Scott Hanselman

Best Packet Writing Software?

December 11, 2005 Comment on this post [7] Posted in Musings
Sponsored By

I just upgraded, blindly, to Nero 7, and suddenly InCD (the Nero Packet Writing Software) and my Iomega REV Drive are fighting. I have an Iomega REV 35G USB along with two Sony DVD+-RW drives, the 510a and the 810a. The 810a is Dual Layer. Now that Nero is installed my REV Drive just looks like a CD.

I always thought InCD was the ultimate packet writing software - however, school me, dear readers, what's the real story for RW disks?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

facebook bluesky subscribe
About   Newsletter
Hosting By
Hosted on Linux using .NET in an Azure App Service

DasBlog Community Building and Documentation

December 09, 2005 Comment on this post [2] Posted in ASP.NET | DasBlog | Bugs | Tools
Sponsored By

Just wanted to give a shout-out to Tom Watts who is near single-handedly coordinating the collection of DasBlog related documentation and goo on the 'net into some organized fashion. It's a little chaotic right now, but we're headed in the right direction.

It's great to see this kind of substantive help from the community, and I praise Tom for his vision and tenacity. Please excuse our dust as we make these changes.

Also, it's nice to see folks using the (largely unpublished) DasBlog Custom Macro support that was snuck into 1.8. I'm shamed to only notice now that Vasanth has written del.icio.us support as a custom macro. I need to get that one hooked up soon. 

We are also discussing the ASP.NET 2.0 Roadmap, and should have some announcements around that soon as well. Until then, note that DasBlog 1.8 does run just fine under the 2.0 runtime - see the readme for details.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

facebook bluesky subscribe
About   Newsletter
Hosting By
Hosted on Linux using .NET in an Azure App Service

New CodeRush Screencasts

December 08, 2005 Comment on this post [1] Posted in NUnit | XML | CodeRush
Sponsored By

If you've though about using CodeRush, or you've tried it and given up because it seems to complex, take a look at the new Screencasts that have been added to the CodeRush Training/Tutorial site. The Cool Templates screencast shows the basics of CodeRush, while the NUnit-specific one shows off how CodeRush can augment testing. One of the best, but least understood features is the Smart Clipboard that will dramatically change the number of arrow keys and shift-arrowing that you need to do. There's 900+ templates in CodeRush and it can be a little daunting unless you grok it.

Now playing: Jill Scott - Thickness

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

facebook bluesky subscribe
About   Newsletter
Hosting By
Hosted on Linux using .NET in an Azure App Service

Fatherhood - Part 1

December 06, 2005 Comment on this post [23] Posted in Parenting | Z
Sponsored By

CIMG3974

I'm overwhelmed. The idea that we'd be put in charge of this little man without so much as a license or registration is beyond me. Z changes everything.

We took birthing classes, breast-feeding classes (Mo's better than I at this particular skill), and read voraciously. I was at every pre-natal exam; how could I not?

The baby doctor told me that he'd delivered some babies to married couples where he literally met the father on the day of delivery. There may be some folks who study harder for their MCSE. I feel as if I've been prepping for this my whole life. As if my first 32 years are prepare for his first 32. I know I crammed in these last nine months and I'm totally prepared to be completely unprepared.

If I known it'd be so important, so weighty, so powerful, I'd have studied harder in High School. I'd have exercised more, eaten better, drank less soda.

It's more than cuteness. Everyone thinks their baby is the cutest baby in the world (which mine is, of course.) But it's the implicit trust.

This little guy didn't choose us. Choosing us was the most important and effectual decision that he never made. He has no reason to trust us other than he has no reason not to. We accept the immense weight of that trust with open arms.

He cries, and he's fed. Everyone deserves to count on that simple contract. I am overwhelmed at the responsibility, but I know we've got this.

- saZ (father of Z)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

facebook bluesky subscribe
About   Newsletter
Hosting By
Hosted on Linux using .NET in an Azure App Service

Gotcha in .NET Framework handling of Versions and Publisher Policies

December 06, 2005 Comment on this post [3] Posted in Bugs
Sponsored By

PubpolicyweirdAs a publisher of libraries, one might find the need to force a redirect to a specific assembly version in order to fix a bug without requiring a recompile of the application consuming your library. Typically this is done by the publisher using Publisher Policy Files.

Peter Thomas, a wise man in the world of such things and fortunately a Corillian employee noticed this:

While debugging a rebinding problem I stumbled upon an interesting behavioral quirk with how Fusion decides which policy file to use.  I had found information on Richard Grimes' Fusion Workshop that stated that if you had multiple policy files for an assembly, the policy file with the latest version would be used.  This doesn’t appear to be completely true.  I found that it uses the policy file with the latest version when the version is sorted alphabetically.

In my case, I had a policy file with a version of 3.1.0.43 and another with the version 20.0.0.0 (for testing).  I had expected 20.0.0.0 to be loaded but I could see via the Fusion logs and ProcessExplorer that the 3.1.0.43 policy file was always being used instead.  I added a new policy file (all these files used the same rebinding info) with the version 4.0.0.0 and that one stated to get used.  Noticing that the ones that worked were single digit versions I created 10.0.0.0 to see if it would fail to be used as well and sure enough, it wasn't loaded.  Finally I created 9.0.0.0 and it did work.  As I looked at the GAC it dawned on me that it loaded the version that was alphabetically last.

This struck me as so bizzare that at first I didn't believe him. However, it's a little-known bug and will possibly be fixed in the Longhorn timeframe. Until then, if you're using .NET 1.x and publisher policy you'll want to avoid double-digit version numbers. For .NET 2.0 we're told:

For .NET 2.0, you won’t run into this issue due to the policy cache. There's a pretty good description of the policy cache here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/junfeng/archive/2005/05/24/421459.aspx.  It's a side effect of the policy cache, the code with the calculation error is avoided due to the policy cache.

Kudos to Peter for chasing it down.

(and No, I'm not back to work, I'm just reporting the news, so phooey on you for thinking it.)

Now playing: Luther Vandross - Hit It Again (featuring Queen Latifah)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

facebook bluesky subscribe
About   Newsletter
Hosting By
Hosted on Linux using .NET in an Azure App Service

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.