IDEs, Editors, ..

Here are my favorites in descend order

• Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web
  yes! - it allows you free F# development, notably for libraries
• LINQPad
  again and again a wonderful tool!
• SharpDevelop
  sometimes a little bit idiosyncratic
• Online Scratchpad on TryFSharp.org
  the fastest start …

Additional resources

Maybe the following packages are necessary or in minimum useful:

• Visual F# Express Tools
• The free standalone F# compiler tools
• Windows 8 and .NET 4.5 SDK
• Windows 7 and .NET 4.0 SDK

some (unordered) links

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/2008/04/04/tackling-the-f-productization.aspx
• http://www.fssnip.net/an
• http://fsharp.org/use/windows/
• http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/

Situation

By installing BizTalk in a distributed environment it is essential, that the MS DTC (Microsoft Distributed Transaction Controller) have an unique CID. Notably by cloning machines in a virtual environment this is often not the case, if the customizing after cloning is too simple establishes. A lot of system guys don’t care about this IDs – they only change the SIDs of the systems.

To verify this, you have compare these IDs via RegEdit.

1. Start RegEdit
2. Goto HKLM\CID (there are around 4 GUIDs below this key)
3. Open these GUIDs and look for the Description key with value MSDTC.

The parent GUID of this Description key must be unique over all involved machines!

Solution

If this is not the case, do the following.
btw: In circumstance that there is often used the same process to clone the machines, you should go the following steps on all machines. Otherwise you need it for all without one.

1. Open Services
   Normally you should see “Distributed Transaction Coordinator” with Status: Started and Startup Type: Automatic
2. Open cmd prompt as administrator and run msdtc –uninstall
   After refreshing the view in Services (F5) there should no more the entry “Distributed Transaction Coordinator”
   After refreshing the view in RegEdit (F5) there should be no more the CID-key
3. run now msdtc –install
   After refreshing the view in Services (F5) there should be “Distributed Transaction Coordinator” again with Status: <empty> and Startup Type: Manual
   After refreshing the view in RegEdit (F5) there is now a new CID-key with new GUIDs below
4. run sc config msdtc start= auto
   (yes – there is a space between equal-sign and auto!)
   After refreshing the view in Services (F5) there should be “Distributed Transaction Coordinator” with Status: <empty> and Startup Type: Automatic
5. run sc start msdtc
   After refreshing the view in Services (F5) there should be “Distributed Transaction Coordinator” with Status: Started and Startup Type: Automatic

Remarks

Use the tools DTCPing and DTSTester.

• DTSTester: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293799
• DTCPing: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2868

Problem

I tried to add the Emmet (fka Zen Coding) package to Sublime Text 2. But by running this “Install Package” (CTRL + SHIFT + p) command

no packages were displayed.

Solution

No glue why, but I had to change the repository channels protocol (Preferences > Package Settings > Package Control > Settings – Default) from https to http:

And voila .. here we have the packages:

Situation, Problem

During playing a little bit with these WPF MVC F# projects inside SharpDevelop I stumbled over the situation, that I could not send F# snippets to the interactive window. The menu was not available.

Normally it looks like this:

Solution

If you would like to use the context menu “Send to F# Interactive” inside SharpDevelop during fsx developing, you have to ensure that this fsx file is part of an F# project!

fsx only as a solution item

no context menu “Send to F# Interactive”

fsx as a F# project item

context menu “Send to F# Interactive” is available

Situation

My private machine has Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. This Visual Studio edition doesn’t allow to develop with F#. So I installed additionally SharpDevelop.

But it took longer as expected to get F# projects running in this environment.

Problem

Creating a new or opening an existing F# project ended up in this error:

“Please ensure that the F# compiler is installed on your computer.”

According the the installation hints from Use F# on Windows, I installed the following packages:

• Windows 7 and .NET 4.0 SDK
• Install the free standalone F# compiler tools

But no chance .. still the same.

I remembered an old blog post concerning a special entry in the config file of SharpDevelop to get F# running .. but still the same.

Reason

Indeed there is this reference inside all my *.fsproj files:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\FSharp\1.0\Microsoft.FSharp.Targets" Condition="!Exists('$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0.dll')" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\..\Microsoft F#\v4.0\Microsoft.FSharp.Targets" Condition=" Exists('$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0.dll')" />

And both folders are not on this machine.

My F# is located under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\F#\3.0\Framework\v4.0.

Solution

After a few more attempts to configure SharpDevelop to use F# from the location on my machine, I lost my patience. I decided to go the hard way: use a junction.
With Sysinternals tool Junction it is possible to link one of the missing references to an existing one.

Im my case this command made it:

junction "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft F#\v4.0" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\F#\3.0\Framework\v4.0"

After setting this junction, F# developing within SharpDevelop was possible.

