SketchPath, Draco.net and more

For anybody who regulary deal with XML and XPath in particular may be interested to try out Phil Fearon's SketchPath. It is a free utility which will easily analyse an xml document allowing you to examine the XPath query required to reach certain elements or attributes. I have only been playing arround with it for a very short time and I have come to the conclusion it could have saved me quite a lot of time on a recent project where I had to parse a large number of xml documents stripping out various bits n bobs. It is currently still in beta, but if this is anything to go by then the alpha release will be awesome.

On another note, Christopher Bennage has an excelent entry on his blog about getting up and running with Draco.Net. For the uninitiated, Draco.net is a continous integration (CI) environment that reports to have minimal set up troubles. To put it simple CI is basiclly an automated method which will check out your code from your code store (Subversion or SourceSafe for example), run any unit tests and run a build script. This is an area I am no where near knowledgable about, but am intending to look into in the near future.

For anybody getting in to WPF, there is a good getting started tutorial over at msdn.

Michèle Leroux Bustamante has a good post over on dasBlonde about getting a system setup for
.NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 including links for downloads for VS2005.

On a more personal note, has anybody been getting tired dry eyes while working away on the computer? Apparently if you are staring at the centre of the screen then you are putting your eyes at unnecessary strain. In this blog entry the author describes how you should look at the monitor. I don't know if this is scientifically correct but if I work on my laptop which is below eye level and look down at the screen I do not feel as optically tired (is that correct???) as I do if I am looking at my flat screen.

Finally this blog entry from Sarah Ford has a quick shortcut key combination for VS2005 to help reformat code. It also works on web markup which is realy handy for me as I tend to have tags out of line and basically all over the place.

New 22 inch widescreen

Well my old 19 inch CRT finally blew yesterday and I am now the proud owner of an iiyama 22inch widescreen (well in the office anyway). Takes a bit of getting used to, but the simple fact that there is virtually no reflection gives it the thumbs up straight away. Using VS 2005 with it is a dream.

The rewrite is going well. I have managed to implement code in different and better ways, learning new methods as I go along.

Speaking of VS 2005 here is a link to a blog entry that can help speed it up:-

Speeding up Visual Studio 2005

Reading through the transcript for Hanselminutes show 72 I came across a reference to a Justice Gray who is planning on reading and comprehending an IT related book each week. It beggers belief how he can find time to do that, but I guess it is all down to planning. I have a few books on my reading list, and I must admit it takes me quite a while to get through each one. Perhaps if I organise myself better I could wizz through these and try my best at keeping up to date with everything that is happening in the world of development.

After reading a few posts regarding mouseless computing I am trying my best to use my mouse less and rely on keyboard shortcuts instead. For one thing it may prolong the onset of RSI, but also I have found it quicker and easier to use keys for some things rather than reach out for the mouse. I do keep failing, especially when it comes to web browsing.

Happy programming