Web Essentials extends Visual Studio 2013 with a lot of new features that web developers have been missing for many years.
If you ever write CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Markdown, TypeScript, CoffeeScript or LESS, then you will find many useful features that make your life as a developer easier.
Check it out here: http://vswebessentials.com/
Switch from SATA to ACHI for better performance.
This post is partly to help me remember, and to save you pulling out your hair.
Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_System_CurrentControlSet_Services_Msahci
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
restart.
change your BIOS settings for the IDE controller to use ACHI instead of SATA. Save and restart. It should install the appropriate drivers. Then rejoice. BTW…although this is straightforward, you should make sure you have a restore point and/or a backup to save your ass if things go badly.
Polyglot: a person who speaks, writes, or reads a number of languages.
Long before the Web and client-server programming, it was common for an entire application to be written in a single language on top of a single platform or system. A programmer could specialize, become successful in this one language, and remain employed for years with a great deal of job security.
Then we started to see specialized tools and languages designed for a specific purpose. With relational databases, came SQL. When GUI client development was all the rage, we got C and Pascal. When we wanted to write code with object-orientation, we got C++. Then the web become “the thing” and we got HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. As web development matured, we began regularly working with regular expressions and XML.
Programming languages are always changing, and in recent years, a large number of new languages have joined the landscape. Procedural languages like PowerShell, Python, and Ruby. Existing languages expanded to include new features, such as data querying with LINQ being added to C#.
Being a polygot programmer allows a developer to use the right language for the right job, or the ability to dive in to a new language leveraging what is known about existing language tools. Every developer has a specialty or a language they are best at, and nobody can be an expert at all of the languages out there. Often, learning a new language allows you to apply new ways of thinking to the code that you write most often.
I was tired of being called the “.NET guy”, and I didn’t want to switch to becoming a “Ruby guy”. I wanted the familiarity with many languages. I wanted to be “the right guy” for any job. I started with teaching myself Node, then taking a weekend crash course in Ruby. That led me to getting very comfy with a few different flavors of Linux. A fun project with friends lead me to PHP and MySQL. I love all these languages. I know when it is appropriate to use, and I can jump in to many other possible projects with ease. Absorbing the mindset of these new languages and platforms allowed me to return to my core of the .NET stack and to become passionate about diving deeper into what was already in the tool-sets and libraries I was using regularly.
Most of my peers snub their nose at languages outside their expertise. That’s just wrong. We should celebrate the diversity of software development. All developers should “just for fun” write some code in a new language. We should support and learn from all developers, regardless of the language they prefer, or the tools they choose to use. Discuss. Share. Teach. Ask. Learn. Participate.
Image Resizer for Windows is a utility that lets you resize one or more selected image files directly from Windows Explorer by right-clicking. It’s handy and will always be something I install on any windows box I own. Works on Windows 8 too!
By default, image files with the following extensions can be resized: bmp, dib, gif, ico, jpe, jpeg, jpg, png, tif, tiff, wdp.
Oh. I wish I could say I never said one of these. I swear it was never said as an excuse. On purpose.
oh boy…
10. “I haven’t touched that module in weeks!”
9. “It must be a hardware problem.”
8. “Somebody must have changed my code.”
7. “It must be a browser setting?”
6. “You must have the wrong version.”
5. “That’s weird…”
4. “There must be something wrong with your data”
3. “It’s never done that before.”
2. “It worked yesterday.”
and the best one
1. “It works on my machine”
10:30 AM Tuesday January 29, 2013… Currently listening to Skin Of a Drum
I just read the blog post of Amy Jo Martin. “Lonely At The Top” is the name of the post and refers to the name of a recent meetup. It’s hitting me hard now. I didn’t know Jody Sherman. His name seemed familiar. I came across the name of his company recently. But I never put a face to the name. It wasn’t real.
But the idea of this man does mean something real to me. The entrepreneur. The renegade. It’s where I want to be. To be among the CEO/Founders/Developers that I look up to in my community.
I recently quit my “day job”. I took the leap. Leap of faith. I believed. Finally. I would succeed at this. It would work out. I would be the entrepreneur. The renegade.
It would be hard…
And rewarding…
I’d never regret anything…
But why did it take me so long to jump?
I tease my entrepreneur friends for being lonely – for needing to work among people. I most look forward to locking myself into my home office with no distractions and no conversations. Just grinding it out.
They all say…
You’ll see.
Now… After the news that Jody may have taken his own life, so soon after Aaron Swartz… I want to run back to the safety of my comfortable 8-5 developer/manager role.
Currently listening to: Auditorium w/ the Ruler
Still what I must come to terms with is that this community is shoulder to shoulder. Strength in numbers, all of us looking to the future. But often we should remember to turn to our left. To our right. Check on each other.
Instead of talking about our projects and our market share.
Our social media strategies.
We should ask about how we feel.
Our families.
Talk about laughs and sports and TV.
Enjoy our friendship and our community for the people that it brings into our lives.
We should share our life.
Talk about what it means to be a man or a woman. A mother or a father. Talk about vacations.
Let’s talk about music
And art
And take a break.
Currently inspired by: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
From time to time users accidentally commit data like passwords or keys into a git repo. While you can use git rm to remove the file, it will still be in the repo’s history. Fortunately, git makes it fairly simple to remove the file from the entire repo history.
I hate when I accidently close a tab in Firefox that I still need. One errant click, and you’re sunk.
NO! You aren’t! CTRL + SHIFT + T in Windows or COMMAND + SHIFT + T in Mac OS X and your tab returns!
boom!
If you’re using Chrome, you should get familiar with the Ctrl+Shift+V keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Shift+V on OS X). It pastes text in Chrome without formatting, plain and simple.
