C# Shiznit

Lifextender v0.9.3.0 Available for Download

slighty — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:43:00 GMT

Title says it all - download over here

Change list available here

Visual Studio 2008 Add-in Compatibility

slighty — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

I've update most of the add-ins available here for Visual Studio 2008. Here is a quick list of the add-ins.

MRU Cleaner
- Fixed an issue with incorrect icons
Click here to download MRU Cleaner

Explore In Windows
- Files are now selected in Windows Explorer when "Explore In Windows" is triggered from a file node
Click here to download Explore In Windows

Start Page Killer
- No changes
Click here to download Start Page Killer

Property Manager
- No changes, however, I'm aware of the issue w/ readonly fields but haven't had a chance to fix it yet
Click here to download Property Manager

Lifextender v0.9.2.9 released

slighty — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:13:00 GMT

Lots of bug fixes, a Comskip Upgrade and a few more features.

Check out the release notes here.

Introducing Lifextender - a commercial remover app for Vista Media Center

slighty — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 05:37:00 GMT

I'd like you all to meet my new friend, Lifextender. I've been working on Lifextender for about the last month and I think it's at a point to set loose. Lifextender is a dead-simple, commercial-removal application for users of Windows Vista Media Center. It permanently removes commercials from dvr-ms files created by Media Center.

Lifextender is available for free at http://www.lifextender.com.

Commercial Remover app for Vista Media Center

slighty — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:59:00 GMT

10.18.07 9:46am - Application Released

Can be downloaded at http://www.lifextender.com

10.10.07 9:24am - Application Release Coming

I've been hard at work on this commercial-removing app. I'm currently testing it and throwing a website together to support it. Since I plan to have this up within a week or so, I won't be distributing the URL of the old app. Check back in a few days for a new post regarding this topic.

I'm not a fan of commercials. They make me set down my beer to pick up the remote and skip past them. So awhile ago I checked out a project called DVRMSToolbox and blogged about it here

DVRMSToolbox comes with a lot of small applications that allow you to sorta create your own flow. I'm a developer and I found this approach to be a tad bit overwhelming. While it gives you a great deal of flexibility, it also is a bit more complicated if you simply want to cut commercials out of the video file. I also had issues w/ the FileSystemWatcher and the MC add-in acting up. I just want something more straightforward and stable.

Over the holiday break, I decided to start up a new project to deal w/ commercials as well as a few other annoying issues that plague my Media Center library.

This app (which doesn't have a definite name yet) does 3 things:

1) Removes duplicate shows
2) Removes partial shows
3) Removes commercials from .dvr-ms files permanently

It's a windows forms app that runs in the background. It has a tray icon to let you know it's running and to let you 1) start/stop it's heartbeat and 2) manually perform scans.

Every X minutes, it scans your Media Center library for dupes, partials, and shows w/ commercials. If duplicate or partial shows are found, they are moved to the recycle bin. If shows with commercials are found, they are processed.

Escape XML string characters in C#

slighty — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:57:00 GMT

I searched long and hard (that's what she said!) for a native .NET method for escaping special characters in text and didn't get very far. Sure, there's only like 5 special characters, and 5 Replace() calls would probably do the trick, but I'm sure there's got to be something built-in.

To much relief, I've discovered a native method, hidden away in the bowels of the SecurityElement class. Yes, that's right - SecurityElement.Escape(string s) will escape your string and make it XML safe.

MRU Cleaner for Orcas Beta 1

slighty — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 05:42:00 GMT

Title says it. Nuff' said.

Note - this version will install side-by-side with MRU Cleaner for VS 2005
Click here to download MRU Cleaner for Orcas

Property Manager Updated 1.0.0.4

slighty — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:19:00 GMT

This is a small, but somewhat useful update. While I've never been one to prefix my local variables w/ the infamous "m_", I know many-a-dev that do. Thus, this update now supports this as well as a few other minor changes.

Localizing existing strings into resource files is teh lame

slighty — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:41:00 GMT

I did about two hundred string replacements before deciding to actually spend 30 seconds to find a tool to make it easier.

http://www.codeplex.com/ResourceRefactoring

Dispatch v1.0 Released.... finally.

slighty — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:37:00 GMT

So I won't start this post off like it's another blurb in someone's high school yearbook. About how the last 8 months have been crazy and cool at the same time, or about how funny it was when we totally streaked though the quad.

But I did want to let ya'll know as of Tues morning, Yellow Cup released v1.0 of Dispatch - a plugin for Visual Studio 2005 designed for ASP.net developers. Dispatch eases that burden of FTP deployment and allows you to focus on development. This has been my main priority over the last 8 months. Trying to start a new company (alongside a FT job), developing Dispatch and managing the beta program all at the same time can make for some late nights, early mornings and LOTS of coffee and redbull.

MRU Cleaner v1.0.0.5 - Now serving your file-cleaning needs too

slighty — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:47:00 GMT

This version includes the ability to now clear your Most Recently Used Files list in addition to the already-existing ability to clear your Projects list. I also changed the name from Project MRU Cleaner to just MRU Cleaner. Screenshot below:

Explore in Windows Add-In updated - 1.0.0.2

slighty — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:15:00 GMT

This is an update I've been meaning to do for some time. This update expands on the initial version in a few ways. Web projects will always be opened in Windows Explorer now, even if the web project was loaded via IIS.

Secondly, the ability to explore an item in Windows Explorer has been added to individual files, solutions, setup projects, and other miscellaneous project types.

MethodInvoker + Anonymous Methods = tEh r0x0r

slighty — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:23:00 GMT

If you've ever tried to update a property of a windows form control inside a thread other than the original thread that said control was created in, you've probably gotten a nasty little error.

Say, for example, you want to update the text of a Label control. You might simply write:

myLabel.Text = "What a great post";

This will break if the above code is called from another thread. To get around this issue, you need to call the method on the thread that the owns the control's
underlying window handle. This is ~~easily~~ accomplished using the control's Invoke method. But the Invoke method takes a delegate as a parameter, along with an object array of arguments to pass. So now you get to create a delegate and a unique method that accomplishes your task.

Kick-ass Vista Firefox Theme

slighty — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 03:05:00 GMT

Man, this one is so much nicer than any other Vista theme I've seen for Firefox so far - so this'll be my official bookmark next time I need to install it.

New Clipboard Manager Upgrade 1.0.0.7

slighty — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:47:00 GMT

Dudes - I know it's been forevs since an upgrade to Clipboard Manager, so last weekend I spent my Saturday on good ol' CM. I added this really cool little animated character to the clip list... so every time you copy something onto your clipboard, he pops up and asks what you want to do. I call him 'Clippy'.

But in all seriousitivity, the cool new addition for Clipboard Manager is the intellisense-like popup of your last 10 clip entries, with the item count configurable.