Writing
Articles
Essays on thinking clearly, working for yourself, and doing real work while AI rewrites the rules. Two decades of them.
Sending Email in a Development Environment without an SMTP Server
No local SMTP server? Configure .NET's mailSettings to drop emails into a pickup directory so you can test sending without actually sending.
2008.01.08Read →TFS Build Not Publishing Web Applications
Why TFS builds silently skip copying web apps to _PublishedWebsites: a commented-out MSBuild import in the .csproj file, and the one-line fix.
2008.01.08Read →Visual Studio Hangs on a Team Foundation Server UNDO Command
Visual Studio 2005 hanging on a Team Foundation Server Undo command? The undocumented devenv /resetuserdata switch fixed it for me.
2007.12.13Read →Full path to the solution file… too long?
Hitting Visual Studio's 260-character MAX_PATH limit creating a solution? Build it elsewhere and copy it over, or map a share for a shorter path.
2007.12.05Read →Google.com/ig/ and Big Feeds (over 512K in size)
Bumped your RSS feed to 1000+ items for a BlogEngine migration and forgot to change it back? FeedBurner chokes past 512K and serves stale posts.
2007.12.01Read →Syntax Highlighting for .build and .msbuild
A simple Visual Studio trick I wish I'd known sooner: map .build and .msbuild file extensions to the XML editor to get proper syntax highlighting.
2007.12.01Read →Weird Error after VS2005 Crash & The K.I.S.S. Principle
After a VS2005 crash corrupted a project file beyond repair, the fix was simple: restore from backup first, troubleshoot second. K.I.S.S.
2007.12.01Read →Cruise Control.NET & Visual Source Safe – SS.EXE Hangs
CruiseControl.NET hanging on 'Checking For Modifications' with Visual SourceSafe? A stray space in the password field was silently blocking SS.EXE.
2007.11.30Read →Frustrating MS Test Issue – blah blah blah is not trusted
MSTest throwing the location of the file is not trusted on a referenced DLL? Right-click it, hit Unblock, and the error disappears.
2007.11.19Read →Comma Delimiting Strings in .NET – The Framework Way
Stop using StringBuilder to join comma-separated strings in .NET - the built-in CommaDelimitedStringCollection class does it for you.
2007.11.15Read →Vitamin or Prescription?
A simple framework for prioritizing feature requests: ask if it's a 'vitamin' (nice to have) or a 'prescription' (required to survive).
2007.11.14Read →MODI – The Lightweight DOM Inspector Bookmarklet
MODI is a bookmarklet DOM inspector: hover over any element to see its parents and classes, no install required, works on any machine.
2007.11.13Read →