A proposal to have Steam/XBox style “achievements” in Visual Studio – and apparently it’s being made into an extension! I’ve come dangerously close to getting some of these I think. Some examples from the site:
I’d love one for architectural anti-patterns – a bunch of them were given unofficial names at work, but a bit too rude to put in print.
Haven’t actually played with it, but it has got to be good. Apparently a popular community plugin is now built in.
Get it here, use the link on the right side, the one that asks for you email is version 6.5.
A list of new features available here (which was where I heard the news). There’s apparently a “Write LINQ against loaded assemblies” feature that sounds… intriguing.
For the last few years I’ve been using Launchy for rapid keyboard based application launching. It’s a distant, weaker cousin of QuickSilver on the Mac, with a tiny subset of its functionality, but still fantastic. Some people, when seeing Launchy in action comment that in Windows 7 this functionality is built in via the Start menu search box.
Not quite.
For example typing “vis 10” in Launchy will match “Visual Studio 2010”, however in the Windows Start search thingie, it will not. You would need “vis 2010”.
In the below screenshot, you can see that Launchy matched anything that has a “vis” followed by “08” anywhere in the application name.
In short, the Windows 7 search matches from the start of a word, whereas Launchy is happy for the match to be anywhere within the word. I think that’s a lot more useful, especially in situations where a program name is a concatenation of some words. E.g. I might have a bunch of XML related applications, all with “XML” somewhere in the name… is it “XMLSpy” or “SpyXML” ? The point is, I should be able to look for it by just typing “XML”.
Anyhow, even if you’re on Windows 7, get Launchy. Or if you’ve been spoiled on a Mac, get QuickSilver. You won’t regret it.
Started using the new and shiny VS’10 at work. A glorious IDE. However, Smart-device (PDAs and phones) development is no longer supported, except for the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 – version 6.5 and prior are out. Talk about drawing a line in the sand – presumably they think that in a year Windows Mobile 6.5 will be forgotten. Presumably.
And to think I thought I’d uninstall VS’08. Silly me. Have to keep it around for some time yet I think.
Saw this in Melbourne Central station. An unfortunate positioning of visual elements, lends an escalator sign an entirely more sinister meaning (it’s even better with its caption):
Is it only me that sees this as an escalator with a drop into a chasm on the end? Makes me think of “Lemmings”.
Checking my paper mail, I noticed that Australia Post is peddling a new stamp. Except it looked like two stamps. Now usually stamps are tiny postcard of cultural history – endangered species, famous people/places and the like, but one day you run out of ideas, and that’s how we get this– the Meta-stamp – a stamp depicting… errrm… a stamp!
I guess it’s kind of similar to when Hollywood remakes classic movies.
Can’t wait for the next one – the stamp of a stamp of a stamp. A bit like the infinite cat project.
