Jannik Anker

I took it!

Jannik Anker — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:56:44 GMT

How 'e' are you?

Jannik Anker — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:24:12 GMT

I'm an e-vangelist, apparantly... I envy all the e-experts here on GWB :-D

your e-score: 78
your e-group: e-vangelist
your e-ranking: 1040/9733

Check your own score at www.howeru.com.

The Most Useful .NET Utility Classes Developers Tend To Reinvent Rather Than Reuse

Jannik Anker — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:30:14 GMT

- a great little list from Phil Haack (and be sure to read comments as well)...

Computer Laws

Jannik Anker — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:01:08 GMT

I found a bunch of great Computer Laws...

A few highlights:

Ellison's Law: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. (Harlan Ellison)
Jakob's Law of the Internet User Experience: Users spend most of their time on other websites. (Jakob Nielsen)
Nathan's First Law: Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container. (Nathan Myhrvold)
Ninety-ninety Law: The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. (Tom Cargill)
Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. (Don Osborn)

Also, sysprog.net has quotes on everything from design over bugs to tech writing - plus a collection of predictions à là Bill Gates' 640K blunder...

Mouseless Computing

Jannik Anker — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 14:10:00 GMT

As I'm sitting here, my wrists are hurting slightly, due to the fact that at my new job (well, I'm back at my old workplace, but with a new title and all that) I don't have my normal keyboard. Also, my "new" chair sucks big time, so it's all agony ;-)

So I thought I'd share an old link with you guys: Jon Galloway : Mouseless Computing - although I know it sounds a bit backwards, asking you to use the keyboard more with my current keyboard being the culprit, it's a great post nevertheless, that should be as widely spread as possible...

"Processing requests from the background thread"

Jannik Anker — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 03:02:00 GMT

Whaaat? This screen appeared in Visual Studio 2005, right after I deleted a server control from HTML view and saved the file (not the designer-file, the aspx-file). And it just stayed there. No cancel, no way back into Visual Studio what so ever!? I wonder if I'm missing a service pack :-s

Ended up terminationg the VS-process manually. Bummer...

Which superhero are you?

Jannik Anker — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 10:31:00 GMT

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		85%
Robin		73%
Superman		70%
Hulk		65%
The Flash		60%
Iron Man		50%
Batman		40%
Green Lantern		40%
Supergirl		38%
Catwoman		35%
Wonder Woman		8%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Good news for flickr users!

Jannik Anker — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 14:45:00 GMT

Pro users no longer have upload limits - and regular users now have a 100MB limit each month, instead of the 20MB they used to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Flickrblog/~3/60508217/ho_ho_ho_flickr.html

That's damn good news for me, having just bought a new 10,1MP camera - with a 2GB memory card...

Top 20 Programming Lessons

Jannik Anker — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 19:10:00 GMT

Have a look at the top 20 lessons learned by JD in his 20 years of programming:

http://www.dcs-media.com/desdev/Detail.aspx?ArticleId=578

[Via Software by Rob]

Testing blogmailr.com

Jannik Anker — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:01:00 GMT

I know it works. I just know it :-)

SlickEdit Gadgets

Jannik Anker — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:11:00 GMT

I just installed a "funny" little (free) plugin for VS.2005. It's called SlickEdit Gadgets - I haven't really figured out yet if it can help me be more productive, but try it out for yourselves:

Download the free SlickEdit Gadgets thingy here

.NET Framework 3.0 RTM

Jannik Anker — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:07:00 GMT

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft just released the WinFX/.NET 3.0 Framework into RTM...

Visual Studio 2005 PowerToys

Jannik Anker — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:40:00 GMT

Via Paul Ballard:

"Microsoft has just dropped a set of Visual Studio 2005 PowerToys. Here's what you get:

Source Code Outliner : The Source Outliner tool is a Visual Studio extension that provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them inside the editor.
Visual C++ Code Snippets:The Visual C++ Code Snippets tool lets you insert snippets in your code by using a pop-up menu that contains programming keywords. VB.NET and C# languages have this functionality in Visual Studio 2005.
Indexed Find : The Indexed Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that uses the Microsoft Indexing Service to provide improved Search capabilities to the integrated development environment (IDE). It sends the results of a search to the Output Window.
Super Diff Utility: The Super Diff Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that compares text files. It uses color coding and graphics to show the difference between the files in deleted text (red), changed text (blue), inserted text (green).
Event Toaster Utility: The Event Toaster tool is a Visual Studio extension that notifies users about specific events within the Visual Studio IDE."

Oh, and you can get them here.

A "do not forget this (again)" post...

Jannik Anker — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:34:00 GMT

Note to self: Hey self! That fantastic tool you forget the name and URL of, and found out that you badly needed at your new job, was Steve Millers PureText. The Googled URL to Steves web site seemed to be invalid, so you found it at pcworld.com instead :-)

Visual Studio trick for obtaining the public key token and blob of a signed assembly

Jannik Anker — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:42:00 GMT

I hate command prompts.

I know - I'm supposed to be a geek and all, and therefore love prompts and stuff. But I just hate them anyway. So I was very pleased when I stumbled across andrewconnell.com, where I found a very nifty trick for avoiding some command prompt hell...

