Complete PC Backup

At the link below there is a short overview of the Vista's new backup option - Complete PC Backup. The Backup utility now offers an option to back up your complete system, i.e. a whole drive partition. The contents are compressed and the destination can be a (set of) DVD or another partition.
The restore is performed from the Vista installation DVD option - Restore Complete PC.
Nice option for preparation of the system for Linux installation. :)
Using Vista's Complete PC Backup utility: Insight - Software - ZDNet Australia

Installing VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu Linux

The page below explains how to install VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu Linux. This is something I'm looking to do in the near future.
VMware/Workstation - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Specifying the Changeset in Team Build

In TFS, we have a need to put the specific version in the automated build process. This is for re-building the recent release version of the web site. Since there is no GUI option to do this, there are a couple of ways to do it by editing the .proj file. The method described at the link below seems to be the best one:
Nagaraju Palla's WebLog : Examining Get Task in TeamBuild
Overriding CoreGet method will retrieve the version of code you specify and that is the version that will get built in the end.
Here is the link to MSDN documentation on the TFS Get command.

License Crawler

If you lost license numbers for your software, here is a program that can retrieve these from the registry. License Crawler will extract the registration keys for the software you have installed on your computer. The program has only 74KB and is very efficient.
License Crawler

See all exceptions in .Net code

Visual Studio 2008 has an option to display all the exceptions being thrown and/or not caught by user code. The Exceptions dialog is available by pressing Ctrl+Alt+E.

This is handy if you’re working on other people’s code that has many try/catch blocks with an empty catch part. Effectively, this jumps over the exception, ignoring it, but can lead to stack overflow blowup in certain occasions.

IE Tester

If you need to preview the web pages/sites in different versions of Internet Explorer, this is the solution:

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

My DebugBar | IETester / HomePage

Finger Operation in Windows Mobile - FTouchFlo

FTouchFlo is a freeware that enables features found in TouchFlo, which are (again) found in other types of mobile devices and operating systems. Finger scrolling is what I mean here.
[2007-10-25] FTouchFlo v.1.4.1 HOTFIX - xda-developers

FingerTouch is another piece of work, also freeware, that has a few great keypads that can be used for finger typing as opposed to stylus typing.
Yay, my Windows Mobile phone has just inhaled some life into its daily operations. Not having to use stylus is a great thing.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1

After upgrading the Firefox 3.5 to 3.5.1 I have quite a significant subjective feeling of speed. I have to add, this is *with* Fasterfox Lite extension. But, still, the speed of page loading and display, and the overall responsiveness of the application is great. On par, if not better (requires a bit more comparisons) than Chrome 3. Good work, Firefox team!

Modal Popup Dialog window in ASP.Net

At the link below there is a sample on how to display a modal popup window in JavaScript and receive back the values from the modal window.
Modal Popup Dialog Window in ASP.NET

Linux on HTC Magician (Qtek S100)

Here is the project to run Linux on HTC Magician (Qtek S100) – link. The status of the project as of 2007-04-03 is B-. This means most features can be utilized, but not all and not fully.

The drivers from this project might be used to help running Android on Magician.

There is the Angstrom Linux distribution (link) that should run on Windows Mobile devices or, if you are interested in Android, the HTC Android hub (link).

Software Engineering: RUP vs MSF

Comparing today’s two most widely used approaches in software development from Microsoft’s and IBM’s point of view.

General conclusion of the comparisons could be summarized as:

RUP is (1) a formal, strict and heavy software engineering process that wants to (2) identify the requirements and architecture early in the process to be able to (3) focus on planning the time schedules and budget to create (4) a predictive and ordered software development environment.

MSF4ASD is (1) an informal, loosely, and light software engineering process that (2) embraces ad hoc requirements management and architecture design to (3) facilitate the ability to cope with changes to create (4) an adaptive and responsive environment.

MSF Documentation: RUP vs. MSF - A comparative study (link)

Comparing the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) (link)

Geocities is closing down

This morning I received a notification from Yahoo that our old friend, Geocities, is closing down. Geocities provided hosting for my very first html page that was posted online. For a while the web site, currently at http://alen.appspot.com, had its home at Geocities. The design, background, and text on the current web site are still pretty much what they used to be in those days. I feel a bit sad that Geocities' days are over and hope this means a new beginning for some other services that will mark the current years.

Open Source HTML Parser for C# (.Net)

Html Agility Pack - Home

This is an agile HTML parser that builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT (you actually don't HAVE to understand XPATH nor XSLT to use it, don't worry...). It is a .NET code library that allows you to parse "out of the web" HTML files. The parser is very tolerant with "real world" malformed HTML. The object model is very similar to what proposes System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams).

4 GB of RAM on a 32-bit Machine

Below is a page from Microsoft that explains memory management in Vista SP1 on 32-bit machines. As I am in the process of getting the 4th GB of RAM and maxing my system, the article makes an interesting reading.
I have already applied PAE setting with BCEditor but don't know if it is really necessary now. I have AMD64 system with socket F and it should support more than 4GB of addressable space.

The system memory that is reported in the System Information dialog box in Windows Vista is less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed