Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/13
When you want to deploy WPF, it is important to check if you have sufficient hardware acceleration for your apps.
The most important things to check is the RenderCapability.
It gives you the Tier on which graphics is rendered.
The Tier tells something about hardware acceleration support, including a broad estimate of the pixel shader and vertex shader levels and DirectX versions.
Currently, there are 3 tiers: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, Software Development, WPF | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/12
A short while ago, [WayBack] Danny Thorpe posted an answer about multithreading issues on StackOverflow.com [WayBack] which reminded me a lot about a BorCon session he did.
That session is called [WayBack] “Reading Tea Leaves: The Fine Art of Debugging“, it is still very current (a lot of it is not Delphi specific at all: it can be applied to a broad range of platforms), and I was glad to find that [WayBack] Joe White made [WayBack] some great notes and posted them on his blog.
Edit 20100513T0830: (thanks Mario!) Don’t you love 404 :-)
The blog from Joe White seem to be down, and the web archive of his blog didn’t have that particular page, but the google cache has.
–jeroen
PS:
Danny is a great writer; I’m really glad he [WayBack] showed up at StackOverflow.
Here is another very [WayBack] nice answer from him on concurrency in software using read-write, locking, interlocked increment and more.
He found back his slides:
Consolidating a dusty box of ancient DVDRW archive disks this weekend (uploading them to multi-redundant NAS) and looky what I found! I’d given up all hope of ever finding this again. #digitalpackrat ftw!
Hope this brightens your day @jpluimers :) https://t.co/saqq7JA46e
Posted in Debugging, Delphi, Development, Software Development | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/11
This Why does this code fail in D2010, but not D7 question on stackoverflow once again shows that SizeOf on character arrays usualy is evil.
My point in this posting is that you should always try to write code that is semantically correct.
By writing semantically correct code, you have a much better chance of surviving a major change like a Unicode port.
The code below is semantically wrong: it worked in Delphi 7 by accident, not by design:
Like many Windows API functions, GetTempPath expects the first parameter (called nBufferLength) number of characters, not the number of bytes. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Encoding, ISO-8859, Software Development, Unicode | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/10
Recently, SysInternals introduced Disk2vhd.
This is a tool that generates a VHD (virtual hard disk image) from a physical disk.
Even better: it can do this for a running system that is online!
They use volume snapshots (a.k.a. Volume Shadowcopy Service) to do this on-line.
From their site:
Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk – Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion
via Disk2vhd.
Note: Sysinternals now has a Live Share at http://live.sysinternals.com where you can download the most recent versions of their tools.
–jeroen
Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/06
In the past there were already a lot of shortcuts, including a few including the windows key.
SEO Consultants has a good overview of both lists.
Microsoft has the classic list.
Windows 7 introduced quite a few more, which I’ll list below.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Event, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User | 5 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/04
Last week, I blogged that we should move away from Flash to HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, commenting on Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash post announcing support for HTML5 including video playback of H.264 encoded video.
In the mean time, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team announced that in IE9 they are going to support HTML5 and that H.264 will be the only supported video encoding standard.
There is a truckload of hardware that supports H.264 decoding acceleration.
So the movement is from a plethora of video encoding standards into one broadly accepted H.264 standard.
When you look at the combination of support in HTML5/H.264 for all the major browsers, only FireFox has not announced support. This is probably because H.264 is not a free (as in beer) standard: commercial use requires payment. But – if I read the H.264 article right – content that is free for end users requires no royalties to be paid.
This combined hardware and software support means that there is a pretty strong backing for H.264!
–jeroen
Reference: IEBlog : HTML5 Video.
Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, HTML5, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/03
I just noticed that WhiteHouse.gov last week released some of their code as Open Source.
In addition to using the Open Source Drupal project, they actually contribute to the Open Source community as well.
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/03
Scott Adams blogged about the lost 4G phone; the blog includes two drafts of comics that will never get themselves into the Dilbert comic pipeline.
Fun nonetheless.
–jeroen
Posted in Geeky | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/02
It is easy – even for experienced power users – to get your PC infected by a virus, trojan horse or other form of malware.
These 10 tips for getting rid of stubborn malware from TechRadar UK should help you getting back on track.
–jeroen
Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/30
Steve Jobs just posted his Thoughts on Flash.
Let me add another thought: I hate flash apps.
Flash should go, and we all should go for HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
The primary reason I dislike Flash is similar to this quote from Steve Jobs’ post: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, HTML5, Software Development, Web Development | 2 Comments »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 