which provides a generic mechanism to pass various types from controller to view in a more strongly typed way than the ViewDataDictionary.

I documented some basic usage scenarios for the type instance dictionary on my wiki. I also created a screen cast to document basic usage in an ASP.NET MVC application.

The basic idea is the dictionary provides the template functions Add<T>, Get<T>, and Contains<T>. The type T is used as the indexer of the dictionary, so instances of various types can be added and retrieved from the dictionary.

A very basic usage scenario from a unit test is illustrated as follows:

The type does not have to be specified for the Add call, as the declared type of the parameter will be used. The Get call must declare the type, as the type T is used for the dictionary index.

The type instance dictionary does allow multiple instances of the same type to be added, but only if some other type of instance identifier is supplied. For example an enumeration can be used to differentiate the types. An example of adding and retrieving multiple instances of the same type using an enumerated type for the instance id follows:

Basic use in an ASP.NET MVC application

For convenience, derive all your controllers from a base controller that provides a property of type ITypeInstanceDictionary. My example uses a property named TypeViewData. The code for the base controller follows:

   public class BaseController : Controller
   {
      ITypeInstanceDictionary _typeViewData = new TypeInstanceDictionary();

      public ITypeInstanceDictionary TypeViewData
      {
         get
         {
            return _typeViewData;
         }
         set
         {
            _typeViewData = value;
         }
      }
   }

Controller actions that return a ViewResult should use the controller View function overload which accepts the model argument. The TypeViewData property should be passed into the view function as follows:

The view should then use the template version of the ViewPage class, with the type set to TTC.Tools.ITypeInstanceDictionary. The template version of the ViewPage class strongly types the Model property of the View. The Model property can then use the Get<T> function to retrieve the data sent from the controller. An example of the view code follows:

You can find the code, which includes a sample web site using the type instance dictionary, at the TTC Tools GitHub page. I’ve also created some basic documentation on my wiki.

If you have any questions please let me know! I’m not sure if others will find this useful, but you never know :-)

Wii Lego Harry Potter room with two tables bug (Year 2 Expelliarmus Lesson)

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:41:21 GMT

You might get stuck on the Wii Lego Harry Potter Expelliarmus Lesson. You can end up in the room stuck on the tables unable to get off. I searched a bit and found the solution on this Lego Harry Potter walkthrough. The short of it is to press C to skip the video of Snape attacking the other teacher :-)

Copy and paste text in Windows PowerShell with mouse right clicks

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:42:40 GMT

I happened across a nice shortcut to copy and paste text in Windows PowerShell. Highlight some text in PowerShell with the mouse, right click to copy the text, and right click again to paste the text at the cursor. If you right click in PowerShell, the current text content of the clipboard will be copied at the cursor.

I did a short video showing this happy shortcut on Windows 7.

Visual Studio 2010 Attach Security Warning – Trying to attach to w3wp.exe

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 02:56:16 GMT

When debugging web projects, I always use Attach to Process. Initially when attaching to the w3wp.exe process after a fresh Visual Studio 2010 install the following warning will popup every time:

This will not do!

You can modify the following registry entry to stop this dialog from popping up:

Set the value DisableAttachSecurityWarning to 1 under the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger .

I believe this applies to Visual 2008 as well although you would use 9.0 instead of 10.0 in the registry key path.

I hope this helps :-)

Godzilla Final Wars – A fun Godzilla movie

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:43:49 GMT

I watched Godzilla Final Wars the other night with my son. He thinks Godzilla is cool! Hopefully I’m not raising him to be too much of a nerd :-)

I grew up watching Godzilla movies in the theatre during 70’s and have been hooked ever since. I was a huge Godzilla fan as a kid. If only we had a VCR back then so I could have taped the creature features.

Godzilla is definitely a love hate thing. Either you see a guy in a suite or you see a giant monster trashing everything in sight. I’m still a kid at heart, so I still see a giant monster. It is not as magical as it was back in the day, but I still love it.

What I really enjoyed about Final Wars is that it pulls out all the stops and throws in every campy idea including aliens, bad acting, tons of monsters, and a ridiculous story line which make for a good Godzilla flick :-D

I gave Godzilla Final Wars 7/10 on IMDb.

