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For the most part I try for original content ….. but then I found this and I couldn’t have said it better – actually, I didn’t say it at all, and I am envious http://www.wolfgilbert.com/Main/Blog/Entries/2008/4/17_SOA_as_the_Uber-Container.htm...

I’m learning about Entity Framework (the Beta 3 drop) by implementing an app to manage my collection of DVDs –  in general I like Entity Framework and will continue to use it, but every once in a while, there’s something that makes...

Recently, I started having problems with the error "Items collection must be empty before using ItemsSource" popping up after I’d made a few changes to my UI.  I think I understand the root trigger, but I haven’t got time to reason through...

Working offline with TFS is different than with Visual SourceSafe.  On the one hand, VSS is better integrated with Visual Studio, so its pretty easy to unlock files for editing offline, you just begin editing them.  On the other hand, VSS can...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I reluctantly decided to plow my server under and start afresh with a new installation.  There were still a couple of issues that came blazing in from far out in the mindless reaches of the productization effort. ...

Introduction I’ve begun the (forced) conversion to Team Foundation Server with my recent (desired) transition to VS 2008.  It’s been an interesting experience to put it mildly.  As with the great majority of my interactions with...

Before launching into the gory details of my recent conversion to TFS I feel its necessary to address an issue that I consider to be completely reprehensible on Microsoft's part.  It’s not a technical issue so much as a product and market decision,...

 vista...

The googleplex is now grubbing around inside code distros and indexing them -  of course, someone immediately got the bright idea to look for comments containing profanity - and this is the result -  quite funny - Thanks JeffD!...

I’ve been wrestling with an issue at work and thought I’d publish some results.  I’ve run this by a few peers, and needless to say am exercising the great irresponsilbe freedom afforded by having one’s own blog, I’m...

The latest version of IE (7) defies description –  I’d love to say that it runs like a pig, but that would imply that it runs more often than it does, and in general would be an insult to pigs everywhere. Its not like the developers...

On Saturday, December 01, 2007 Dan Scherlis and I gave a talk about how game companies work at the Microsoft GameDev day at Harvard.  We both had a lot of fun giving this talk, and equally enjoyed the presentation from the folks at Second Life and...

In many, if not all, projects there are a few key pieces of software technology, where much of the risk and the reward in the project are found.  These pieces are quite rightly subject to scrutiny during the initial architecture and design phases,...

I am going to do a longer posting on problems of extending value types, but since I just had to complain on Connect after bumping into the decision not to support operators as extension methods, I had to complain now.  In essence, the restriction...

I’m starting the switch to using the [DebuggerNonUserCode] attribute instead of [DebuggerStepThrough] attribute, and noticed a small annoying behavior. (For why I’ve decided to do this, this is what set me off). When using [DebuggerStepThrough], you’ll...

I have wrestled with a while on providing guidance for the use of categories in the LAB – it’s not that I had trouble understanding it, so much so as the name ‘category’ made things somewhat counterintuitive – however I’ve...

I’ve updated the MahJong app, adding support for UI elements embedded in the 3D view, hit detection of the 3D tiles, and a bunch of other stuff, fixes, etc.  I’ll be doing some more posts “Real Soon Now”, once I’ve managed...

DispatcherTimer seems to have a singularly odd behavior when it comes to specifying the interval.  I was working on the Mah Jongg demo and needed a sub 1 second timer.  No problem I though, I’ll just define a 100ms timespan, as in new...

In the earlier posts in this series I discussed the need for workflow based solutions to complex animation requirements, and showed how continuation functions could be used to achieve this goal.  In this post I am going to concentrate on the sequencing...

Go here to get previous and subsequent posts in this series. The two classes with primary responsibility for rendering and managing the visual game,GameBoard and GameBoardPresenter,provide a main entry function (SetupBoard() in GameBoard) and...

Click Picture to see Animation Go here for more posts in this series WPF animations of visual elements require special attention when used in a multithreaded environment or for that matter even in a single threaded environment whenever animations...

  These articles illustrate a mechanism you can use to perform sophisticated animations using WPF without needing to make your code overly complex while still adapting to the two key constraints WPF imposes on animation development.  The first...

On Tuesday the 22nd of May, I'm giving (gave) a presentation at the CT .Net user group on the implementation and use of dynamically loaded services based on the WCF framework.  I'll put some more detail into this in a bit, for the moment Presentation...

In the next series of posts I’m going to dig into a specific workflow example, showing how continuations can be used to support a process that moves forward by fits and starts, and how this can be considerably easier than you expect.  I’d...

Ruth Malan at Bredemeyer is enlisting help from architects and developers to define, design, and deploy (the 3 D’s) a system called HelpMatch, which would be used to create a decentralized system that could match people that wish to provide charitable...