I spent today at DDD8 and was really impressed with the level of content and the quality of the speakers. This is an event run by and for the community. It takes place in the Microsoft UK offices, but is not an MS event (Microsoft speakers are not allowed...

Ben Vincent has blogged an excellent write up of his experiences with the IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) toolk it. It’s well worth a read and illustrates how the tool can increase your sites relevance on search engines (and drive traffic to your...

It's been pointed out that I didn't need to write the extension method RaiseToThePowerOf. BigInt has it's own static Pow method. I blame code blindness. So, with this in place Problem 25 is solved like this... 1: var ten = BigInt.FromInt32(10); 2: var...

UPDATE: It's been pointed out that the extension method RaiseToThePowerOf isn't required. I've updated the C# solution to Problem 25 here , but left this post "as is". This is part one of a three part post where myself and Giles Knap play around with...

On a recently snowboarding holiday I found myself having some decidedly geeky conversations with a good friend of mine, Giles Knap . Giles is currently learning F# and was extolling its virtues while I did my best to defend C#, explaining to him that...

Howard van Rooijen has just announced that the Release Candidate for StyleCop for ReSharper is now available. If you like StyleCop (you do, don't you?) then you should definately take a look at this. Howard wants all your feedback, so go download StyleCop...

I love writing code. Sometimes, though, not writing code is even better. Less code written means less to test, less to maintain, less to document etc etc. Ben Vincent, Lead Program Manager for Windows Live Calendar, likes to spend his free time pretending...

Isn't it great when you spend all day sat in front of a PC and then get home and get asked to do the same thing? Over the last week I've been helping my wife set up a website designed to keep the residents of our village informed about the Community Plan...

I've been using StyleCop within Microsoft for some time now. I'm a big fan, and really excited to see that it's just been released to the rest of the world. Go find out about the release here .

There's a brand new release of the SDC Tasks library available. A lot of the feedback (suggestions, patches etc) from CodePlex users has now been merged into the latest release, as well as a number of changes that have come from internal use of this...

We were discussing the use of the new modifier in C# in my team today, and I was expressing my opinion that I don't like it. The new modifier is used to explicitly hide a method in a base class. I'm sure there are good reasons to do this, but generally...

Last week I attended and presented at the Microsoft Mediaroom Developers Conference in Boston. The conference went really well, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed presenting. I generally don't do much presenting, and I was standing up in front...

SDC Tasks, a library of over 300 MSBuild tasks, has moved from its old (and soon to be demolished) home of GotDotNet to a new and shiny location on CodePlex. The new location is http://www.codeplex.com/sdctasks . The CodePlex project hosts the latest...

I'm currently in the process of setting up a new home for the SDC Tasks on CodePlex. As soon as the project is properly set up I'll announce the URL, but for the moment you can still access the code on GotDotNet. Alternatively, use the url www.BuildFramework...

Andy Reeves has announced that he's leaving Microsoft. Andy was the creator and driving force behind the SDC Tasks library and SBF. It's a shame to see a great engineer like Andy leaving the Microsoft.

At the end of this week Microsoft UK will have one less brilliant developer. Giles Knap and his wife Natasha will be leaving Microsoft to travel around the world. Giles has been instrumental in developing the Solution Build Framework, and much of the...

Well, I've just (last week) started a new job at Microsoft. I've been at Microsoft for 5 years now, and for those 5 years I've been working in Microsoft Consulting Services. However, as of last week I've joined the EMEA development team for Microsoft...

I've just finished watching Laurence Melloul's and Craig McMurty's WCF Tracing video from Channel9. This is an excellent video that highlights some of the cool stuff that's "out of the box" with WCF – information and tracking that users of ASMX had...

So, I tried to big-up Word 2007's blog publishing features in my last post and somewhat put my foot in it. Word 2007 in general does an excellent job of posting to blogs, but when I cut and paste from Visual Studio 2005 into Word 2007 what popped out...

Pat Long has been trying to post xml and code samples to his nice new blog. It appears he's having problems . So, I thought I'd give it a go and prove to him that Word 2007 does an excellent job of posting both. Here is some sample xml... < Grid...

I've had some technical interviews recently. One of the hard parts of being interviewed is the part where you're asked to do some whiteboard coding. In the past the statement "could you write some code on the whiteboard" has caused my brain to reset and...

I’ve just finished a WCF training course and feel the need to rave about it. Firstly, WCF is a very cool product. The WCF team have done their best to create a consistent object model that you can extend as much as you like. The second thing I’d like...

I'm sure you all love GotDotNet and find the search engine on there very useful. However, I know that some people find that searching on GDN can sometimes be challenging. In order to make your life easier we've made the CodeGallery for Solutions Build...

I’ve just returned from an internal Microsoft training event called TechReady. Basically, a bunch of Microsoft Services people turn up in Seattle and learn stuff. The highlight of this event for me have to be the WCF presentations by Craig McMurtry...

So, this is my first blog post from Word 2007. I followed Joe’s instructions (recommended to me by Howard ) to get this working. I can’t quite work out how to assign multiple categories to my posts, but apart from that I’m really impressed with Word 2007...