Only 13 days till MIX10 and counting! I am so excited to be there, learning tons of new stuff and meeting old and new friends. My plane will be leaving in about one week, since I will be hiking Zion Canyon a few days before MIX10 itself.

If you’re going to MIX10, you really should attend the Tweetup on Sunday (http://twtvite.com/5i84zm). It’s a great way to meet nice designer/developer people and prepare for the days to come. (Psst: Some say, that even Bill Buxton himself will be there!)

Also: Be sure to check out the Session Planner in Silverlight with offline functionality. (Read more about it at http://blogs.msdn.com/sync/archive/2010/03/01/organize-yourself-at-mix10-using-mix10-session-planner-beta.aspx)

If you just can’t go to MIX10, you can use this website to express your pain: http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/ ;)

Update 2010-03-05: Albert just told me about an iPhone session planner for MIX10: http://itunes.apple.com/de/app/mix10/id357234402?mt=8. I just tried it and it really rocks. The only thing I would wish for is synchronization with the Windows Live account used at the standard MIX10 site.

[German post concerning a user group driven conference in cologne]

Die Community-Konferenz dotnet Cologne 2010, zum Launch von Visual Studio 2010 und .NET Framework 4, findet am 28. Mai 2010 im Holiday Inn am Stadtwald statt.

Neben Visual Studio 2010 und .NET 4.0 werden innerhalb der 18 Sessions natürlich auch noch weitere Themen angeboten.

Eine Anmeldung ist ab dem 3. März 2010 um 10:20 Uhr möglich!

Ab diesem Zeitpunkt besteht die Möglichkeit eines der 150 begehrten Super Early Bird Tickets zu bekommen. Zum Super Early Bird kosten die Tickets nur 25 €! Danach werden sich die Preise auf 40 € bzw. 55 € erhöhen.

Am Abend veranstaltet dass dotnet-forum.de ihre Community Grill-Fete. Dort können sowohl die Konferenz Teilnehmer als auch Mitglieder des dotnet-forum.de (auch ohne Konferenz) teilnehmen. Bei schönem Wetter findet sie draußen am See statt!

Aktuell werden noch Sprecher gesucht. Wer also möchte kann sich mit Vorschlägen an das Orga Team wenden. Neben Ruhm & Ehre gibt es für Sprecher auch freien Eintritt. Details dazu finden sich auf der Call for Papers Seite.

[German post concerning a raffle of an Xbox 360 by listing my favorite developer tools.]

Die Möglichkeit eine Xbox 360 Elite durch Auflistung meiner Top Entwicklertools zu gewinnen, lasse ich mir natürlich nicht entgehen:

• JetBrains ReSharper
  Nach jahrelangen, hassähnlichen Gefühlen gegenüber ReSharper, hat die 4.5er Version endlich mein Herz gewonnen und ich möchte sie in der täglichen Arbeit nicht mehr missen.
  
• .NET Reflector
  Ohne ihn geht es einfach nicht ;)
  
• GhostDoc
  Ich nutze ihn zwar inzischen deutlich seltener, aber er unterstützt mich immer noch prima bei der Dokumentation öffentlicher APIs.
  

P.S: Eigentlich auch noch SonicFileFinder (Wenn ich ihn nicht nutzen würde, hätte ich ihn nicht entwickelt), aber ich darf ja nur drei Tools nennen ;)

Since a few days ago, I am proud owner of an Acer Aspire H340 easyStore Home Server. It came preconfigured with a few Add-Ins, for example the Firefly Media Server Add-In and the Lights-Out Add-In.

The Firefly Media Server Add-In got some nice features. One is the automatic creation of an iTunes Shared Library based on all music located in the Home Server “Music”-folder.

The Problem

So, I tried that feature, but it didn’t work: My iTunes installation on the desktop didn’t see the Shared Library.

The problem was, that the H340 comes with an old version of “Bonjour” installed, which doesn’t work with the current iTunes version (8.1.1). “Bonjour” is the service providing the Shared Library functionality.

The Solution

So, if you encounter this problem, just download the current Bonjour version from http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/windows/bonjourforwindows.html, log into your Home Server using Remote Desktop (Account is “Administrator” and the Home Server Console password) and upgrade Bonjour. Done!

In the dawn of Windows 7 RC on MSDN and “for the masses” in two days there comes a new logon screen:

Birds? Are they kidding me? Tough guys need tough logon screens, like flying pink elephants or something.

