Here is a neat tip (#210) from Sara Ford.
Add Reference to your Visual Studio Project Directly from the Object Browser
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Category Archives: Technology
I Survived a Busy Long Weekend
Went up to Quebec City with the family this past weekend. The wife and I both have family up there so we try to go up at least once a year (this was our second trip this year).
We leave Friday night after work and drive as far as Trois-Rivieres, which after a full day of work and several hours in the car with the little one is far enough. We crash overnight in a hotel, then cover the last couple hours to Quebec City on Saturday morning. We spend most of Saturday with my family, then Saturday night we crash at the in-laws place. Sunday is time spent with the wife’s family, and some touristy activities. Then Monday we head back home. This time we stopped in Montreal and spent a few hours at the Bio-Dome. It’s a pretty cool place, but a little on the expensive side.
We got home Monday night and did nothing but unpack and watch a little TV. I spent last night and most of tonight getting caught up on 5 days worth of emails (approximately 1600, 75% spam) and my Google Reader feeds (1000+ articles). I’ve still got 900+ unread items in Google Reader.
First Impressions: Rogers Video Direct (aka Zip.ca)
I’ve been a subscriber of Rogers Video Direct (a Rogers branded version of Zip.ca) for about a month now and so far it’s working out for me.
Basically how it works is that you sign up for an account, choose a plan which dictates how many DVDs you can have out at once and how many you can have shipped to you for free each month. I started out with 3 at a time, unlimited per month, but have switched to one at a time, unlimited per month after getting a feel for exactly how long it actually takes me to watch a DVD given my schedule. Even on the 1 at a time plan there is a ‘Refill’ feature which you can use to indicate that the DVD you’re returning is in the mail. They’ll basically send out your next DVD before before they receive the last one. In my experience I receive my next DVD the same day that they receive to previous DVD return.
Anyways, once you’ve signed up, you browse their selection of DVDs and add the ones you’re interested in to you ZipList. You can rank the DVDs on your list and what they do is send you the highest ranked DVD on your list that is available.
I am currently on my 4th DVD. I find the DVDs in my mailbox within 2 days of receiving notification that they’ve shipped and the return trip seems to take about the same time (2 days after I mail the DVD back it disappears from my current rented DVD list.
I’ve got years of movies to get caught-up with!
Installing PHP 5 on IIS in 5 Simple Steps
Just followed the instructions in this great article and installed PHP5 on my main (Windows) development box.
I Have 1077 Items ‘Starred’ in Google Reader
Yeah…
Custom WordPress FAQ "Mashup"
I’ve just hacked together a custom WordPress FAQ on this site. Not because I specifically wanted an FAQ on this site, but I do want one on another upcoming site so I figured I’d use this site as a test bed for how I was going to achieve the desired look-and-feel.
I Am Now My Own OpenID Provider
So have you heard of this OpenID thing? The basic idea is this: instead of having a separate username and password at each web site you visit, you create one username and password at an OpenID Provider. What the OpenID provider gives you in return is essentially a custom web address (or URL).
Feed Me… RSS
I’ve become a hard-core Google Reader user lately. It has gotten to the point where I have all the RSS feeds of my (former) daily-visit web sites plugged into Google Reader.
Google Reader is setup as my start page in my browser and as a result I rarely visit any of the sites I used to visit several times per day.
My Slashdot and CBC news stories all appear in Google Reader, as do my daily comics, my friends sites and blog. I receive Facebook updates there too. The Globe and Mail, MySQL product releases, Stack Overflow, Wired top stories, Woot one day deals! You name it!
If it interests me, I will probably hear about it via Google Reader!
Recent Additions to my Bookshelf
The first 4 (Head First Design Patterns, User Stories Applied, Design Patterns and Refactoring) I have finished reading and can highly recommend, the last 4 (xUnit Test Patterns, Test-Driven Development, Code Complete and Implementation Patterns) I am currently reading.
PortableApps
I can’t remember if I’ve already blogged about this or not, but I’ve been using PortableApps for probably about 6 months now and I think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
In a nutshell, PortableApps is a suite of applications that you can install on a USB flash drive and then run from the flash drive wherever you go.
The PortableApps suite comes with a launcher application that sits in your system tray as shown in the image above. Clicking the launcher icon brings up a Start menu like list of portable applications installed on your flash drive, shown in the image below.
The PortableApps web site (http://www.portableapps.com/) has dozens of portable applications that you can download and add/install to your PortableApps suite, but you can also install other portable applications on your flash drive and have them appear in the PortableApps menu. All the applications available directly from the PortableApps site are Open-Source but there are other free, non-Open Source portable applications available (some of the ones I have installed as displayed in the image above include FreePCAudit, FSCapture and .Net Reflector).
Over the next little while I will blog about some of my personal favourite portable applications.