Jetbrains have announced the plan for Resharper 2.0, including the much awaited support for Visual Studio 2005!. Fantastic news as VS 2005 without resharper is worse than VS 2003 in my humble opinion. (I'd forgotton just how much Resharper does for you!) The full plan is posted here.
EAP for it will start in about a month and complete set of features will be implemented by the middle of summer. The release is planned for the autumn (about the same time as the release of Visual Studio 2005).
I just used some spare PayPal money to get myself a 3 month subscription to the SkypeIn Beta. Had trouble finding a free number in the area code of my choice (was going to go for a US number in Silicon Valley, but ended up going for a Chicago one because there were plenty left)
Anyway, feel free to spam my new SkypeIn voicemail box by calling (+1) 312-239-0607. You never know, I may be online at the time and surprise you by answering the call.
While I was looking, I found this blog post on available SkypeIn US area codes. The only UK area code available at the moment is Central London (0208).
From Martin Fowler's site:
Detestable (adjective): software that isn't testable.
Found my second thing in .Net that really sucks. In .Net DateTime is a reference type and is therefore not nullable (Unlike the Java.Sql.Date class in java). I am talking to a SQL Server database with a nullable DateTime field and I want to accurately pass this around my application then out of a web service (that is supposed to be interoperable between .Net and Java clients) into a .Net based UI.
Other things that suck about DateTime is that if you create a DateTime and do not initialise it then the object is set to DateTime.MIN_VALUE which happens to be a date lower than SQL Server 2000 can support. I get the feeling that Dates and interoperability really don't mix...
All in all it is a bit smelly. Apparently fixed in .Net 2 - but until then I will have to employ some horrible work-around hack.
One of my friends recently gave me "Effective C#" by Bill Wagner. I just wanted to do a quick post to say what an excellent book this is.
I have recently moved from Java to C# and because the languages are so similar I can often do things in C# exactly the same way as I did them in Java but that isn't always the best way. This book explains what those better ways are.
Normally in a book such as this I would find myself disagreing with many of the recommendations, however Bill Wagner does a great job of explaining why he is recommending what he is (sometimes delving down into the IL to show you what he means). This means you can understand when that tip should and shouldn't apply.
I recommend that you get this book and skim through the tips one day when you have some time (I did it on a train). Then when you are next writing some C# you will remember the tip and can go look up exactly what he was talking about.
Well, for some reason I seem to be back at my No. 2 spot in Google when you search for "Martin Woodward". I changes my blog templates a little bit. The Martin Woodward header at the top of every page is a bit of text that has a screen stylesheet applied that hides the text and displays the ": Martin Woodward" graphic instead. If you are using a text based browser then you don't see the image but get the text.
Now I had the text set to be a hyperlink back to the Woodwardweb homepage - but this seems like it tripped out the Google spam filter (as there were hidden text links contained within the site - a tactic sometimes used by search engine spammers trying to inflate their search engine rankings.).
So, I'm going to leave my templates static for a while and see if I stay at the No. 2 spot for a couple of google indexes. If so then it may well be this that has fixed it.
The bad news is that I noticed I had jumped to the number 2 slot because my comment spam levels just shot up. Obviously the comment spammers are using google to identify target sites. Looks like my move away from Moveable type is getting more and more urgent...
Today I had the pleasure of visiting London for the day. It's always a pleasure to visit London because I am so very grateful that I don't live there. (If you haven't heard the London Underground song then take a listen - NOT work safe!!)
Anyway, on the way down to London I had my NetStumbler open looking for WiFi links. (Wartraining anyone??) Done this a couple of times and you get amusing results, especially from some of the SID's giving very frank names as to the reason that person has got broadband...
Now, I'm on the 21:00 GNER service from Kingscross to Newcastle and I am sitting in the Buffet Car, connected to the internet wirelessly. Seems to work pretty well. I can access email and internet ok. The latency sucks - just tried to fire up a Skype session with a buddy in the states but that was too much to ask. The fact that you can check your mail for free (if you travel in first class) and surf the web while travelling at 125mph is pretty sweet!
