Converting hex string into Color (Windows Phone)
Windows Phone has no ColorTranslator.FromHtml, so here is a regex-based method that parses #aabbcc, #ffaabbcc and friends into a Color object.
The journal
Notes from the workbench.
149 articles on building software and understanding how it works.
Async callback to awaitable Task<>
TaskCompletionSource turns any old-style async callback into an awaitable Task. Demonstrated with the WP7 camera, applicable everywhere.
Battlefield Heroes Rcon .Net library
I rented a Battlefield Heroes server and discovered the admin tooling wanted an app running 24/7 on my PC — so I wrote a .NET library for the Rcon protocol instead. Protocol details and source inside.
Apache WebDAV setup compatible with Windows
Windows can mount WebDAV shares as drives, but refuses basic auth by default — and getting Apache to serve digest auth that Windows accepts took some troubleshooting. The working setup, documented.
Async/await HTTP server in C#
There are plenty of C# web servers already, but I wanted to play with TPL and async/await — so here is a minimal HTTP server built around them. Downloadable code included.
.Net Dictionary speed and memory
How well does Dictionary<int,int> actually perform? I measured speed and memory with random data and random access on real hardware — with numbers, graphs and a few surprises about what hides behind O(1).
Resolving application path in .dll Web, Console, WinForms and WPF applications
ShadowCopy means web apps run their .dlls from a temp directory, so "the directory of my assembly" is a trap. Static helpers that resolve the real application path for web, console, WinForms and WPF alike.
Locating config file from .dll in both Desktop and Web applications
A .dll shared between web and desktop apps can't assume where app.config or web.config lives. A small cached method that resolves the correct config file wherever the assembly is running, with Nini example.
Unsafe kernel32-mapped memory Bitmap WPF
For DSP debugging I want to draw FFT data fast: kernel32-allocated memory, unsafe pointers, and InteropBitmap so WPF renders straight from the buffer. Vacation-time code, constantly improving.
IE favorites, NTFS symbolic links and Dropbox
NTFS symlinks are well-known to *nix users and unknown to most Windows users. Combine them with Dropbox and your IE favorites (or any folder) silently sync between machines.
I just wanna do the right thing, like Tedd would have done
I just wanna do the right thing — like Tedd would have done. (Video embedded.)
Optimizing RDP for casual use (Windows 7 SP1, RemoteFX)
I have worked over RDP since around 2000, and bandwidth is usually the bottleneck. Concrete tweaks for RDP on Windows 7 SP1 with RemoteFX to squeeze a smoother desktop out of a slow line.
Kinect face recognition
OpenCV's haar cascades finding faces on the Kinect RGB camera in real time. Source coming after some major refactoring.
Kinect OpenCV object recognition
SURF object recognition through EmguCV — detecting objects even when tilted and rotated, as part of my Kinect starter kit.
Should I defrag my SSD?
"Yes!" and "No, never!" — both answers are right. SSDs don't care about fragmented reads, but NTFS does interesting things when free space gets fragmented. What actually matters, and what to do about it.