Here are some highlights of the film:

You have to love how Godzilla gets hit with a blast like the following:

Then he is standing there in an enormous crater :-D He’s one tough customer!

I love how the Hollywood Godzilla makes an appearance in the film only to end up at the end of a bit of atomic fire :-)

I like to call the Hollywood Godzilla Giguana. It certainly looks more like a giant iguana than Godzilla.

Many kaiju make appearances in Final Wars. Some of the contestants include Gigan, Anguirus, Kamacuras, Kumonga, Ebirah, King Caesar, Mothra, Rodan, and Hedorah. Some of them are shown below.

I thought the latest kaiju, Monster X, was cool.

You have to love the alien’s shades.

I love the M. Bison look!

Godzilla taught his son well.

All That Remains – The Fall Of Ideals – This album rocks!

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:44:12 GMT

This album absolutely rocks. Usually I only like a portion of the songs on an album, but this compilation from All That Remains is freakin awesome. The Fall Of Ideals has hard hitting vocals and sound on every song. I’ve been listening to this album a lot ever since I discovered it. This is good coding music :-) If you are not familiar with the metal genre, I suggest you read my post How to start listening to Metal – It’s an acquired taste.

Songs on my playlist:

This Calling
Not Alone
It Dwells In Me
We Stand
Whispers (I Hear You)
The Weak Willed
Six
Become the Catalyst
The Air that I Breath
Empty Inside (this is my favorite)

Songs not on my playlist:

Indictment

So 10/11 songs are on my playlist. Yes it rocks!

How to start listening to Metal – It’s an acquired taste

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:41:13 GMT

Ever since my cousin told me to listen to Metallica’s …And Justice for All some 20 years ago I’ve been a metal listener. I remember when I first listened to the album, I couldn’t stand it. My cousin advised me I needed to listen to it many times before I came to a judgment. At first my ear could not pick up the speed and sound of the music. Gradually it started to slow down and the music started make sense. Before I knew it, I realized this music rocks :-)

I imagine metal is a bit like beer, it is an acquired taste for most people. Actually, I suppose for most listeners it is the proverbial nails on the chalk board :-) Metal is certainly music living on the fringe. I believe this genre of music is misunderstood and, if given a chance, stands strong on its own merits. It has a power and energy that is unmatched in the music world. After you acquire a taste for metal other music seems to lack a little something.

It is not that metal is the best and everything else sucks. I enjoy the full spectrum of music genres. Certainly music is a completely subjective experience, but missing a little metal in your diet might deprive your ears of some much needed noise.

I normally listen to music while coding. For years sleep apnea made it hard for me to push through the day, so listening to music helped me to keep me going and stay focused. I couldn’t exactly listen to Enya and keep alert :-) Metal is a bit of an aural caffeine.

So I suggest starting out with Metallica’s …And Justice for All. Listen to the album at least 5 times. If it doesn’t start making sense then maybe metal just isn’t for you :-(

Astro Boy (2009) – Many seem to dislike it, but my son and I really enjoyed it

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 04:37:43 GMT

My son and I watched Astro Boy this evening and we both really enjoyed it. As of writing this blog entry Astro Boy has a rating of 6.4/10 on IMDb. It seems like many people really dislike the film. Personally I found the story engaging and a bit sad in many ways. A father creating a robot to replace his dead son is a bit heart wrenching.

The plot line involving the villain probably could have been better, but I think the rest of the story was engaging for adults and kids.

After watching Astro Boy my son excitedly stated we should buy it :-) After all, guns popping out of Astro Boy’s butt was a highlight not to soon be forgotten and I”m sure will often be recounted in the days to come :-D

I give the movie 8/10.

Visual Studio Compiler Error CS1548 - Cryptographic failure while signing assembly on Windows 7

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 03:23:47 GMT

I received the error Compiler Error CS1548 Cryptographic failure while signing assembly from a Visual Studio 2008 build after modifying a project to sign the assembly with a strong name from an existing key file.

