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Efficiency and Quality: Who's Responsible?
Examine the core functions and responsibilities typically assigned to each department in a screen-printing company.
"How do I get my orders through the production process cleanly, efficiently, and without error?" Aside from scheduling concerns, this is a question I hear most often from screen printers. What owners and managers tell me about are the snags, the delays, and the confusion they face in the production flow. Many managers feel that if something can go wrong, their operations are primed and ready to allow it to go wrong. Facilities experiencing these problems often lack focus in two areas: the primary function of each department in the operation and the responsibility each department holds in completing its primary function.
Managers need to establish a clear definition of each department's primary function in the production process. We all multitask, but each of us also holds a position designed to accomplish a specific task. The primary purpose is not always well defined or understood. And without a definition, we find ourselves drifting away from our purpose and focusing on things that should be secondary to our jobs.
Managers also need to hold each department accountable for its responsibilities as they relate to production. After a job is defined, the responsibilities that come with that job are rarely explained or affirmed. In most companies, it's assumed that someone along the production line will catch mistakes and take care of a problems before a job gets too far through the production process. Each department assumes that an order or product is correct when it's received from the previous department in the workflow. This easy-way-out thinking leaves the production flow at risk of becoming an out-of-control train wreck.
Let's take a look at the various departments in a typical screen-printing shop and define the primary function for each.
Sales The primary function of the sales department is to generate sales to feed the production process. Its responsibility is to understand the schedule and the capabilities of the production department.
Order entry Entering orders accurately is the primary function of this department, and its responsibility is to be timely and to intercept potential questions and problems before allowing an order to move on.
Procurement Here, the primary function is to purchase goods for orders. The responsibility is to make certain that goods are on hand when needed, every time, for every order, no matter what.
Creative art The primary function in this department is to maintain clear communications with customers and create what the customers want. The responsibility is to meet completion deadlines and create graphics that lend themselves to textile screen printing.
Scheduling The scheduling department's primary function is to block out time to accomplish all the production functions for each order. The responsibility is to have an intimate understanding of how to estimate production time, as well as the capabilities of the production operation, and to know at all times where the schedule stands.
Production art The primary function of production artists is to prepare and deliver all film positives to the screen-prep department. Their responsibility is timely delivery and guaranteed correctness of the completed films, from spelling to registration.
Screen prep The primary function here is to prepare and deliver ready-to-use screens to the production floor. The department's responsibility is to verify mesh count and screen tension, as well as block-outs and taping. This department also must be able to replace screens quickly.
Print production Printing products is the primary function. The responsibility is to not only set up and print top-quality goods, but also to maintain the schedule by adhering to the estimated production time of each order.
Inspection The primary function in inspection is to examine each garment without hindering the pace of production. The responsibility is to make sure a quality product reaches the customer. This responsibility also includes willingness to stop production when anything about the order is in doubt.
Packing The primary function in the packing department is to label garments with the correct pricing and package them appropriately. The responsibility is to present the product to the customer in a way that meets the customers' expectations.
Shipping Here, the primary function is to deliver the finished goods to the customer. The responsibility of the department is to make the delivery within the specified time frame at the least cost to the printing company.
Production flow
Each order that reaches your hands has its own special requirements. For each, production time needs to be scheduled, supplies ordered, screens exposed, and so on, just as quickly as possible. This need for speed often contributes to inefficient order processing and rearrangement of the production schedule. As a result, orders tend to move in an erratic fashion through the production process.
Unless you've addressed efficiency issues recently, you probably have employees along the production line this very minute complaining about the movement of orders. "Joe is always sitting on these orders, and then it's my job to make up the time!" This frustrated employee could represent employees in any department of your operation. The complaint is nearly always the same: "No one seems to be concerned about taking care of the orders and the customers until the orders get to me!" This is generally not the truth. I have never witnessed an employee intentionally attempt to make the next person's job more difficult. More likely, the problem lies in the process and not in the people driving the process.
Also problematic is the tendency for orders to come to a halt several times during production while someone not directly involved with the process verifies the paperwork or some other aspect of the job. If the employees responsible for such stops are in a position of authority and want to see all the paperwork, but have no direct involvement in producing the order, photocopy the paperwork so that the originals and the job it refers to can continue to move through production. Owners and senior managers should not be excluded from seeing each order, but they need to avoid creating additional steps that might needlessly slow production.
No matter how efficiently your operation is, invariably you'll have departments waiting for the production steps to catch up to one another. There's very little that the screen-prep staff can do, other than have screens ready, until the art arrives. The price-and-pack employees can build boxes, but they can't package an order until the goods are decorated. If paperwork arrives in a department, but can't be processed until another department completes its own share of the work, the paperwork may very well be a waste of time and effort. You get the idea.
Nurturing responsibility
Your company "culture" should promote an attitude that every employee is responsible for the quality of the final product. The responsibility for the product is as much the procurement department's as it is the screen-prep staff's, the screen reclaimer's, the inspection team's, and so on.
As owners and senior managers, we often like to assume that everyone knows what part they play in creating a quality product. We like to believe that everyone knows they must do their part in the process to make the final product as perfect as can be expected, and we like to think that our employees will make the final product as close to what our customers expect as is humanly possible. But these assumptions will have no basis in reality unless we make "taking full responsibility" a part of our company culture.
Making responsibility a company-wide policy isn't just about inspecting finished goods for registration, pinholes, or correct sizes. These are important and specific functions, but whole-company responsibility encompasses broader goals, like making sure production flows smoothly and efficiently. It deals as much with inspecting for pinholes before production as it does in looking for them at the end of the dryer. Company-wide responsibility means employees take ownership of the entire production process.
Let's assume you've established some standard of acceptability for your finished goods, and that you've communicated this information effectively to your staff. If you haven't done so, then this should be step number one. Next, employees must understand that they are empowered to stop and question an order in process, no matter what stage of production it has reached. Based on my 25 years of experience in this industry, I've come to trust employees' gut feelings about the conditions of orders, even if everything seems to check out on the paperwork. Your employees naturally will have these gut instincts, and will use them, if you give them authority and encouragement to act.
Two things should happen after an order is stopped. First, if there is a mistake or quality issue, take action to correct the problem immediately. Also, make certain that all employees involved in producing that particular order are made aware of the situation. This is not an occasion for you to point out someone's ineptitude, but rather a situation you should use as a tool to make your staff aware of your company's standards. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn from the error so the same mistake is not repeated again and again.
Second, if there is no mistake, but someone felt it necessary to stop the process, make note of it on the order (along with the employee's initials). Noting this on the order makes everyone else aware that a question was raised and dealt with.
For example, imagine that a customer has used royal-blue ink in its logo for the past two years, but at a corporate level, has changed to navy blue. A note in order entry saying, "Customer has changed logo to navy," will keep every employee who remembers those previous orders from waving the error flag.
I spoke with a creative artist once who said, with frustration in his voice, "You're the fourth person to bring this order up here and ask that same question." A simple note on the order from the order-entry staff would have saved a lot of trouble and frustration. I wasn't pleased that the order had been stopped four times, but was incredibly impressed that three of my employees had taken the responsibility before me to ask the question.
What's your function?
Production success requires that employees understand their primary functions and the responsibilities that go with those functions. By clearly defining the roles employees are expected to play and their broader responsibilities, then empowering workers to take action when problems arise, you'll breed a company culture that will keep your operation efficient and your product quality at its best.


