http://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user%2F06213114670216208115%2Fbundle%2FProgramming%20-%20Dotnet

But if you have kids and have the Thermos aluminum straw Bottles such as the Thermos Funtainer or Foogo Straw bottles, you can get replacement straws directly from Thermos for $1 a piece. My kids like to bite the straws and they get destroyed pretty quickly. If you need just the top part of the straw, that would be $0.50.

Apparently, people are reselling these straws on Ebay and other sites for $7-$10 a piece! So Thermos is limiting each order to 5 straws. I am putting this out there to hopefully direct people to the source.

Call Thermos directly at 1-800-831-9242 to order your replacement straws.

const int iterations = 200000;
const string expr = " Hello    world! Why    are so    many spaces?  Testing One   two three    four    five.";

// Remove excess space using Regex
var doRegex = new Action(() =>
{
    for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
    {
        var newStr = Regex.Replace(expr, @"\s{2,}", " ");
    }
});


// Remove excess space using Split/Join
var doSplit = new Action(() =>
{
    for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
    {
        var newStr = String.Join(" ", expr.Split(new[] { ' ' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries));
    }
});

var benchMark = new Func<string, Action, long>((name, a) =>

{
    var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    a();
    sw.Stop();
    Console.WriteLine(name + ": " + sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
    return sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
});

// Warming up
Console.WriteLine("Warming up.");
doRegex();
doSplit();

// Run benchmark
long regexElapsed = benchMark("Regex", doRegex);
long splitElapsed = benchMark("Split", doSplit);

On my PC, the Split method is about 7.5 times faster than Regex.

Here’s the release notes:

Release Notes

This is a minor bug-fix/minor refactor release.
Fixes:

• Copy now uses the overwrite parameter correctly.
• Fixes crashing problem on some machines due to use of GetsequentialGuid.
• CreateDirectory now supports rolling back nested directories.
• RollbackFile Rollback() may throw exception when original directory has been deleted.
• Security issue when writing to event logs.

Enhancements:

• Upgrade solution/project files to Visual Studio 2010
• Use NUnit instead of VSTS framework
• Changes to support Visual Studio Express

Thanks to karbuke and dorong for their contributions.

So I started to look for a way to manage/categorize all of these raw videos and I think I’ve found a pretty good and free solution: Picasa (from Google).

The current version of Picasa for Windows (version 3.8) allows you to specify titles for images and videos, as well as assigning various tags to them. The user interface is very user-friendly. And the actual searches are typical Google-lighting-fast.

What I do is I go through each raw video take, give it a title and assign some tags. Then later I am able to very quickly search for videos. For example, if I need a take involving a dolly pan to the right, I just type “dolly pan” into Picasa and instantly the takes with those keywords come up.

Here’s a sample table, displaying some info. Since the values in the tables do not have spaces or tabs, the browser is forced to display the values on one line:

Here’s the same table, with <wbr/> tags inserted where periods are:

/// <summary>
/// Gets the start of the week that contains the specified date.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date">The date.</param>
/// <param name="weekStartsOn">The day that each week starts on.</param>
/// <returns>The start date of the week.</returns>
public static DateTime GetStartOfWeek(DateTime date, DayOfWeek weekStartsOn)
{
    int days = date.DayOfWeek - weekStartsOn;
    DateTime startOfWeek = days>=0 ? date.AddDays(-days) : date.AddDays(-7 - days);
    return startOfWeek;
}

Wow! 25 World cup soccer games in 3D! Wait a minute, I think I see some dead pixels on my current HDTV.

Use any file system as a transactional file system! Transactional File Manager is a .NET API that supports including file system operations such as file copy, move, delete in a transaction. It’s an implementation of System.Transaction.IEnlistmentNotification (works with System.Transactions.TransactionScope).

More on Transactional File Manager in my original blog post on it. If you are interested in contributing to the project, let me know.

• You cannot start MSMQ Service with the following entry in the Application Event Log: The Message Queuing service cannot start. The internal private queue ‘admin_queue$’ cannot be initialized. If the problem persists, reinstall Message Queuing. Error 0xc00e0001.
• You cannot install MSMQ with the following error: Attempt to install Message Queuing Server failed with error code 0×80070643. Fatal error during installation. The following features were not installed: Message Queuing Services/Message Queuing Server.

  

For me, the solution was to delete the Registry key KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ, then try the installation again.

See also:

• MSMQ won’t install on Windows 2008 with a Fatal Error (0×80070643)