After restarting my virtual development machine IIS was not able to start anymore. I checked out if there is something reported to Event Viewer and I found the following error message –Error 12: The data is invalid. It turned out that during shutdown of my virtual machine IIS config file was ruined. Solution to my problem was very simple.

In one of my current projects I needed something that takes image uploaded by user and converts it to avatar image. There is requirement for avatar images: they must be 32x32 pixel squares. Here is my solution.

I used LINQ to solve the following problem: find all titles of objects at hierarchy level X when you know object ID in hierarchy level Y. I cannot imagine if there is some other solution that is same short and clear as one that LINQ provides. Take a look and decide by yourself.

I needed some elegant method to read registry values in my Live Writer Delicious bookmarks plug-in. RegistryKey has GetValue() method but it returns values as object. I wrote generic version of GetValue() as RegistryKey extension method. It returns you specified value from key and converts it to type you ask. If conversions are not successful then default value of given type will be used.

C# 4.0 supports optional method arguments. Related to this is support for named parameters in function calls. For us it makes easier to use methods which have long argument list. It also introduces some new dangers which may lead us to messy and hard to understand code. In this code I will show how to use optional arguments and give some hints how to avoid messy code.

I am developing a little piece of software that interacts with Delicious through HTTP API. Using Delicious API puts you one responsibility – use their service carefully. Don’t flood it and don’t stress it some other way. In this posting I will show you how to get bookmarks from Delicious and how to use their service without stressing it pointlessly. (more…)

I am using WebBrowser control to show preview of automatically generated HTML. Users can select options and preview pane reflects those changes automatically. WebBrowser control has some problems that have been here for years already. Here is my example about how to show custom HTML in WebBrowser control.

vCard is popular format for exchanging contacts. Besides e-mail clients also modern mobile phones are able to read and send contacts as vCard. This posting introduces same ideas how to implement vCard support in your applications and how to add images to vCards. (more…)

Source code documenting is very important task. Code documentation servers as persisted communication between developers who are using same code. Undocumented or poorly documented code may be hard to understand to other developers who have then waste their valuable time to struggling through the code they don’t understand well. In this posting I introduce you some code documenting tips.

Classes for people and organizations are often modeled incorrectly in object models. These faults cause heavy implementation problems. In this posting I will analyze some legacy models, introduce class Party as generalization of people and organizations and provide some implementation details. Information here is based on my own experience, like always.