Good news is, that you can easily customize the logon screen without any resource hacking, etc.

Preparing your installation for logon customization

The functionality was originally designed for OEMs, so the first thing to do is to check, whether this feature is already enabled.

Start regedit.exe (requires admin rights), navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background and look for a DWORD called OEMBackground.

Create it, if it doesn’t exist and set its value to 1 to enable it, or 0 to disable.

Exchange logon wallpapers with your own ones

The “OEM wallpapers” are stored in %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds where you may find the following list:

• backgroundDefault.jpg
• background768×1280.jpg
• background900×1440.jpg
• background960×1280.jpg
• background1024×1280.jpg
• background1280×1024.jpg
• background1024×768.jpg
• background1280×960.jpg
• background1600×1200.jpg
• background1440×900.jpg
• background1920×1200.jpg
• background1280×768.jpg
• background1360×768.jpg

It may be that the neither the files nor the directory exist. If so, simply create them.

Just replace the file matching the resolution of your primary monitor. If Windows can’t find a file matching your resolution, it uses the backgroundDefault.jpg in “stretched-to-fit” mode. So, if you’re too lazy to create all the files for different resolutions, just delete all files but the default one.

Be aware, that you can only use files with less than 256kb in size.

For those of you being depressed, because UltraMon 3.0.x Beta isn’t running under Windows 7 Beta, I say: “Don’t be! There’s help!”

After asking the Realtime Soft team about Windows 7 support, I received the following answer:

Disabling the window buttons in the registry will allow you to use UltraMon, to do this run regedit.exe, go to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Realtime Soft\UltraMon\<version>\Window Buttons', then change the value of 'Maximize to Desktop Button' and 'Move Window Button' from one to zero.

Big thanks to Christian Studer for this great tip!

The year 2008 is almost gone (at least in my timezone) and I would like to thank all the great people, who visited this website. Especially those ones giving me so much positive feedback for SonicFileFinder and even more the ones sending presents from my wishlists.

It’s been great to see, that SonicFileFinder picked up some speed in this year. It almost cracked the 10000-Downloads-in-one-year barrier!

I am so much looking forward to 2009, since there are great opportunities at work (Comma-Soft AG) in building new (web) frontends. A new private project is going to start. There is a good chance, that I will attend the Mix 2009 and so much more.

Furthermore, I am hoping for more time to blog about interesting stuff, since besides the SonicFileFinder releases it has been quite silent in 2008.

Anyways, I wish you folks all the best for 2009! Stay save, be delighted, do some sports, enjoy, have a great time with friends and family, live, watch good movies, eat good food … well, you know the rest.

Kind regards

Jens

P.S: Let’s also not forget the SPAMers providing me with so many hilarious E-Mail as well as so much annoying stuff. Thank you!

SonicFileFinder is a free add-in for Visual Studio that allows a fast and convenient search for any file within every Project of the loaded Solution by entering the complete filename or just a part of it. The found file(s) can either be edited with a single keystroke or a Windows Explorer / CommandLine prompt can be opened at the file's location.

What's new?

Version 2.1 is a small add-on release to 2.0.

Note: SonicFileFinder now requires .NET Framework 3.5 to run!

• ADDED: Support for F# project types. (This should also fix some problems with other strange project types.) Sadly the F# project doesn't expose file events, like "added" or "removed". Thus SonicFileFinder can see removed or added files only after reloading the solution.
• CHANGED: Removed the Live Preview feature.
• CHANGED: Split the configuration dialog into "Appearance" und "Features".
• FIXED: Opening a Master Page in a standard ASP.NET Web Project now opens the Master Page not the the code behind file.

Download it on the SonicFileFinder website.

Since Christmas is around the corner, I would like to point your eyes to my amazon wish lists in the US, UK and Germany. If you like and use SonicFileFinder, why not make a small donation? Those of you, who would like to spend a special amount, could send an amazon Gift Card (US, UK, Germany). Thank you!

SonicFileFinder is a free add-in for Visual Studio that allows a fast and convenient search for any file within every Project of the loaded Solution by entering the complete filename or just a part of it. The found file(s) can either be edited with a single keystroke or a Windows Explorer / CommandLine prompt can be opened at the file's location.

What's new?

Version 2.0 is quite a big feature release. Besides all the new features, the performance has been increased drastically.

