Archives - June 2009
Excel 2007 Named Ranges and Data Validation
It’s hard to find information on Excel Named Ranges for Excel 2007 using a search engine. The problem isn’t that there’s no information available, but rather that most of it refers to older versions of Excel. And of course, that would be fine, if Excel 2007 didn’t go and move everything around...
Silverlight 3 on XBox 360
Scott Guthrie earlier today twittered about a sneak peek shown today of Silverlight 3 running on an XBox 360. I’ve been waiting a long time for this and I really hope that the XBox platform will be able to take advantage of some of the opportunities that Silverlight has to offer. I’d really...
INVESTing in User Stories
User Stories describe features from the standpoint of the user, and should identify small units of work that can reasonably achieved within a short (1 or 2 week) iteration by a programming pair. A useful acronym for remembering how to write good user stories is INVEST (more elsewhere and here ...
Determine Whether an Assembly was compiled in Debug Mode
I’m working on a little application right now that provides some insight into the assemblies in use for a given application. One of the things that I want to be able to show is whether or not each assembly was built in Debug or Release mode. As you’re no doubt aware, running applications...
The Fibonacci Blog Post Formatter
Sarah suggested Tuesday that I write a blog PostFormatter that only changed the format of blog posts created on days that were Fibonacci Sequence days (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…). I’d hoped to code something like that up during my Ann Arbor talk last night but ended up not having the time, so...
ASP.NET MVC and SOLID Programming Principles June 2009
This week I presented “Introducing ASP.NET MVC and SOLID Programming Principles” (aka SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC) to the Cleveland .NET SIG and the Ann Arbor .NET Developers group . Thanks to everyone who came, it was standing room only at the Microsoft office in Cleveland and a great turnout at...
Binding in ASP.NET MVC
At my ASP.NET MVC + SOLID Principles talk in Cleveland last night, I had a couple of questions about binding in ASP.NET MVC. For instance: Can you still do something like <%= Bind(“Foo”) %> in your form? How does the controller that receives a POST get back the Model that was used in the...
DRY - Don’t Repeat Yourself - Motivator
I’ve been meaning to create a DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) motivational poster for a while now, ever since seeing Derick Bailey’s SOLID posters . To me, DRY is at the heart of many software patterns and principles, and sums up much better the similar Once and Only Once principle (which...
Speaking in Cleveland and Ann Arbor this week
This week I’ll be presenting my TechEd session on SOLIDifying ASP.NET MVC applications to the Cleveland .NET SIG in Independence and the Ann Arbor .Net Developer’s Group (in Ann Arbor, MI). The talk’s main purpose is to introduce developers to “Uncle Bob” Martin’s principles of software design...
Upgrading HP MediaSmart ex470 to 2GB of RAM
After the horrible experience of trying to restore some files from my Windows Home Server while it was continuously thrashing due to insufficient memory, I picked up a 2GB stick of RAM (which arrived a couple of days ago) and am in the process of doing the upgrade with the help of this step-by-step guide...
