Visual Studio coexistence - avec COM

Sorry, another boring one about info that's not easily available on the internet.

Added an extra version of Visual Studio recently and my COM-based ruby tool-kit for talking to Visual Studio (so I never need to use the (yuch) IDE) started popping the wrong version.

The link below has mixed solutions - most other internet references describe the "Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector" which is registered for .sln files, which should detect the correc version or otherwise ask the user to choose. However this doesn't seem to apply to opening a solution via COM by "connecting" to it.

The "top" solution on the link below is probably a bit hacky for general use - Version Selector seems more sensible, however Version Selector doesn't work for COM object lookup.

So to summarise - choose your default by writing the registry value at:

HKLM\Software\Microsft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\devenv.exe

With thanks to the posters at: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/vssetup/thread/568e32af-d724-4ac6-8e8f-72181c4320b3

Does anyone know the word for,...

You can say things like "back when I was single,..." or "when I was a bachelor,...". But what's the word for before you had a baby?

The best I can come up with is "back when I was free,..."

My day at work

"Uh, Karl,... It says here we don't get to keep Poland or Czechoslovakia. I'm starting to think this whole surrender thing mightn't have worked out as well for us as we'd hoped,..."

Ahhhh,,... MS Word Sanity

It had never occurred to me before, but to bypass the hideous annoyance of word pasting the reformatting for everything you paste simply:

1. Create a macro that does "paste unformatted"
2. Assign it to Ctrl-V

Couldn't be simpler.

Sub PasteUnformatted()
    Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdFormatPlainText)
End Sub

Home sweet home

Within one hour of hitting Brunswick I've had an El Mirage coffee, a Sydney Rd vietnamese pork roll, hit the second-hand bookshop* and am sipping a coffee at Brunetti.


*Sadly closed today as they are moving from their old fire-damaged labyrinth to some new shmancier digs.

Make a realistic wish

Sometimes people need to be reminded that for the cost of a trip to Disneyland or meeting a celebrity or sport-star (say $10,000) instead you could sponsor 20 underprivileged children for a year (eg: Plan @ $43/month), or maybe help an indigenous community in northern Australia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS36ZuCW-7c

A decade

To my wife, mother of my child, my best friend, my closest family, my life.

My love.

Rockin' the suburbs

Saturday afternoon relaxing. "What's that sound?"

Oh, yeah. A lawnmower. We aren't in Brunswick anymore.

Apropos

Maya has a baby toy from a brand called 'nuby'.

In case no-one else says it.

"Even pratts are 'top blokes' after death"

To lose something you don't have

Awwww,... Such a sorry sound to hear Maya with her cold. She sounds like someone who's lost their voice with laryngitis, but she doesn't have a voice to lose yet!

Maya's Superpower

#2 We drove all the way down Eastlink, over the 1001 speed-humps of Yarra Council (including the bizarre speed-hump on top of a speed-hump) past our old Taylor Street place and she didn't wake, but she wakes up when we go over the tiny 'driveway' bump at the entrance to our street!

To coin a phrase

To describe the little chunky bits from when the baby vomits I propose the term "Chucky Cheese".

Maya's Superpower

#1 - I can freely walk anywhere in the room, and she is quiet, calm, relaxed. Her eyes are closed, face against my chest. Yet get within on step from the bassinette and, bing, the body goes rigid then jerks and suddenly she's all action!

Words I didn't use before I was a parent

#2 - Grump, grumpy, grumpy-bum

Words I didn't use before I was a parent

#1 - Poppet

There's a little poo on her nappy

And a little Tigger, and sometimes a little Piglet and Eeyore,...

Surely the irony of having pooh on a nappy wasn't lost on the nappy manufacturers,...

'Baby legs'

I've just put Maya down to sleep, but as I stand nearby in case she's not going to settle I find I'm still rocking and swaying. My sea-legs acting up again.

I'm feeling lucky

I can't find a place to make this available - so I'm doing it here. Since I don't have any hosting that lets me control the <header> and <link> tags I can't make this automatically appear in your Firefox search-box just by visiting this page.

Instead you can copy the code here into your profile directory as described in the header.

Once you're done you should have a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search in your search-bar. So if you can't remember if the ruby doc site is rubydoc.com or ruby-doc.org, just do - Ctrl-K, "rubydoc", <enter>, done.

