blog.averetek
.NET musings, news, and product reviews courtesy of the Averetek development team.Saturday, February 25, 2006
Distributed computing & Enigma
This is a cool opportunity to use technology to solve one of history's mysteries. The M4 project is using distributed computing to decipher the 3 original Enigma messages. The first message has already been broken. Binaries are available in multiple flavors for Windows and Unix.
M4 project home page
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Symbol Characters in HTML
Ever wonder what's the best way to represent a symbol or special character in HTML? For example, if you want to display the registered trademark symbol (®), there are at least three ways to do so:
1) Enter the raw character - ®
2) Encode it using a numbered character entity - ®
3) Encode it using a named character entity - ®
There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. After a little searching, I found an excellent article on the subject at http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/tagpages/text.htm. In this case, they recommend going with the numbered character entity. Check out the article to find out why.
1) Enter the raw character - ®
2) Encode it using a numbered character entity - ®
3) Encode it using a named character entity - ®
There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. After a little searching, I found an excellent article on the subject at http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/tagpages/text.htm. In this case, they recommend going with the numbered character entity. Check out the article to find out why.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
My must-have apps
Most of my time is spent using Outlook, MSN Messenger, Visual Studio, and SQL Management Studio. Here’s my tidy list of other applications I use on a daily basis.
SlickRun – spend five minutes with this great application and then spend the rest of your life wishing you had thought of it. SlickRun is a free floating command line utility for Windows. I use it about 100 times per day and almost never use the XP Start menu anymore.
JetStat.com IIS Admin – while there are many utilities to let you run & manage multiple IIS sites in Windows XP, very few of them are as lightweight as this one. It runs in the tray, and when minimized consumes less than 2 MB.
.NET Reflector – Loetz’s Reflector is a class browser for .NET components. It disassembles and displays in VB, C#, IL, and Delphi. It also has an analyzer that enumerates class dependencies, allowing you to quickly see the impact code changes will have on the rest of your application.
UltraEdit – I use less than half of the features available and it still smokes any other editor out there.
OnTime – Dark Frequency standardized on AxoSoft’s OnTime for defect tracking. Feature-rich, highly customizable, and reasonably priced – the single-user version is even free.
Picasa – I have a million photos and this helps me organize them with Google's customary efficiency.
Cropper – Brian Scott’s simple screen capturing app that lets you selectively capture parts of your desktop. Outputs to GIF, JPG, PNG, and others.
iTunes – WinAmp may whip the llama’s ass, but iTunes it’s still the best platform for playing and managing my music. It’s an OK MP3 player but anyone can do that. The Smart playlists, hooks into the music store, and (of course) the iPod integration make it all work.
I also love my BlackBerry but who knows how long that will last…
SlickRun – spend five minutes with this great application and then spend the rest of your life wishing you had thought of it. SlickRun is a free floating command line utility for Windows. I use it about 100 times per day and almost never use the XP Start menu anymore.
JetStat.com IIS Admin – while there are many utilities to let you run & manage multiple IIS sites in Windows XP, very few of them are as lightweight as this one. It runs in the tray, and when minimized consumes less than 2 MB.
.NET Reflector – Loetz’s Reflector is a class browser for .NET components. It disassembles and displays in VB, C#, IL, and Delphi. It also has an analyzer that enumerates class dependencies, allowing you to quickly see the impact code changes will have on the rest of your application.
UltraEdit – I use less than half of the features available and it still smokes any other editor out there.
OnTime – Dark Frequency standardized on AxoSoft’s OnTime for defect tracking. Feature-rich, highly customizable, and reasonably priced – the single-user version is even free.
Picasa – I have a million photos and this helps me organize them with Google's customary efficiency.
Cropper – Brian Scott’s simple screen capturing app that lets you selectively capture parts of your desktop. Outputs to GIF, JPG, PNG, and others.
iTunes – WinAmp may whip the llama’s ass, but iTunes it’s still the best platform for playing and managing my music. It’s an OK MP3 player but anyone can do that. The Smart playlists, hooks into the music store, and (of course) the iPod integration make it all work.
I also love my BlackBerry but who knows how long that will last…
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