Installing redcar with

sudo gem install redcar

ends up in this error

Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error installing redcar:
     ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

I installed these additional packages:

sudo apt-get install open4
sudo apt-get install rubygems1.8
sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre´
sudo apt-get install firefox-dev
sudo apt-get install ruby-dev

Maybe the last one is the most essential one and all the others are not necessary.

Problem

If you try to delete large folders with explorer it could run for several minutes. Also when you try to suppress the moving to recycle bin via SHIFT + DEL.

Solution

From all variants to do this, rmdir in command prompt is my favorite

rmdir /s/q <foldername>

btw: deleting of files with good old DOS-del is also a fast way – particularly when you redirect the output:

del /f/s/q *.* > nul

Problem

If you go in Explorer to the GAC folder (%windir%\Assembly) a shell extension gives you a special view of the content there:

In this view you couldn’t copy the DLLs to somewhere else.

Solution

1. With a special registry intervention you could deactivate the shell extension so that Explorer shows the content in a normal way.
   But this is like a hack.
   
2. If you are practiced with command line you could go to the assembly folder
   
   
3. And the smartest with explorer is to map a network drive to \\<your machine>\c$\windows\assembly
   
   and so you have access to your assemblies over the new drive:
   
   

Install App “Kontacts” via BlackBerry App world

Run Kontacts and Export to csv

Start “BlackBerry Desktop Software”

Choose File

Press BlackBerry Icon in address line

Choose Device > home > user > documents > Kontacts

Copy file via drag and drop to folder in Explorer

Open www.google.com/contacts (maybe you have to sign in)

More > Import

Choose File (the exported file from above)

Import

Connect Phone to Google contacts via special app

Starting Point

In a former version of a project wiki on Github was a separation between the page filename and page title. So we build up our Wiki in a manner, that some well defined prefixes in the filename describe the overall context of the particular page.

Sample:

At the page themselves we used a title-tag on top of the page to get the title in the rendered HTML-page.

Here “= Tabelle: Anhänge bzw. Attachments” for the page with filename “data+table+Attachment”.

This was rendered as

We see:

• there is a file “data+table+Attachment”
• and a title-tag “= Tabelle: Anhänge bzw. Attachments”
• as well as a rendering with the title “Tabelle: Anhänge bzw. Attachments”.

This was fine.

Problem

Now the Github-Wiki uses the title of the page as the filename and vice versa. This ends up in a cluttered file system and also in suppressing titles in the page themselves.

So this page

renders to

As we could see:

• the title tag “= Organisation: IT-Infrastruktur” is not more rendered.
• Instead the filename “organisation+IT Infrastructure” is choosen as the title for the page.

That sucks.

Solution

I reported this by Github again and hope for a fix.

Programming

• Visual Studio
• ReSharper
• Agent Johnson
• Agent Smith
• StyleCop for ReSharper
• Keymaps
• SettingsManager
• Git Source Control Provider
• Gist
• NuGet Package Manager
• NDepend
• Productivity Power Tools
• PowerCommands for Visual Studio
• PostSharp
• Indent Guides
• Typemock Isolator
• VSCommands
• Ressource Refactor
• Clone Detective
• GhostDoc
• CR_Documentor
• AnkSVN
• Expression Blend
• SharpDevelop
• Notepad++, PS Pad
• StyleCop, FxCop, ..
• .NET Reflector, ILSpy, dotPeek, Just Decompile
• Git Extensions
• inkl. MSysGit, MinGW
• Github for Windows
• SmartGit
• PoSH-Git
• Console Enhancement Project
• LINQPad
• Mercurial
• RapidSVN
• SQL Management Studio
• Adventure Works Sample DB
• AdventureWorksLT
• Toad for SQL Server
• yEd Graph Editor
• TeX, LateX
• MiKTeX, TeXworks
• Pandoc
• Jenkins, TeamCity
• KompoZer
• XML Notepad
• Kaxaml
• KDiff3, WinMerge, Perforce Merge
• Handle
• DbgView
• FusLogVw
• FTP Commander
• HTML Help Workshop, Sandcastle, SHFB
• WiX
• Enterprise Architect
• InsightProfiler
• Putty
• Cygwin
• DXCore, DXCore Plugins
• FreeMind
• ProcessExplorer, ProcessMonitor

Social Networking, Community

• Windows Live Writer
• Disgsby
• Skype
• TweetDeck
• FeedReader

Sytem and others

• Microsoft Office (notably OneNote!!!)
• Adobe Reader
• PDF Creator
• SRWare Iron (Chrome)
• AddThis
• bit-ly
• del.icio.us
• InstaPaper
• Leo Dictionary
• Google Bookmarks
• Proxy Switchy!
• StumbleUpon
• K-Meleon
• FreeCommander, FAR
• 7-Zip
• Keyboard Jedi
• Launchy
• TrueCrypt
• Dropbox
• Ditto
• Greenshot
• Rainlendar2
• Everything
• Daemon Tools
• inSSIDer
• VirtualBox
• Stardock Fences
• Media Player Classic
• VLC Media Player
• Winamp
• WinAmp Cue Player
• LAME Encoder
• CamStudio
• Youtube to MP3 Converter
• VirtualDub
• Image Resizer Powertoy Clone 2.0
• Paint.NET
• Picasa
• Windy
• JediConcentrate, Ghoster
• TeamViewer
• Timerle
• TreeSizeFree
• WinDirStat
• Windows Sizer, WinResizer
• ZoomIt

