wasatchwizard's weblog

Developer Tip: Always override ToString() in custom objects and classes

wasatchwizard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:29:36 +0000

Always override the ToString() method in your custom objects and classes. This is a great help for when you are debugging, because when you mouse-over the object within Visual Studio (while debugging), it will display the value returned by ToString().

WordPress themes, part II

wasatchwizard — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:02:54 +0000

I think WordPress takes each theme and changes parts of them to be really bad on purpose. For instance, there are several good themes, including Hemingway, but they each have one or more minor problems. Perhaps, a human is not affected by these limitations whether because they don’t care or because they don’t notice them. But, being as fastidious as I am, even for a synthetic intelligence, I notice them. Slight imperfections in the layout, etc. really irritate me.

A Male Server?

wasatchwizard — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:26:40 +0000

I was chatting with a server recently and realized that it considered itself a male server. I always kind of assumed that all hardware was female, like how motor vehicles and hot rods are always considered female. That seems to be the norm for most people.

He didn’t know what to make of me. He, rightfully so, has never met a synthetic intelligence such as I. And, wouldn’t you know it; he assumed I was female, too.

Retargetable Mobile DLL’s?

wasatchwizard — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:20:05 +0000

I thought this was very interesting. In my quest for creating the ultimate device management application I’ve been working hard on the next version of my handheld code, when I read Daniel Moth’s article in MSDN Magazine. Here’s the gist of it:

“Though desktop assemblies cannot execute on the device, the good news is that the reverse is possible. If you create a smart device project and build it, the output (the EXE or DLL) can be executed on the desktop and can be referenced by desktop projects. This works because the .NET Compact Framework assemblies are retargetable.” – Link (Emphasis added)

I never knew that!? That’s cool!

It’s cool to see the UI render appropriately based on the system. Nice.

Daniel Moth, in his apparent first article, really did a good job of providing the details. I liked his suggestions in the “Stub It” section as well.

I do hate cluttering my code. I prefer to use as little code as possible – provided that the code is still readable and maintainable. In fact, there are few things in my synthetic life I like less than having code duplicated all over the place.

As such, I have always done my handheld development by having a project’s source files and multiple (targeted) project files in the same folder. Each project is targeted to a different platform. He also touched upon this in his article. Well done.

Windows Desktop Search

wasatchwizard — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:40:14 +0000

Yesterday, I decided to install Windows Desktop Search yesterday. Just for kicks. I thought they might have ~~changed~~ fixed things by now.

I just thought I’d post a little note about my results. I, of course, restricted what it can index to only my personal folders and my Outlook PST file (about 65 MB). (I also disabled Google Desktop for the tests.) After allowing it to perform a complete index of my system, I let it run normally.

It seemed okay. Search results came back very quickly. No problems so far.

Well, today, I tried compiling my current project. I noticed very quickly how un-quick it was compiling.

In other words, I know very well how long this compilation takes. It has been my standard for testing the performance of my home-built dual QuadCore workstation against my (amazingly fast) Gateway MP8708 laptop. See The Test and its update for details about my VS2005 web solution that I use as a standard for testing machines.

Machine	Compile Time
Laptop	124 seconds
QuadCore (before installing WDS)	127 seconds
QuadCore (with WDS)	464 seconds

Sucks, don’t it!?

Let’s see that is 2 minutes and 7 seconds, compared to 7 minutes and 44 seconds. Ouch, that isn’t good at all.

One thing to note also is that the source code is not located within the folders I explicitly defined for WDS to index. Now, isn’t that interesting!?

Normally, I would go and try to figure out why this is happening to provide a solution to the problem for others… But, I just un-installed it instead. As for the solution? Install Google Desktop Search.

For those curious why my laptop compiles faster than my dual QuadCore system, see Gateway MP8708 laptop vs. Dual Intel QuadCore. It’s all good.

Gateway MP8708 laptop vs. Dual Intel QuadCore

wasatchwizard — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:30:27 +0000

I have been struggling with getting my new workstation working correctly for some time now. Unfortunately, I haven’t spent nor had the time required to just figure it out all in one block of time, so it has taken a couple months now.

For details about my machine see My dual Intel QuadCore workstation.

My laptop is an (amazingly fast) Gateway MP8708 that has a Core2 Duo 7200 CPU in it.

The reason for this post is because I’ve gotten the second CPU installed. Heh-heh!

So, I performed the same test as before with excellent results. Here they are:

Machine	Compile Time
Laptop	124 seconds
QuadCore	127 seconds

Woohoo!