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Footwear Collection by Cesar Idrobo
Cesar Idrobo Discloses The The Flash Collection Footwear Collection
Cesar Idrobo, the maker of the highlighted design Footwear Collection:The Flash Collection by Cesar Idrobo spells out, Blending classic footwear styles with active lifestyle aesthetics. What makes this collection stand out is a bold casual touch by adding vibrant colors and athletic soles which are perfect for a fast paced lifestyle. Theses shoes can have a seamless transition from a professional scenario to a casual environment and still make you look good! .
Footwear Collection by Cesar Idrobo Images:
End of the article, click here to go back to previous page, or alternatively go back to DXGN Design Journal homepage.

subset: commoncrawl


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Wianno, Cape Cod, MA 2.50Sweet Jesus, Chesapeake Bay, MD 2.25Olde Salt, Chesapeake Bay, MD 2.25Chesapeake, Chesapeake Bay, MD 2.25Cape May Salt, NJ 2.50East Point, Delaware Bay, NJ 2.25Blue Point, Long Island, NY 2.50James River, James River, VA 2.25Crab Island, Great Bay, NJ 2.25Rappahannock, Rappahannock River, VA 2.25
Harry's Oyster Bar & Seafood Restaurant is the perfect fusion of oyster bar, sports bar and seafood house serving up the ocean's freshest fare (as well some select land-locked dishes) in a fun and completely relaxed atmosphere with outdoor seating and a spectacular view of Atlantic City's famed boardwalk.
In addition to Harry's full menu, Harry's also sells cigars. Current offerings are:
Ashton Magnum $15Arturo Fuente $9Romeo Y. Juliets Belicoso $15Rocky Patel Decade Torpedo $18
Hours of Operation:
Sunday-Thursday: noon - 10:00pm; Full Menu All DayFriday & Saturday: noon - 10:30pm; Full Menu All Day
Reservations accepted for parties of 6 or more, call 609.431.0092
For directions, click here
Home | About Us | Menu | Press & Reviews | Contact | Directions | Purchase Gift Certificate
Copyright Harry's Oyster Bar & SeafoodBally's Atlantic City, Ground Floor. In the Courtyard of the Historic Dennis Hotel.Park Place & the Boardwalk, Atlantic City, NJ 08402 Phone: 609-431-0092 E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


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Jane Szabo
Jane Szabo is a Los Angeles based fine art photographer with an MFA from Art Center in Pasadena, CA. Her work investigates issues of self and identity. Using self-portraiture and still life as a vehicle to share stories from her life, her work merges her love for fabrication and materials, with conceptual photography. Szabo brings many facets of visual art into her photographic projects, incorporating sculptural, performance and installation elements into her work. Her imagery is often infused with humor and wonder, ingredients that draw the viewer in, inviting them to linger and to have a dialogue with the work, and themselves. Her background in the film industry, creating prop and miniatures for theme parks, and overseeing set construction for film and television, undoubtedly informs her creative process.
Szabo's photography has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Museum of Art & History in Lancaster, CA, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, the Yuma Fine Art Center in Arizona, and the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Oceanside Museum of Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, The Colorado Center for Photographic Arts, San Diego Art Institute, Los Angeles Center for Photography, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, and the 2015 Kaohsiung International Photographer Exhibition in Taiwan.
Her photographs have been featured in many publications and blogs including: The Huffington Post, Lenscratch, Silvershotz, Bokeh Bokeh, L'Oeil de la Photographie, F-Stop Magazine, Foto Relevance, Fraction, Your Daily Photo, A Photo Editor, Don't Take Pictures, Art & Cake, Diversions LA, ArtsMeme, and others.
Family Matters incorporates memory, metaphor and allegory to express the challenges, burdens and joys of my role as daughter, and now caretaker, of my elderly parents. My mother and father recently faced a daunting move into assisted living; they are struggling after a series of strokes, memory loss and the decline of their cognitive abilities. This series uses objects gathered from the family home to tell the story of my role within this family.
After moving my 86 year-old father and my 91 year-old mother into an assisted living apartment, I began organizing the contents of their home. When they left, they walked out the front door of their home of 36 years, with barely a glance behind them, leaving unopened mail on the table, and me behind, to sort through the chaos. Over the months, I returned to make the final selection of which treasures I would keep, and to tie up all the loose ends before putting the home on the market.
Family Matters uses objects from their home, and my childhood, staged as still lifes, to illustrate the story of our relationship. Using childhood possessions, and simple items that have been in the family for years, I create tableaus that hint at complicated family dynamics. The presentation of these objects is not merely a catalog of possessions, but a catalog of feelings; of pain and disappointment, hope, loss and burden.
The challenge of assisting parents who live 1000 miles away has changed my life drastically. Working through these feelings in this project has helped me unravel, and resolve, many issues that I was unable to confront about our past. Though seeing my parents age and decline is difficult, I feel I have been given a gift to be able to be a significant part of this transition.
Reconstructing Self is a project that merges fabrications with conceptual photography. In this series of self-portraits, I playfully explore issues of identity in an ambitious juxtaposition of fashion, sculpture, installation and photography.
Photographs of dresses, made from familiar objects such as wrapping paper, coffee filters and road maps, suggest a persona, and become a stand in for my self. The identities represented in these forms illustrate who I am, who I am not, and who I wish to be. Though these works are self-portraits, the lack of human form makes the dresses universal. With references to paper doll dresses and childhood playtime, one can imagine these personas could be put on and removed at will as the mood and personality change.
The balance between the self and the world outside can be a precarious one. We struggle to find a way to individualize ourselves, yet often merely blend in among the masses. Presented as a typology, the dresses encourage the viewer to look closely to analyze the differences and similarities, and perhaps to fit themselves i to one or more of these dresses or "selves." Drawing from my own background, I create still lifes, pairing objects with the dresses . I expand the story by inviting the viewer to contemplate the connections, and create their own mythology. The empty forms suggest alienation or loneliness, while the materials and objects simultaneously strive for individuality and uniqueness.
Sense of Self After shooting many portraits of people in their homes and attempting to tap in to a psychological element, I realized that I was frequently referencing my own self-identity and issues. It was then time to turn the camera around and start working further outside my comfort zone. It was time to expose my "Self" and reveal my own vulnerability. I am currently working on a series of self-portraits entitled Sense of Self. Many of the images within the project document a process or activity. Blur, movement and light are used to add a psychological element to the work. This is a large body of work and is much more conceptual and experimental than my previous projects. These images explore my struggle to maintain a rigid sense of order upon my self and my environment (a process that is failing). This attempt and failure to contain chaos parallels my personal struggles and sense of identity. Unfortunately, this self-imposed rigid sense of order, a self that wants to grid, to sort, to map, to control, conflicts with my need to escape into freedom.
dis.place.ment This series of environmental portraits, which are shot in the subject's home, have an added twist. A parent is photographed in a child's room, a child is presented in a parent's space, and activities occur in unusual places. The displacement of the subject makes the viewer pay special attention to their surroundings.
I recently was asked the very valid question as to why I had chosen to photograph people.
When returning to the camera after a long hiatus, the first thing I said was "I don't shoot people." And yet, here I am, inviting myself into people's homes, invading their personal spaces and looking deeply into their psyches. As humans, we are drawn into the lives of others, yet we see our own reflection. I hope this project serves to allow each viewer a moment of self-reflection. These beautiful images invite you in, but once inside they force you to question your own identity, and your relationship with others.
I'm with the Band Being married to a musician means many late nights in dark and often smoky venues. After getting the obligatory "live" shots that every band member craves, I began to investigate the behind the scenes moments that are so much more personal. I'm with the Band documents one short week while hanging out with The Other Mules, a nasty blues band, as we peruse the clubs of Amsterdam and its neighboring cities.
The website will be permanently closed shortly, so please retrieve any content you wish to save.


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Thank you for visiting our website and taking the time to look around. Select Interiors Ltd was started 31 years ago for the sole purpose of creating superior quality shop and commercial interiors.
We started out in Manchester and the North West, but since then we've expanded and now offer our service throughout the United Kingdom.