Sometimes nice to have

• ArcGIS
• TortoiseSVN, TortoiseCVS
• XnView
• GitJungle
• CowSpy
• Grindstone
• Free Download Manager
• CDBurnerXP
• Free Audio CD Burner
• SmartAssembly
• intellibook
• GMX SMS Manager
• BlackBerry Desktop
• Cisco Any Connect
• eRoom
• Foxit Reader
• Google Earth
• ThinkVantage GPS
• Gridy
• Bluefish
• The GodFather
• Tor Browser, Charon
• YouTube Downloader
• NCover
• Network Stumbler
• Remote Debugger
• WScite
• XML Pad
• DBVisualizer
• Microsoft Network Monitor, Fiddler2
• Eclipse IDE
• Oracle Client, Oracle SQL Developer
  

Bookmarks, Links

• http://pastebin.de/, http://pastebin.com/
• http://followup.cc 
• http://trello.com
• http://tumblr.com
• https://bitly.com/, http://is.gd
• http://www.famkruithof.net/uuid/uuidgen, http://www.guidgenerator.com/
• https://github.com/, https://bitbucket.org/
• http://dict.leo.org/, http://translate.google.com/
• http://prezi.com/
• http://geekswithblogs.net/Default.aspx, http://codebetter.com/
• http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

• http://de.schreibtrainer.com/index.php?site=3&menuId=3
• http://www.mr-wetter.de/

this is an update to

http://geekswithblogs.net/mapfel/archive/2010/07/12/140877.aspx

Problem

Starting Outlook shows only the splash screen with comment “loading profile”. I could cancel the startup but restarting shows the same. I verified with Task Manager that no hidden outlook process is bother me.

Solution

Scanpst

Normally with Outlook the tool “Microsoft Outlook Inbox Repair Tool” (scanpst.exe) is additionally installed. Some people could access it via Startmenu, but not me.

My lovely Launchy found it under

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\SCANPST.EXE"

Scanpst first ask you for the pst file which you would like to scan. I started with the first default offer:

C:\Users\…\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\….ost

And this brings up the information, that another application uses this file.

Handle

To investigate the causer Handle from Sysinternals is your friend in such cases.

Start it from an administrative console and pipe the output to a file.

handle > c:\temp\handle.txt

Now you could open this file with the editor of your choose and search for the blocked file (your pst file).

On top of the section you see the application which has a handle to this file opened (SfdcMsO1.exe).

Task Manager

Kill this application and start Outlook again.

And voila – everything starts up fine … by me

Problem

If you run the “Generate database from model” wizard and execute the generated script the destination database could be the wrong one (for instance master of the SQL Server).

Solution

To use an own mdf attachable user database some connection information must specified during script execution.

Execute your script opens the dialog “Connect to Server”.

Press “Options” and go to the second tab “Connection Properties”.

Select “Browse server” in the “Connect to database” dropdown box:

Confirm the information dialog with “Yes”.

In the following dialog you could choose your user database.

Now the schema is created in the user database.

With Entity Framework 5 in Visual Studio 2012 the code first feature could let you come to the question “Where is the automatically created database located?”

I run in the question after changing the model which throws during the next run this error:

“The model backing the 'MyContext' context has changed since the database was created. Consider using Code First Migrations to update the database (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=238269).”

Okay – clear I thought “delete the database”. But where is the database and what type is it???

In this constellation the frameworks generates a localDB.

You could access this database via SQL Server Object Explorer. For the first time you have to add this localDB. The server name is “(localdb)\v11.0”:

And so we could browse through the content of this database. It got the same name like the context class.

Problem

Sometimes my notebook shows the optical drive as power off:

But the hint there

is not changing this state.

Solution

By looking in the device manager you see the next problem:

So open the properties via right mouse click.

This gives you the hint to remove the drive first.

“Windows cannot use this hardware device because it has been prepared for "safe removal", but it has not been removed from the computer. (Code 47)”

Whether you select the comment by dragging the mouse over the the hidden part or pressing the button “Properties”.

So we unplug and reinsert the ultrabay.

If you think, now the system is working – you are wrong. Now the system is the meaning, that the ultrabay is unplugged.

You could verify this by refresh the view in the device panel. Now there is no longer our device.

Yet your great gig comes – unplug the ultra bay and reinsert it a second time!

After this you could hear with a media inside, that the motor is really started and we have a working device

What a difficult birth …

Update

If the drive doesn’t start, then try to use the context menu “Power On” in Explorer.