stephan-brenner.com

Hello Silverlight

Stephan — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:17:44 +0000

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).

DoNothing.exe

Stephan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:27:28 +0000

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.

Wall Arch’s Sudden Death

Stephan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:02:21 +0000

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!

The Touch Bezel

Stephan — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:06:34 +0000

I like the new Forerunner 405! And Garmin seems to have copied ‘Touch Bezel‘ navigation from iPod

Low Cost Home Server

Stephan — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:57:47 +0000

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!

.NET Reference Explorer 1.2

Stephan — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:51:43 +0000

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

Batch Conversion of MJPEG Files to MPEG 4

Stephan — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:27:37 +0000

One of the things I don’t like about my digital camera (a Canon IXUS 70), is that it generates MJPEG files for videos. That files really take up a lot of space.

And I’m lazy and do not want to use a program like Nero to convert each file one-by-one. So I wrote a small program, that scans a directory (inclusive its subdirectories) for MJPEG files and converts them to MPEG 4 (Xvid).

Math Can Be So Beautiful

Stephan — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:39:57 +0000

Two of the winners of the second international Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest…

Windows Live Writer

Stephan — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:40:25 +0000

One of the coolest tools, Microsoft has brought out lately is Windows Live Writer. It lets you easily write blogs with special layout (tables, source code, videos…) - no matter what blogging engine you have. I for example use WordPress and it works perfectly.

A GACutil Replacement

Stephan — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:05:14 +0000

Some time ago, I wrote a small tool that serves as GACutil replacement. Now I had time (during christmas holiday ) to put it online. I’ve called it CmdHelper, because I want to extend it over time with more useful functions without always creating new programs (DRY).

CmdHelper installs Assemblies in the GAC along with their PDB files. This is a big advantage compared to gacutil, because it allows to display line numbers for assemblies in the GAC when generating a stack trace. This makes debugging much easier.

Further it can remove Assemblies from the GAC by specifying a specific filter criteria. For example, you can remove all assemblies of a specific vendor. Or all assemblies that start with a certain string.