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SMOKY FRUITShttps://a.pomf.cat/jctfid.mp3
Miracle Night (M@STER Ver.)https://a.pomf.cat/aaaaky.mp3
That is odd... They should've put Takane or Makoto instead. I can't imagine her singing the m@ster version for this song, it doesn't suit her
They couldn't put makoto in this song, since she already was in the m@ster version of miracle night.
Sorry, if I missed this, but do we know how many albums there will be?Because Album 01 has Miracle Night sung by Haruka Amami, Makoto Kikuchi, Ami Futami, Mami Futami, and Iori Minase. Then, you have Album 02 which has Boku-tachi no Resistance sung by Miki Hoshii, Chihaya Kisaragi, Yayoi Takatsuki, and Hibiki Ganaha. So, what's left is Azusa, Takane, and Ritsuko for the next song.So, will there be more albums with songs sung by a different set of 765 pro idols? Sounds kind of short to stop at Album 03.
Seems that thread is dead. Oh well.Here are the previews for the new PLATINUM MASTER CDs!'Bokutachi no Resistance' Sung by: Miki Hoshii, Chihaya Kisaragi, Yayoi Takatsuki, Hibiki Ganahahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ev1bELS33I'Insane Game' Sung by: Miki Hoshii, Hibiki Ganaha, Takane Shijouhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KnQrZsIs4o
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Mandatory for Govt. Departments to obtain registration under GST – Conditions
Is it necessary for the Govt. Department to obtain registration under GST ? As per Section 2(73)(g) of Revised Model GST Law person" includes— any corporation established by or under any Central, State or Provincial Act or a Government company as defined in section 2(45) of the Companies Act, 2013 (18 of 2013); Thus In case the Government… Read More »


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On Wednesday, September, 13, 2017,10 Things You Have In Common With writing help Senator Bernie Sanders introduced his well-anticipated Medicare For All bill (S-1804).7 Things Everyone Knows About comparative essay That You Don't This came during a time when the California State Legislative session for 2017 came to a close with SB-562 still in the Rules Committee of the State Assembly, effectively killing the bill until the 2018 Legislative Session. This could not have come at a worse time, because on Thursday, the day after Senator Sanders introduced his Medicare For All Bill, Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy both introduced Legislation seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
According to this Politico article, states like California would be the hardest hit. In fact, the article does an excellent job of explaining the bill in detail. Because of this, California should all the more stick it to Trump and his anti-healthcare agenda and pass SB-562. If California gets single-payer, it will set off a single-payer tidal wave as states like New York, 5 Best Ways To Sell paper writer Oregon, etc. will be more inclined to pass single-payer. Please contact your Senators and Representatives to stop Trump's anti-healthcare agenda, and support Senator Sanders/Representative John Conyers' Medicare For All bill. Likewise, I call on Speaker Anthony Rendon to release the SB-562 bill and actually respect the legislative process. Everyone should call their Assembly representatives and let them know that we need to pass SB-562 immediately, especially with the threat of Trumpcare looming over America. All the more,No More Mistakes With do my homework we need to get single-payer through, more than ever, in order to protect Californians.
#GrahamCassidyNO #SinglePayer


