differentpla.net

The Visual Studio 2010 splash screen is stored in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\vs000223.dat. It's a hidden file. It's a PNG file.

It's generated by the installer; if you remove it and run Visual Studio, you'll get a default splash screen, without the registered owner information.

The registered owner information is in 8pt Segoe UI

If you're using the Microsoft Symbol Server to pull down symbols for Windows, or if you're using SYMSTORE.EXE for your own stuff, you'll see that EXE (and other binary files) are stored in a path similar to C:\WebSymbols\user32.dll\4226015990000\user32.dll.

Where did the magic number come from?

I'm making some improvements to our build scripts at work, and I ran into a problem where Source Server indexing wasn't working.

For some reason, LINQ's ForEach extension method doesn't work on IEnumerable<T>; it only works on IList<T>. Easy fix:

public static class EnumerableExtensions
{
    public static void ForEach<T>(this IEnumerable<T> values, Action<T> action)
    {
        foreach (var value in values)
        {
            action(value);
        }
    }
}

I was doing some ASP.NET MVC this weekend, and I couldn't get the project to start: all I got was "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage", when using Visual Studio's built-in development web server (Cassini).

I think it's because Cassini doesn't support IPv6, and on Vista, "localhost" refers to the IPv6 address ::1, rather than the IPv4 address 127.0.0.1.

If you use http://127.0.0.1:12345/Home/, then it works fine.

To resolve this, you can go to the project settings and set the Start URL explicitly.

...because then you can't (easily) use Console.Write, because "Console" clashes.

Getting IntelliSense to work for NHibernate mapping files (.hbm.xml)

You'll need to copy the XSD files from C:\Program Files\NHibernate\src\NHibernate-src\src\NHibernate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas.

Using SQL Server Compact Edition for Unit Testing

Ayende shows how to use SQLite with an in-memory database for unit testing your NHibernate code (here). This is a great idea: your unit tests will run more quickly, and you don't have to worry about tearing the database down when you've finished.

Essentially, you write a new task like this:

<define name="echo3">
  <echo message="${this.message}"/>
  <echo message="${this.message}"/>
  <echo message="${this.message}"/>
</define>

...and then you call it like this:

<echo3 message="Hello World"/>

Any parameter passed to the defined task is available as this.foo inside the defined task. I've found it useful when you don't want to write a task in C#, perhaps because all you're doing is calling a bunch of other NAnt tasks.

I just started using TeamCity Professional Edition for some personal projects (and we're evaluating the Enterprise edition for use at work).