Community developer blogs

Granville Barnett

Recent Posts

• More technical blog...

  Posted: 15 Jun 2009 at 18:33 by Granville Barnett

  Hi there, I've started a more technical blog located here - / which will be on compilers, runtimes, OS', and parallelism. Basically what I do now, I just didn't feel this is the right place to talk about it. Come join me if you are interested. Cheers, Granville

• IE 8 is out

  Posted: 20 Mar 2009 at 06:01 by Granville Barnett

  The title says it all, download here - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

• Intel Parallel Studio - a tool you will want

  Posted: 18 Mar 2009 at 16:21 by Granville Barnett

  I've been using the Beta of this tool for a while now and its amazing. Do yourself a favour and download it - http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-sdp-home/ Note: on the webpage it says that there is a non-commercial version, I'm not sure what the extent to that is as the page wouldn't load for me at the time of writing this.

• If you have anything to suggest about the DSA Book then please read this…

  Posted: 01 Feb 2009 at 05:06 by Granville Barnett

  Its been a while since I talked about the DSA book but to summarise its had over 20,000 (first, second) downloads which has largely provoked me into taking the whole thing a lot more seriously for the next edition which I expect will triple its content. I don’t have any times at the moment because we are figuring out what we want to add to the book based on the current programming climate. So, if you have any suggestions then please let me know by emailing me via the contact page. Don’t hold bac

• I’m sorry for the lack of posts…

  Posted: 26 Jan 2009 at 02:41 by Granville Barnett

  Sorry folks for the lack of posts but ever since I’ve moved to Australia I seem to have had very little time to actually post something of any calibre. At the moment I am actually working on some writing commitments I have so I will post about them when they appear online. In the meantime I’ve resurrected my Twitter account in a hope to micro-blog more in an effort to make up for my blog shortcomings as of late. I can’t promise it will be pretty but you are more than welcome to follow my ramblin

• One of the best tips for browsing msdn…

  Posted: 16 Jan 2009 at 01:26 by Granville Barnett

  I like MSDN I really do but when you want to increase the font size the thing just breaks and looks awful. Recently I’ve found that switching to the loband version of a MSDN page is far better when increasing the font size so its more comfortable to read. Originally I found this suggestion posted by Jon Galloway here. Definitely helps if you are staring at MSDN for the best part of the day.

• A tool I just couldn’t dream of living without…

  Posted: 06 Jan 2009 at 23:13 by Granville Barnett

  I always use more than one monitor whether I am at work or home. Personally I don’t feel that the support in Windows for more than one monitor is that bad, however I can’t ever see the day when I drop Ultramon and switch back to what Vista gives you. I have built a strong dependency upon this tool, its just awesome. A few of the features I seem to frequently use are: Transfer to other screen button (Ultramon decorates each new window with an additional few buttons, the other being stretch acros

• Shared Source CLI Google group launched

  Posted: 06 Jan 2009 at 04:53 by Granville Barnett

  I’ve just created a Google group based on the SSCLI which you can view and join by going here - http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft-shared-source-cli It supersedes now defunct SSCLI newsgroups from the Microsoft and Yahoo servers which have had all but no activity in the last 2 or so years. If you have any interest whatsoever in the SSCLI then I encourage you to join. http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft-shared-source-cli

• Data Structures and Algorithms book flying out (again!)

  Posted: 22 Dec 2008 at 02:48 by Granville Barnett

  The updated version of the Data Structures and Algorithms book that Luca and I wrote is flying out once more! We are really very happy to see how many people are downloading our book. In total (counting the previous release) the book has had nearly 16,000 downloads! Amazing. If you haven’t already got a copy what are you waiting for?! Its free so you don’t have to reach into those empty pockets at this time of year. Download the updated version of the Data Structures and Algorithms book here!

• Updated version of the free Data Structures and Algorithms book available!

  Posted: 19 Dec 2008 at 00:40 by Granville Barnett

  Just in time for Christmas ;-) You can download a revised version of the book Data Structures and Algorithms: Annotated Reference with Examples here! The last version of the book has had just under 14,000 downloads since we released it. Download the book now! Data Structures and Algorithms: Annotated Reference with Examples

• Shared Source CLI (aka Rotor) on Vista

  Posted: 08 Dec 2008 at 05:00

  I thought I would share my experiences with Rotor on Vista (x86 and x64). First off Rotor is an open source version of a big chunk of what's in the full commercial .NET that you use on your machine today BUT certain things in Rotor are no where near the quality of that in the commercial .NET &nd

• Follow me on Twitter?

  Posted: 30 Nov 2008 at 03:26

  In a bid to keep up with friends and suchlike I have joined Twitter. I can't promise much in the way of earth shattering Tweets but I'm sure it will be a mildly entertaining read. So, if you want to follow me please tune your browsers to this URL - http://twitter.com/g_barnett. Probably wort

• Code Contracts – my opinion on them anyway...

  Posted: 09 Nov 2008 at 19:29

  One of the great things that came out of the PDC for me was the confirmation that code contracts would be coming to .NET 4.0. I was a big fan of Spec# [1] but admittedly I never thought it would make it into the mainstream C# or VB.NET languages even though the prior solution provides the more conci

• Design Patterns – Part 7 published

  Posted: 13 Oct 2008 at 11:43

  The 7th part of the design patterns series was published today. This part covers the template pattern. View it – Design Patterns – Part 7

• Design Patterns – Part 6 published

  Posted: 09 Oct 2008 at 11:30

  Part 6 of the design patterns series has just been published on DotNetSlackers. This part covers the adapter pattern. View it – Design Patterns – Part 6

• Design Patterns – Part 5 published

  Posted: 07 Oct 2008 at 11:37

  In this part of the series we look at the command pattern. I've also seen that Sonu has posted in the article quick links to the previous articles in the series as well. While the articles are not written in any specific order I would recommend that you read the first part before you read any o

• A good book on Vim commands and a Vim emulator for VS

  Posted: 05 Oct 2008 at 11:31

  I've used Vim for quite some time on Windows (yep, not quite a Vim purist...) however, I have never actually read a book on Vim. For those who don't know Vim is an awesome text editor with a really powerful set of commands you can issue via the keyboard. Why care? Well, using Vim commands wh

• Our cries have finally been answered then?

  Posted: 30 Sep 2008 at 21:35

  I for one am very happy that the next version of Visual Studio will finally embrace what some of us have been requesting for a long time now – UML adoption. A few months ago I mentioned some stuff that would be in the next version of VS and now that more has been going on I am thoroughly pleased. Fo

• Software pipelines

  Posted: 30 Sep 2008 at 12:19

  There is a pretty interesting architecture based on software pipelines that will at least allow your systems to utilize many-core processors in a far easier manner than other alternatives. This approach has a lot in common with fluid dynamics in that some principals are the same. All service request

• Results: Using a dark theme in VS for a week

  Posted: 26 Sep 2008 at 17:20

  As I mentioned several days ago I’ve been seeing if a dark theme in VS would help my eyes a little. The short of it is – no, no it didn’t. The major sore point is that if you use a dark theme in VS then you find yourself constantly swapping between dark (VS) and light (web content, content in genera