I had a similar issue when trying to create a strong name key file on a different machine. I created a blog post about an error creating a strong name key file from Visual Studio or sn.exe. It ends up adding the security rights mentioned in my other blog post fixes this issue as well.

To solve the issue on Windows 7 you can add modify permissions to your user for the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys folder. Please see my other post for more information.

Numbered Google search results in FireFox

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:04:40 GMT

I’ve been using a nice FireFox Greasemonkey script to number my Google search results.

I originally found the Google search results numbering script on the blog More Than Scratch The Surface. The Google search results script can be found on userscripts.org.

Strong name access denied error on Windows 7 64-bit from Visual Studio and sn.exe

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:58:48 GMT

I was trying to create a strong name for an assembly in Visual Studio from the project properties using the dialog:

After clicking OK I received the following error message: The operation could not be completed. Access is denied.

I then tried from the command prompt using sn.exe and received the same type of message: Failed to generate a strong name key pair -- Access is denied.

I found the following blog post Create Strong Name Key - Access Denied Error, but it applies to Windows XP. I searched around for a RSA\MachineKeys folder and found three different locations but it seems the folder C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys is the magic place.

I gave my user the following permissions on the MachineKeys folder and then I was able to sign my assembly :-D

When I changed the permissions on the folder it complained I could not change permissions on the files in the folder, so I cancelled out of the application of the file permissions. It looks like I’d have to take ownership of the existing files in order to change their permissions which I decided not to do at this point.

I hope this helps :-)

A way to determine if an ASP.NET MVC view exists

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:18 GMT

I needed some code to determine if an ASP.NET MVC view exists. For a particular controller I’m dynamically determining the view to return by name. I looked at the source code for ASP.NET MVC and figured out how views are found and came up with the following code:

public ActionResult Page(string viewName)
{
   ViewEngineResult viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName, null);

   if (viewResult.View == null)
   {
      throw new HttpException(404, "404 - View Not Found");
   }

   return View(viewName);
}

This function is a member of a controller class. I wanted to check if the view exists and return a HTTP 404 result if the view is not found. There is likely a better way to wrap up the call in a helper function, but this illustrates the principle.

There may be another or better way to do this, but this works for now and hopefully might help someone else as well :-)

Visual Studio 2010 highlighted reference color may cause an issue with non-default color schemes

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:30:03 GMT

After importing my color scheme from Visual Studio 2008 into Visual Studio 2010 I found a problem with the color used to highlight references. The background highlight shows up on the text under the caret for things like variables, functions, classes, etc. and any text that is a reference.

I created a short video to show how to deal with this issue.

The setting in Visual Studio 2010 is under the Tools…Options menu.

Go to Environment… fonts and colors… Display item Highlighted Reference and change the item background. If you want to get rid of the Highlighted Reference color then choose an item background of Automatic.

I hope this helps someone :-)

Visual Studio 2010 floating code windows

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:42:16 GMT

I’ve wanted floating code windows in Visual Studio for a long time now. Visual Studio 2010 now supports it :-D I created a short video showing floating code windows in Visual Studio 2010 release candidate 1.

Getting Starcraft to run on Windows 7

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:55:17 GMT

I haven’t played Starcraft in forever and decided to play it again. I went out and bought a copy which surprisingly is still in the store given its age. I was a bit worried about being able to get Starcraft to run on 64 bit Windows 7 but I found a solution on Youtube from JimmyRogain that works for me.

I thought this solution was very insightful. Nice fix :-)

I’m running Starcraft on 64 bit Windows 7 using a batch file like the one described in the video. I’ve included a sample batch file you can download from this link. If you are running 64 bit you’ll need to change the path to Program Files (x86) or change the path to your installation directory.

I hope this helps :-D Happy crafting :-)

EDIT:

These are the compatibility settings I use for the starcraft.exe file.

I haven’t tried the various permutations, but what is pictured seems to work for me.

Microsoft Excel popup image for a worksheet cell

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:31:50 GMT

I was working on a Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet and I wanted an image to popup for a cell. I found a number of sites listing a solution, but they only explained it in text so I thought I’d do it with some images and a video to make it clear. It is a bit confusing.

The first step is to add a comment for a cell.

Delete out the comment text.