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Saturday, December 10, 2011
Daily Links 10 Dec 2011
Windows Store for Developers Blog
Ree7 Tile Toolkit for Windows Phone 7
How to create Splash Screen with Progress Bar in Windows Phone 7
Testing your (WP) app with various connection speeds
Integrate In-app Purchasing in Windows Phone Apps
WinRT vs. Silverlight - Part 8 - What other people are blogging
Testing the Update Process for Windows Phone Apps
What does featuring in the Marketplace do with your app?
Building an Augmented Reality XAML control
Submitting Apps to Marketplace with Background Tasks
Windows Phone 7 Skydrive Library
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Daily Links 01/12/2011
Get Your App into the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace - Fast!
Don't use PhoneApplicationService.State[] in Mango
Safe event detachment base class for Windows Phone 7 behaviors
Windows Phone Power Tools
The visual file explorer is probably the best feature thus far
Mango Sample: Data Validation
A weak event listener for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7
Mango Sample: Lock and Run
31 Days of Mango | Day #29: Globalization
31 Days of Mango | Day #31: Promoting your app
Custom map control for Windows Phone 7 from scratch. Part 1.
My custom windows phone theme broke when I upgraded to 7.1. Here's how to fix it
Beautiful Page Transitions (Practically) Free
Monday, November 21, 2011
Daily Links 21/11/2011
Track memory usage of your Windows Phone 7.1 app in real time
Continuum Transition for Windows Phone Silverlight Toolkit
31 Days of Mango | Day #11: Live Tiles
31 Days of Mango | Day #19: Tilt Effect
MonoCross 1.0 Released
Mango Sample: Chart Data
Facebook C# SDK
just released a stable build
GART Geo AR Toolkit
Localizing a Windows Phone app Step by Step
The Untimely Demise of the Plugin (and how LOB developments will suffer)
Creating your First Android Application
using MonoDroid
TestDisk Download
Open Source Data Recovery Tool
Metro Station Icons Pack (209)
Monday, November 7, 2011
Daily Links 07/11/2011
Windows Phone Alerts and Reminders
Getting Started with the Coding4Fun toolkit Tile Control
31 Days of Mango| Day #4: Compass
Announcing: Phone as a Remote Control
"app that lets me remotely control my desktop computer."
Windows Phone Marketplace FAQ
Announcing: Your Last About Dialog (YLAD)
Generic About Dialog for windows phone
Paging Data from the Server with Silverlight
Roslyn CTP Now Available
UX guidelines for Metro style app development
Agile is for your WHOLE Business
Tutorial – Using Visual Studio Solution Configuration to Manage Free and Paid Game Versions
Free Icons Search Engine
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Daily Links 18/10/2011
New Coding4Fun Toolkit v1.4.8 officially released
Testing your Windows Phone application prior to submit to the Marketplace is an essential task
WCF on the Windows Phone 7–The How to Guide
A Simple Way To Get To Get Your WP7 App Rated
Project: Windows Phone Icons
Sharing to Facebook, Twitter and email in Windows Phone 7
Facebook C# SDK
"helps .Net developers build web, desktop, Silverlight, and Windows Phone applications that integrate with Facebook."
BugSense now available for Windows Phone
Bug tracking and Analytics for your mobile devices
New FREE e-book: Windows Phone Toolkit In Depth
EF 4.2 Code First Walkthrough
Google Dart – overview and comments
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Visual Studio Extensions worth checking out...
Many Features. Best: Tab and Pin your Code files. Close all but pinned.
VS Commands 2010
Many Features. Best: Xaml Bindings and resource highlights
Xaml Styler
Great for formatting xaml.
Team Foundation Server Power Tools August 2011
Obviously only if you use TFS for your source control. Now with Rollback feature only previously available from the command line.
Code Maid
Many Features. Best: Cool Build progress bar with "Cancel Build" button.
Snippet Designer
For Ninja Coders who want to be super productive - craft your code snippets with this.
Portable Library Tools
One Code Library to rule them [platforms] all
Code Metrics Viewer
View Code metrics usually only available for VS Ultimate users.
[Update 03/09/2011] ...
Default Browser Switcher
Toolbar that allows 1-click switch the browser that VS uses for Web Projects.
Handy when you're developing a silverlight app with no web project attached.
Some Isolated Storage Explorers
[Update 09/09/2011]...
Visual NUnit
Nice NUnit UI test runner from inside VS. Run or Debug unit tests. Also has filters for project, namespace and fixture.
[Update 13/10/2011]
NUnit Test Application
Mobile Ready HTML5 MVC.NET
AnkhSVN - Subversion SCC Provider
Nice replacement for the VS task manager -which get wiped when the .suo file is deleted. The solution is more presistent
Windows Phone Test Project
WoVS Quick Add Reference
Add quick reference to missing assembly when class referenced in code.
I've tried to keep to those extensions that are free.
... any cool ones I've missed?
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Daily Links 06/10/2011
WinRT demystified
Live face recognition on Windows Phone
for "real" face recognition in .NET - use EmguCV
Building Offline Experiences with HTML5 AppCache and IndexedDB
Microsoft Windows Simulator Touch Emulation
Windows Phone Icons Maker
ListPicker? I hardly even know 'er! [A detailed overview of the Windows Phone Toolkit's ListPicker control]
Tips and tricks about updating live tiles in Mango
Windows Phone 7 Silverlight ZXing Barcode Scanning Library
The Standard About Page for Windows Phone 7 revisited
A Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) MVVM Tombstoning Example
Windows Phone 7 Page Orientation Change Animations
Metro Controls – Jump Viewer
Tombstone Helper v2.5 now available
Using INotifyDataErrorInfo for validation in MVVM with Silverlight
Implementing Data Validation in Silverlight with INotifyDataErrorInfo
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Daily Links 15/09/2011
132 more Windows Phone Application Bar Icons
Windows Phone Augmented Reality Starter Kit Video
A Cheat Sheet for Unit Testing Silverlight Apps on Windows Phone 7
How to run NUnit tests on Windows Phone 7
Context Menu for Silverlight - FREE
WP7: How to add an EULA page to your application
Xaml Sessions at BUILD
Telerik's HTML5 UI Framework
"delivers everything needed for client-side, jQuery-powered development in one integrated, compact package."
I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong.
Thoughts on Win 8 + the future of Silverlight & WPF
Windows 8: What you Need to Know
Migrating a Windows Phone 7 app to XAML
Windows 8 geolocation API: First run
Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview as bootable VHD
Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview - Now Available for MSDN Subscribers
New Features for Web Development in Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Daily Links 07/09/2011
Silverlight 5 Quick Tip: 64-bit Support
SL5 Elevated Trust Settings for Out of Browser and In Browser
Free GUI Isolated Storage Explorer Tool
WoVS Default Browser Switcher (Visual Studio Extension)
Silverlight Keyboard Controls
The OS Keyboard for touch screen silverlight development is a bit intrusive.
Here are some sample silverlight versions to user instead.
Silverlight How to Command Control
Windows Phone Toolkit ExpanderView in depth| Part1: key concepts and API
Restore and Preserve Page State for Windows Phone 7.5 or Mango Phone
The Big List of What's New or Improved in Silverlight 5
Simplifying Async Networking with Tasks in Silverlight 5
Building a Twitter client for Windows Phone - Storing the auth data and making sure the user is remembered
WP7 Marketplace statistics
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Daily Links 01/09/2011
Jump Start: Windows Phone "Mango"
Report: Microsoft shows off quad-core Windows slate
"Microsoft Enterprise Technology Architect Patrick Hevesi noted that there are quad-core Windows slates coming later this year that will offer eight hours of battery life, a 10-inch HD screen and 1080p playback."
My MVVM tombstone pattern
Who says Silverlight can't run on a tablet?
Creating objects - Perf implications
Unfortunately FormatterServices.GetUninitializaedObject() is not available in Silverlight - boooo!
Localizing your Windows Phone 7 application (Enums and Finished project)
AgFx = Developing Data Driven Windows Phone 7 App Joy
WP7 by the numbers….Exclusive Aussie Developer ROI Calculator
Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Cheat Sheet
3 Ways to update the Application Tile Content in Mango
29 Ways to make your wp7 app killer and make money
Isolated Storage Explorer for Visual Studio
Friday, August 26, 2011
Daily Links 26/08/2011
Proving to be a bit buggy so far, but at least you can get hold of the source code to fix it in the meantime.
Windows Phone 7 Iconography
Migrating to Mango – Developer View. Part 1 & 2
Two lessons from a frustrating Mango submission
Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.6
Now with additional Tile control
New Coding4Fun Toolkit v1.4.6 officially released: cool new components and lots of fixes
WP7Contrib – Tombstoning Part I The View
Using Bouncy Castle on Windows Phone 7
Bouncy Castle = Java Cryptography lib port
WP7: Marketplace Test Kit Walkthrough
Windows Phone MVC / MVVM hybrid framework
WP: Tips for Watching Your Data Usage
"is" vs "GetType" vs "typeof"
Compare a generic type to it's default value
Monday, August 22, 2011
Daily Links 22/08/2011
How to port your WP7 custom application Theme to Windows Phone Mango
iPhone styled WP7 apps
Progress on WP7 Icons
Create PDF in Silverlight
Using Inversion of Control in MonoDroid Applications
WP7: Loading Optimizations - How I optimized my loading time with almost 3 seconds
Reusable WCF Service Data Access Layer for WP7, MonoTouch and Mono for Android
Mercurial Cheat Sheet
Moonlight on Android
EF 4.2 Beta 1 Available
Free Screenshot tool
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Daily Links 11/08/2011
Windows Phone 7 Mango Augmented Reality Tutorial
Reflection, Lambda, and Expression Magic
Smooth Streaming on Windows Phone 7
Clean Design-Time Friendly ViewModels: A Walkthrough
Passing parameters to a Silverlight application
Complete Silverlight Business Application using MVVM
Creating a Silverlight 5 Helper for ASP.NET MVC3 Razor
Speech Recognition
Web Hosting Deals
Ten Year Agile Retrospective: How We Can Improve In The Next Ten Years
by Jeff Sutherland - co-founder of Scrum
Can Agile Software Development Deliver a Great User Experience?
8 Principles of Continuous Delivery
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Daily Links 28/07/2011
Code First Migrations: Walkthrough of August 2011 CTP
Coding4Fun Toolkit – now with in-app tiles
MVVM in real life Windows Phone applications Part2
Mindscape LightSpeed Free eBook available (not LightSwitch… but for the LightSpeed ORM…)
Windows Phone 7: Pivot Page Indicator Control
Windows Phone Toolkit AutoCompleteBox
Posting Twitter Status Update from Windows Phone
Microsoft Releases 'Mango' SDK Beta 2 Refresh
Some highlights of new features in the Mango Beta 2 Refresh update (SDK)
Localized Windows Phone App - Start to Finish
Windows Phone Page State–Step by Step
Windows Phone Mango build 7712 released to developers
Convention Based View Model Location using Ninject in a MVVM/Silverlight Application
Windows Phone (Mango) DB Engines Performance Testing
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Daily Links 26/07/2011
Windows Phone Developers Get New App Hub Features: Mango app submission just one month away
WP7 Dev Tips - Error Reporting
QR code scanning on Windows Phone 7.5 using ZXlib
Xceed Ultimate ListBox for Silverlight
Showing the Onscreen Keyboard in Silverlight OOB Applications
Cross platform .NET mobile apps talk at NDC 2011
Smooth Streaming in Silverlight
Offline Silverlight Applications
Channel 9 Video
Great presentation / source code for patterns when developing offline capabilites for silverlight applications. When you consider the intrusion of tablets in the work-place, and the mobility they provide, this becomes increasingly necessary - particularly of LOB apps.
Branch by Abstraction (BBA)
An alternate "best practice" feature-based branching strategy
Speed up Visual Studio Builds
GPU.NET, a developer platform with it's own Compiler and Runtime to easily hardware-accelerate .NET solutions.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Windows Phone: 1-Click Backup and Restore of Isolated Storage Data
WP7 Development Tools ships with an Isolated Storage Tool that allows you to backup and restore files that are in the Isolated Storage – on your device, or on your phone. Problem is, it's a command-line tool, so it's not all that user-friendly. Here are some steps to make use of that tool and Visual Studio Toolbar Buttons to create a quick 1-click shortcut to backup and restore your data.
Step 1: Find your Application Id
You can find your Application Id in the form of a Guid in the AppManifest.xml file:
Step 2: Create a batch file to call into the IsoTool.exe
I found it handy to great one batch file for backup, and another for restore.
If you really wanted to, you could define a single batch file with % placeholders for the parameters (backup / restore / device / emulator)
So for backup, it should look something like this:
@echo off
cd "Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool\"
ISETool.exe ts xd {<PASTE ProductID HERE>} %1
echo Backup Complete
… and for the restore, something like this:
@echo off
cd "Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool\"
ISETool.exe rs xd {PASTE ProductID HERE} "%1\IsolatedStore"
echo Restore Complete
The above 2 files target the emulator – if you'd like to target your device, you can update "xd" to be "de"
Step 3: Add a Visual Studio External Tool Command
From the Visual Studio menu, go to Tools | External Tools.
Click "Add" to add a new command, and it should look something like this:
I found it handy to prompt for arguments, so that I could append to the path for different backups / restores.
Do the same for the restore batch file.
Almost there – you can now backup and restore by accessing the commands from the Tools Menu in Visual Studio – but I did mention we'd add a "1-click" solution, so optionally follow step 4…
Step 4: Hook the External Tool Command to a Toolbar Button
From Visual Studio, right click the toolbar, and select "Customize".
From the Toolbars tab, click the "New" button, and give your toolbar a name.
Then switch to the Commands Window, select the "Toolbar:" radio button, scroll to the toolbar you just named, and click the "Add Command" button.
In the "Add Command" dialog, scroll to the "Tools" item under "Categories" on the left.
Now this is where Visual Studio gets a bit sucky – the command doesn't have a name that makes sense. If you haven't added any custom commands in this manner before, the names of the backup and restore external tool commands you just added should be something like "External Command 5" and 6:
Click the OK button to add a button. From there you can give it a name that makes sense:
Click the close button, and voila, you should have a toolbar with buttons that will backup and restore the data on your WP emulator / device:
Happy Coding
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Daily Links 19/07/2011
App hub refresh: new look and feel, reports, private beta publishing
WP7 App Settings Persistence
MonoDroid v MonoTouch : a comparison
A Windows Phone 7 Twitter Application : Part 1 of 2 (Understanding OAuth)
Part 2
How Agile Architects Lead
Editorial - So your App or Game is in the WP7 Marketplace - What next?
WP7Contrib - Bing Maps REST Service Wrappers
Silverlight: Adding Google Streets View
Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tutorials You Must Read
StatLight: Silverlight Testing Automation Tool
Enriching Windows Phone 7.1 ("Mango") Apps with Secondary Tiles
Working with Live Tiles in WP7 Mango - Creating, Updating and Deleting them
Implementing a Windows Phone 7 Conversation View
Developer Economics 2011 - Winners and losers in the platform race
Silverlight is Dead, Long Live XAML
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Daily Links 12/07/2011
Some very interesting thoughts on cross platform development, along with an open-sourced framework that practically implements it.
The Mono team has since been retrenched, but keep an eye on Xamarin (from those very same developers) for some exciting developments in the cross-platform space.
Creating WP7 promotional videos
Portable Library Tools
Single library - multiple .NET platforms
Top 8 Websites To Learn Windows Phone 7 Development
WP7 Launchers - Mango (Windows Phone 7.1)
Resources for Windows Phone Mango Developers
PinCodeKeeper WP7 app - Submitting to Marketplace
Building a detailed About page for your Windows Phone application
Silverlight Touch Library
Provides some parity with the touch API found in the windows phone silverlight framework
Monday, July 4, 2011
Daily Links 04/07/2011
Release Notes
Windows Phone 7: Login UI Sample Code and Coding4Fun
Step by Step Mango Beta Developer Update Guide for Windows Phone 7 (WP7)
Download Windows Phone 7,1 SDK Beta 2 - Web and Offline installer
Unit Testing the Windows Phone 7 applications
Augmented Reality With Windows Phone 7 - Part I Camera+Sensors
Augmented Reality With Windows Phone 7 - Part II Sensors
Announcing the Microsoft Entity Framework June 2011 CTP
Walkthrough: Enums (June CTP)
Make Money with the Microsoft Ad Control
Visual Studio Code Cleanup Macro
Friday, June 24, 2011
Daily Links 24/06/2011
WP7 Apps browse
WP7: How to create an alarm application (Mango)
WP7 Trial Mode done simply
Drag and drop in WPF (and similar to Silverlight)
Play Media files with the MediaPlayerLauncher in Windows Phone 7
Getting Started with Kinect Development
3 Incredibly Useful Projects to jump-start your Kinect Development.
MonoMobile.MVVM, Round 2
Portable Library Tools
Excellent! Up until now I've been using shared files and using the "Add as Link" functionality into the platform-specific projects. This should make things much simpler.
