Posts

Showing posts from 2011

Best mouse... ever!

Image
I bought a new mouse about 6 months ago and, like with all gadgets, I decided to wait a while before deciding to score it. Very simply I have to say this is the nicest mouse I've had I think. It's wireless, rechargable (even while using), keeps a good battery life and is very comfortable and responsive. I've used mostly Microsoft and Logitech mouses and when I saw this 'darkfield' mouse I thought I had to try it. It's a nice size in the hand, but not too heavy or big. It has plenty of buttons including one just below the left side of the thumb which is different. As usual the software allows you to configure all these. The wireless dongle is tiny and is one of those Logitech® Unifying receivers so if you have another device using the same type of dongle, you only need one and can register the multiple devices with it. This is pretty much easily the nicest mouse I've had - I'd strongly recommend it. Logitech Performance Mouse MX™ http://www.lo

SlowCheetah - XML Transforms

If you've ever developed a web-based project in Visual Studio, you'll probably know about the need configuration transforms you can do with the web.config file. The downside is that these can't be applied to the app.config for a normal application. There have been several workarounds available including scripting changing the app.config file when a build is performed, but frequently they are not straightforward or easy to configure.there is an easy to configure new alternative though in the form of visual studio extension called SlowCheetah. SlowCheetah allows you to automatically transform the app.config when you press F5 in Visual Studio. Just like with the web.config file, it is possible to have a different transform for each build configuration. Have a read up on how to use SlowCheetah here in the Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery .

Android Market missing most of your applications?

After a recent update to the Android market application I noticed that most of my applications were missing. This was a real pain when it came to trying to update the applications. Going into the main application settings page and clearing the cache for the market application brought them back, but subsequent loads, or on finding updates, seemed to reset the list back to only showing about 4 applications. After much frustration, on closer investigation I found that the account being used in the market application wasn't my main account. I changed accounts and now everything seems to be back to normal!

Windows Installer pain

I can't believe that it should be this hard to create a solid Windows Installer MSI. Sure, there's a bunch of applications out there which can make your life easier, but the good ones aren't exactly cheap. It seems strange that Microsoft are pushing MSI and Wix and yet there's no easy way of creating them. As far as I understand it, according to this , Microsoft are phasing out the Windows installer project that came with VS2010 in the next version, I guess in favour of the limited edition of InstallShield. "Future versions of Visual Studio will not include the Visual Studio Installer project templates." Don't get me wrong, InstallShield is a really nice and simple environment, but if you want to start doing anything slightly complicated, or compile for 64-bit, you have to stump up to the Professional or Premium editions which start getting quite expensive! I wonder if there are are decent integrated solutions out there that don't require quite a