<-- Dump this in <profile_dir>/searchplugins/i_m_feeling_lucky.xml -->
<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>I'm feeling lucky</ShortName>
<Description>Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABQAAAAUCAYAAACNiR0NAAAABGdBTUEAAAAAiyVgTQAAACBjSFJNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACg5rWnAAAEHUlEQVR4nGJgIA1YAnGfqhH%2FaigbAwAEEAYSluRYldVq%2Fd%2FKV%2BI%2FkLsKSSrMOVD7%2F4K9uf%2BX3Qj8zyfMehybfoAAwkBqxvzH97%2FP%2Fb%2FzXez%2FhjXG%2F%2BW1eJ4AhWVCsvT%2BX%2Fwy7f%2B5z%2F3%2F5162%2B28bBLZQBl0%2FQABhICEJ9uM73kb%2F3%2Fc%2B6%2F%2BiWw7%2FHcIkQRr7auc7%2Fz%2F7uef%2Fzrfx%2F5fcdfzfttUU5gMUrwMEEAyBbAoF4tXpLSb%2FT35q%2BX%2FkY%2Fn%2FxXcc%2F%2BdN0QZp%2FL%2Fqavz%2F4x%2Fr%2F299G%2Fp%2F7UvX%2F6ueuvyfdc7hf%2Bkco%2F%2FeqXIgNUUggwACCIQstUzFnzQu8P5%2F4EPu%2F%2FOfJ4Lxrnfx%2F1c8cv4%2F8YgV2MC979P%2BH%2F1Y8X%2FzW%2F%2F%2F69%2B4%2F9%2F0xvf%2FjnfR%2F3e%2BTgYGjRlIDSiiGAACCIRCC6brAsMs7v%2FhD6VgTbvfp%2Fzf8MYTbqCVnzjQxWVgCze88fq%2F%2FrXb%2F3VAvOqJ2%2F%2BpJ63%2FW%2FqI%2FYd5HSCAwEhJn%2B%2F%2F4ttO%2F5fed%2Fq%2F6pnL%2FzUvXP%2Bvfu7yf8Vj5%2F8zz9n%2B79vm%2Bf%2FUpzaga5L%2BL3%2Fo9H%2FZAydwcEw9Zf0%2FrVMDJTUABBA8SRg4Cv9vWm%2Fyf%2Fppm%2F%2BzL9r%2Bn3ne9v%2BCGw7%2F177w%2BH%2FsY%2B3%2F%2FS%2FK%2F085Yf2%2Fd7%2FF%2F74Dlv%2B7dpn%2FT2pV%2F88jyPoE2SCAAEJGlrxCrKt0rAX%2F69oK%2FdexEfzfvs30%2F9bXEf93vIkDuzRvqs5%2FPTshkIueQMOsDz3pAAQQioFAXKxmwv%2FE0lcMGG6S%2F6fuDAPGeBPQwJj%2F86%2Fb%2F58FdHXlPMv%2FKc36%2F238Zf5bQMIOxbsAAQQ3LLPFCpjOeoERU%2FL%2FADBhH%2FlQBk53oLBb9zTg%2F8onLv%2B3vA4BRloVEFf%2BP%2Fgh%2F%2F%2Fm10H%2Fcydr%2FxcQZTsOcylAAIGRiBTXE5Bh5z9P%2BL%2F%2FQw44iex9n%2FF%2Fx9u4%2F0vvuvyffNwajFc9dQUnle1AvO1tODDp%2BIEjrmyB%2Fn%2Bo9xkAAgjsutQmo%2F%2BbHib%2BX%2FPIHxzDG954AJOGBzjW%2B4EREJSn8F8ZmBLWv%2FIGGhjzfyMw6ax95QqO7YU3HcCRBUuHAAEERvwibMdzJmqDJUCGrAcauOa56%2F9ZF%2Bz%2Bp3aAkwUktwBzB8iFoES95J7j%2FwmHLP83rjP%2B7xYnAzcQIIBQsp%2BRs8jxSUet%2Fm95G%2FR%2F9ROP%2FyC2poUAzMDj%2BdN0gIb5%2F1%2F30hNome3%2FsBIlsDg024HDECCAMAwF5UuQK5bf9f7fsd0MlM5gBhYBvf1kAdCLK584g10PSl7oBgAEEAYy9RB9svKhB7g0cYmWhmUpmJcsg%2FIVwC4HJW5QmkXXDxBAGAgYnn26wMTLJwTOAbCYewLFDFALVkNxEbp%2BgAAiFhFX3AMBQIABAKoYTFWVpxJlAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC</Image>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" template="http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?output=firefox&amp;client=firefox&amp;hl={moz:locale}&amp;q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
  <Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="aq" value="t"/>
  <Param name="btnI" value="I'm Feeling Lucky"/>
  <!-- Dynamic parameters -->
  <Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://www.google.com/firefox</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

I just tripled my output

You probably know this but in GMail you can set up keyboard shortcuts for operating without the mouse. And I always forget which keys are mapped to what (for the more obscure things). I then found out you can bring up key help at any time by hitting '?' (hint, not while you're writing an email - that would just put a ? in :-)

Ok, not that interesting, but if you hit '?' in Google Reader you get an equivalent help overlay. Give it a try - I get about 300 new articles a day and using the shortcuts allows me to get through the ones that don't interest me to the gold in seconds.

Eg scan all the Age newspaper articles for the interesting headlines in about 20 seconds.
j,j,j, (skip over some articles),
m (ooh, i'll read that later)
j,j,... (keep skimming)

Enjoy