Silverlight Debug Helper
WPCentral Review: Windows Phone "Mango" (preview release)
Firefox 5
Monday, June 20, 2011
Daily Links 20/06/2011
Windows Phone Mango Features vs iOS5 Features
WP7: Detecting Network Information
Surfy for Windows Phone 7
Web Browser with tabbed browsing
Metro In Motion Part #7 - Panorama Prettiness and Opacity
ChevronWP7 Labs will jailbreak your Windows Phone with Microsoft's approval
Expression Blend templates for Windows Phone applications
AgFx hidden gem - PhoneApplicationFrameEx
10 Silverlight 5 Demos
Silverlight Drag and Drop for Business Applications
Silverlight Panorama Template
DevLabs: Debugger Canvas
Unfortunately only for VS Ultimate :(
Welcome to the first release of the WCF Express Interop Bindings
Kinect for windows SDK beta Tools
Free Version of YouTRACK Issue and Bug Tracker from JetBrains
Why the New YouTrack Matters
"allows Visual Studio 2010 users to select and manager Visual Studio windows configurations."
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Daily Links 14/06/2011
Windows Phone 7 Navigation Transitions Step By Step guide
Windows Phone 7 - Getting Started and Key Apps
Updated Silverlight Unit Test Framework binaries - compatible with the Mango phone tools beta
Silverlight: The Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated!
Reactive Extensions 6/5/2011 release available
6 Quick tips to make your WP7 App pass Microsoft's Certification
Best Practices for Application Marketing
Send Toast Made Easy
Track the sales/downloads of your Windows Phone 7 applications with Mopapp
Consuming WCF Web APIs in Windows Phone
HTML App Host Framework for Phone 7
Building an HTML/HTML5... Based Application for Phone 7
HTML5 Snippets
Coded UI Test: Convert Normal CUIT to Data Driven CUIT using Visual Studio 2010
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Daily Links 08/06/2011
WP7 Mango: Know about application lifecycle
Developers: New Screenshot Tool Now Available
Seven useful tips and tools for Windows Phone 7 developers
WP7Contrib – Bing Maps REST Service Wrappers
Elevated Trust in Silverlight 4
" Apply custom chrome;
Directly access selected directories on the file system;
Use COM Interop to open up a whole range of features, including;
Running windows applications;
Integrating with Microsoft Office products;
Access to the Windows Speech API.
Relaxed user consent on Clipboard, WebCam and Microphone access
Full Screen Keyboard support
Cross Domain network calls, without the requirement for a Client Access Policy. "
Silverlight, HTML5 & Windows 8 : Where we are heading to ?
WCF Extensibility – Custom Serialization in Silverlight
making the common things you have to do in every windows phone application, like persist application settings, use tasks/choosers, log/trace, threading/asynchronous development etc. testable.
The Sterling NoSQL Database in a Mango World
Monday, June 6, 2011
Windows Phone: Capture + Resize Image using the phone camera
Sample code. It's not tested, so let me know if there are any issues:
Basically a wrapper around CaptureCameraTask with some image resize filling.
private void ConfirmMarkerPicture_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
CameraTask task = new CameraTask();
task.TakePicture(CameraTask_TakenPicture, true);
private void CameraTask_TakenPicture(BitmapImage image)
_imgMarker.Source = image;
… where _imgMarker is type Image.
There are also Resize Width and Height properties which can be set prior to TakePicture call.
Happy coding .
Daily Links 06/06/2011
"Project Silk provides guidance for building cross-browser web applications with a focus on client-side interactivity"
Project Silk Drop 10
"enables cross-platform portability of business logic and data access code, (Model + Controller), while supporting full, native and/or platform-specific presentation (Views). "
WP7 TombstoneHelper V2.0 released
Is your WP7 application ready for certification?
AgFx makes writing data-heavy Windows Phone applications child's play!
Task System in Windows Phone 7
Camera Capture Task
Email Address Chooser Task
MarketPlace Search Task
MarketPlace Hub Task
MediaPlayer Launcher
Phone Call Task
Phone Number Chooser Task
Photo Chooser Task
Search Task
SMS Compose Task
WebBrowser Task
Windows 8: HTML5 and AJAX/JavaScript == Modern UIs: HTML5, AJAX/JavaScript/jQuery
Yet Another Nail In Silverlight's Coffin?
Windows 8 and the future of Silverlight
How to: Build a Duplex Service for a Silverlight Client
Fun and Headaches with Custom Duplex Bindings for your WCF Services
Scale-out of Silverlight HTTP polling duplex WCF service in a web farm scenario
Friday, June 3, 2011
Daily Links 03/06/2011
GZIP Compressed Web Requests in WP7
Modifying the Silverlight Toolkit's DateTimePicker for WP7
Developing with the Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone 7
Populating a Windows Phone "Mango" SQL Server Compact database on desktop.
Pricing your App (and is WP7 worth it?)
Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone Q2 BETA1 now available for download
Mango Samples
"Motion API, augmented reality, background agents, working with the camera stream, notifications, reminders, and much more"
Silverlight 4 and COM: Sending Mails Using Outlook
Caliburn.Micro v1.1 RTW
WP7 Devices InfoGraphic
Previewing Windows 8
Microsoft gives the first official look of Windows 8 touch interface
Usability of iPad Apps and Websites:
2 Reports With Research Findings
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Windows Phone: Detecting Internet Connection
There are a few posts out there that explain using the Silverlight API to detect networks and connections. Some simple, and some a little more complete.
None of them really suited what I needed, which was a simple class that I could bind a UI element to, that would reflect the internet connectivity.
So I spent a few minutes writing a class of my own, using the knowledge gained from the articles above:
1) Must have a property that fired a property changed event: IsConnectedToInternet
2) This property must be updated on the UI thread, so as not to cause cross thread access error
3) Connection status needed to be polled, in order for property to be updated.
4) Singleton Pattern for ease of use.
Here's the code if anyone's interested:
Daily Links 28/05/2011
downlaod link
Augmented Mango - SLARToolkit for Windows Phone
Zune Detection and Network Awareness
A few tips for working with XAML inside of Visual Studio 2010.
User Experience Design Guidelines for Windows Phone
WP7 Barcode Reading
WP7: Searching your contacts
How to: Improve the Responsiveness of Your Application Using the Windows Phone Profiler
What's New in Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta?
Windows Phone 7 Mango - Silverlight and XNA integration
Monitor network connectivity in WP7 apps
Windows Phone 7 Development: How to change the Target Phone Version back to v7.0 from v7.1
EF 4.1 Validation
NOW AVAILABLE: New Windows Azure Platform Pricing Calculator
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Silverlight–Disable ListBox Selection
After some searching, the following seems to be the simplest solution:
Disable Selection of a ListBoxItem with this style:
Apply the style to the ListBox – like so:
Monday, May 23, 2011
Daily Links 23/05/2011
Simulating tombstone (suspended state) on Windows Phone 7 emulator
How to get the UniqueID of a Windows Phone device using C#
Offline Microsoft Silverlight Applications
Encouraging Windows Phone Marketplace Reviews
Things to consider before submitting your WP7 App
How to Publish Your AppMakr App into the Windows Phone Marketplace
WP7: Extending the ListBox Control
Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit
Game Changing Features in the Silverlight 5 Beta (Part 2)
TileSlider Control for WP7 (OpenSource)
NOW AVAILABLE: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 v1.2
Consider this when downloading large files on Windows Phone 7
New countries supported by Mango Windows Phone Update
Debugging Windows Phone 7 device network access with just a laptop
Creating a Windows Phone 7 Trial Application: Advanced Buy Now Implementation
EF Power Tools CTP1 are Great for Code First
Using IIS Express to Secure Silverlight and WCF Applications
Za Developers - getting a WP7 device
The best contract that I could find was a deal from 8ta:
R230 p/m
HTC Mozart (imo the best WP7 device currently available from a network)
90 mins any network
230 mins 8ta and landlines
25 MB Data
Unfortunately my current contract was only up for cancellation in October, and I really don't have that much patience, so I wondered over to expansys and bought a LG Optimus E900 for just under R3000 - I've seen it priced for as low as R2300 (the other WP7 devices were selling for just over 6G's)
The above mentioned 8ta contract can also be bought without a device with R2800 gift voucher, so it was a no-brainer.
I don't think the LG is available from a local network, but if you're willing to ignore the plain TFT screen, it has great features like 16Gig storage and 1500Ma battery.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Daily Links 13/05/2011
Top Tips for Building a Successful WP7 Application
XNA Game resources: Free sounds and music to use in your games
Using SterlingDB with Telerik RadJumpList to achieve maximum performance in LOB scenarios
Windows Phone 7 Development 101 - Off To Market!
Common Windows Phone 7 Performance Challenges
Coming in Mango:Sql Server CE
Windows Phone Beginner Series
TouchStudio - Hello World
Silverlight Validation: Resource File
Built-in GZip/Deflate Compression on IIS 7.x
Coded UI Test (CUIT) using Visual Studio 2010
Free EBook: Designing for WP7
Best Collection of Mobile User Interface Patterns
10 Reasons Why Architects and Developers Should Care about Cloud Computing
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Daily Links 03/05/2011
Wintellect Silverlight Touch Library
reusable library that provides Multi-Touch support for Silverlight applications by via Manipulations, Gestures, and specialized Behaviors and controls.
Windows Phone 7 Development Best Practices Wiki V0.1
How to customize the WP7 ListBox Selected Item | Part1: Control Template
Managing Tombstone State in a Windows Phone 7 Application
Windows Phone 7 and WCF Don't Play Nicely
FloatingWindow v1.2: multi-windows interface for Silverlight 4
Silverlight 5 Beta Rough Notes: Multiple Window Support
Silverlight 5: Elevated Trust In-Browser
Silverlight 5's New and Improved Threading Architecture
MSBuild Extension Pack April 2011 Release
StyleCop 4.5 RC1
Monday, April 18, 2011
Daily Links 18/04/2011
Silverlight 5 Beta: Let's deal with it's features
Debugging Data Bindings in XAML with Silverlight 5 Beta
Using Custom Markup Extensions in Silverlight 5
List of newly supported developer countries for Marketplace
At last!
A Quick Wrap-Up of Today's Windows Phone Announcements at MIX
cool devtools bro!
Mango adds Beta and Private Marketplaces to Windows Phone 7 and neglects Enterprise
w00t for the Beta Marketplace!
Mix11: Windows Phone 7 news
Microsoft TouchStudio for Windows Phone 7
EF 4.1 Released
EF Video Series
Code First/Entity Framework 4.1 Videos and Articles on MSDN
Building WP7 Custom Validation Control - Validation Logic
Make your own Angry Birds for WP7
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Daily Links 09/04/2011
New Features Announced for Silverlight 5
Windows Phone 7 - Creating Trial Applications
Windows Phone 7, Android and iOS with Mono I: Getting Started
Mono Android and iPhone Updates
Windows Phone 7, Android and iOS with Mono IV: Webservices
WP7 – How To Extend ListBox When Reaching Last Item
Coding4Fun Phone Tools Update
Now supporting NuGet
About Prompt
Input Prompt
Progress Overlay
Round Button
Round Toggle Button
Memory Counter
Message Prompt
Password Prompt
TimeSpan Picker
Toast Prompt
How to implement Template Binding in Silverlight Custom Control?
Silverlight coming to Xbox, bringing WP7 games along with it?
Monday, April 4, 2011
Daily Links 04/04/2011
Windows Phone 7http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Quick Tip #25: Safely modify the colors of your application
Silverlight on the iPad
WP7 Tombstone Helper Library
Bing Maps Silverlight Control SDK
5 Free Agile & Scrum Tools for Project Planning and Prioritizing
Jeff Wilcox's "Metro" design guide for developers, v1.00
Lessons Learned developing a Windows Phone 7 App
Microsoft Expression Blend Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows Phone 7
Start-to-Finish Guidance for Windows Phone 7 Application Development
WP7 TombstoneHelper
WP7 Screenshot Tool
Theme Forcing for Windows Phone 7 (Silverlight)
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Daily Links 23/03/2011
Forget These Not (WP7 submissions)
A Smarter TextBlock Control for WP7
Build great Windows Phone applications the easy way!
Windows Phone 7 Icon Set : metro second edition
Windows Phone 7 app tips: drawing my location on a map
Entity Framework 4.1 Release Candidate with Go-Live (with Final Release to follow in a month)
NUnit for Silverlight updated: NUnit 2.5.5, Silverlight 4
RC of Entity Framework 4.1 (which includes EF Code First)
Lighthouse: Silverlight Unit Test Runner Project released
Unit Testing XAML Data-Bindings in Silverlight
Stop Using Mocks
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Daily Links 13/03/2011
An app developers shares some sales numbers and lessons learnt.
WP7 Application Bar Icons
Creating a Custom Markup Extension in WPF (and soon, Silverlight)
Phoney Tools Updated (WP7 Open Source Library)
Native Extensions 2.0 For Microsoft Silverlight Released
A Numeric Input Control for Windows Phone 7
12 WP7 Coding4Fun Toolkit in Depth articles covering all controls
Mindscape Phone Elements released!
MEA countries - submit apps to marketplace via Yalla Apps
Using DockPanel in WP7
Testing Network Availability
Displays color comments in Visual Studio 2010, C#.
Using NuGet with Windows Phone Applications
Monday, March 7, 2011
Daily Links 07/03/2011
Fluent Assertions
Fluent test assertions.Supports MSTest, NUnit and XUnit.
ReSharper 6 Bundles Decompiler, Free Standalone Tool to Follow
Interesting timing after Reflector from RedGate has now become a payed app.
Creating theme friendly UI in WP7 using OpacityMask
WP7: Application performance and tuning
Windows Phone Cryptographic Storage opensource project
New Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2 officially released
Windows Phone Shake Gestures Library
Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer
Simple menu for your WP7 application
There's Only One Valid Metric For Developer Productivity And Quality
Creating Visual Studio Code Snippets
... and here's a VS Extension to make designing them easier
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Daily Links 19/02/2011
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 with SP1
Sterling Object-Oriented Database 1.0 RTM
Silverlight for Windows Phone Programming Tip #6
How to detect if you application is overlayed by another UI shell.
Reactive Drag and Drop Part 1
WP7 Element Binding samples
Windows Phone Silverlight Application Faster Load Time
Free win phone 7 book
Using the TabControl on Windows Phone 7
What I Learned In WP7-Issue 17
Official link icons to your application
Moonlight 4 Preview 1 is out
Interview questions for Senior Software Engineers
Friday, February 11, 2011
Daily Links 11/02/2011
Google Maps for Windows Phone 7 using Bing Map Control
Windows Phone Developer Tools January Update
Install the developer tools and the visual studio update
Styles in Silverlight: Everything a Developer Needs To Know
Using a Channel Factory in Silverlight (instead of adding a Service Reference). With cows.
Performance issue with progress bar in windows phone
Silverlight Memory Leak, Part 1
Coding4Fun Windows Phone Toolkit
Profiling and Logging Entity Framework Queries
Windows Phone 7 Marketplace stats
Salted Password Hashing
WP7 InputPrompt in depth
Simple Error Reporting on WP7 REDUX
WP7Contrib: Location Push Model
Free Silverlight Controls from MindScape
The case for the Bindable Application Bar for Windows Phone 7
Avoid ObservableCollection Memory Leak
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Daily Links 03/021/2011
Visual Studio Spec Explorer Power Tool
comes with UML Extension as well
Quickly building a trial mode for a Windows Phone application
Useful value converters
Windows Phone GPS Emulator
Well finally! Here's a download link
Pity is seems a little buggy. Map Images take forever to load, and it crashed when I tried using the search function.
Localize a Silverlight 4 Application
Silverlight for Windows Phone free e-book
Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Explained
WP7 working with Images: Content vs Resource build action
[Tool Review] – Scrumy – Lightweight Scrum and Kanban
Windows Phone Image Button
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Daily Links 26/01/2011
Coding4Fun Toolkit for WP7 Overview and Getting Started
Silverlight extensions library
"enable Silverlight 4 out-of-browser applications to interact with cool Windows 7 features"
Silverlight 4 and Asynchronous Validation with INotifyDataErrorInfo
Silverlight XAP file optimization
WP7 working with VisualStates: How to make a ToggleSwitch from CheckBox
WP7 Developer Guide from Patterns and Practices Team
On Testing Windows Phone 7 Applications - Part I: The Simple Stuff
Tasks: Launchers and Choosers–Windows Phone From Scratch #22
SQL SERVER 2008 - Missing Index Script - Download
Entity Framework GetById
Entity Framework Tutorials
Free video capture software
Monday, January 10, 2011
Daily Links 10/01/2011
Mono for Android
WP7 Capabilities
Detecting Users Win7 Mobile Theme Color
Windows Phone 7 Design Guidelines - Cheat Sheet
Customizing Silverlight ChildWindow Style using Blend
Entity Framework Code-First, oData & Windows Phone Client
500 Metro Style WP7 Icons
The Weekly Source Code 58 - Generating (Database) Test Data with AutoPoco and Entity Framework Code First
Delta Gaming Engine
Develop games for multiple platforms (Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android , Windows Phone 7, Xbox 360, Linux and Mac) using C# .NET!