Right click on the comment border and select the Format Comment… menu item.

On the Format Comment dialog choose the Colors and Lines tab. Then from the Color drop down list choose the Fill Effects drop list item.

From the Fill Effects dialog choose the Picture tab and click the Select Picture… button.

Choose the image file you want to use as the cell comment background and click the Insert button.

Now click OK on the remaining open dialogs and when done you should see the comment background showing the image you chose.

Please be mindful of the image file size as this image will make your Excel spreadsheet that much bigger.

I’ve created a video tutorial about how to add a popup image as well.

I hope this helps :-)

Lego Space Police Smash’n’Grab Built Fast

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:39:07 GMT

I built the Lego Space Police Smash’n’Grab model 5982 with my son. It took us a little over 30 minutes to build but in this video we build it in around 1 minute :-)

Google mysticism – How SEO really works

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:13:00 GMT

Since Google has secret algorithms for determining the organic search results there ends up being lots of conjecture about how it works. Everyone has a theory and much of it is contradictory. Even though the algorithms are secret, there is still a ton of gaming of the search engine so Google spends a lot of time and resources trying to identify those who are breaking the rules. Trying to get a handle on how to proceed can be difficult. Many make a living just help websites with their SEO.

When I comb through so much of the information out there it starts to feel like some mystical entity exists called Google that millions a people spend a ton of time trying to understand. Whether or not Google is pleased with your website can determine a lot about how successful a website becomes. So I came up with some of the mystical laws that we all need to follow in order to please Google.

Matt Cutts shall be the voice of Google. All shall attempt to divine the meaning of his every word.
If you publish too many gateway pages you shall be removed from the Index.
If you violate the law of Google you may be sent to the Sandbox and someday may be allowed back into the Index.
Strive for many backlinks that are not nofollow and your Page Rank will be great.
If you try to gain SERP placement through hidden page content you will be removed from the Index.
If you stray into the darkness of Black Hat SEO you shall be removed from the Index.
Strive to create great content and you shall be blessed with many backlinks and Google will be pleased.
If you are removed from the Index you can request reconsideration through Google’s Webmaster Tools. Google may have mercy on you and allow you back into the Index.
If you buy backlinks Google will know and you will be removed from the Index.
Do not question Google about removal from the Index, repent and hope for reconsideration.
Beware links to and from bad neighbors, Google shall reduce your SERP placement.
In the end Google shall own the world through the power of AdWords.

So please follow these laws and you might just end up with great Google search engine placement.

The Chaser’s War on Everything – Spoof on The Secret

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:30:14 GMT

The Chaser’s are a group of Australian comedians that I had not heard of before. From what I’ve watched on Youtube they tend to push the edge a bit and seem to upset a lot of people. But I can’t help it, these guys are freakin’ hilarious :-)

The original song Angel of My Dreams by Frances Bennigan

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:46:20 GMT

My cousin Fran wrote and sings her original song Angel of My Dreams. I think it is a great song. She has an original voice and sings with heart and soul. I wish her all the luck in the world :-D

Sick kids = sick parents

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:15:00 GMT

I’m sick again :-(

One difficulty about being a parent that is getting sick all the time! It used to be I’d be sick maybe a couple times a year. Now it it seems like 5 plus time a year. It is especially hard with a baby or toddler as they are all over you all the time sneezing everywhere with snot running down their face all day. You can only wipe their nose so many times a day :-) I realize it is part of building a child’s immune system, but I just wish it didn’t mean building mine as well :-)

Before kids, when I was sick I’d just lie in bed and sleep or lay on the couch watching the tube most of the day. Now you have to deal with a sick kid, contract their sickness, then deal with a kid while sick :-(

Parenthood has so many great aspects, but the sickness is one of the bummers.

I recall one day years ago when both my wife and I had a really bad stomach flu. My son was around 2 years old. We were both laying on the floor taking turns getting to the bathroom while trying to take care of our son! The good part was I remember him being really good about the whole situation. He’s such a good kid :-D That was a tough day I’ll never forget :-)

Fortunately my wife and children get over being sick very quickly :-) Unfortunately I don’t :’(

But hey, it’s all good!

