XNA: Cannot connect my PC to my Xbox
I have an issue with XNA Game Studio Connect. Yesterday I purchased my XNA membership subscription and installed it for the first time on my Xbox hard drive. I started it up and it gave me a key. I entered this key, together with a name in my XNA Game Studio Device Center and tried to connect and that failed.
I tried several different keys just to make sure I got the whole key right (altough I was reading the key from a 720P screen, I must say the I character is pretty confusing 
).
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Visual Studio 2008 w/ SQL Server 2008
When you try to add a SQL Server 2008 to your project, using Visual Studio 2008 you get an error that SQL Server versions above 2005 are not supported.
Gladly Microsoft published a patch for this problem and you can download it here.
LINQ: Why did I miss this?
I have been using Visual Studio 2008 since the first beta that came out. Because VS2008 supports targeting a certain framework, it was also suitable to do out .NET 2.0 projects.
Recently, at work, we started a new project for a client for us, involving a pretty complex database schema. After two weeks we created a nice class collection, for maintaining all the data in database. Which involved classes for every type of item we could insert/fetch from our database, but also included the (what we cal) collection classes (which contain the items in the database). We created this class collection on top of our own DAL, which supports MSSQL, MySQL and oracle. After testing our classes in a lot of situations, we finally fine tuned it and after a total of 3 weeks we completed the basic framework for our database.
Yesterday, when I finally found some free time, I started looking at the basics of LINQ in combination with .NET 3.0. I found a nice ‘little’ tutorial (visit it here) and started fooling around with it. I imported the complex database we created for our client in my MSSQL Express running on my laptop and the started a new test project within VS2008. I added a new LINQ to SQL file to my projected and imported the complete database into it and also the stored procedures we created.
Voila… the framework, we created in 3 weeks, seems unnecessary. For my own feelings I am glad the system requirements of the project say that we need to use .NET 2.0 instead of 3.0, therefor we can not use the whole LINQ stuff in this project. But in the future, we surely will be considering LINQ for new projects.
My new prop.snippet
Currently I am designing and starting a huge project where we work on with a couple of people. Because we want to create extended documentation of our classes and their properties and methods, I finally started seriously using the comment XML feature of Visual Studio.
So I adjusted my prop.snippet to match this new habit of mine. See a screenie of the way it looks:
The snippet has the following ‘features’:
I attached prop.snippet to this article, so everyone can download it. If anyone has an extension to this one, please let me know.
Development Frameworks
Hilarious link about development Frameworks
CPM development pattern PowerPoint presentation
Simple logging class
Sometimes (ugh!) debugging can be a pain in the ass. Sometimes you just can’t debug like you want to (with nice breakpoint etc).
At first I always wrote debugging statements to a file on the local hard drive, but that also got out of hand. You have too much info to process. Now for a project I wrote this nice and simple static logging class.
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Visual Studio ASP.NET debugging in Firefox … SLOW
I develop quite a lot in ASP.NET these days and one thing that always annoyed me, is the slow responses Firefox has on the default web server Visual Studio is using.
After doing a lot of research on the item and not many topics to be found on Google about this problem, I finally figured out why it is so slow. It has to do with the IPv6 support of FireFox, which is enabled by default in FireFox.
To fix this problem, you just have to follow these easy steps and FireFox will be just as fast as Internet Explorer.
- Open FireFox
- In the address-bar, type about:config to get to a large list of FireFox settings.
- On the top of the list, you see a text-box called Filter.
- Enter the following (or part of) text : network.dns.disableIPv6.
- In your settings list, you see an option appearing, which by default is False.
- Right click this setting and select Toggle, this should make the value True.
- Restart your browser.
There you go, now FireFox is super-lightning-fast again!
Hope anyone can use this information, because it is annoying when debugging is getting slow.
PassKeeper
PassKeeper is a simple password management tool. This idea was originally born, after I lost track of a couple of passwords and retreival by email was almost impossible.
I tried a couple of password tools, but none of them supported all the features I wanted from a tool.
The application is fully written in .NET and therefore you need the .NET Framework 2.0 installed.
Version: PassKeeper Alpha 1
Status: Unreleased, in development
Current Features:
– Security: Encrypted file storage, using keys you provide.
– Security: Option to ‘lock’ the password file to your current Windows account.
– Security: Option to ask for password before unmasking any password.
– Security: AutoMask, after a period of time the unmasked password will mask again.
– Security: AutoAuthorize: Keep your credentials in memory for a defined time, for quick password browsing.
– GUI: Easy management of passwords, by using groups.
– GUI: QuickFilter, to show only the passwords you want.
– GUI: Nice Office 2007 like menu system, called Ribbons.
– GUI: Simple Mode, to show only a small simple window.
– Other: Auto update function, to keep your PassKeeper up-to-date and safe!
Download link: Not available yet.
Beta testing: Check here
Screenshots:
Team Foundation Server integration, part #1
The first part of my “Team Foundation Server Integration” article is ready. You can read it over here.
You should check it out, because it might be helpful but please consider that it is still a work in progress.
Example: Add workitem to Team Foundation Server
For my project at work I had to find out how to add a workitem to Team Foundation Server, through C#. Because I don’t want you to go through the same research as I did, I created a small example project which shows the basics.
The code example at the end of this post shows how a connection is made to a Team Foundation Server (with the right credentials). After that the WorkItemStore is initialized, which we can use to create a Project object.