December 2004 - Posts - Ed's Blog
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Object reference not set to an instance of an object

December 2004 - Posts

  • MagicDraw

    What a nice modeling tool! Much better at UML than Visio. They've got a community addition which can do anything except generate code.

    Check it out here

    Posted Dec 21 2004, 09:06 AM by eduard with no comments
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  • My most read post....

    is one I made on how to copy text to the clipboard using javascript. I went through all my old posts to see if people are actually reading them and I found that this one was the most popular with more than 700 views. It feels quite good to know that people find some use for what you're writing. This is also the first time that I know of that one of my posts is number 1 when you search on google (for : javascript copy clipboard that is).

    PS: I don't mean to sound full of it, it was just exciting to see that people are actually reading my stuff!

     

    Posted Dec 20 2004, 07:47 AM by eduard with no comments
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  • NDoc 1.3 released

    Get it here.

    Here is a list of the new features [from their website]:

  • A complete re-implementation of the Html Help 2 documenter, now known as the "VS.NET 2003" documenter.
  • Support for new code commenting tags like preliminary, threadsafety and exclude.
  • Support for the ObsoleteAttribute and FlagsAttribute attributes.
  • An extensibility feature that allows you to define your own code comment tags and control their formatting.
  • User interface enhancements.
  • Major performance enhancements in both reflection and document production.
  • Better consistency between NDoc generated topics and MSDN topics.
  • Posted Dec 20 2004, 07:22 AM by eduard with no comments
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  • Application trust boundries

    Rocky Lhotka writes an interesting article on the “Fallacy of the data layer”. Although he focusses on the data layer, the mayor points I take away from  are the following:

    • your application has a trust boundry, anything that you have full control over falls inside that boundry, and anything you don't have full control over falls outside the boundry.
    • So what ? you may ask. The key concept is that once you cross the trust boundry, the code you're going to should be properly encapsulated because it might change or be used by other applications as well. How you encapsule the code is up to you, but of course in keeping with the times you'll probably go with services [ as an aside, I wonder why we always think of services as “web services“ ? - what are methods on an object if they are not services offered by the object to the outside world? ]
    Posted Dec 17 2004, 12:14 PM by eduard with no comments
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  • Comment spam

    After reading Charl's post on comment spam, I decided to delete the spam on my own blog.

    Armand set up the site so it will recognize comment spam and mark it as such on your feedback list. If a comment is marked as comment spam it will not show up when users view your posts. I must say it is working quite well.

    So why did I delete them anyway? Because I can't stand them in my feedback list [ Bit of obsesive compulsive behaviour going on there ].

    Armand, if you ever read this, I recon you can delete those comments automatically, I've never had a comment marked as spam by misake.

    I wish the .Text guy will give us some functionality to delete multiple comments at once. This one-one thing is not doing it for me. [ Maybe it's in the new community server release, haven't checked it out though]

    Posted Dec 17 2004, 09:59 AM by eduard with no comments
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  • Thunderbird 1.0 released

    Mozilla's newest mail client has released it's first version. Looking really good and includes an RSS reader.

    Get it here

    Posted Dec 14 2004, 04:07 PM by eduard with no comments
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  • New nHibernate version released

    Version 0.5.0.0 has been released. I hope they get to a beta version soon!

    get it here

    Posted Dec 14 2004, 02:03 PM by eduard with no comments
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  • C# command line compiler

    For the notepad junkies I found this nice article on how to do almost anything with the c# 2.0 commandline compiler

    Read it here

    Posted Dec 14 2004, 09:25 AM by eduard with no comments
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  • 30 Goats crammed into minibus

    Only in SA................

    Posted Dec 09 2004, 09:10 AM by eduard with 1 comment(s)
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  • Community Server Beta 2.0

    The newest beta has been release, read about it here.

    Posted Dec 09 2004, 07:36 AM by eduard with 5 comment(s)
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  • Boxing/unboxing types in .NET

    Sometimes your code does stuff without you knowing it (that tends to happen a lot to me :) ). One such a thing is the boxing and unboxing of types, which is basically conversion between primative data types (such as int) and it's object representation(Int32). I recon it's a good to know what happens behind the scenes and when it happens.

    Read more about it here

  • The not-so-efficient StringBuilder

    This is some guys J# code [StringBuffer == C# StringBuilder] from the daily WTF. Good for laughs.

    public override string getClassVersion() {
      return
        new StringBuffer().append(
          new StringBuffer().append(
            new StringBuffer().append(
              new StringBuffer().append(
                new StringBuffer().append(
                  new StringBuffer().append(
                    new StringBuffer().append(
                      new StringBuffer().append(
                        new StringBuffer().append("V0.01")
                          .append(", native: ibfs32.dll(").ToString())
                        .append(DotNetAdapter.getToken(this.mainVersionBuffer.ToString(), 2)).ToString())
                      .append(") [type").ToString())
                    .append(this.portType).ToString())
                  .append(":").ToString())
                .append(DotNetAdapter.getToken(this.typeVersionBuffer.ToString(), 0xff)).ToString())
              .append("](").ToString())
            .append(DotNetAdapter.getToken(this.typeVersionBuffer.ToString(), 2)).ToString())
          .append(")").ToString();
    }

    Posted Dec 02 2004, 08:42 AM by eduard with 1 comment(s)
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  • Quotable quotes 2

    My first post on quotable quotes didn't draw much attention but I like posting them, so heres some more:

    “Nobody will ever need more tha 640KB of memory”
    Bill Gates
    [Don't know how I forgot about this one - can't remember the exact wording, but this is more or less it]

    ”No operation plan extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main body of the enemy”
    Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke
    [or - No plan survives contact with the enemy. From Eric Gunnerson's post]

    ”I don't know how we will fight world war III but I do know that we'll fight world war IV with sticks and stones”
    Albert Einstein

    Posted Dec 02 2004, 08:30 AM by eduard with no comments
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  • Design up-front or along-the-way

    Eric Gunnerson made an interesting post on this topic. I agree with him that one should have a solid/flexible architeture up front, but then let the software evolve to whatever it needs to do.
    Posted Dec 02 2004, 08:17 AM by eduard with no comments
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  • Shorts

    Two fish swim into a concrete wall.
     One turns to the other and says "dam"
     
    Two peanuts walk into a bar One was asalted.

     A jump-lead walks into a bar.
     The barman says "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

     A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

     A man walks into a bar with a slab of tarmac under his arm and says:
     "A beer please, and one for the road."

      Two aerials meet on a roof, fall in love get married.
     The ceremony wasn't much but the reception was brilliant.

     Two cows standing next to each other in a field, Daisy says to Dolly "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," said Dolly. "It's true, no bull!"

     Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.
     One says, "I've lost my electron."
     "Are you sure?"
     The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..."

     A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him? "
     "Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him" So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth. Finally, he says "I'm going to have to put him down." "What? Because he's cross-eyed?" "No, because he's really heavy"

     I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him 50 quid that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. And he said, 'no, the steaks are too high.'

     Two fish are in a tank One says to the other "I'll man the guns, you drive"

    Posted Dec 01 2004, 08:18 AM by eduard with 1 comment(s)
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