I'm on a development team of 1, so source control isn't a huge or pressing issue for me. The biggest advantages of having source control is for rolling back to earlier versions, and using a diff tool to see what I've changed. It also means I follow some better practices than just developing away, heedless of key files I might overwrite, or changes I might make that break a system. About a year ago I set up CVS, which worked pretty well. It took a lot of fiddling to get working just right, but when I figured out the securities and settings,...

August's MSDN Magazine has a C# to Visual Basic Translation Tool which will take a whole C# project and convert it to a VB.NET project. I have used the resources that the author John Robbins mentions for small snippets of C# (ConvertCSharp2VB and C# to VB.NET Translator), but the ability to convert a whole project sounds pretty good.

I haven't had time to download any of them yet, but the submissions for Roy Osherove's Add-In Contest for Visual Studio.NET look good. Something to get back to later, I guess...

The IE blog at MSDN has a quick tip for IE, where giving an IE Favorite a one-word name allows you to type that one word into your address bar to go to the Favorite URL. That's interesting for me, I probably still prefer two mouse clicks. But, even more interesting than this, check the stats on the IE blog: posts - 9, comments - 825 That has to be the highest comment to post ratio ever!    

Chris Hays shows step-by-step how to do “horizonal tables” (fixed rows, variable columns) with Reporting Services. I'm bookmarking this to have a look at later. Chris uses the matrix which is an interesting Reporting Services control. I've used this in the past to take advantage of the multi-level drill-down which I reckon is slightly easier to use than a table control. The subtotals are easier than tables too, but there's a trade-off because with the table you have very tight control over what gets displayed, and how, compared to the matrix.

Tony Bain (from Red Rock SQL Services), a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, spoke at Wednesday night's SQL Server SIG at the Microsoft offices in Melbourne. His primary topic was improvements in the core technology of SQL Server over the 2000 version. Tony has been using the software for the last 12 months - since the first beta - and had lots of insights to show for it. Tony started off explaining that this was a "What's New"-type session, which meant a brief overview of the improvements without any real advice on how to implement them in the real world. Left...

Jeff reflects on 3 years of experiences and priorities, thinking he was happy (but realising he was actually miserable) and doing something about it. He writes about the need for support (and sounds like he's very grateful that he got that from his wife), self-esteem, balance and ability to take risks (and a lot of other stuff that you'll have to read for yourself). His post made me think of a time when I felt down in general and I felt bad about my job and future prospects, and I realised something: it's OK to feel bad. I'm learning from that and I still spend...

Omer wants ordering of task bar buttons, and I agree. It sounds trivial but I find that every day I order my buttons (from left to right) Outlook, MyIE web browser, Windows Explorer, the rest. I reckon I save 10 minutes a day just by knowing where my browser window is when I'm switching between programs. On the other hand, Alt-Tab is probably faster than the mouse. Next, Kevin posts a 5-second registry tip to get rid of the useless “Use the Web Service to find the appropriate program” dialog that comes up when you try to open a file with an...

I don't have a need for it right now, but I know one day that Mathias Schiffer's PrintForm replacement for Visual Basic .NET code will come in handy for allowing users to print what they see. My current solution is “official“, pre-baked reporting via Reporting Services, and I'm using the ComponentOne FlexGrid for on-screen data displays (I wonder if it has a Print method?)

Here's hoping that someone will find this information useful when working with the IIS Lockdown Tool, FlexWiki and Reporting Services. If the URLScan filter is set to a fairly restrictive level, neither Reporting Services or FlexWiki will work (returning constant 404 errors). I found helpful advice at the following pages: FlexWiki and URLScan : Robert Hurlbut points out that setting the “AllowDotInPath” setting in urlscan.ini to "1" fixes FlexWiki. Operating .NET-based Applications : The code for this MS whitepaper (see Security Guide Scripts Download) has sample urlscan.ini files for development and production servers, which will re-enable ASP and ASPX files in IIS. Got IIS...

Philip has a great post on when he worked on the Money team at MS - funny, insightful, and memorable.