Note: SonicFileFinder now requires .NET Framework 3.5 to run!

• ADDED: In Visual Studio 2008 the keyboard shortcut, for starting the search with SonicFileFinder, will now work in the source code view of the HTML editor.
• ADDED: Unwanted files can now be excluded from the search using the same search language in the new exclusion field.
• ADDED: The order, in which the columns of SonicFileFinder are sorted, is now being displayed underneath the result list.
• ADDED: The font size used in SonicFileFinder can now be adjusted using the configuration dialog or hotkeys.
• ADDED: Files using a designer, like WinForms, will now be displayed in design view when opening them with SonicFileFinder. (Code view can be forced using the context menu.) Sadly this won't work for C++ projects and there seems to be no way to fix this.
• ADDED: The number of found files is now displayed in the title of the popup/tool window.
• ADDED: The history of files opened/explored with SonicFileFinder can now be saved between sessions.
• ADDED: SonicFileFinder will now detect changes (file added/renamed/removed) in Visual Studio 2008 Website projects.
• CHANGED: Significantly improved performance while searching.
• FIXED: The sorting of the columns in the result list is now saved between sessions.
• FIXED: The crashing of SonicFileFinder, which should have been fixed in Version 1.9.1, reappeared in some special cases and should have been fixed now.

Download it on the SonicFileFinder website.

Update: If you get the following error message, please download SonicFileFinder again.

Don’t forget: If you like SonicFileFinder, you might want to take a look at my amazon wishlists (US, UK, Germany).

Everybody owning an iPhone has encountered the small Sleep/Wake button button located at the top right. Normally it puts the iPhone to sleep or wakes it up, when it’s light asleep.

But it can do more!

After pressing it for about 3 seconds a “slide to power off” message appears. After confirming it, the iPhone will be shut down completely. To wake it again from its deep slumber, just press the Sleep/Wait button for 1 second and the phone boots up.

I guess you already knew that, right?

Well, it can do even more! (Now comes the good part ;)

When receiving a call in sleep mode (the screen is off), the phone wakes up, shows information about the caller and displays the “slide to answer” message, but there seems to be no way to ignore or kick out the caller. This is where the Sleep/Wait button comes in:

• Press Sleep/Wait one time to shut off vibration and ringtone
• Press Sleep/Wait rapidly two times to kick out the caller and send him/her directly to your VoiceMail box

How cool is that?

P.S: @Uwe: Yes, I am working on the 2.0 release of SonicFileFinder ;)

Since the Windows Live Writer Backup Utility won't work under Vista x64 at the moment, I'd like to describe how you can do this manually.

The complete settings consist of four parts:

• Blog Templates
• Blog Posts (drafts and recently posted)
• Plugins
• Registry Settings

Blog Templates

The blog templates reside at C:\Users\<your user name>\appdata\Roaming\Windows Live Writer\blogtemplates or when using C# you should use Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData followed by \Windows Live Writer\blogtemplates to get the path.

Blog Posts

Your blog posts are located in the "Documents" folder inside a sub folder called "My Weblog Posts". C# knows the "Documents" folder as Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal.

Plugins

If you installed any plugins for Windows Live Writer, you will find them inside your "Program Files" folder underneath "Windows Live\Writer\Plugins"

Registry Settings

Last not least, you have to open regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Writer. To backup, simply right click, click "export" and write the settings to a .reg file. Double click this file to import the settings again.

When using Windows Live Writer for blogging with Drupal you have to consider a few things, when setting up your account as explained here for example.

But even then, you cannot download any categories from Drupal for use in Windows Live Writer. There is a small bug in the blogapi.module (located under /modules/blogapi/ in your Drupal installation).

Inside this file there is a function at the end of it named _blogapi_get_node_types().

function _blogapi_get_node_types() {
$available_types = array_keys(array_filter(variable_get('blogapi_node_types', array('blog' => 1))));
$types = array();
foreach (node_get_types() as $type => $name) {
if (node_access('create', $type) && in_array($type, $available_types)) {
$types[] = $type;
}
}

You simply have to delete the red marked parts and everything will work as expected.