BTW, the article says it's a VS2005 trick, but it works fine for me in VS2003...

I just noticed something funny...

Jannik Anker — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 21:33:00 GMT

Over at feedicons.com (great initiative, by the way), I can't find the link to their feed ;-)

I can, however, subscribe to their newsletter!?

W3C - Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0

Jannik Anker — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 13:31:00 GMT

Quote from http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/CR-mobile-bp-20060627/:

Abstract
This document specifies Best Practices for delivering Web content to mobile devices. The principal objective is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices.

The recommendations refer to delivered content and not to the processes by which it is created, nor to the devices or user agents to which it is delivered.

It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites. Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with the creation of Web sites, and to have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, such as Web servers and HTTP. Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition CTP

Jannik Anker — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:34:00 GMT

Yeah... I got my HP iPAQ 6515 this weekend. Although I am having some problems adjusting to this whole PDA idea whilst also using the thing as a phone, I am planning on using it as a way to get going with the .NET Compact Framework.

So, I was looking for a good database solution for mobile devices - and then I saw this:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition CTP

Yummy. Will be testing ASAP.

Finally, it's all been worth it...

Jannik Anker — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:35:00 GMT

The hard work, the countless hours and endless nights. I am now finally a respected blogger (not like back in the old days):

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

Hehe ;-)

[OT] Mmmmm... Spore...

Jannik Anker — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 11:24:00 GMT

Did you guys hear about Spore from EA before this years E3? I certainly didn't - but it looks goooood... And won some awards, too!

CAPTCHA rocks!

Jannik Anker — Tue, 16 May 2006 17:33:00 GMT

So, I finally figured out why my blog didn't have CAPTCHA (why am I constantly writing CAPTHCA?) for the comments. It turns out that Jeff (Julian) had forgotten to add it to the skin I'm using here - I wish I had known before I manually deleted something like 60 spam comments, all from the same stupid [product name] moron.

I had been looking for the ~~CAPTHCA~~ ~~CAPTHCA~~ CAPTCHA (I hate that "word") option for ages, but didn't find it. Because it isn't there. So I asked Chris Williams what he'd done to get it, and he directed me to Jeff.

Thanks, guys!

Google Trends

Jannik Anker — Thu, 11 May 2006 13:50:00 GMT

Google announced a few new services yesterday: Google Trends and Google Co-op.

Trends inherits its concept from Zeitgeist, allowing you to see search (and news) activity for defined keywords. I like it!

Co-op is quite a bit more nerdy - I'm not sure I actually get it yet :-/

Tricking out your apps (WinForms)

Jannik Anker — Wed, 03 May 2006 17:18:00 GMT

What I've learned today:

The final application startup tweak we'll discuss is preventing a second instance of the application from starting. Of course, some document-based applications make sense to run multiple times, but many utilities make no sense, or can even cause problems when run this way. It turns out that we can easily make a change to accomplish this. In Visual Basic, you can simply click the Make single instance application checkbox in Project Settings to enable single-instance mode. In C# (and VB for that matter), you can create the same effect in the Main method.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class MyClass
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        bool exclusive;
        Mutex m = new Mutex(true, "C4F-TrickedOut", out exclusive);
        if( exclusive )
        {
            Application.EnableVisualStyles();
            Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
            Form1 mainForm = new Form1();
            Application.Run();
        }
        else
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Another instance is already running.");
        }
    }
    
    
}

Very nice. More like this here (Coding4Fun)

Buzzaire - Metered Dose Caffeine Inhaler

Jannik Anker — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:53:00 GMT

ThinkGeek offers a lot of weird and very, very geeky stuff to the geeks in all of us. But this new thingy takes the prize:

Buzzaire - Metered Dose Caffeine Inhaler

This is insane - if someone needs an inhaler in order to get his/her caffeine buzz, he/she should go see a doctor. In fact, anyone willing to spend money on such a device should go see that doctor ASAP.

I'll admit that the idea is funny, and that it is indeed ultrageeky to own a gadget such as this. But hey, how about brewing some normal coffee instead?:

Caffeine Comparison Chart

Drink/Food	Caffeine Content
12oz Can of Coke	34mg
12oz Can of Mt. Dew	37mg
12oz of Jolt Cola	78mg
10oz Bottle of Bawls	80mg
8oz of Brewed Coffee	70-120mg
One breath of Buzzaire	150mg

Nah... Spend your money on this instead...

Patents v. Microsoft

Jannik Anker — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:28:00 GMT

Via Dave Shea @ mezzoblue:

"Who's affected? Well, do you use the

<OBJECT>

element? Then, potentially, you are. Sites that embed PDF, Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media, or RealPlayer files will all get hit by this.

What happens? The page loads, but the controls are disabled by default. In order to activate them, the user must click on them first.

Bad for advertisers? Yep. Bad for CMS/eCommerce vendors that rely on ActiveX controls? Yep. Bad for media sites? You bet. Bad for Adobe? Of course.

Really, there's no good side here. Except that you've got two months to fix your sites. Like you didn't have anything better to do anyway. Enjoy."