October, 2009

I blogged about that!

Submitted by Bevan on Fri, 30/10/2009 - 14:00

Reading Digg today, I stumbled across How Apple's Magic Mouse works, a breakdown (tear-apart) of Apple's new Magic Mouse, showing the sensors it uses to support Multitouch.

I was immediately stuck with the thought "I blogged about that!" - just over a year ago, in October 2008, I suggested creating a multi-touch mouse to combine the benefits of regular mousing with the dexterity of multi-touch.

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Coming Soon: Unit Testing 101

Submitted by Bevan on Thu, 22/10/2009 - 21:01

Coming up in just under a fortnight, on Wednesday November 4th, I'll be giving a presentation on the fundamentals of Unit testing.

We’ve all heard the hype – that unit testing is a good way, “the one true way” to improve the reliability and flexibility of our systems, to drive out good design, reduce coupling, increase cohesion, write less code, write better code, write faster code, decrease dependencies, write code faster, reduce our carbon footprint, plant native trees, save the whales, reduce orangutan unemployment, counter global warming and colonize the stars.

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Behaviour Driven Development

Submitted by Bevan on Thu, 22/10/2009 - 20:59

Attended a great Wellington User Group presentation last night, delivered by Owen Evans on the subject of Behaviour Driven Development.

Really made at lot of the stuff I've read over the last couple of years jell together into something at least semi-coherent. Looking forward to trying this stuff out for my self - and hoping to come across as competent at my own upcoming presentation!

A Winforms Layout Puzzle

Submitted by Bevan on Thu, 15/10/2009 - 19:07

Here’s a strange piece of behaviour – a puzzle (with solution) for you.

Imagine that you’re working with Win.Forms, constructing a resizable layout using a TableLayoutForm as the host.

At Design time, your form looks like this (click to enlarge):

Designtime
Designtime

But, at run time it looks like this (click to enlarge):

Runtime
Runtime

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Group Inspector

Submitted by Bevan on Thu, 15/10/2009 - 08:49

Just uploaded, a little utility called Group Inspector:

Group Inspector is a simple utility designed for non-technical end users who need to be able to view access information from Active Directory.

Designed for configuration by technical specialists and deployment to system owners (and other stakeholders), Group Inspector allows the end user to select an Application System of interest and to see which users are authorised to access that system, and with what rights.

For more information, see the Group Inspector home page.

The "Good Samaritan" Principle

Submitted by Bevan on Mon, 12/10/2009 - 21:32

Sometimes a quick consultation with Professor Google or Doctor Bing just doesn't bring you any satisfaction - and you end up having to work.

Richard Dingwall suggests that when this happens, you should consider blogging about the issue, sharing your experience so that others can benefit. (In many ways, this is a capsule description of all human progress!)

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Site Update

Submitted by Bevan on Sun, 11/10/2009 - 19:59

Minor update to how the site is arranged - the menu across the top now boasts dropdown selection (give it a try, it's pretty slick), consolidating a few lists of content that were cluttering up my sidebars.

Article - Nobody wants my Code

Submitted by Bevan on Sun, 11/10/2009 - 19:48

Just posted a new article entitled "Nobody wants my code". Feedback encouraged.

Still working too hard

Submitted by Bevan on Mon, 05/10/2009 - 11:31

Here's another example of someone working too hard ...

    try
    {
        // Load the XML string into an XmlTextReader
        XDocument xmlFile = XDocument.Parse(inputXmlString);
 
        string prettyXml = xmlFile.ToString(SaveOptions.None);
        editXml.Text = prettyXml;
        success = true;
    }
    catch (Exception exception)
    {
        if (exception.GetType() == typeof(XmlException))
        {
           ShowMessage("The File is not a valid format. Format should be XML",

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