The Blog

Exploration Of Thought

Thoughts on autonomy, self direction, digital business and life.

• Using iTextSharp To Watermark/Write Text To Existing PDF’s

  How to watermark existing PDFs with real text (not clunky images) using iTextSharp, complete with orientation detection and working C# code.

  Donn Felker – May 11, 2008

• The Importance of Unit Testing WCF Attributes

  A WCF gotcha: removing the IsOneWay attribute silently turns an async call into a blocking one. You need unit tests on your service contracts too.

  Donn Felker – May 7, 2008

• Upgraded Personal Blog to DasBlog 2.x

  Upgraded my blog to DasBlog 2.0.7 in about 10 minutes flat, then spent 30 more verifying cross-posting and admin login still worked.

  Donn Felker – May 6, 2008

• Software Development: Greeenfield vs. Brownfield

  Greenfield vs brownfield development, explained with real examples of each, plus my own breakdown of how much of my career was spent in each camp.

  Donn Felker – May 5, 2008

• By Far, The Coolest Flash App I’ve EVER Played With

  Why Atmosphere's paintitgold.com Flash graffiti app, letting you spray-paint any URL's screenshot, is the most fun web app I've played with.

  Donn Felker – May 1, 2008

• 3.5 Beta Exams Not Available In Phoenix

  Phoenix is a top-5 US city, but no local testing center was rated high enough to proctor the ASP.NET 3.5 beta exams -- the nearest was in Prescott.

  Donn Felker – April 29, 2008

• Simple Download Counter HttpHandler

  A quick-and-dirty ASP.NET IHttpHandler that counts file downloads using a simple XML counter, built in minutes to test if an idea was worth pursuing.

  Donn Felker – April 29, 2008

• TechEd Developer 2008 & Party With Palermo

  I'll be at TechEd Developer 2008 and the Party With Palermo event - drop me a line if you're going too so we can meet up in person.

  Donn Felker – April 29, 2008

• WTF’s Per Minute

  A quick repost of the classic WTFs-per-minute code quality chart I found on digg, saved here mainly so I have my own copy to reference.

  Donn Felker – April 7, 2008

• NUnit 2.4.7 and the RowTest Attribute with Example

  NUnit 2.4.7 shipped with the RowTest add-in, letting you run one test method against multiple data rows instead of duplicating tests.

  Donn Felker – April 1, 2008

• I Can’t Read Your Screen, Mr. Presenter

  A pet peeve about presenters with unreadable tiny fonts, and the fix: ZoomIt for live zooming plus a dedicated big-font account for demos.

  Donn Felker – March 31, 2008

• PhotoShop Express vs. Paint.NET

  I hoped Photoshop Express would be a Photoshop Lite like Paint.NET. Instead it's a slow, upload-dependent browser app. Paint.NET still wins.

  Donn Felker – March 31, 2008