So, turns out, that when you are writing a post with Live Writer, at the bottom of the page there are three tabs, Edit, Preview and Source.

When you switch to source, you will see the raw html.  You can also modify the source there which is our trick for formatting the HTML.

So, here are the steps:

1.  Start Live Writer (it starts with an empty post)

2.  Copy your unformatted HTML into the “Source” tab as shown above (it will look like this below)

3.  Click on the “Edit” tab at the bottom of the page

4.  Click Back on the “Source” tab at the bottom of the page

And now, it will look like this:

Now, you can cut and paste the code and put it anyplace you want.

Hope this helps!

I’m not a wizard at writing LINQ expressions so I often find myself in Google looking for something similar to what I want, then I put it into my application and run it. This has worked pretty well, but it takes a couple iterations to get it right. It occured to me that someone probably has written a LINQ interpreter so I just guessed the name, LINQPad, typed it into search, and I find the authors of the book C# 3.0 in a nutshell, Joseph Albahari and Ben Albahari, (which I like a lot) have written it.

I download it (it’s an exe file), run it (OK, I trust you guys somehow), and presto, I get a very nice interface that not only has tons of examples built into it with a nice tree view, but lets me make a connection to my database and run LINQ queries against it. It even cancels them when you create one that will run forever (very nice guys!).

So, the query I was going after is I have a huge list of cities that includes states. From that, I just want a unique list of states (this list does not have all the states so I want just the ones contained in it). Below is a screen shot of the LINQPad with my Query in it. I simply pressed the green triangle (trained by Sql Server Enterprise Manager), and presto, my list! Could not be much easier. This tool will be in my box for a long time.

Amazon.com: C# 3.0 in a Nutshell

Grab this now!  It’s a winner, believe me.

[DataObjectMethod(DataObjectMethodType.Select, true)]

    public List<BusinessObjectItem> GetMembers()

    {

        listBusinessObject.Sort(

            new Comparison<BusinessObjectItem>(

                delegate(BusinessObjectItem lhs, BusinessObjectItem rhs)

                { return lhs.Name.CompareTo(rhs.Name); }));

        return listBusinessObject;

    }

So, the first thing I did was to execute the ReSharper "cleanup" from the right mouse button as follows:

Then, when I hover over the "return" and press the right mouse button with the light bulb, I get this:

I say "Convert to Lambda" and I get this:

listBusinessObject.Sort(

            new Comparison<BusinessObjectItem>(

                (lhs, rhs) => lhs.Name.CompareTo(rhs.Name)));

        return listBusinessObject;

Way to cool!  Just had to share.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been really impressed with how much content there is out there on the Internet in people’s blogs.  To harvest all this content, you really need some kind of aggregating software to help you organize all this content.  For no real reason, the first aggregator I used was Bloglines.  It worked pretty well but I got tired of days when it was very slow, and other days where this cute plumber would be displayed telling me Bloglines was offline and I should come back later.  About 2 months ago, I switched to Google Reader.  So far, I’m a happy camper.

Google Reader Online

To switch from Bloglines to Google Reader, there was a simple "export to standard format" and "import from standard format" that made moving all my subscriptions easy.  Functionally, both do the same thing.  They keep track of what I’ve read and give me a reasonable experience at viewing posts.  Initially, I didn’t like the Google Reader format but since I’ve been using it more, I’ve grown to like it better.  It has lots of clientside javascript which makes it faster and it has subtle things like when you mouse over a post, it marks it as read (unless you click the button on the bottom saying "mark as unread".

Google Reader Offline

This is really what I wanted to talk about.  I’m currently flying home (to California) from a two week Italian bicycling vacation.  I’ve been offline for  a while and as you can imagine, I have over 2000 blog posts to catch up on.  At the first airport, I decided to install Google’s offline reader.  The steps were pretty straight forward.