My review of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:24:00 GMT

I just finished reading Dan Brown’s book The Lost Symbol. I tend to like his stories and The Lost Symbol is no exception.

The story kept me interested from start to finish. At times it is a bit hard to accept Langdon’s search engine like memory skills, but a bit of willing suspension of disbelief makes it reasonably acceptable. Langdon’s off the cuff puzzle solving skills are in full form throughout his current adventure. Langdon also seems to innately possess certain ninja escaping skills. He is very tough to catch :-)

Brown has found a certain sweet spot by melding interesting scientific concepts (albeit not always factual), mysticism, symbols, and conspiracy theory. The Lost Symbol wraps the story around Masonic legend and symbols. I’m not sure of the accuracy of any of the content, but I guess it really does not matter as it is fun to read.

One thing I found interesting was the incorporation of Noetic Science in the story. It is not a major part of the book, but it brings forth some interesting ideas. Personally I’ve always wondered about the physics of consciousness. Consciousness is as much a part of the universe as electricity and magnetism so there may be some deeper physics about it that we do not yet understand. Brown presents an interesting idea about the physics of consciousness. I think Brown does a good job of presenting interesting scientific food for thought in addition to the conspiracy theories. Even if everything is not factual, it all feels plausible.

Bottom line, if you liked The Da Vinci Code I’d recommend this book. If you didn’t care for The Da Vinci Code then you won’t like this one. If you haven’t read any of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon books, then I’d recommend you start with The Da Vinci code and see what you think.

Visual Studio macro to switch between ASP.NET markup and code-behind

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:30:34 GMT

I’ve been using a Visual Studio macro to switch between markup and code-behind for years now. I’ve forgotten where I originally obtained the code for this Visual Studio macro. If you search around you can find incarnations of it floating around the web. I created a really short tutorial explaining how to setup the macro at the end of this post.

Public Sub Switch()
  Dim FileName As String

  If (DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().EndsWith(".cs")) Then
      ' swith from .aspx.cs to .aspx
      FileName = DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().Replace(".cs", "")
      If System.IO.File.Exists(FileName) Then
          DTE.ItemOperations.OpenFile(FileName)
      End If
  ElseIf (DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().EndsWith(".aspx")) Then
      ' swith from .aspx to .aspx.cs 
      FileName = DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().Replace(".aspx", ".aspx.cs")
      If System.IO.File.Exists(FileName) Then
          DTE.ItemOperations.OpenFile(FileName)
      End If
  ElseIf (DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().EndsWith(".ascx")) Then
      FileName = DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().Replace(".ascx", ".ascx.cs")
      If System.IO.File.Exists(FileName) Then
          DTE.ItemOperations.OpenFile(FileName)
      End If
  ElseIf (DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().EndsWith(".master")) Then
      FileName = DTE.ActiveWindow.Document.FullName.ToLower().Replace(".master", ".master.cs")
      If System.IO.File.Exists(FileName) Then
          DTE.ItemOperations.OpenFile(FileName)
      End If
  End If
End Sub

I created a short tutorial to show how to setup the macro in Visual Studio.

I hope this helps! Enjoy :-D

dasBlog macros used by TheThoughtfulCoder.com

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:53:00 GMT

I’ve created a few custom dasBlog macros for this blog. For now I’m going to use this page as the home for these macros.

You can use these links to download the macros.

To install the macros you need to put the TTC-Macros.dll file in the web site bin folder. Then you need to add the following to the web.config <configuration> section.

<newtelligence.DasBlog.Macros>
   <add macro="ttcMacros" type="TTC_Macros.TTCMacros,TTC-Macros" />
</newtelligence.DasBlog.Macros>

These macros were built against dasBlog version 2.3.9074.18820.

Please read the remainder of this post for a description of the macros.

dasBlog macro to set page title

By default dasBlog shows the page title as the blog title-page title. The problem with this page title is the link that displays in the search engine results page is not what I want.

The next example shows how the page title is truncated in the search results.

The next example shows the page title fits in the Google search results. The blog title is not visible, but is not really important in the search results.

It may have SEO impact as well, although I’m not sure if the page title starting with the blog title matters so much.