So, after my first and kind of overwhelming FedCon XVI last year, I tried out FedCon XVII two weeks ago. Well, maybe I was a bit more down-to-earth, maybe I didn't see the thing through rose-colored glasses, but this FedCon wasn't nearly like my first. It may also have been the fact, that "Jägermeister" - the big sponsor this year - was everywhere! (Well not inside the restrooms. At least I haven't seen them there.) Even Marc B. Lee called it the "JägerCon". There were other things I very much disliked, but I spare you the details. As you may have experienced yourself: The good things stay in memory and the bad things (were there any?) will pass away.

"Stop whining and bring up some of the good stuff!" you say. Well, here it comes...

Mary McDonnell alias Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica was very much a pleasant surprise. She was moved to tears at the closing ceremony and she didn't play her role there. Throughout the panels, she formed one of the running gags at FedCon. Wanting to say a few words in German, she said: "Es ist so geil hier zu sein!" She thought that "geil" means awesome, but in German it's more "horny" than "awesome" ;) Another quote when answering a question: "I ordered someone out of an airlock. I don't know whom, there were so many."
	I still don't know, where that question came from, but another running gag was: "Have you ever seen Jamie Bamber naked?" Even people from the audience, even Marc B. Lee himself inside the audience asked the different actors/actresses on stage this question more than once.
Brent Spiner alias Data in TNG - he would make a great stand-up comedian - was hilarious on stage. He came up with the theory, that you tell a bad joke, no matter how bad, and repeat it 10 times, the audience will die of laughter. So he told us: "How proud he was playing on Battlestar Galactica.". You may know, or may have guessed, Brent never played on BSG. But after the 10th time telling this in the strangest situations, the audience was rolling on the floor laughing.
	Did you know, that Rene Auberjonois alias Odo in DS9 actually played with the great Audrey Hepburn on Broadway? And that he and his wife are calling their house in LA "the house that Star Trek built"?
Bruce Boxleitner (left) alias John Sheridan in Babylon 5 had a panel together with Peter Jurasic alias Londo Mollari in Babylon 5. Those two also did Tron together by the way. This panel was clearly the highlight of the whole weekend! You really had to see those guys to believe it. Some quotes: Bruce: (responding to a question about the making-of of a movie) "I don't know, if they put it on tape". Peter: "It's called DVDs now!" Bruce: (responding to a question concerning what happened to the planet next to Babylon 5 after its destruction) [serious facial expression] "Well, I guess it's still there."
	LeVar Burton (Geordy La Forge), Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) and Brent Spiner were great together. Shame on LeVar and Brent, leaving the panel after 20min, to catch their plane. But afterwards Marina told us much funstuff from the set at TNG. Her standard quote as the ship's counsellor was "Captain, he's hiding something". One day after that quote saying it to Patrick Steward (alias Jean-Luc Picard), he answered (in a funny way): "Yeah, I know that you stupid cow! You waste of space!"
This year's costume contest was great as always, but the about 3 meters high an 4-5 meters long At-At was amazing!
	You are dooooomed!!
What a nice couple!
	Even Stormtroopers have to go shopping from time to time.
Last, but definitely not least Giles Aston in his fabulous Nemesis costume taking a picture with me at the end of FedCon.

I'd like to close now with words from Londo Mollari: "That wasn't so bad after all, yes?"

Like last year, you will find a selection of the photos I took in the gallery. (Don't use the internal gallery located at http://www.jens-schaller.de/gallery, because the Drupal integration is somewhat slow.)

I was very delighted this morning seeing that SonicFileFinder got "morning brewed" by Chris Alcock! This is so awesome, thank you Chris!

After the Daily Grind was gone, Chris jumped in and continued the tradition. I really enjoy reading his blog and I already infected some of my colleagues. If you don't know the "Morning Brew" yet, I strongly advise to get there. Chris blogs about interesting finds regarding .NET with a lot of "must reads" in it.

SonicFileFinder is a free add-in for Visual Studio that allows a fast and convenient search for any file within every Project of the loaded Solution by entering the complete filename or just a part of it. The found file(s) can either be edited with a single keystroke or a Windows Explorer / CommandLine prompt can be opened at the file's location.

What's new?

Version 1.9.1 is a bugfix release due to changes in Visual Studio 2008 automation model. Big thanks to Jacobo Amselem for reporting the bug and testing the beta version!

• FIXED: SonicFileFinder sometimes crashed Visual Studio or simply closed itself without a warning, when using some of the new projects types in Visual Studio 2008. This problem occurred for example using the new database project types in Visual Studio Team System 2008.

Download it on the SonicFileFinder website.