Rik Robinson's Blog

Photosynth

2008-08-28T14:01:28Z

For those that missed the announcement last week, PhotoSynth is live and after a pretty bumpy start looks like you can at least play around with it now. I've managed to load two of my sets of photos from a trip to the High Sierras a couple of years ago. It definitely still has its bumps as I had to cancel and restart the synth several times as it would hang indefinitely. I didn't get really high "synthy" scores as I wasn't taking the photos with PhotoSynth in mind at the...(read more)

devLink Conference

2008-08-27T13:29:59Z

This past weekend a few of us Wintellectuals made the trek Atlanta to Murfreesboro TN to present at the annual devLink conference. I really can't say enough about the level of professionalism and obvious preparation that went into devLink . John Kellar , Tommy Norman , and Leanna Baker and the entire team that made it happen are well deserving of accolades for their accomplishment. The conference was held on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University which was also perfectly...(read more)

Updated Deep Dive CSS code

2008-04-01T21:25:35Z

Thanks to all the folks that came to my Deep Dive CSS for the ASP.NET Developer session at this past weekend's Atlanta Code Camp. I got some really great feedback from the evaluations and will definitely incorporate some suggestions into this presentation in the future. The abstract, updated code and slides are available here: Deep Dive CSS for the ASP.NET Developer...(read more)

Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes

2008-02-20T05:52:10Z

We saw it when the world first discovered Flash and I'm sure we've got a lot of it left to live through with Silverlight , so this is pretty timely advice from the "Godfather of Web Usability" himself, Jakob Nielsen . This should be required for every web developer. There are some great links within the post as well, so be sure to click around. Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes...(read more)

Painless Free Annual Credit Reports

2008-01-25T18:30:24Z

There is finally a (relatively) painless way to receive your Free Annual Credit Report from the Big 3 Credit Agencies. It is a really good idea to keep your eye on your credit report these days. The folks at AnnualCreditReport.com have integrated the registration processes for the three Credit Agencies into a seamless wizard type experience. I was able to print all three of mine in less than 10 minutes....(read more)

Weather Widget now in the Silverlight.net Showcase

2008-01-25T08:07:29Z

The Silverlight Weather Widget made it to the Silverlight.net Showcase and is mentioned in the News section of the Home Page . WooHooo. ...(read more)

The New Generic Kid on the Block - HashSet<T>

2008-01-25T07:53:51Z

In mathematics, a Set is typically thought of as a collection of distinct objects that is usually defined by some rule that determines whether they are a member of that particular Set. For example, a Set could be defined to contain "all the odd numbers under 100" or "every number divisible by 2" or whatever. The main points here being that the objects in a Set are distinct (i.e. NO duplicate objects are allowed) and the objects are not ordered or sorted in any way. (If you really feel the need to...(read more)

A Better Way to Remove a Trailing Slash from a Path

2008-01-18T05:32:41Z

How many times have you written this to trim a trailing slash from a path: if (myPath.EndsWith( "\\" )) /* or "/" in the case of a URI */ myPath = myPath.Substring(0, myPath.Length-1); Next time, try this: myPath = myPath.TrimEnd( new char []{'\\', ' / '}); >> > In addition to String.TrimStart() and String.TrimEnd(), there is an overload on String.Trim() that accepts a character array. There are good examples of usage in the MSDN Library. Here are the links: System.String Trim(char[]) TrimStart(char[])...(read more)

Back from the Silverlight Tour

2008-01-18T03:49:55Z

I had a chance to attend the recent Atlanta stop of Wildermuth Consulting ’s Silverlight Tour this past week and wanted to offer some quick comments about it here for anyone considering the class. Going into the class, I had about 3 weeks of heads-down knowledge of Silverlight 1.0, but I had spent no time at all with Silverlight 1.1 (now 2.0). I had also read Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed , watched a lot of the webcasts available and I had just (mostly) completed my first Silverlight 1.0 project . The...(read more)

Squeeze Your ASP.NET Applications Until They Scream

2008-01-11T16:50:52Z

A couple of weeks ago, I had the good fortune of catching a webcast from Jeff Prosise of Wintellect entitled: "Squeeze Your ASP.NET Applications Until They Scream". I was really impressed with the content and with Jeff's presentation of same. The event was sponsored by Compuware and they have given me permission to post a link to the presentation. Squeeze Your ASP.NET Applications Until They Scream...(read more)

My First Look at the (Silver)Light

2008-01-07T05:25:20Z

Over the holidays, I was finally able to catch up on some reading and take some time to play with Silverlight 1.0. The two books that I spent the most time with are ASP.NET Ajax in Action and Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed . Both of these, I HIGHLY recommend! > My first project is a Silverlight 1.0 application that I call Weather Widget (for lack of a more exciting moniker). The Weather Widget will accept a 5-digit US Zip Code and return a 5-day forecast from The Weather Channel. You can see it in action...(read more)

Expression Blend December Preview is out

2007-12-08T03:50:31Z

This page has a list of changes, as well as, a link to get the bits: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/download.aspx?key=blend2preview...(read more)

Sharing Folders in Remote Desktop

2007-10-17T19:52:28Z

Today, I was struggling with getting some code deployed to a client's test server and called him to double-check FTP credentials and such. He casually mentions having the ability to share your hard drive (and other devices) with a Remote Desktop session. How many times would that have come in handy?!?! Anyway, I dug into it further and it works! Check out Dan Mork's blog posting on the topic as he does a great job of walking you through the process. (Make sure and check the comments as there is another...(read more)

Deep Dive: CSS for the ASP.NET Developer

2007-10-08T18:38:05Z

Thanks everyone for the comments and tips offered after I gave this presentation at Alabama Code Camp, as well as, at the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET group last week. I received several "so that's how it works" comments and that was exactly the point of this talk. Here is the abstract of the presentation: This will be a thorough discussion of all that is CSS. Whether you know it as the necessary evil or the great enabler (that just hasn’t quite clicked for you yet), you should walk away with something...(read more)

Time for T : An Introduction to .NET Generics

2007-10-08T18:24:56Z

Finally able to grab a minute to post my code and slides from the Introduction to Generics presentation that I did this past weekend at the Alabama Code Camp at the University of Alabama. This is the abstract from the presentation: With the release of the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework, Generics became first class citizens in the Common Language Runtime. Yet, many still shy away from using them because of perceived difficulty or other misconceptions. This presentation will seek to dispel a few...(read more)