Mark Pearl

February, 2011

Setting up Vodacom 3g Modem in South Africa

So this is a totally selfish post. I continually forget how to setup my 3g modem in South Africa and it takes forever to get in touch with someone on their helpline, so I eventually recorded on youtube for future reference.

South African MVPs deserve their title.

Recently I read a post by someone who felt the Microsoft MVP program had failed. My local experience with the MVP program would tend for me to disagree. On Saturday I attended a free Windows Phone 7 event organized by Robert MacLean and Rudi Grobler both of whom are local...

January, 2011

The sign of a true manager is delegation (C# style)

Today I thought I would write a bit about delegates in C#. Up till recently I have managed to side step any real understanding of what delegates do and why they are useful – I mean, I know roughly what they do and have used them a lot, but I...

The Gates Books–Finished

Today I can finally say that I finished both of my Bill Gates books that had been lying on the shelf for several years. The books were…

Coding is Easy - Software Engineering Isn’t

Yes, coding in its general sense is extremely easy, and it is getting easier by the day. So easy that a small child can rattle off some code and end up with something that works. In fact, for many years there I was in my little bubble with the IDE...

Browser Based F# Interactive

So I love this example that I saw in one of my daily programming newsletters – F# interactive in the browser – no need for VS.

.Net Micro

A while back I purchased a RFID scanner that could be connected to a PC and programmed via VS. It was a fun purchase an though the import duties nailed me, I was glad to get the little gadget.

Cancelling WPF Application.Shutdown

Today I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out what I had had done wrong. I had an application that when the user click’s “exit”, it should prompt if they want to save the last unsaved file, or cancel the exit. If the select cancel it...

Cryptographic Validation Explained

We have been using LogicNP’s CryptoLicensing for some of our software and I was battling to understand how exactly the whole process worked. I was sent the following document which really helped explain it – so if you ever use the same tool it is well worth a read.

Where have I been for the last month?

So, I have been pretty quiet for the last month or so. True, it has been holiday time and I went to Cape Town for a stunning week of sunshine and blue skies, but the second I got back home I spent the remainder of my holiday on my pc...

Dependency Injection in .Net by Mark Seemann, Manning

This is a great book on Dependency Injection. It covered several aspects of DI that I was not aware of. What I really enjoyed about this book was that it had a great balance between being technical and readable. A must read for someone wanting to implement loosely coupled code...

December, 2010

Great Surprise – MSDN Ultimate

So, I attended the Microsoft Community Evening. The attendance was better than I was expecting for December and we had our first Programming Languages Meeting where Gary did a great presentation on an intro to Ruby.

November, 2010

ReadyNas Mistake

You get these days when you just wonder what on earth you were thinking – I had one recently. I have been looking for a fanless power supply and after scouring the net eventually came across a local site that was advertising a ReadyNas Fanless PSU.

C# Anonymous Types

Another nifty little feature in C# is anonymous types. Anonymous types allow a “short cut” in creating an object with a set of properties. They seem to be used mainly in LINQ, however we will make up a scenario here.

C# Extension Methods

This evening I thought I would look into something that I have been meaning to look into for a while, but just haven’t given the time of day. Initially I wanted to brush up on some LINQ, but after going over the definition of LINQ, I stumbled across extension methods…...

Exams are over, time to really start learning

So my UNISA exams are over for the year – and I can finally dedicate some time to professional learning. Since my last development blog post I have had the opportunity to be exposed to some great technologies that I would like to learn more about, so here’s the plan…...

Examination Preparation for COS201

Chapters Covered in Prescribed Book The following are the chapter headings for the subject, which should give you an idea of what is covered in this subject…

October, 2010

TFS in Azure – The highlight of the keynote at PDC

So, while I didn’t get to attend PDC2010, I did get to watch it live at the Microsoft Offices in Johannesburg. It had all the usual things I was expecting, Windows Phone 7 Demo’s, Azure Demo’s and Balmer giving a great pounding impersonation.

C# If Else Shortcut

Recently I participated in a local user group challenge which involved submitting a project that solved a problem with the fewest bytes. My end solution resulted in one long line of code that at first glance seemed like a series of symbols and letters. While I wouldn’t use such an...

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