Linq to SQL - regenerating the dbml file

I have a frustration with the way that the Linq designer needs to be refreshed manually everytime a database field changes. It destroys any other manual work that's been put into the data structure such as setting the Auto Generated Value or changing the way that properties are get or set. Maybe the next version of VS will have some sort of 'refresh schema' button that will check back with the database and display the differences with your Linq schema and allow a merging of changes.

Crazy WPF exception

I just had the weirdest exception occur in my WPF app. I've got a listview with an embedded GridView with GridViewColumnHeaders. The headers have an event to sort them called GridViewHeaderClick. Now when I click the scrollbar buttons to scroll the grid vertically or horizontally it fires this event. No idea why. Crazy heh? I'm gonna put in a work around...

Vs2008 default indentation

VS2008 Beta 2 changes the default curly braces indentation so that the braces line up with the next line not the previous one. I just can't handle this so here's the setting to change it back. (Uncheck Indent open and close braces)

XAML to XPS with pagination etc

Good article
http://blogs.msdn.com/fyuan/archive/2007/03/10/convert-xaml-flow-document-to-xps-with-style-multiple-page-page-size-header-margin.aspx

Note to self: Spyware

Another note to myself in case I ever need to clean out spyware.
See http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000888.html

VS2008

Scott Guthrie recently blogged about the multi-targeting support of VS2008 (Orcas' new name). There's some good stuff in there about some of the cool stuff coming out of VS2008 and .netfx3.5. I also noticed this:
We haven't announced any official RTM dates, but we are planning to have our final beta (Beta2) ship later this summer. Historically the final RTM date of a VS release is usually not too many months off from that.
Might be old news to some but to date I havn't heard of any more concrete release dates than this.

Mental Note

Writing myself a mental note in case this happens again. I guess it's not really a mental note if I write it down though is it...?

When moving a user control that referenced another assembly into a user control within that assembly, remove the assemblyname attribute from the clr-namespance declaration. It will spit the dummy and tell you that the tag does not exist in the namespace when you can clearly see that it does. Another idicator that this is happening is if you hover over the InitializeComponent() method in the constructor it will ask if you want to generate the method stub.
So if you've got :-
xmlns:poo="clr-namespace:CompanyName.Product.Client.Support.Controls.Reports;assemblyname=CompanyName.Product.Support">

and you're now using the poo reference from within itself it will not compile. You need to change it to :-
xmlns:poo="clr-namespace:CompanyName.Product.Client.Support.Controls.Reports">

While I'm on it, another issue that I came across yesterday was getting a dependency property to work from within a usercontrol. I had it all wired up correctly but it didn't seem to be working. Upon consultation with the guru it was due to the fact that I hadn't specified the DataContext of the usercontrol to itself.

Referencing an image from another project in xaml

I recently had an issue where I had a usercontrol that was packaged in a project together with an image that it referenced. Another project used the usercontrol and it wasn't displaying the image. After fiddling with the image source, changing it to a pack URI and a few different things I found that it had nothing to do with the source property. The answer was to go to the properties of the image and change the Build Action to Resource instead of Content.
There you go.

Hamish's first drawing

Yeah so Hamish is only 3 months old but he can still ink his first pic in Paint.net (with a little help)

ReMix Australia

...is coming to Melbourne. Gonna get my tickets early as I reckon this will book out fast.

Monday

Yesterday I found out that this will be yet another tablet free weekend. It should be here on Monday apparently.

Silverlight

I've just learnt that WPF/E has been branded finally. It's now called Silverlight. Some of the stuff you can do with it looks neat but I haven't had a chance to look into it yet. Now that the marketing division has been unleashed on it I'll be sure to check it out again though. The video on the homepage is very corny.

Tablet gaming

The payment of the tablet goes through today. Hopefully this means that it will ship from www.penta.com.au today (been very helpful) and be in my hands by tomorrow or Thursday. I'm bursting with anticipation.
I've been searching around for ink enabled games on the prominent tablet blogging sites and most of them have only come up with a few lame flash games. I know there's probably not much call for tablet/ink enabled gaming at the moment but I have a feeling that people are going to start using the stylus much more frequently as screens become less of a 'look but don't touch' item and more of a 'let me get my grubby mits on it'. With this use and the enabling of better hardware, surely a market for gaming will develop. I remember a game called Black and White that was out years ago that had an interesting input method. I never played it myself but I did see it being played and it looked like it would fit in with tablet pcs well. Here's a link to Black & White 2 which I will be checking out.

Edit: This, from the site, is worrying. I guess it won't work
* Black&White 2 requires a 64MB video card with 1.1 Pixel Shader support. Supported video cards: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti series, GeForce FX series, GeForce 6200 or greater; ATI Radeon 8500 or greater, ATI Radeon X300 or greater. DirectX 9.0c is included on this disc and may require the latest drivers for your video and sound card.

I've also found the FallingSand game which might be amusing for a while.
Please add comments if you know of any other games that would be suitable for the tablet.

REMIX Australia

After attending CodeCampOz a couple of weeks ago I found my passion for developing renewed greatly. To see all these new and exciting tools being used by some of the best people in the industry was very inspiring.

Andrew Coates recently blogged about REMIX Australia, a Microsoft conference that is coming to Melbourne soon. After reviewing the content that is being presented at MIX07 in Las Vegas this year I expect that this will be a very useful conference to attend even if it doesn't contain the full schedule. I'll certainly be keeping my eye out for further details as they appear.