Windows Media Center allows you to record TV shows to your hard drive. As a proud user of a playstation 3 I checked that ps3 cant read WTV movies. You need to convert them to dvr-ms. In Vista and Windows 7 this can be done by a right click on the file. But I want this to be done automatically after a recording has been finished.

c:
cd \
cd windows
cd ehome
WTVConverter "E:\Recorded TV\*.wtv" "E:\TV-Converted"
del "E:\Recorded TV\*.wtv"

1. Open your Taskplaner
2. Add a new Task ( call it like WTV Converter)
3. Choose "protocol a specific event"
4. From the dropdown box choose "Media Player" protocol
5. Choose "Recording" as source
6. Set tje Event-ID to 1 (means recording has finished)
7. As Action choose "Start Program"
8. Select your Script like ""E:\Recorded TV\convert.cmd"
9. Done!

The windows presentation foundation is the biggest change in windows UI programming since Windows 3.1 was replaced by Windows 95. Since ages all UI outputs where made by GDI+ and WIN32 operations. The future is DirectX. So it was a smart step to embedd DirectX in a better way. So the WPF uses the DirectX framework and all its power to render high qualitiy graphics using hardware acceleration. To support older systems and to keep WPF extendable it implements rendering tiers. The lowest tier wont use any hardware acceleration. The highest one can use the power of current DirectX Versions. So what is WPF? Its an abstraction level of DirectX. Not for game developers but for software developers.

<window class="Dixus.WPF.Training.MainWindow"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
height="300" width="300">
<grid>
<button name="button1">Button
 <button.background>
     <lineargradientbrush>
         <gradientstop offset="0" color="gray">
         <gradientstop offset="1" color="yellow">
     </lineargradientbrush>
 </button.background>
</button>
</grid>

using System;
using System.Windows;

namespace Dixus.WPF.Training
{
class CoreWPFApp
{
[STAThread()] static void Main()
{
Application app = new Application();
MainWindow wnd = new MainWindow();
app.MainWindow = wnd;
wnd.Show();
app.Run();
}
}
}

Unit Testing is something most developers hate. Its just boring. Nice to see that microsoft research is working on an VS IDE integrated solution for full covered unit tests.

Wow. I havent really something done with powershell. To take advantage of the new power i started to read about it and to try some stuff. Its really amazing! As .net engineer i am happy that you can access all the power you can take in your IDE. So for example you can create .NET objects in a bash.

$myobject = new System.Anydotnetclasses....

$math = [System.Math]
$math::Sqrt(16)
4

get-help new-* -detailed

get-help new-item

PS C:\Users\hokr\Documents\E-Books\Powershell> $ie = new-object -comobject InternetExplorer.application
PS C:\Users\hokr\Documents\E-Books\Powershell> $ie.Navigate("http://www.dixus.de")
PS C:\Users\hokr\Documents\E-Books\Powershell> $ie.Visible = $True

A nice Visual Studio plug in that allows to visualize linq queries.

LINQ to SQL Debug Visualizer - ScottGu's Blog

This rocks. I can use my google blog using Internet Explorer integrated with delicious.

Quick Tour of Internet Explorer on Delicious

VB.NET and C# Comparison

A nice overview about the confusing path properties of ASP.NET Making sense of ASP.Net Paths - Rick Strahl's Web Log

I was looking for a solution to add custom headers for IIS virtual folders or subfolders. There is a way using cscript.exe and  adsutil.vbs in the AdminScript directory of InetPub.  

 Protected Sub AddCustomHeaders(ByVal virtualDirName As String)
     
       Dim strPath As String = "IIS://localhost/W3SVC/1/Root/" & virtualDirName
       Dim de As DirectoryEntry = New DirectoryEntry(strPath)
       Dim myEntries As DirectoryEntries = de.Children
       ' Find Images Folder
       For Each entry As DirectoryEntry In myEntries
           If entry.Name = "Images" Then
               'Add a custom header (here Ie6 Cache Bugfix)
                entry.Properties("HttpCustomHeaders").Add("Cache-Control:post-check=900,pre-check=3600")
               entry.CommitChanges()
               Exit For
           End If
       Next

   End Sub

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set w3svc/1/ROOT/YOURVIRTUALDIR/Images/HttpCustomHeaders "X-Powred-By: ASP.NET" "Cache-Control: post-check=900,pre-check=3600"

I was looking for a solution and after month somebody send me this link. Thank you dan! Dan Miser - Ignoring specified elements during XMLSerialization Now my XML isnt doomed by attributes that currently are not used! This is great.