1. Install Google Gears
2. Press the Go Off Line Button at the top of the reader page

Then, after about 2 minutes with a nice progress dialog,   Google told me all my subscribed posts were synchronized.  This was at the Nice airport.  I jumped on my airplane, fired up the browser, went to http://reader.google.com and nothing happened.  Just an error message saying DNS could not be resolved.  Well, back to reading the newspaper.

In Brussels (my next stop) I went on line to the Google Reader help and it said it should have worked.  By accident, I discovered if I set the browser (IE7) to offline mode, my Google reader worked.  This is done by going into IE7 tools menu and selecting offline.

So, I’m sitting on the airplane from JFK to SFO after a 6 hour weather delay in NY reading my blog posts.  Very impressive if you ask me.

Problem, the MORE button on posts

One problem I have noticed is that if the blog has a short summary, then a more button all you get off line is the more button and not the context (like my blog for example).  I need to fix my blog to not do that, though I’m not sure what the standard is.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m much happier having my blog aggregator available offline.  I have not used it a lot, but from this one plan trip, I have learned a lot of things I would not otherwise have had the opportunity to.  Offline blog reading with Google blog reader is a good thing.

Creates String.Format in C# From "a" + "b" + "c" syntax

From:

var url = wikiURL + "/api/AddPage?apikey_v1=" + apiKey
                                + "&page=" + wikiPageName
                                + "&name=" + name
                                + "&email=" + email; 

To:

var url =  string.Format("{0}/api/AddPage?apikey_v1={1}&page={2}&name={3}&email={4}",
                    wikiURL, apiKey, wikiPageName, name, email); 

Create Simple Logical Assignments From my Overly Verbose Code

From:

if (ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ShowDinnerConfirmation"].ToLower().Equals("true"))
            {
                TableRowSaturdayDinner.Visible = true;
            }
            else
            {
                TableRowSaturdayDinner.Visible = false;
            } 

To:

TableRowSaturdayDinner.Visible = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ShowDinnerConfirmation"].ToLower().Equals("true"); 

Use ?? When I’ve used Simple ? Operator Makes for Simpler Code

From:

string s = context.Request.QueryString["Cache"] == null ? "true" : context.Request.QueryString["Cache"];

To:

string s = context.Request.QueryString["Cache"] ?? "true";

After a little searching around, I discovered that a header tag was needed.  Further searching found a nice web site that helped create this header tag for me.

http://www.feedforall.com/autodiscovery.htm

Then, all I had to do was add that tag to my master page and the page is now discoverable!

   1:  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

   2:  <head id="Head1" runat="server">

   3:      <title>Silicon Valley Codecamp 2008</title>

   4:      <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" 

   5:         title="Code Camp Rss Feed" 

   6:         href="http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Rss.aspx" /> 

   7:  </head>

Lines 4-6 are the header tag created by the autodiscovery tool listed above.

That’s it. Hope this helps. I did not include it in my series on building the code camp web site because it seemed kind of a small point.

First, it’s really nice to be able use one picture to cover your complete desktop (in my case, three monitors).  While in New Zealand in 2003 on a bike vacation, I took this panorama picture.  I forget where it is, but if any of you know, please add it to the comments.  Here is a picture of that picture.

Secondly, and also very helpful is that you now can have toolbbars on each monitor so you don’t have to guess where things are going to pop up.  It also helps decrease the clutter on your primary toolbar.  No more hunting for programs because you have so many open!  Here is a screen shot.  Notice the toolbars on the right edge of each monitor.  (you may have to click on the image to actually see them.

The third thing I really like is the cool feature where UltraMon adds a buttons to your program menu that lets you move any program to any screen, and another button that lets you maximize your program across all your monitors.  Here is a screen shot of what is added to outlook.

UltraMon also adds to your taskbar a configuration panel that you can right click on for lots of other things which I will explore soon.  Here is what that looks like:

That’s it for now.  Just a quick post to let everyone know about this cool new program.  I highly recommend it.  You can find more details at their web site. 

http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

Good Luck!