Pesky problem in Visual Studio Intellisense

Recently I bought an new Asus Ul30 (excelent, by the way).

It had Windows 7 installed with the configured Portuguese keyboard selection I chose upon first install.

However, sometimes in Visual Studio 2008 and 2010, the intellisense transformed my keyboard strokes in unknown symbols.

The problem? That pesky language bar intercepted Ctrl+Space key combination (used by intellisense) and applied the Chinese keyboard configuration that was factory-configured in my new PC.

After removing that Chinese stuff from my language bar (http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Remove-Language-Bar-t2783.html) and my keyboard and Visual Studio started to work together immediately!

What defines a "Veteran" PC developer?

Yesterday, I found myself thinking about the concept of what "veteran" developer could be.

I think I've found some interesting clues!

Let's see... humm... A veteran PC developer is the one that:

- know what HIMEM.SYS is;

- Still edits autoexec.bat to set his programs to launch at startup;

- Knows why DRDOS was far better than MSDOS, specially when using the "TAB" key;

- Understands the INT9 concept to put TSR programs working;

- Thinks that OOP concept is like a kid's toy;

- Knows what was the "Turbo" meaning in "Turbo Pascal";

- Created an WIN.bat to lauch Windows 3.0 without have to type "WINDOWS" in the MSDOS 5.0 command prompt;

...

Give me more! Help me to complete this list!

Because memory still matters!

In nowadays PCs, with tons of spare DDR3 GBs of RAM, developers (specially the younger ones) tend to forget memory managment, as other aspects in software development are more urgent to attend to.

However, if you are a REAL developer (or a 640Kb PC veteran like me) you should have a little more respect for memory managment.

Take a quick look at http://www.red-gate.com/products/ants_memory_profiler/DOTNET_Memory_Management/Index.html and tell me what do you think about this subject...

Accelerate your exam ideas!

Browsing the web looking for info about my next 70-536 Exam, I've just found an interesting site, containing free Exams.

Just go to www.accelerated-ideas.com and browae "Microsoft Exams"...

Have fun and good luck if you intend to certificate yourself!

Warm boot tool for Windows Mobile 6

Currently I'm involved in a project for the Windows Mobile Platform using the EDA MC70 from Symbol. In recent testing of my app, I've needed to warm-boot the device several times. The MC70 has a power and reboot button on it. However, it takes about 10 seconds of pressing this button until the device restarts itself.

To avoid this, I've developed a small application that can warm boot any Mobile 5 and 6 device, as simply as launching a program. The code is easy to understand. Basically it just does a call to the API function ExitWindowsEx. It is described in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms893047.aspx.

[DllImport("aygshell.dll")]
extern static int ExitWindowsEx(int dwFlags, int dwReason);

function static void Main(string[] args)
{
ExitWindowsEx(2, 0);
}

In order to call the API, we just needed to PInvoke-it! The full program is no longer than the shown in the image bellow...

You can download the tool, named BootMyPhone from here:

Download Full Source
Download Install CAB (for Windows Mobile 5/6)