1. Export google contacts as VCF

For some reasons you cant refresh the performance index in control panel. 

I cant live without google mail any longer. Google Labs added some
really cool features like calendar, google docs and task integrations.
There are some cool hotkeys that make you work faster with gmail - if
you know and learn them.

z = undo
k / j = pre / next in message list
p /n = pre / next in message view
u = go to inbox
/ = go to search box
c = compose in message view
x = select message
s = star (cyclic)
e = archive
r = reply
# = abort / delete
l = label
v = move
shilt i/u = mark read / unread
* + a = select all
* + n = deselect all

If you open the database properties you see extended properties for
the database. Here you are able to set some user defined parameteres
and values.
Following code allows you to read out those values by T-SQL very easy.

declare @username SQL_VARIANT

SELECT @username = [value] from sys.extended_properties 
                    WHERE class_desc = "DATABASE"
  AND [Name] = "UserName"

select @username

I use the great DocProject to create code help files. You set it up in 5 minutes. The only one thing that is annoying are the "Send Feedback" and the three default languages. But there are configfiles in /Presentation/Style/Configuration and Content that you can edit to get rid of this.

CPlusPlusDeclarationSyntaxGenerator
ScriptSharpDeclarationSyntaxGenerator

file="..\..\Help\Presentation\Style\content\feedback_content.xml

I was going crazy because my in my designer and ASP.NET Development Server no infragistics controls that use images could find them. Looks like a corrupt installation... But how to solve it. With nice help from infragistics forum i could solve it this way...

I am currently using 2008 Vol2 CLR 35... If you are using another version you probably have to change some directory names..

He tries to load the images from this path:

/aspnet_client/system_web/2_0_50727/ig_common

No where is it located? You find it here:

c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ASP.NETClientFiles

Just make sure the ig_common directory is in this path including the images folder from your infragistics installation.

If you often create new solutions or projects just to test a piece of code or something else, you will have a lot of trash in your folders. There is a simple way to stop this.  

There are many chart types but sometimes it happens that you cant find the one you need. So you need to specialize one chart to get the one you need. This special chart shows one column as summary. All other columns are parts of the summary column shown as a stack chart. Also there are shown annotations that shows the sum of each column at the top of the stack charts. There is no way to move the columns the way you need and also no solution to add summary annotation for stack charts. So the easy solution is to add a dummy rows to your data.  

Public Overrides Function CreateResultTable() As DataTable
 Dim dt As New DataTable()
 dt.Columns.Add("Month", GetType(String))
 dt.Columns.Add("Dummy", GetType(Int32))
 dt.Columns.Add("Value1", GetType(Int32))
 dt.Columns.Add("Value2", GetType(Int32))
 dt.Columns.Add("Value3", GetType(Int32))
 dt.Columns.Add("Anotation", GetType(Int32))
 Return dt
End Function

Protected Sub myChart_ChartDrawItem(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As ChartDrawItemEventArgs) Handles myChart.ChartDrawItem
  If e.Primitive.Column = 0 Then 'dummy row
      e.Primitive.Visible = False
  ElseIf e.Primitive.Column = 4 Then 'annotations row
      e.Primitive.Visible = False
  End If
End Sub

For i As Integer = 0 To ReportsDt.Rows.Count - 1
       Dim CallOut As CalloutAnnotation = New CalloutAnnotation()
       CallOut.Text = CalcSum(i)
       CallOut.Location.Column = 4
       CallOut.Location.Row = i
       CallOut.OffsetMode = UltraChart.Shared.Styles.LocationOffsetMode.Automatic
       CallOut.FillColor = Nothing
       CallOut.Border.Thickness = 0
       CallOut.Border.Color = Drawing.Color.Transparent
       CallOut.TextStyle.Font = New Font("Arial", 9,FontStyle.Bold, GraphicsUnit.Pixel, 0)
       myChart.Annotations.Add(CallOut)
   Next

Visual Studio is the perfect solution to develop .NET Framework based applications. But there are a few tools around that are very usefull. I want to keep here a list with the most usefull tools in my eyes. That will not only be VS PlugIns. Also external Tools that help to get over a .NET developer day a bit more easier.

Version Controlled Build

Integrates a toolbar and GUI into Visual Studio andhelps you to manage and syncronize your assembly versions.

Download at codeproject

Resource Refactoring Tool

Adds the entry "Extract to Resource" to the Refactor context menu that adds the selected string in your editor to the resource file automatically.

