System.Blog.Martens.Ben

During a recent Hope on the Slopes 24-hour ACS skiing fundraiser, I used my watch to track vertical feet throughout the day. The watch isn't perfectly calibrated, but it's reasonably accurate. The watch counts a run any time you make a vertical change...

Type type type type, send. AUGH! WAIT! NO! We've all had it happen. You click Send, type Alt-S or press Ctrl-Enter to send your message off, and 1.3 milliseconds later you realize that you sent it to the wrong person, had a typo, or forgot the attachment...

I wanted to add my Facebook status to my other blog which is running Community Server 2.0. All I needed to do was write a user control to pull the RSS feed and display the text. This seemed easy enough, but it turned out to be a little tricky. First I...

I've done a couple time lapse videos recently, and I think I'm becoming a bit of a time lapse fan. This latest app combines time lapse photography with the skiing web cams that I watch every day (via my Vista gadget !) The app watches a list of web cams...

I use the built-in Outlook "Sent Directly To Me" search folder as my hot items in Outlook. If my name is on the To or CC line for an email, it's probably something I want to look at fairly quickly. The problem is that I'm starting to get a lot...

The Tester Center team has been hard at work since launch day coming up with new content and adding features to the site. If you head over to the site now, you'll see an RSS feed containing all the content from the site. New content should appear in the...

I moved 2800 miles to take the job with Microsoft. To some that might fall in the "cons" side of the yellow legal pad, but for me it was a huge plus. The Pacific Northwest is an unbelievable place to live and play. The city is vibrant and full...

The Connected Systems Division was featured in Information Week today and they vaguely mentioned my project. "In the past a very select group of users has used modeling. Microsoft is going to make modeling mainstream for the average developer,"...

The last post I made with command line tricks was well-received so I thought I'd post another little Windows shortcut. Items in your quick launch toolbar are accessible by pressing the Windows key followed by the number corresponding to the icon's position...

I finished my undergrad about five years ago (Go Purdue!). As I look back at my education and try to pinpoint the key decisions, a couple things stick out: Get involved in extracurricular clubs. I was a member of StudentDev (a Microsoft student club associated...

Watching a co-worker type can be a good tool for learning new tricks. I always ask "How did you just do that?" when I see something fly by a bit too quickly. I just learned two of them in the last half hour. If there is a command in your history...

The beta version of GraphWise is now available to the public. A 10,000 foot view of the app is that they are a search engine for numerical data. In fact, their home page currently states that they have created over 150 million data tables. Now that they...

I've worked in various version of Visual Studio just about every day for the past 4 years. Today I learned a new feature: the Modules debug window. I'm trying to create test the debugging scenario when a specific set of symbols is not loaded. But no matter...

When I was in school, finding money for pizza was tough, much less for a full copy of Microsoft Office. If your school doesn't have an MSDNAA subscription set up, this new Microsoft program might be just the ticket. Anyone with a valid student email address...

Whenever a conversation about HD and the 360 comes up, I see a ton of confusion about which outputs give you 1080p. Hopefully this handy chart from DanielN will help to answer a few questions. Xbox 360 connected using component DVD’s via HD-DVD drive...

Sometimes I think we should have geek trading cards. "I'll trade you a Don Box for your Chris Sells and a Bubble Tape." Maybe I'm just easily starstruck by famous geeks, but that's one thing that I haven't gotten tired of yet. When I joined the team,...

That's the error I was presented with on my clean install of Vista today. I had everything set up nicely and wanted to create a backup image but I kept getting that error with error number 0x80070001. After a quick Live Search, I turned up an answer that...

Miguel Llopis is an intern on our team this summer. He gave a presentation in our team meeting this afternoon about Channel8. I'm a fan of the work that has been done on Channel9 and Channel10 (shameless plug for my video at On10 ), but I hadn't heard...

In my previous life as an ASP.NET ninja, I had a request from a client to use the enter button to submit a form. It turns out to be a little bit tricky until you find the magic code. Today I was the same question and found the answer after a quick Live...

Windows Live SkyDrive was updated today. It's a place to store 500MB of files for free. I signed up for the open beta and I'm currently uploading files. So far I love the UI (and the name!) All the traffic is encrypted via SSL and you can set the permissions...

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I've been developing .NET applications since the very first beta was released, but today was the first day that I used the CLR Profiler. Somehow I had never heard of it before, but wow, it's amazing! Every developer...

I recently acquired a hand-me-down laptop at work. Since I only have desktops, I was eager to add this to my box of toys. The only problem is that the drive was completely clean and the disc drive was not functional. I tried a network boot to install...

Stories have been popping up recently about a tiny picture of three people who were embedded into the Vista DVD hologram. Originally people thought this was an Easter Egg, but it turns out to be a security measure: http://www.computerworld.com/action...

The big mystery announcement last night was Microsoft Surface . Where do I sign up to get one? I can instantly think of a bunch of board games that would be a great fit for this as well as your basic photo/map display. What if you could use it as a Media...

This news is about two months old, but I just found the beta for Office Communicator 2007 ( http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/beta/ocs/default.mspx .) I like the interface changes, specifically the ability to add multiple people to a conversation...