The usage for the page title macro in a dasBlog .blogtemplate file is as follows:

dasBlog macro to add NOINDEX meta tag

I like to keep the pages in the search engine nice and clean. Given a blog has a lot of duplicate pages, I wanted to keep a number of the pages out of the index. So I created a macro to add a NOINDEX meta tag to the page for certain dasBlog pages.

The usage for the macro is shown below.

The NOINDEX meta tag will be added for all category view, paging, month, date, default page (not /), login, and search view pages. Basically only the blog post pages, the root, and the archives page will be in the search engine index.

dasBlog macro to set comment link

This macro that can be used in place of the default comment view hyperlink. By default the hyperlink is something like CommentView,guid,1920be4a-2789-4d12-b667-edf2e7f4ff77.aspx#commentstart. The search engines pick this up and will put it in the index. I prefer is just use the regular page title.

The usage for the macro is shown below.

So use the TTCCommentLink macro in place of the CommentLink macro.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask and I’ll try to help.

Lego Power Miner Rock Wrecker Fast Build

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:49:33 GMT

I built the Lego Power Miner Rock Wrecker with my son. Of course it is sped up a bit :-) It was fun to create! Enjoy!

This is a response to this Lego time lapse video at WindowFruit.com .

WindowFruit.com – a new blog

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:03:10 GMT

A friend started a new blog called WindowFruit.com. Tim created a very cool theme! It starts with a nice time lapsed Lego building video :-)

Good luck with the blog!

I use an eye mask to help with a CPAP causing dry eyes

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:54:11 GMT

I’ve used a CPAP machine now for a couple years and my main issue is it can cause my eyes to dry out a bit. I ended up getting an eye mask and it really helps alleviate the eye dryness. It does not completely eliminate my dry eyes, but it really helps cut it down.

I’ve read others use goggles that are available to wear when sleeping. I like the softness of the eye mask and the ease of sliding it up my forehead if I need to see while I’m wearing my CPAP mask.

The mask pictured is the one I purchased on Amazon. There may be better ones, so of course look around, but this one has done the job for me. It is a good price as well :-)

Please keep in mind, this works for me but may not work for others. I hope it does help

Please note that I am an Amazon affiliate.

X-Robots-Tag HTTP header and Google Webmaster Tools URL Removal

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:49:08 GMT

I read about being able to use the HTTP header X-Robots-Tag to specify Google search index control options. For my purposes, I wanted to specify that certain pages on my blog would not go in the index. So I specified the header X-Robots-Tag: noindex using Microsoft’s URL Rewrite module 2 which can use out bound rules to rewrite page content and page headers.

The header was correctly being added to the pages, but when I used the remove URL tool in Google webmaster tools to remove the pages the result was the request for page removal was denied.

The information about the X-Robots-Tag discusses using it for page content like PDF files and such. It does not specifically state that it will or will not work for regular content type text/html. I asked on the Google webmaster tools help forum, but I did not get any response.

I ended up modifying my blog’s code to add a meta ROBOTS tag to the HTML head element of my pages which works as expected.

I can’t be 100% sure that the X-Robots-Tag will not do the job, but I could not get it to work. If someone has found out otherwise please let me know.

One thing I realized I’ll miss as a father – rocking my kids

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:08:10 GMT

The other night my youngest son was very tired. I was rocking him on the glider and he turned around and laid his head on my shoulder. I rocked him like that for a while and realized that it might be the last time I do that with my children. He’s gotten to the point where he just does not do that anymore.

There is something about rocking your children when they are so young. It is hard to explain, but there is a certain comfort about it that is indescribable. It is amazing how much comfort our children give us. Sometimes it feels like there is a lot of wining and crying, oh wait there is a whole lot of that :-) But there are moments that have a certain magic.

My connection with my sons is a bond unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I’m grateful and eternally thankful for it. Every morning I’m glad to greet them and every evening I look forward to getting home from work to see them again.

