Writing
Articles
Essays on thinking clearly, working for yourself, and doing real work while AI rewrites the rules. Two decades of them.
IIS 6 & PHP – Mimicking .htaccess User/Pass Functionality
How to password-protect a directory on a PHP site running on IIS 6 using ASP.NET forms authentication, since .htaccess doesn't work on Windows.
2007.08.03Read →Presenting at Arizona .NET User Group – Dependency Injection & Inversion of Control
I'm presenting Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control at the Arizona .NET User Group on August 14th at 6pm at the Microsoft office.
2007.08.03Read →Tip: DirectorySeparatorChar
Stop hardcoding backslashes in file paths. Use .NET's Path.DirectorySeparatorChar so your code works on Windows, Mac, and *NIX alike.
2007.07.29Read →Ubuntu and Virtual PC 2007 Mouse Issues
Installing Ubuntu 7.04 inside Virtual PC 2007 leaves the mouse completely unrecognized. Here are the two links that fixed it for me.
2007.07.28Read →Returning XML Data as a Record Sets through the CLR in SQL Server 2005
How to use a SQL Server 2005 CLR stored procedure to return a row plus its embedded XML column data as proper record sets in one query.
2007.07.27Read →HOW TO: Display Required Field Validators at Page Load
A short snippet to force ASP.NET RequiredFieldValidators to run on page load, so required-field asterisks show up before the user submits.
2007.07.20Read →ASP.NET AJAX Always Visible Control Frustrations
ASP.NET AJAX's Always Visible Control won't target a user control directly. Here's the hacky but working fix: wrap it in a panel instead.
2007.07.17Read →ASP.NET Projects Take Forever To Load in Internet Explorer
ASP.NET projects taking minutes to load in Internet Explorer during debugging while other sites load instantly? Resetting IE's settings fixed it.
2007.07.09Read →HTML 5 vs HTML 4
Early notes on HTML5 vs HTML4: the new browser-native input types like date, email, and range that promised to kill custom UI widgets.
2007.06.23Read →.NET Scaffolding
Tree Surgeon scaffolds a consistent .NET project layout, borrowing Rails' convention-over-configuration approach to keep code where you'd expect it.
2007.06.21Read →Teamprise Explorer Client vs. Visual Studio Team Explorer
Comparing Teamprise Explorer and the Visual Studio Team Explorer plug-in for working with CodePlex's TFS-hosted source - and why the VS plug-in won out.
2007.06.07Read →Windows Surface
A first look at Microsoft's original Surface: a 30-inch multi-touch tabletop that lets you grab data by hand, no keyboard or mouse required.
2007.05.31Read →