I’ve been using SubSonic for a while now and I totally love it. Not only has it made developing in .net fun again, it’s also been a huge productivity booster for me and the guys I work with. And while I appreciate all of the hard work that the team has put into the SubSonic Build Provider for use with WebSite Projects, I just don’t work that way. I like having the actual generated code files included in my project (be it a WebSite or WebApplication) and checked into source control. I gives me the warm and fuzzies. But...

Tonight I wasted several hours troubleshooting hardware/driver issues with my development box - a fully loaded Dell OptiPlex GX620. I've been fighting with this particular machine since the day I got it. Recently it's been freezing up, the USB controllers malfunction at random times, it hangs during boot (before the OS even starts loading), and all kinds of other fun stuff. I've already upgraded the BIOS to the latest available version, released back in December 2006, and applied all relevant firmware and chipset driver updates. Oh, and I'm running Vista Ultimate 32-bit... though I had the same hardware issues...

While working on a web application I had the need to dynamically add new Option elements to a Select element (drop down list) using some fancy client-side JavaScript. The obvious solution was to do something like this: var theSelectList = $('theBigFatSelectList'); var myNewOption = new Option("My Option", "123"); theSelectList.selectedIndex = InsertNewOption(myNewOption, theSelectList); function InsertNewOption(newOption, selectElement) { var optsLen = selectElement.options.length; selectElement.options[optsLen] = newOption; return optsLen; } And it worked just as I’d expected. I got a new option in the drop down list and all was right with...

Being Web 2.0 is a hot topic right now. So much so that everyone and their mom is out to dress up their web presence with whatever Ajaxy goodness they can. Lucky for the Internet the ASP.NET AJAX framework has made adding Ajax functionality to asp.net web sites and web applications a pretty simple task. The simplicity is made possible because the framework hides much of the magical mechanics of doing the actual Ajax and DOM work behind a new control, the UpdatePanel. However, like most magical solutions this one comes at a cost. Actually a couple of costs. Two...

After reading Jeff's post about advertising on your blog and why it's so deliciously evil I thought I'd look into a few of the ad services he mentioned. Hey, I'll take a few extra bucks if you want to shill your stuff on my blog... and then I'll knock your product anyhow. I'm a huge fan of spite! But I digress. I was checking out some of Text Link Ads' free tools and I came across the Blog Juice Calculator. As best I can tell this is nothing more than a tool, and I use that term loosely, to judge the...

This is a quick note to myself - and all of you as well - for writing code and using classes from outside the standard .net assemblies. Be sure to add assembly references to the project! I was was working on some code today and tried to use a .net class from outside the assemblies that are automatically referenced when a new project is created. In this particular case I was trying to make use of the System.Transactions.TransactionScope class - from the System.Transactions assembly. After several minutes of banging my head into the desk and Googling I threw my...

As several of my comrades have already announced, Subtext has been nominated for two, count 'em two Community Choice Awards! Apparently my pleading worked! Nominations Best Project for Communications: The best project for talking to your friends or sharing information. Other nominees include - Miranda, Pidgin, and FileZilla. Most Collaborative Project: The project most likely to accept your patches and value your input. Other nominees include - Azureus, XOOPS, and Zimbra. This is a really big achievement for the project and we're proud to be one of only two .NET projects to be nominated. The other project is VMukti, a corporate...