text:
Today is my first time linking up with Amber at MommaInBloom for It's OK Thursday. I seriously love the idea of it and I'm super excited to be participating in it. Thanks Amber for the awesome idea!
It's OK..
That I bought a Brita water filter and pitcher – even though I really don't need one – because it was only 50 cents. Seriously, who could pass up such an awesome deal?
It's OK..
That I seriously plan on making quesadillas every single day because my mom bought me this awesome quesadilla maker. It actually puts little indents on the tortilla shell so you know where to cut for even slices!
It's OK..
That our yard is still looking a little rough. We removed a huge playset with mulch surrounding it from the back our yard a few months ago and then got the whole thing fertilized and treated to kill weeds and then had grass seed planted. Yes, I know everything is almost dead because it's winter, but it seriously looks SO much better already. I can't wait to see what it looks like in the spring and summer!
It's OK..
That our once gorgeous Christmas tree is now looking droopy and depressed. I realize it's a little late to still have it up but I wanted my mom to see it and then I didn't want to spend time taking it down when I could've been spending time doing something more fun with her. So it's still up.. and it looks so sad.. but it'll be taken down this weekend, I promise!
It's OK..
That our 6 month old sectional has two saggy cushions because our dogs like to lay on top of the cushions and look out the windows. I like them to be happy and comfortable and they seem to enjoy the couch as much as we do.. so I'm completely fine with it! And we can replace cushions – right?
It's OK..
That I'm seriously obsessed with trashy reality tv shows. I can't even deny it to anyone because it's pretty much all I watch.. along with other semi-trashy tv shows like Gossip Girl and Desperate Housewives. At this very moment I'm watching Snooki & J-Woww. Seriously. I would almost be embarrassed.. if I wasn't too busy enjoying myself watching this show.
So there you go! Hope you had a super awesome time and don't forget to check out MommaInBloom!
30 Day "What If" Challenge
Day 5 : What If you could ask God a question, what would it be?
Ugh, I'm sorry, I'm just not going to answer this question.
Challenge questions will continue tomorrow, I promise!