Download at codeplex

CoolCommands

Find file in solution explorer, references, misc context menu entries for folders. The VS2008 SETUP.BAT has an error. Edit the file and replace the line that starts with regpkg with regpkg CoolCommands.dll /root:Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 /codebase

Download CoolCommands

GhostDoc

Define a hotkey and let generate your XML comment. It used the function and parameter names to generate it automatically. Only problem it works only with C#. The VB.NET support is experimental. I tried to comment ASP.NET VB code and had here no effect. But for C# a great tool.

Website Roland-Weigelt

DocProject for Sandcastle

A tool that integrates a help generation tool in VS by templates. It uses MSBuild and Sandcastle to generate chm and other help files from your XML comments.

Download at Codeplex

.NET Reflector

See what is in an assembly. You can open each .NET assembly and look into the interface structure. The tool let choose the language you want.

Roeder .NET Reflector

AnkhSVN

A Subversion plugin for Visual Studio that makes it possible to diff, update, commit or revert in your VS IDE directly. Also you can see the modified files in your solution explorer visualized by some symbols.

Download AnkhSVN

LINQ Pad

A wonderfull helper that allows interactively query your SQL databases by LINQ. It also includes some help examples and is a perfect stand alone addon for LINQ experts and newbies.

Download LINQ Pad

Notepad2

A small 250kbyte text editor with syntax highlighting for free. If you dont want to buy UltraEdit (the best editor ever) try this one.

Download Notepad2

Linecounter AddIn

Not a must have but interesting to know. And also the sources are available.

LineCounterAddin

I never had to do with Sharepoint Windows Services so I wanted to play a bit with it. I know it is that portal solution of microsoft to handle large intranets. You have a complete .NET object model where you can do all that you need. Futher its free! All you need is a Windows Server licence. The best way is the installation in a VirtualPC. So setup a VM with Windows Server 2003. Give it a least 1 GB Memory. After installing the windows server run all updates and service packs and configure the server xp like. That means disable the server stuff like error logs, shutdown logs and internet explorer security. A good german article you can find here.

• Install IIS with ASP.NET support
• optionally install and setup Active Directory
• Install Frameworks 2.0, 3.5
• if you forgot to install the IIS use reg_iis in the framework directory
• Install your Visual Studio 2005 or 2008
• If you want to develop WepParts use 2005 (Sharepoint Tools still not out for 2008)
• Download WSS 3.0 and install it (default way works fine)
• Install the Sharepoint Software Development Kit
• connect with your Administrator Password to http://localhost for the default website
• connect to http://localhost:17642 for sharepoint admin backend
• Open you Visual Studio and add the sharepoint.dll reference.
• Start exploring the sharepoint object modell

Remember that the sharepoint is installed as a website. So you will find a web.config. By default its set to windows auth mode. So here I created two ToDo entries that I want to read out with Visual Studio. MyBlog Example and A Second List Entry. Sharepoint organizes data in lists that are stored in sql server tables. You can create your own lists with your own data types and fields.

So lets take a look how you can access those elements by Visual Studio and WSS oject model.

using System;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
namespace SharepointShell
{
class Program
{
 static void Main(string[] args)
 {
     String url = "http://localhost/";
     SPSite mySite = new SPSite(url);
     SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb("/");
     SPList myList = myWeb.GetList("/Lists/Aufgaben");
     foreach (SPListItem myListItem in myList.Items)
         Console.WriteLine(myListItem.Title);      
 }
}
}

I updated a project to Visual Studio 2008 and framework 3.5 some weeks ago. Now the time had come to reengineer a small submodule from classic dataset DAL to a LINQ DAL. The main important advantage of LINQ is the compilable SQL. One of the biggest problems in large project was taking care of changes in the DDL on sql server side. The compiler cant help you because all SQL statements are written as strings. But with linq thats not a problem any longer.

Second thing i like is that you dont need that huge and slow datasets any longer. The LINQ designer creates smaller objects that you can use as business objects much more better than a DataSetRow used to be. Also there is no need for IsDateIsNull methods. You can work with nothing or null like you do with other objects too.

However... The greatest introduction in LINQ wrote scott.

There are many thinks why I sometimes feel like "format c:" using windows vista. One reason was that every windows explorer folder was looking different. Every settings where made correctly. But my source code folders where shown with columns like "Rating" and "Lenght". WTF. You can fix this in registry: Open the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell and delete the complete Bags and BagMRU key folder. Create a new key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell with new string "FolderType" with value "NotSpecified". Then open your explorer and reset the folder settings. Next think i used to love on vista was the missing context menu entry to extract zip files by explorer. You can fix this by executing this command in console.

cmd /c assoc .zip=CompressedFolder