Blogs|Sep 3, 2009

Lambda Expressions, Anonymous Methods, and Syntactic Sugar

What is the relationship between lambda expressions, anonymous methods, and delegates? The answer is, in two words: syntactic sugar … or is it? To show this, I put together a real simple console program that declares a delegate which returns a string. I then declare a concrete method that matches the delegate signature, and another…
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Blogs|Sep 2, 2009

Mac Pro + OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) + Windows 7 x64 = Love

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you have already seen my infatuation with using Apple hardware. With a freshly pressed copy of Apple’s latest, OS X 10.6 now in my hot little hands, it was time to install both the Leopard and Windows 7 RTM on my main desktop Mac Pro. After…
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missing-export|Sep 1, 2009

Silverlight Captcha Example

Silverlight, with its powerful text and graphics manipulation capabilities and strong interaction with the scripting DOM, seems to be the perfect engine for a Captcha challenge. See an Example Online Download the Source (18.3KB) Captcha is a challenge-response test used to determine to a degree of confidence that the end user is really human and…
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Blogs|Aug 31, 2009

Fixing a Server 2008 R2 Upgrade from Server 2008 Activation Problem

After remoting into my domain controller I recently upgraded to Server 2008 R2, I very briefly saw a balloon tip pop up that said: “Invalid Windows Activation” (or something close to that). That was odd as I was sure I had already activated the server. I shudder to think what would happen if your domain…
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Blogs|Aug 27, 2009

Silverlight 3’s New and Improved Duplex Networking

One of the many cool features added to the run-time in Silverlight 2 was support for WCF duplex services. That support allowed Silverlight clients to connect to duplex services and receive asynchronous callbacks through a callback channel. This made it possible to write Silverlight apps that, for example, update stock prices in near real time as the prices change…
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missing-export|Aug 26, 2009

Windows Workflow Sequential Workflow Unit Testing

Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) is a powerful programming model and designer for workflow processes. Using workflow is easier than some may believe. I wanted to share a quick post relative to some practices I’ve found useful for sequential workflows, specifically around Inversion of Control (IoC) and unit testing. In our shop we have several complex…
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missing-export|Aug 21, 2009

Devscovery 2009 Redmond follow-up

During my CLR/BCL/C# 4.0 talk, a few people asked me questions for which I didn’t have the answer. I have now researched these questions and have the answers.   Question #1: Are the new concurrent collection classes in .NET 4.0 serializable? Answer: Yes, ConcurrentStack, ConcurrentQueue, ConcurrentBag, and ConcurrentDictionary are all serializable. However, the BlockingCollection class…
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wintellect-blogs|Aug 15, 2009

Custom Behaviors in Silverlight 3 and Blend 3

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Expression Blend lately. I wasn’t a huge fan of Blend 2, but Blend 3 is something I can get excited about. And one of the things that excites me is the ability to write custom behaviors. Behaviors are pieces of code that a designer can attach to…
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wintellect-blogs|Aug 12, 2009

Paraffin 3.11: Fixed Directory Reference Option

Sam reported a bug in Paraffin where I wasn’t handling the –dirref option correctly. How embarrassing! It was a quick fix so grab the updated code and binary here. As always, please let me know if you have feature suggestions or bug reports for Paraffin.
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wintellect-blogs|Aug 12, 2009

Setup Windows Identity Framework SDK Samples on Windows 7

The setup and cleanup scripts that ship with the Windows Identity Framework SDK sample code do not properly operate under Windows 7. This is due to a check for the OS type that is used to determine if the scripts should use the netsh command or the older httpcfg command. To correct this problem, simply…
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Blogs|Aug 11, 2009

Bugslayer Tips Reappear

A while ago we lost the link where I had put all the tips that ran in my Bugslayer column in Microsoft Systems Journal and MSDN Magazine. Now they’re back. Here’s the complete collection: https://www.wintellect.com/bugslayertips.aspx. Enjoy!
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wintellect-blogs|Aug 11, 2009

Google Notebooks and Bookmarks

I really like Microsoft OneNote. It only stands to reason then that I would love the online Google Notebook application. Of course I do!… What’s not to love?! Nearly everyone that I know who has used the application loves it. If didn’t have a chance to add the application before it went away… you really…
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