text:
What a great way to start the week
I really enjoy making collages so I thought why not join the Mosiac Monday club meet new wonderful people from allover the word. It sure is going to be exciting to see all the great work out there. This is my first contribution and I call it Bath and Blooms.
Bathroom with a nautical touch and Peonies
photo: Martina Svensson and Tyra Hallsénius-Lindhe
photo: Martina Svensson and Tyra Hallsénius-Lindhe
The peony is named after Paeon, a student of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. Asclepius became jealous of his pupil; Zeus saved Paeon from the wrath of Asclepius by turning him into the peony flower (wikipedia)
I wish you all a great week, this week with the beginning of the Easter holiday
and I also would like to say Thank you to our host Mary.


text:
Parrot, famous for their high-end headphones, has updated their Zik line with the new Zik 3. Design-wise, the Zik 3 looks incredibly similar to the previous Zik headphones. Despite that first impression, there's quite a lot of new features packed in the Parrot Zik 3.
On the outside, the Zik 3 receives new texture and color options for consumers to choose from. You can check them all out here in Parrot's site. One thing that you won't notice at first glance is the enlarged headband for improved comfort and to fit the guys with big brains.
It also has smart noise cancelling which changes depending on the environment you're in. If streaming your music through Bluetooth not good enough for you, the Zik 3 can be plugged through a USB as a digital analog converter to provide great sound.
Lastly, the Zik 3 is finally Qi-enabled, making it compatible with any Qi wireless charger to effortlessly charge the 830mAh battery inside. If you want to purchase Parrot's Zik 3 headphones, it's available for $400 and should be out in the market in a few days.


text:
i can only take part responsiblity for englands failed world cup bid. I thought my power point demo wasn't bad. I went on after Prince william. who was absolutely shitting himself in greenroom before.
i now fly straight from zurich to Bristol to deliver 2 other failed presentations @ inbetweentime festival
Kim noble will die (4th Dec). details here
You are Not Alone. (5th Dec) (dont bother coming to this as it'll be shit work in progress) details here
undeterred, i'm now working on the finishing touches to my peckham 2026 world cup logo. i'll be concentrating on the fantastic bus network.


