Community developer blogs

Benjimawoo

Recent Posts

• Yay me, and a question...

  Posted: 28 Mar 2006 at 17:53 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  Firstly, yay me!I don't care what you might think about the pros and cons of microsoft certifications. You may think they're pointless. You may think they're not worth the paper they're printed on.Either way, I passed my first exam today. Woo and yay! 70-315 - I have a certificate that says I can "D

• This is what happens when developers aren't network guys...

  Posted: 22 Feb 2006 at 07:01 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  In a previous post, I was confused over which user account TfsBuild.exe executes under. I kept on getting various file exceptions and whatnot. Well now I know. It runs using the account you specified for all your Team Foundation Server Services to run under (In the installation guides, it's the one

• Something I really could do with finding out...

  Posted: 16 Feb 2006 at 21:47 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  ... But I don't know how. Here are a couple of things I know: Timers aren't thread-safe BackgroundWorkers are thread-safe It's a shady proposition setting a timer running on a form, and doing a straight method call to update the form's display. It works sometimes, but because the timer runs (or at l

• Scheduling builds using Team Build

  Posted: 06 Feb 2006 at 21:17 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  Today I've been having big fun trying to get an automatic build schedule together for the project I'm working on at the moment.Yes, that's right. Trying. Nearly there, and there are several things I've learnt along the way about Team Build. Here are the important ones (in no particular order):1) The

• The Midas Touch

  Posted: 03 Feb 2006 at 22:58 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  There are some people that just have the touch of gold for some things. Carl Franklin is one of them. I've been listening to DotNetRocks for a couple of years now, and it's always been fantastic. In fact, when I'm not talking to my boss, I crdeit my entire career to DNR. Obviously, I tell my boss it

• Have these always been here? Or am I being stupid?

  Posted: 27 Jan 2006 at 06:10 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  In the code editor in VS 2005 (any edition I guess, but I've been using VS Team Edition for Software Developers): Right Click. Expand the 'Breakpoint' menu item. Click 'Insert Tracepoint' Enter a message You'll now have whatever message you want printed out in the output window. It can print the cal

• I mean Really....

  Posted: 27 Jan 2006 at 06:04 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  Honestly, though. Who checks in breaking changes 10 minutes before going-home time, eh? Just wanted to share.

• In the midnight hour...

  Posted: 13 Jan 2006 at 06:05 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  She may well have cried 'More, More, More', but that's beside the point. The point is I have more Live Messenger Beta invitations to give away. As before, mail me here if you want one.

• Quickly...

  Posted: 07 Jan 2006 at 19:42 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  Just in case anyone actually visits this blog 'in person' (rather than subscribing to the feed) the comments seem to be on the blink at the moment. If they're not sorted out shortly, I think I might move back to Blogger's native commenting system. It's been made much better since I first moved aaway

• Anyone for Windows Live Messenger 8.0?

  Posted: 07 Jan 2006 at 07:38 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  I have a some invitations to the Windows Live Messenger 8.0 Beta. mail me here if you're interested. Just want to share.

• Quick thought before bed

  Posted: 05 Jan 2006 at 22:04 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  I've heard it said that the biggest security hole in any system is the one between the keyboard and the chair. People (or at least a lot of people) need to be kinda protected from themselves. Particularly when it comes to 'all that technical stuff' like computers. Which is a shame, considering how u

• Well whaddya know?

  Posted: 02 Jan 2006 at 18:14 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  If you type something into the address bar in Internet Explorer and hit ctrl+enter, it forms a complete .com URL from that word, so enter 'microsoft' and hit ctrl+enter and it'll complete it to 'http://www.microsoft.com'. This is not new. It's been there for donkey's years, and it even got through t

• Quick SQL Reporting tip

  Posted: 03 Dec 2005 at 20:04 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  I usually have to customize the data that's presented in a report in SQL Reporting services based on the currently logged in user. I'm guessing I'm not the only one. The good news? It's really really easy! What you can do is simply create a new String parameter (called something imaginative like 'Cu

• So much stuff, so little time...

  Posted: 23 Nov 2005 at 19:53 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  Gah! So busy of late! Been writing lots of C#, and here are my cool features, in no particular order, and with no (at the time of writing) links (Sorry). Refactoring Support Windows Forms designer guide lines Generics - say no more Partial classes There are so many more as well. I just love it. The

• It's only a real little thing...

  Posted: 16 Nov 2005 at 09:19 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  ... But am I the only person who thinks that it would be a good idea fo a text editor to not only use punctuation and spacing to skip from word to word when you ctrl+crsr, but to include CapitalLetters in how it delimits word boundaries? It's just been plaguing me over the past few days. I guess the

• Great articles about Generics

  Posted: 29 Oct 2005 at 17:04 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  Like most people, I daresay, the only way I've really been using generics over the past couple of months is for creating strongly types collections with System.Collections.Generics.List's, but I know in my heart of hearts that that's only half the story. Not even half of it. It's more like the first

• A grand day out. And a Grand night in!

  Posted: 25 Oct 2005 at 21:17 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  So I spent my Saturday in the company of a whole bunch of UK nerds this weekend. And oh my, what a cool day! I've never really been to any real developer events, certainly not one that was so fiercely community driven as DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper on Saturday. And oh my what a day it was. In keepin

• Non Smokers look away now...

  Posted: 02 Oct 2005 at 01:20 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  I know it's a particularly anti-social habit, as well as being about the least politically correct thing one can do, but I am a smoker. Even worse, I don't even have the decency to be a victime of smoking. I dont't smoke 'Because I Can't Help It' or 'Because I need to' or any ligitimate reason like

• Debugging and testing serviced components

  Posted: 24 Sep 2005 at 18:15 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  I've been working over the past couple of weeks on a new data access component at work. For many and varied reasons I decided to implement it as a serviced component. I wanted to take advantage of COM+'s ability to pool and maintain objects, as well as its tried and tested transaction management cap

• And... Breathe...

  Posted: 18 Sep 2005 at 17:16 by noemail@noemail.org (Benjimawoo)

  So I've been a bit busy over the past couple of weeks. What have I been up to? Spent 2 weeks in Egypt Spent a week at work Went book shopping Actually, that doesn't sound too busy at all. How come I feel like I haven't had 2 seeconds to sit and do anything? Oh well. Doing some interesting stuff at t