Error Logging

The Microsoft Enterprise Library has a really good Logging Application Block that allows you to make your logging infrastructure configurable.
This framework makes logging as easy as typing:
Logger.Write(”System rolled over!”);
the framework is configurable from your config file.
The Microsoft Enterprise Library out of the box provides the following destinations for logging messages:

Email
Custom Locations
Message Queues
WMI Events
Database
Text Files
File

I took [...]

.NET Regular Expressions

What the Heck is a Regular Expression Anyway?
I’m sure you are familiar with the use of “wildcard” characters for pattern matching. For example, if you want to find all the Microsoft Word files in a Windows directory, you search for “*.doc“, knowing that the asterisk is interpreted as a wildcard that can match any sequence [...]

.NET Agile Development Practices

Introduction
The purpose of this article is to define a set of ideal practices for an agile software development project. I encourage you to leave comments about this article using the comments box at the bottom of this page. Please note that the practices listed are the practices that I believe are essential to a good agile development project; [...]

Bug Tracking Software Review #2 Mantis

With the current company and projects Im working on we have been using Mantis bug tracker since i set it up about 2 years ago. At the time of its introduction it was a big change for the team who weren’t used to using proper [Basic required] developer tools to get the job done.
Here [...]

Speeding up vs2005

Our team has been playing around with trying to speed up the responsiveness. Here’s a few things we’ve tried that have worked at least most of the time:

Close the Toolbox tab - Even with just the tab closed, VS2005 still seems to use resources to keep it up to date. By removing it from your [...]

What terms a Project manager should pay more attention to

As a development manager or project manager, you here a lot of weasel words and excuses from your staff or from external consultants who are trying to hose you into believing things are better than they are. In many cases, developers use these phrases to even convince themselves that things are better than they are, [...]

Bug Tracking Software Review #1 JIRA

I’ve been using a product from Atlassian called JIRA for the past couple years to track tasks, bugs, and requests.
I highly highly recommend it - its an amazing product and the team behind it provides great support and rapid response. They’re also highly supportive of charity and open-source organizations - if you ask nicely, they’ll [...]

Protecting web.config Connection strings

It is recommended that store your database connection strings in the Web.config file and encrypt the connection strings. In the .NET Framework 2.0, you have the option to enable the configuration encryption in the <protectedData> section in the web.config file.
For example:
<protectedData>
<protectedDataSections>
<add name=”connectionStrings” provider=”RSAProtectedConfigurationProvider”/>
</protectedDataSections>
</protectedData>
There are two predefined providers that you can find in the .NET Framework [...]

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

Recently I was lucky enough to have a wonderful sunny day so i decided to take a trip down to the cliffs of moher and it gave me the perfect chance to try out some software for stitching photos together into panoramic.
 

The software tool AutoStitch from University of British Columbia works very well. Given that [...]