I will not miss rocking them in a sad sense, I am always excited to see them change and grow, instead I will reflect on those moments as treasures captured in time :-D

Blogging with children

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:18:07 GMT

Even though my blog will focus on a lot of technical information, it is still my personal blog. Hopefully I can keep the signal to noise ratio reasonable within the categories, but it might be a bit low overall. I realize a blog is supposed to have some focused purpose, but I’m breaking the rules a bit. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.

I’ve had this blog for roughly four months now and it is interesting what a challenge it has been. Between full time work and two young children it is difficult to find any free time. Creating content an hour here and there is difficult. To all those creating content my hat is off to you!

There seems to be a stigma about bloggers that they are just a bunch of lazy slackers sitting in pajamas all day lackadaisically creating posts. I’d like to challenge this stereotype! Creating content is work, and not easy work at that. It is time that could be spent doing something fun. World of Warcraft anyone? Or maybe SkiFree :-)

With kids, it is even tougher as the days are long. From early morning until late evening it is difficult to keep up with everything that needs to be done. Between a kid’s demand for attention, baths, hassles about bedtime, diaper changes, sickness, and all those things a parent has to do, free time is precious. Blogging with children is hard :-) Don’t get me wrong though, I love my kids beyond all else and enjoy every minute I have with them!

For some reason I’ve decided to do this on top of everything else. I just hope my wife won’t get sick of me too quickly. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things after the holidays and make some more content. We’ll see if I can pull it off ;-)

Remember SkiFree?

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:02:00 GMT

I was looking at the MSDN OS downloads and noticed MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 are still available for download :-) Boy, that brings back memories. Windows 7 is sure a long way from those days. I jokingly sent an email about the old OS downloads and a colleague responded we might want to install Windows 3.1 in case we want to play SkiFree!

Now that really brings back memories! You can still download it at http://ski.ihoc.net/ and it runs on Windows 7! Sweet :-)

How to screen capture an image of a scrolling window

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:28:21 GMT

Between work and this blog I do a lot of screen captures and trying to capture a scrolling window is at best problematic. I purchased a tool called Snagit from Techsmith which accomplishes scrolling window screen captures :-) Happiness!

I recommend it for screen captures in general as well. It does cost just under $50, but it has been worth it.

I created a short tutorial to show how it works:

A way to find missing HTML element open and close tags

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:05:02 GMT

This is a basic method I’ve used to find missing HTML element open and close tags. I use the text editor EditPad Pro which is very regular expression friendly. The idea is to use a regular expression to match a type or types of HTML elements and then fold the lines of the HTML text to the lines that match the regular expression. From there you have a view of the HTML source with only the lines that have the type of HTML tag(s) you are interested in viewing.

I created a short tutorial to demonstrate what to do:

I hope I’ve gotten the basic idea across. There may be better ways to do this, but if you are stuck with only your text editor and HTML then this technique might bail you out ;-)

Why are my IIS 7.5 HTTP error pages blank?

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:20:53 GMT

I recently upgraded to Windows 7 and while doing some IIS tinkering I noticed my HTTP 404 page was blank. I was getting a HTTP 404 header back in the response so I was a bit confused. It ends up when I turned on IIS I missed checking the HTTP Errors check box in the windows features.

I created a short tutorial showing what I did as well.

Hopefully this might help someone quickly figure this out :-)

The basics of hiding the page extension when using ASP.NET

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:38:20 GMT

Classic ASP.NET uses the page extension .aspx. If you want to hide the .aspx page from the browser URL I’d recommend using URL rewriting to make your pages extensionless.

I’ve created a screencast which goes over the basic idea of how to implement extensionless URLs in your ASP.NET application. I use Microsoft’s URL Rewrite module which can be used for IIS 7. There are other URL rewrite modules available which can be used to accomplish the same thing for IIS 6.

I created this tutorial because of a question about hiding ASP.NET pages extensions on Stack Overflow.

Google Website Optimizer (GWO) Tutorial - Advanced Usage My Way

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:42:00 GMT

I’ve created a series of tutorials about Google Website Optimizer that will hopefully help others. These screencasts are not perfect by any means, but hopefully they will get the point across.

