Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcut - Next Error

I always have to look this up when I am doing some major re factoring. 

When you have a bunch of errors and get tired of mousing to the error list in visual studio use this keyboard shortcut

F8 - go to the next error

shift + F8 - previous error

Visual Studio 2012 - Filter Solution Explorer

A really handy new feature I found in visual studio 2012 today was the filter solution by checked out or open files.

I always seem to have more files open than I can keep track of.  This really helps me reduce my time spent finding the correct open file.

Promo Windows 8 upgrade price ending 1/31/2013

If you are thinking of upgrading your PC to windows 8 do it before 1/31/2013 or the price will go from 14.99 - 39.99 to 199.99.

I will be doing this soon as 14.99 for my recent pc seems like a great price.  I know windows 8 has not got tons of great reviews, but I am going to give it a try and see how it goes.

Windows Pro 8 Upgrade

If you have purchased a PC recently and it came with the 14.99 offer here is the link to redeem it

Windows 8 14.99 Offer

asp.net Session State SQL Server Setup

On a  recent project I needed to add a SQLServer to manage my asp.net session state.  I could not find a single easy source on how to do this so here it is below.

Steps
1. Go to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319 on a command line
2. Paste and run - aspnet_regsql –ssremove –E -S .  this will remove the state server that is installed.  I have used this when I need to start over because my state server was not installed correctly.
3. Paste and run - aspnet_regsql.exe -S .\ -E -ssadd -sstype p
-S .\  This is the server name, in this case it uses the default server instance.  This works great for dev local setup, but you will need a real sql server name for deployments.
-sstype p don't put anything in the tempdb on the sql server, keep it all in the state database you are creating
-ssadd flag to create the tables, this exe can be used for membership provider pattern and other stuff, so make sure you only want to add the state server stuff.

4. In your web.config add
<sessionState mode="SQLServer" timeout="180" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" sqlConnectionString="Data Source=.\;Initial Catalog=ASPState;Integrated Security=True"/>

Windows Phone 8 Development - Day 0

I am an android phone user.  I have had an android phone for quite some time.  However being a Microsoft developer and knowing XAML I want to try out windows phone 8 development.

So I have been looking at buying a Windows Phone 8x and developing an application.  Before I plunge into a mobile phone platform switch I figured I should try to develop a simple app to see how I can leverage my .Net and XAML skills on the phone.

Googling (Being a good Microsoft guy I am sure I should use Bing instead) and Binged even sounds cool.
But after a search Google sent me to
Getting Started Developing for Windows Phone

Before reading any instructions on the screen I just went right to downloading the Windows 8 phone SDK.  This is when I found out I have to be running windows 8 to even develop a windows phone app.  This sure is a roadblock to trying it out. Not only do I need to buy a new phone, but I have to upgrade my OS on my development laptop.

I guess its off to installing windows 8, and visual studio 2012 so that I can do some windows development.

Note: If you want to get a Free Version of Visual Studio called Visual Studio Express.  This can be downloaded from

Visual Studio Express Download

Gmail POP Email Script

I use Gmail as my primary email.  I have other emails that I need to access so I use Gmail as my email client for these other email addresses. This way I can get them on my phone and everything is consolidated.  It works really well.  I can even send email as this other pop email account.

Unfortunately Gmail has an algorithm it uses to check your email box on pop email addresses.  And there is no setting to say how often to check your pop email address.  Because of this sometimes an email address sent to my POP email account will take hours to get into my inbox.  This is not a good situation.

To solve my problem I found this really cool script written by Daniel Slaughter that will check your pop email for you.  It works awesome. I have only tried in in Chrome, but it works for other browsers also.

http://www.danielslaughter.com/projects/gmail-pop3-checker-for-greasemonkey/

Coding at night

This article hit home for me.   9 to 1 am are my most productive times.

Coding at night

Interesting article on programming language popularity

As primarily a C# and Java Script developer I found this interesting

Programming languages`