Dutton

13 Feb 2013

Microsoft 70-483 Programming in C# Exam Passed

Programming in C# Specialist

Today I took and passed the Microsoft 70-483: Programming in C# exam making me officially a "Programming in C# Specialist" (wooooo!)

This is part of a new set of exams working towards the MCSD: Windows Store Apps Solution Developer certification which is all about producing apps to target the new Windows 8 app store in either HTML5 or C# and seems to be replacing the old MCPD.

I already passed the JavaScript equivalent course earlier in the year and now hope to move on with 70-484 and 70-485 to obtain MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using C#.

10 Feb 2013

Rebooting a Gaggia Cubika Plus

I know that this is a bit off piste from my usual subject matter but software engineers and coffee are pretty much inseparable and I'm no exception.

My coffee machine recently started playing up. Turn it on, see the light come on to show its ready, load her up and press the button to expect a delivery of the black gold liquid I've become dependent on, but no... Lots of "coffee machine" noise, but no coffee.

Turns out I've been leaving it switched on for too long and this particular model has an overheating cut out which according to the manual requires a service engineer back at Gaggia to reset.

Fortunately, a bit of googling led me to this Amazon review which explains what to do and so I've reproduced it here with photos for anyone else who may encounter the same issue.

NB: This is for information only, opening the machine will certainly invalidate your warranty and may expose you to high temperatures and live electrical circuits. I hold no responsibility for any damages or loss encountered by following these instructions.

Unplug the machine from the mains.
Slide the water tank out.
Locate and remove the two screws holding to the top plate (indicated below).

Remove the top plate (be careful not to damage the rubber seal).
Locate the overheat trip switch (indicated on the photos below).

Push this down with a screwdriver.
Reassemble and test.

I agree with the comments on this review; this switch shouldn't really require disassembly to access and from reading some of the other comments, quite a few people have returned "broken" units with this problem before discovering how to fix it.

Bit of a design flaw in otherwise an awesome espresso machine.

Anyway, caffeine source fixed, back to coding =)

09 Feb 2013

How to add a ScrollViewer to an ItemsControl in a Windows 8 Store App

I've been working on my first Windows 8 Store App this evening and coming from a WPF rather than Silverlight background have already found a few little differences in the XAML GUI implementation.

Simply wrapping an ItemsControl in a ScrollViewer to provide scrolling functionality for your content as I would in WPF results in some not very nice behaviour in a Windows Store App ItemsControl.

Instead, you need to provide a ScrollViewer as part of your ItemsControl.Template as follows.

31 Jan 2013

Hooking into changes on a Dependency Property on an object that's not yours

I came across a scenario today where I needed to hook into dependency property changes on an object that wasn't mine and found this new trick I'd not seen before, you can get the property's descriptor and add a new value changed handler in code.

var descriptor = DependencyPropertyDescriptor.FromProperty(RadioButton.IsCheckedProperty, typeof(RadioButton));
descriptor.AddValueChanged(radioButton, (s,e) => { /* ... */ });

Don't forget to remove the handler again once you're finished with it to prevent memory leaks like so.

descriptor.RemoveValueChanged(...);

14 Dec 2012

Microsoft 70-480 Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Exam Passed

Microsoft Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist Yesterday I passed the Microsoft 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 exam. Microsoft are currently offering the exam for free along with an excellent set of online tutorial videos over at the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

This is part of a new set of exams working towards the MCSD: Windows Store Apps Solution Developer certification which is all about producing apps to target the new Windows 8 app store in either HTML5 or C#. Although my background is primarily C# (and had the HTML5 exam not been free I would have gone for 70-483 instead) the preparation for 480 filled in a lot of gaps in my existing jQuery and javascript knowledge.

I'm now working towards 70-513: Windows Communications Foundation Development with Microsoft .Net Framework 4 which is more relevant to my current commercial work and is step closer to the (soon to be retired!!!) MCPD:Windows Developer 4.