wintellect-blogs|Dec 14, 2005

Francesco Gets a Facelift

Francesco Balena is at it again: his .NET-to-the-Max Web site is looking really spiffy after a facelift, and Francesco tells me that in the future, most of his writing will be published in his blog rather than in magazines (U.S. magazines, anyway). Meanwhile, Sara Faatz and others have been working really hard on Wintellect’s new…
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Blogs|Dec 13, 2005

XslCompiledTransform Performance

I’ve been meaning to write some benchmark code to compare the performance of .NET 2.0’s new XslCompiledTransform class and 1.1’s deprecated XslTransform. I finally got around to it this morning, and the results were a little disappointing. In my tests, which used a fairly simple style sheet, XslCompiledTransform ran about 3 times faster than XslTransform.…
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wintellect-blogs|Dec 13, 2005

Spice Up Your Web Pages

Want to add a cool (albeit IE-only) effect to your ASP.NET 2.0 Web pages? If so, add the following statement to the <head> element of the site’s master page: <meta http-equiv=”Page-Exit” content=”progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Fade(duration=.5)” /> Then watch what happens as you navigate between pages. DXImageTransform is old news in a way; it’s been around in one form…
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wintellect-blogs|Dec 8, 2005

Comment My Code

I saw a neat T-shirt the other day that said something like this: Comment my code? Why do you think they call it code? I think I’ll buy one for every developer I know.
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sql-server|Dec 6, 2005

SqlCacheDependency Hell

I just emerged from SqlCacheDependency hell–actually, SQL Server 2005 hell. I thought I’d document the problem (and the solution) so others won’t have to waste as much time as I did. First, I’ve been using SqlCacheDependency with great success since early betas of ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. I marveled at how little work…
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Blogs|Dec 6, 2005

Jerky Heaven

I love beef jerky. It’s a great snack when you’re hiking, scuba diving, or spending a long day at the flying field. Lately I’ve been in jerky heaven since a friend taught me how to make my own. It’s not only cheaper than the store-bought stuff, it tastes better, too. Here’s the secret to making…
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Blogs|Dec 6, 2005

Session State Partitioning

ASP.NET 2.0 is so chock full of new features that it’s hardly surprising some of those features are barely documented (or not documented at all). I love sifting through the dirt and uncovering hidden gems that few people know about. One of those hidden gems is session state partitioning, which helps large applications that use…
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Blogs|Nov 30, 2005

Twinstar and ASP.NET 2.0 Providers

It was beautiful here in East Tennessee today–50 F and only light winds–so I took time off at lunch to fly my newest airplane: a twin-engine ARF called the Twinstar. It’s 50“ long and has a 56” wingspan. It’s powered by a pair of O.S. 25FX engines, which turn the 3-blade 8×6 props at more…
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 26, 2005

Where Not to Stand

Here’s a wonderful short video of a scale model 747 taking off and landing–and a sterling example of why spectators at R/C events should carefully choose their vantage point.
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 17, 2005

Fixing a Date Formatting Bug in ASP.NET 2.0

Sometime between beta 2 and beta 3, a bug crept into ASP.NET 2.0’s BoundField class that prevents date formatting from working. In the following declaration, the “{0:d”} is ignored: The bug was slated to be fixed in the RTM release, but alas, it wasn’t. There is, however, a work-around: set the BoundField’s HtmlEncode property to…
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Blogs|Nov 16, 2005

Was 9/11 an Inside Job?

I was taking a break from writing this morning and googling the Web for articles on centers-of-lift and centers-of-gravity in airplanes when I came across a thought-provoking piece that has nothing at all to do with airplane design. It argues that the WTC collapsed on 9/11 not due to airplane strikes, but to controlled (and…
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 16, 2005

The Ultimate R/C Model?

Check out these photos of an R/C model of the new Airbus 580. To say it’s huge is an understatement! Better yet, check out this video of it flying. I’m trying to find information about the builder, but so far I’ve had no luck. Those are real gas turbine engines under the wing, and there…
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