Archives

• Regular Expressions Cookbook

  May 28 2009 10:17 AM

  Comments

  I just received a notice that O’Reilly is publishing a new Regular Expressions Cookbook.  It’s not available yet, so I can’t offer a review, but I’m certainly a fan of Cookbook style books (like this one), because of their simple, problem-solution organization.  The authors are notable regular expression experts, so I expect there will be some good material here. Other regular expression resources and tools: Regular Expression Library – hundreds of pre-written and tested expressions covering many common use cases Regular Expression Construction Forum – get advice on writing and optimizing your regular expressions more

• Vista Disconnect From Network Share or UNC Path

  May 27 2009 7:36 AM

  Comments

  Occasionally I’ll try to connect to a UNC share or network device and I’ll forget my proper username and password for the device (NAS, router, another box, etc.).  In the case of one of my NAS drives at home, it will let me guess three times what my credentials are, and then it will just connect me as whatever my last guess was, but at that point I’m basically attached as guest.  Once that happens, I can see the root of the drive in Windows Explorer, but I can’t get to any of the subfolders due to lack of permissions.   If I try to reconnect,  it won’t let me.  If I try to map a new network drive, it tells me I can only have one connection open to this … more

• TechEd 2009 Session Aftermath

  May 27 2009 7:27 AM

  Comments

  I’m a bit later than usual in posting my slides and demos from my talks, and for that I apologize.  TechEd this year was a lot of fun, albeit a little disappointing due to its being a smaller show than in past years.  However, it was great to see a lot of my friends whom I typically only interact with electronically, and to meet a few new people as well.  I do wish that this show would have had a bit more to offer developers, but I guess I’ll just have to wait for PDC for that. My two talks both were related to ASP.NET MVC, but neither was specifically an ASP.NET MVC talk.  What I mean is, yes, I used ASP.NET MVC for all of my demos and briefly mentioned what ASP.NET MVC … more

• XmlSerializer FileNotFoundException

  May 21 2009 7:43 AM

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  Recently a buddy of mine ran into this problem trying to serialize a custom object.  The error message he got back was the ever-so-helpful An unhandled exception of type 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' occurred in mscorlib.dll Additional information: File or assembly name uwzg3j_w.dll, or one of its dependencies, was not found. After a fair bit of research, he found the answer, which I thought would be worth sharing here for anybody else who’s stuck trying to figure this out.  The class already had the [Serializable] attribute on it, but of course the issue was with one of the members.  One way to help diagnose these kinds of issues is with the XmlSerializerPreCompiler … more

• IgnoreRoute in ASP.NET Routing is Order Dependent

  May 12 2009 8:30 AM

  Comments

  I’m wiring up the IoCControllerFactory from MVCContrib into an MVC application and I kept running into an issue where a request was coming in looking for a ContentController.  The reason for this is that in my CSS file I have a property like this: background: transparent url(images/logo.gif) no-repeat scroll left top; which is in the Content folder.  The resulting request for “/Content/images/logo.gif” was matching the default routing rule: routes.MapRoute(     … more

• TechEd 2009 Sessions

  May 11 2009 1:35 PM

  Comments

  This week I’m at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles.  I’m giving two talks and would love to get some feedback from attendees on them.  Naturally you can use Commnet to add your evaluation (and I hope you will do so, unless you’re one of those cruel all 1s people), but if you have anything constructive to say, I’d love it if you’d post comments here or contact me directly.  It’s a challenge to present topics in such a way that you please everyone in the room, and usually the biggest issue has to do with the level of the content.  Most of the time, at least 10% of the people say it’s too technical and at least 10% say it’s not technical enough.  The best I can strive to do is … more

• Stir Trek

  May 11 2009 1:20 PM

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  Last Friday I presented at the Stir Trek event held in Columbus, Ohio.  This event was by far one of the best local events I’ve been a part of, and I’m eagerly looking forward to a similar event already scheduled for next year.  You can learn more about it at its web site, but the event’s primary goal was to provide local developers with content that was presented at MIX09.  My talk was on What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0, and I got a lot of positive feedback on the presentation.  I’ve sent my slides and demos to the organizers of the event, so I’m sure they’ll make their way onto the official site somewhere, but if you need them you can grab them here: … more

• Azure Developer Contest

  May 6 2009 7:12 AM

  Comments

  If you’re into cloud computing, you should check out the new CloudApp(): Azure Services Platform Developer Contest.  You can learn more about it at newCloudApp.com.  The contest opened up on May 4th and submissions are due by 18 June 2009.  Winners will be chosen and announced by the end of June.  The contest is US-based and includes categories for .NET applications, PHP applications (PHP is supported on Azure), and a Community Winner.  Prizes include up to $5,000 cash (Visa gift card) as well as being featured on Azure.com and Channel 9.  You can also follow the contest on twitter at #newCloudApp. Have fun and good luck! more

• Outlook Send Mail Infinite Loop - Message in Outbox

  May 4 2009 7:14 AM

  Comments

  Last week I encountered a problem with Outlook that I’m happy to report I’ve just solved.  I found a bunch of things on the Interwebs that looked like they might be useful, but none of the fixes there did the trick for me (of the ones I tried – some fixes were more extreme than I wanted to attempt).  Here are some resources that may help you if my fix does not:

  Outlook Send-Mail Infinite Loop

  Message stuck in Outbox

  How to troubleshoot mail stuck in Outbox in Outlook 2000

  Delete a stuck Read Receipt

  Download MDBVU32.EXE (see previous link for why)

  Forum with some tips for trying to delete messages

  The Problem

  I tried to send an email on Sunday and for … more