cruizer

Using search engines from an IE6 address bar

2008-09-03T07:37:00Z

After using progressive browsers such as Firefox and Safari in my previous employers, imagine my dismay when I realised we were stuck with IE6. One of the things I missed as I had to step back and bear with old IE6 is the absence of the search bar. We're not allowed to upgrade to IE7 nor download browsers (lest we risk dismissal, shudder!) so there was nothing I could do...or was it? Anyway many thanks to my officemate who gave me this cool registry hack. Maybe you've seen this already, maybe...(read more)

Learning Ruby from C#

2008-07-25T10:58:00Z

Just in case you haven't seen this yet: http://www.codethinked.com/category/IronRuby-via-C-Series.aspx I'm sure it's a handy tutorial for learning Ruby (using IronRuby for .NET) the language if you've already got C#/.NET background. I personally think the DLR will become a huge thing and will help a lot in getting enterprises (like my current employer) to embrace dynamic languages....(read more)

IronRuby binaries out now

2008-07-25T00:19:00Z

Of course it's still in Alpha, but get 'em here ! Took it out for a quick spin and it seems still rough around the edges, but hey...no need to build it yourself anymore if you want to try it now....(read more)

Continuous Integration "Hang-ups"

2008-06-15T01:44:00Z

I really like continuous integration . Having come from a company that didn't practice it at all (this was a time I used to regularly work 12 to 16 hours a day), I was so happy when I got into a company that actually practiced it. I found it to be a really effective mechanism to ensure that developers are on the same page -- it encourages programmers to move in small steps (changes) with respect to the code base. Those in the team who like to check in lots of changes at a time are those who tend...(read more)

JP Hamilton on testing WinForms

2008-05-30T03:46:00Z

JP Hamilton has posted a brief blog post on how he unit tests WinForms . Looks nifty, especially if you use a pattern like Model-View-Presenter for your forms. His rationale is that if you keep on testing only the presenter and mocking out the view in your unit tests, your forms code still gets zero code coverage. He makes his extension methods available for download in the post. If you're using only VS 2005 or .NET 2.0, it's a simple matter to take out the "this" in the method...(read more)

Silverlight 2 Unit Testing: slides and code

2008-05-18T07:27:00Z

It was my first time to join a community event in Singapore during yesterday's Heroes Community Launch and it was a blast! It was also cool to see that of nine presentors during the event, three of us are Pinoys. I definitely am looking forward to meeting more of the community people soon. First-time jitters got to me though. Towards the end of my demonstration, I encountered a problem which I didn't encounter during my personal run-through while preparing for it. And when I saw the "15...(read more)

Speaking about Silverlight 2 and Unit Testing

2008-05-16T05:50:00Z

I will be speaking tomorrow at the Heroes Community Launch 2008 here in Singapore with my favourite (boring?!) topic...Unit Testing! Only this time it's about the testing framework that comes with Silverlight 2's beta release. Kinda excited and nervous at the same time, since it'll be my first time to participate in a community event since arriving in Singapore over a year ago. I'll be posting my slides and demo code tomorrow after the event....(read more)

Design patterns are NOT from hell

2008-05-02T01:40:00Z

I saw this somewhere in my daily reading list (I religiously browse my Google Reader at the start of the day). I thought to myself that the blog author probably had negative experiences with programmers or architect types who place too much emphasis on design patterns. I agree that people who give too much importance (or "cool factor") on design patterns will probably see the trees but not the forest. Personally, I agree with the author that the problem has to be understood before a solution...(read more)

Lessons learned in optimising Windows forms apps

2008-04-25T06:43:00Z

Wow, I've been in a black hole for months! The usual excuse -- busy at work on projects. Now that we've gotten our app into production, we're now into firefighting, er... I mean maintenance work for that app. Here are some of the lessons I've learned in optimising and debugging our Windows forms app: Avoid overuse of threads and BackgroundWorkers Application splash screens are passe but they can be a good means of hiding application load activity such as caching data and loading stuff...(read more)

You're probably not getting real exercise at all...

2007-12-30T10:36:00Z

...when your arm hurts because you've started playing Wii Sports with your Nintendo Wii Yesterday was a Saturday so it's no work day. I spent half the day playing baseball and tennis with my kids...Wii Sports style. And when I woke up this morning my right arm was hurting a bit. Looks like I need to go and radically do something about exercising...so my boy and I did a bit of basketball this afternoon. Hopefully that can also go a little bit into reducing that bulging (pregnant!?) tummy of...(read more)

My first impressions of Visual Studio 2008

2007-12-28T01:59:00Z

After a long wait, I've finally completed the ISO download of Visual Studio 2008 from MSDN . After a slightly shorter wait upon launching the setup.exe, I was notified that I was short of disk space (it requires a minimum of 4 GB!). So I had to do a Disk Cleanup and do some delete/move/copy/whatever here and there to free enough space. Installation took quite some time, good thing I didn't heed the warning to close all opened apps and windows, so I was browsing through 'net stuff while...(read more)

Microsoft's Updated "Guidelines for Test-Driven Development"

2007-12-24T06:28:00Z

The previous incarnation of that Microsoft article was heavily panned by critics and in a rare move, Microsoft actually pulled it out of its developer web site. I didn't realise it but Microsoft actually replaced it with one written by Jeffrey Palermo -- http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730844.aspx -- back in 2006. Most of you probably weren't aware of that either. If you read the (updated) article though, try your very best to read how the TDD steps are actually done in VSTS. I...(read more)

Smalltalk: "Been here, done that"

2007-11-07T06:58:00Z

The .NET world is eagerly anticipating the release of version 3.5 of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2008 later this month . Naturally there is a build-up of technical discussions, events and online material about the features the new release is adding to the table. In the meantime, here I am studying Smalltalk , an object oriented language dating back to the 70s. I was still an avid watcher of Sesame Street that time! Will I just let the computing world pass me by as I dabble in programming...(read more)

InvalidOperationException when accessing a web service

2007-11-06T04:15:00Z

We encountered a strange thing in our current project: there are times our client will bomb out with a web exception when a web service call is cancelled. We found it strange because we enclosed our web service call within a try-catch block, specifically looking for a WebException and testing if the WebException's Status is WebExceptionStatus.RequestCanceled. (Yep, that's a single "l" alright) If the status is RequestCanceled, that means that the exception was just a result of the...(read more)

And so I ate my words

2007-10-09T09:50:00Z

Yeah, I said enums are evil . Now I'm taking them back. I was forced to swallow my pride and use an enum for my current project. This is for representing the privilege level of the user. I guess the simplicity of the enum won me over, since one can easily compare enums with each other. Besides, the data will be coming from a WCF service, so the data is just that -- data. It can't be an object complete with behaviour. So now, my position is to just use the simplest thing that will work . If...(read more)