Private Homepage of Stephan Brenner
To get familiar with Windows Azure I created a new web application:
Currently the application only provides some basic functionality, but I intentionally wanted to publish an early stage to be able to work with it in real life. I plan to add more features over time.
These are some of the technologies I am using:
I like the password strength indicator for the Apple ID. While typing it is visualized which criteria are met and which not.
Recently I have written about the Managed Stack Explorer. In the meantime MDbg (.NET Framework Command-Line Debugger) is my favorite tool for creating stack traces of running .NET applications in customer or test environments.
Download: MDbg_2.1.zip (412 KB)
Usage:
Example:
To easily get stack traces of a running .NET application I was searching for a small tool and found the Managed Stack Explorer from Microsoft. Unfortunately it was not maintained anymore since 2006 and thus didn’t support Windows 7 and 64 bit. I fixed these issues and built a version 1.01. It currently only can trace .NET 2/3/3.5 applications and not .NET 4 applications.
Download: ManagedStackExplorer-1.0.1.zip
I mostly use the tool from the command line:
MSE /p
MSE /p 1234 /s > c:\temp\StackTraces.txt
The package now additionally contains a MSE32.exe. Use it if you want to monitor an application that is running in 32 bit compatibility mode on a 64 bit OS.
I had some time to play with Silverlight 2. I like editing Silverlight XAML by hand (in Visual Studio that is the only possiblility), but to get a nice design or add some effects, Expression Blend is helpful. I’m a bit disappointed that there is no SVG support in any of the Microsoft tools – so you cannot easily integrate existing SVG graphics or icons (e.g. from Open Clip Art Library). The free tool Inkscape can help here.
The first outcome of my coding is here (click on the items to edit them; drag the items to change the order).
Sometimes you just need an executable file that does nothing: 
DoNothing.zip.
I use it to outsmart a tool that always calls on every start a configuration wizard – even though it already is configured. Now it calls DoNothing.exe.
Only a few weeks after I visited Wall Arch, it collapsed. It was one of the most favorite landmarks in Arches National Park. See the photo – I was standing right below the arch. How lucky that I was not there last Monday!
I like the new Forerunner 405! And Garmin seems to have copied ‘Touch Bezel‘ navigation from iPod 
Recently set up a new home server with the Gigabyte STA. The power consumption is only 18 W inclusive hard drive and it is absolutely quite because it does not need a ventilator. This is made possible through the Via C7 chip….really nice!
I’ve uploaded a new version of .NET Reference Explorer:
- New: Using global assemblies as entry assemblies
- New: Multi-selection in ‘Open File’ dialog
- New: Config files of entry assemblies now get processed
- New: No installation needed anymore.
- Fixed: Loading of global assemblies with publisher policies