General Programming

Take a look at my recent MSDN blog post to see how you can get around the common issues related to .NET development of Vista Sidebar gadgets. Don't want to write registry access code in javascript? Can't figure out how to uninstall your .NET based gadget? Read on... http://blogs.msdn.com/markh...

For some reason, I'm drawn to creating things that are just cool while not altogether useful (see my Animated Activity Designer post, though one could argue that it may in fact be useful). To that end, I decided to create a Vista Sidebar gadget that displays a screen saver of your choosing. Vista has some good screen savers that it shipped with and I've embedded screen savers before (in fact, I show how to do it in one of my books). So go ahead and grab it from the Windows Live Gallery (link below)....

For the programming savy, head on over to my MSDN blog to see if you can solve this interview question I created: http://blogs.msdn.com/markh

For more information, check out my MSDN blog post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/markh...

I just posted a somewhat lengthy article on my MSDN blog covering Avalon and 3D graphics. I got a little bored yesterday and this is what happens. In a nutshell, I created a mesh exporter for MilkShape that will output the mesh in XAML format that you can then load using Avalon. http://blogs.msdn.com/markh

Awhile ago, I hinted in the comments section of my MS interview rejection post that I had a secret. Well, it's official. Apparently I didn't scare MS away too badly. I am now going up for yet another interview (yes, I am a sucker for pain) for a Programmer Writer position. For those unfamiliar with Programmer Writers (and I am still a little unsure), they are basically developer's that write sample code and then create an article for it, as well as other writing related tasks. A good example is MSDN...

Whilst perusing throught the Office directory, I found a file named VisualStudioTeamCore.dll. It's located in the Office11/VSRuntime folder. Just thought it was interesting

I have yet to post code on my blog, so now is the time. I have various function nuggets that have followed me around like a lost sick puppy over the years and this is one of my most recent. Since I work with a UI architecture that is very dynamic in nature and extremely plugin-oriented, I need to have a set of functions to explore the type information of objects and allow me to dynamically call methods and properties. Here is an example of such a function. Let's say you had some XML that looked something...

I am the lead architect for a component (specifically the presentation layer) on our team. I have 1 other person helping me with implementation. One day we had to add a new feature. I designed a solution and handed it off to him and he came back and asked “why do we need it to do this? It wasn't in the requirements?” I responded by saying something along the lines of “because eventually someone will ask for it”. In fact, I find myself saying that over and over again. Now here's...