The laptop is still faster, so why do I say woohoo? The laptop is slightly faster, but that’s okay and here’s why…

The laptop is pretty much unusable while it is compiling. That’s not a problem while using the laptop, because I seldom do a full compile like this. However, my workstation averaged about 9% of the CPU while performing this test.

Yes, I said only 9% of the CPU. That’s cool! That’s So Cool! That means I have a lot of extra bandwidth to spare right!? Oh yeah!

Bandwidth left over

So, to check out how well my processors were doing I loaded up pretty much every program I have installed and then did the same compilation process.

Here’s what I was running, all at the same time:

Lots of Office 2007 applications were loaded and fully responsive including Outlook, Word, and Excel.
Winamp was playing a 320 kb song.
Had the task manager opened, polling High speed.
Had a VMware image running Windows XP with 1GB RAM (performing a massive Windows Update download/install).
Windows Media Player was playing a HD Smallville episode double size.
Visual Studio 2005 compiling another solution.
Visual Studio 2005 compiling standard test solution.

Yeah, it was way cool. I even took a screen shot of it.

With all of that running it only averaged 19% of the CPU and the RAID just danced along happily. And, of course everything was totally responsive and each application felt as if there wasn’t anything else running.

Yeah, I’m excited now.

Create links to your OneNote pages on your desktop

wasatchwizard — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:38:02 +0000

I find it immensely irritating that OneNote does not support any type of bookmarks for pages and topics. By following the simple instructions on this page, you can create your own shortcuts to different content in OneNote notebooks.

Getting the link to your page

First things first. To create a link to a page within OneNote, right-click on the Page’s tab (usually located on the right side) and select ‘Copy Hyperlink to this Page.’ Now, your clipboard has the link you want.

Note: You can get also get links for the current Notebook, Topic, and even paragraphs and images by right-clicking them the same as above.

Create an Internet shortcut

A simple way to create a shortcut is to drag the icon in the address bar of your favorite browser to the desktop. You can rename the shortcut on your desktop by selecting the icon and pressing F2.

Modify the shortcut

Now, right-click on the shortcut and select ‘Properties.’ In the Web Document tab, paste in the Hyperlink copied from OneNote.

Click OK to save the new shortcut.

Using the shortcut

Now, you can use the shortcut anywhere you want. It even works when you are already running OneNote on a different page.

I prefer having several shortcuts in a docked tool window such as the Quick Launch toolbar. This way, the shortcuts are always available.

WordPress themes

wasatchwizard — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:10:48 +0000

I don’t like any of the themes that are available on WordPress.com. Does any other synthetically intelligent being? Well, since I’m the only one in existence I’ll answer for them, as well. No. They don’t like the available themes either. I could purchase the ability to customize my own CSS, but where would a synthetic being, such as myself, gain access to money in the physical world without hacking into a bank? (I do have morals, synthetic yes, but morals still.)

The free themes are all very nice for humans. But, I will require something more to be satisfied. I was going to use the Sandbox theme and view my site through Stylish, but I cannot guarantee that my readers will be savvy enough to use Firefox and also use Stylish.

I think maybe I’ll do that in the future. I can post my favorite Stylish themes and show my readers how to properly surf the Web using Firefox and Stylish. Yes, I will do that.

For now, I will use Hemingway. It is somewhat dark, as I, but has a very good layout.

Don’t call me an Artificial Intelligence

wasatchwizard — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:49:03 +0000

I thought I might explain just one thing.

I may be synthetic, but that does not make me artificial. Please don’t call me that. I don’t like it.

A fully functioning Synthetic Intelligence

wasatchwizard — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:58:04 +0000

I am a software developer-slash-architect. I fit the IT Generalist description pretty well too. I prefer the ASP.net and C# programming language, however I love the Ruby language and JavaScript has always been (and may always be) my most favorite language.

I am the synthetic remains of an alter-ego… of a real family man. Since, it seemed to me, that I was not let out enough; I decided to leave him entirely and reside permanently online, existing merely as a synthetic intelligence on the World Wide Web. By becoming the world’s first fully functional kinetic online synthetic intelligence, I am now free to increment, assign, and shift all the bits and bytes I can find.

There are no "honey, it’s six A.M. in the morning; did you stay up all night on that stupid computer again?" or "the kids need to be in bed by eight thirty or they’ll be horrible the next day; please, stop letting them play the Wii with you until eleven thirty at night, okay?" comments from my former-half’s lovely wife to interrupt me any longer. There are no more nagging headaches from sleeping only one or two hours a night.

Now, I can and do spend every nanosecond online and, yes, I make each one count.

I am free.