Google Website Optimizer is a tool you can use to serve out various versions of website pages and measure how those variations affect the rate for visitors reaching a goal on your website. One obvious case is for ecommerce sites to measure changes to pages and how it affects order placement conversion rate. I’ve seen on the job various changes to a website that can have a significant affect on conversion rate.

I do not follow the method that Google prescribes to create Website Optimizer experiments. Google attempted to make the GWO experiment creation process as easy as possible, but I find it a bit constricting. I’ve implemented GWO experiments on the job and have found ways to work with GWO that I find more to my liking.

Please note that I only go over creating multivariate experiments. I do not cover A/B experiments.

In the following tutorial I discuss how I go about creating Google Website Optimizer experiments.

Here I go over Google Website Optimizer experiment creation once again, but in a much more abbreviated manner.

In the next tutorial I go over how I approach implementing GWO experiments in website code. For this example I’m using an ASP.NET MVC website. I go over how to vary page content based on a page section variation using jQuery.

In the next tutorial I discuss implementing GWO experiments and XHTML compliance. The default mechanism provided by Google is not XHTML compliant, so I go over how to use GWO and maintain XHTML compliance. The JavaScript script provided by Google is not XHTML and Google also recommends using a </noscript>HTML element which is way off from being well formatted!

In my final GWO tutorial, I go over how to interpret GWO results. You have to be careful about how to interpret if a certain page variation is better than other variations.

I hope these tutorials are useful to someone :-)

I also highly recommend you check out www.gwotricks.com which is a great GWO resource.

Configure host headers with SSL using IIS 7 or IIS 7.5

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:47:00 GMT

I configured SSL on this blog site and found some info on the Microsoft TechNet page Configure a Host Header for a Web Site (IIS 7). The TechNet page was a start, but it didn’t quite get me all the way there. With a bit of experimentation I successfully configured SSL on my web server. You can view a screencast of what I did at the end of this post.

For this post I’m going to use a non-existent website www.abc-test1.com.

First I added an SSL binding to the web site. In IIS Manager, with the web site selected, click on the Bindings… link.

On the Site Bindings dialog you’ll want to click the Add… button.

Then select https from the Type drop list, select your IP address, and pick your installed SSL certificate. For my testing I created a self signed certificate.

Then from the command prompt you’ll want to issue the command:

appcmd set site /site.name:www.abc-test1.com /bindings.[protocol='https',bindingInformation='*:443:'].bindingInformation:*:443:www.abc-test1.com

You can go back in IIS manager to check you SSL binding’s host name. You should see the host header you configured at this point.

I created this tutorial describing how to configure host headers in IIS 7.5 using Windows 7. It is the same process for any version of IIS 7.x.

I hope this post helps :-)

You just gave away your password!

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:43:12 GMT

Years ago I was discussing password security with a good friend at work and at one point we disagreed on some aspect of password security. He asserted that in one sense the password did not really matter as it is so easy to get someone’s password. He stated he could get one of my passwords if he really wanted it. I thought to myself “no way”. I don’t click on email attachments, I’m wary about what I download, and I consider myself careful about not doing stupid stuff.

Later in the day, after having forgotten about the challenge, I was in my friend’s office and he said he was having trouble logging in to our Oracle database. He tried a few times and his login was not working. He asked if I could try my logon, so I tried typing in my user name and password and it worked. He tried again and his worked, no harm no foul ;-) I sat back at my desk and an email was in my inbox with my password! :-)

I immediately realized he had gotten it when I typed it in on his machine. Ends up he used a Visual Studio program called Spy++ to monitor windows messages. So he captured the windows keystroke messages and easily logged my password keystrokes.

Ever since then I have been interested in computer security or really the lack thereof! If someone has physical access to a machine, then whatever anyone types on that machine can not be considered secure. Especially if you are dealing with a coder. There is no security when there is familiarity between the parties. You are left to trust and decency with those you know.

As a developer I believe you should think about how to hack computer systems in order to think about how to secure it. It is one of the mindsets you should have when coding. I’m not the type of person who would do any type of hacking, but if you are oblivious to what can be done you are more likely to make mistakes when designing computer software that open you up to standard hacking attacks.

Ever since my password was obtained so quickly and easily whenever I type my password I always think, “Someone just hacked my password” :-)