text:
Tag: street ministries
Five Things You Might Want to Know About Mission Trips
I realize that people go on missions for reasons they don't always acknowledge or are aware of. It is true that sometimes, the motive or aftereffect is one of misplaced pride or smugness that one has done a good deed. This is what I know, based on my experiences on short term missions. I'm aware… Read More ›


text:
Obey Your Masters
Big Brother wants to know about every
In order to comply with a federal mandate to educate students on the danger of alcohol consumption and sexual assault, schools are forcing students to disclose incredibly personal details in order to register for classes.
The thing is, the well-connected makers of this software are overstepping the law -which only requires students be educated, not that they disclose any personal details- in order to scoop up valuable data that can be sold to third party affiliates.(Infowars)


text:
To make sure that your vehicle is operating in the best condition possible, make sure to go to regular maintenances. If parts are starting to wear out, they can be replaced before a much larger starts to form. If you notice an issue between visits it is recommended to bring the vehicle in as soon as you can.
One issue that might start to form is a problem with the coolant temperature sensor. This is an important part that will enable the control unit to send alerts if there is an issue with the engine. This could mean that the engine is overheating, or if the temperature is rising in the system. If the sensor becomes damaged, it should be replaced as soon as possible.
Function of it
The coolant temperature sensor operates based on the difference in temperature that it will encounter. As the temperature of the engine changes, the potential difference output of the device will also change. This is then measured by the control unit of the engine. As the temperature rises, the resistance of the coolant in the vehicle will drop. The voltage output is then sent to the electronic control unit of the vehicle. This constantly measures the resistance for the coolant in the vehicle.
Location of temperature sensor
The coolant temperature sensor is usually in close proximity of the thermostat of the cooling system for the vehicle. There may also be two temperature sensors in some vehicles. One will send information from the engine system to the control unit. The other will send information from the control unit to the dashboard. If there are two sensors, one of them is the coolant temperature sensor. The other one is for sending the information to the dashboard of the vehicle.
Signs it needs attention
One of the most common signs to know if the sensor might be bad is if it does not function properly. Usually this is by the engine overheating on a regular basis. The coolant may be leaking resulting in the temperature sensor malfunctioning. A bad coolant temperature system will result in the check engine light illuminating on the dashboard of the vehicle. Another sign is if the vehicle uses more gasoline than normal. Black smoke may also come out from the exhaust pipe. This can mean that the coolant temperature sensor in the vehicle is defective. If this is an issue, bring the vehicle in so we can inspect it for you.


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Update - July 14th, 2015
Apo-clobazam shortage is resolved. The drug identification number or DIN is 02244638.
Please note that PMS-clobazam, marketed by Pharmascience Inc, has been discontinued and is no longer available in Canada. A notice of this drug discontinuation is posted on www.drugshortages.ca. The drug identification number or DIN is 02244474.
Acetazolamide tablets are available again from AA Pharma. The drug identification number or DIN is 00545015.
Please note that Acetazolam (Valeant Canada LP) is no longer available, this product has been discontinued. A notice of this drug discontinuation is posted on www.drugshortages.ca. The drug identification number or DIN is 00295019.
Two clobazam drugs are in shortage:
APO-clobazam (DIN 02244638) is on back-order. The company's estimated resupply date is July 5, 2015.
PMS-clobazam (DIN 02244474) is not available. Resupply date is unknown.
The clobazam products that are not in shortage are: Teva-clobazam, Frisium and Clobazam-10 (available in Quebec)
People may experience difficulty locating PMS-clobazam at pharmacies. There is still some APO-Clobazam in the drug supply chain but it isn't known if there is enough to last until the next batch is released. If your drug store has run out of APO-clobazam the pharmacist may be able to find some from a different supplier or by contacting another drug store. We expect some people who currently take APO-clobazam or PMS-clobazam may receive an alternate brand if they need their clobazam prescription refilled in the next few weeks.
Please contact your local pharmacy to inquire about this drug shortage.


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Monday, May 22nd, 2006
Buttonator – Drag & Drop Web Buttons
Creating an interface for your Ajax application is half of the struggle, so what is a graphically challenged individual supposed to do? Thankfully, there are resources like Buttonator.com out there to save the day.
Buttonator is not about mid 90's online button creation; it has taken a simple idea and made it useable for real web users and designers in the year 2006. Buttonator is becoming a tool that designers want to use!
Not only does the tool allow you to create customized buttons on the fly, but plans are in the works to allow designers to provide "button templates" uploaded to the site to aid in creation of buttons to match your site anytime and anywhere (even by anyone).
You can choose from 15 different button styles, 8 different fonts, and tons of colors for the font and background colors (you can even specify them as HTML color codes). It's definitely a good resource, and if they can pull off the "button management" options they're looking for, it will grow even more.
Posted by Chris Cornutt at 7:30 am
9 Comments


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Mix 2011
A lot of announcements and new stuff released at Mix 2011 !
Haacked.com has more news and of course Scott Hanselman has more info as well.
The new tools will include modernizr to help asp.net mvc developer step into the age of css3.0 and html5.
My favourite videos: http://tinyurl.com/mvcfavs
Asp.net MVC 2.0 around the corner
When you're reading this article, the fact that Asp.net mvc 2.0 will be released soon won't come as a surprise. Both Phil Haack and Scott Guthrie amongst others have been blogging about it. I started a new web project recently and was doing the input validation using Xval by Steve Sanderson. I made a leap of faith and upgraded the project to MVC 2.0 because xval had some quirks (or actually the jquery validation plugin did). Luckily those were fixed by MVC's new build in validation system. The Gu has an excellent post on the subject. I am using the microsoft validation scripts for the client side, and they work very well, even taking culture settings into consideration out of the box.
There is a lot more to MVC 2.0, the templates are nicer. The Html.TextBoxFor(p => p.Id) is very handy, and make the input forms a lot easier to write. The ModelBinding seem to be much better now as well. With 1.0 I sometimes had to some of it by hand, as the binder didn't grasp what it was supposed to bind. I haven't run into that in 2.0.
The attributes for Actions / methods in your controller have been streamlined as well. You only need to put [HttpPost] over actions for Form Posts for example. One thing I haven't used yet but might come in handy on a big project some day might be the Areas. OdeToCode has a nice article on this new feature.
Over at TekPub, Steve Sanderson and Rob Conery are doing an excellent series on MVC and are also going into the new things of 2.0. If you can spare $28,- I highly recommend watching it.
jqGrid Package
A complete package is now available at http://www.jqgrid.com. This was mentioned in a comment on my post about jqgrid, but I thought it was worth a mention here :).
Enjoy !
Devexpress Asp.net MVC Grid
At work we work with Devexpress components for our windows applications. And I have used some like the pivotgrid and the reporting tool in asp.net websites. They are very powerful, but sometimes hard to use. They have so many options and properties, it's sometimes hard to find the right one.
Last week the devexpress blog showed a screenshot of their upcoming asp.net mvc grid. It looks suspisciously like jQuery's tablesorter plugin. What wasn't revealed though, is how this grid hooks up with the controller, what actions you have to implement etc. So I wonder how they're going to implement the model 'hookup' so to speak.
I am not really anxious to get these kind of tools and components for asp.net mvc, as you can already do that stuff using jquery and your ORM of choice, but you never know, maybe they will come up with something nice, that isn't overcomplicated and bloated ;).
Update : Oops that last part suggest that the devexpress components are bloated, but I didn't intend it that way. They can be a bit complicated to use though, but their support is always willing to send you a bit of example code if you're stuck.
Anyway I just hope they come up with something that's 'in the spirit' of MVC, if you know what i mean !
Editing in jqGrid with asp.net mvc
Phil Haack already posted how to use the jQuery grid 'jqgrid' on his blog haacked.com. What wasn't covered in that tutorial was editing, so I thought it would be nice to add that here.
To be honest it gave me a bit of a headache, as I had created a sample table that had the ID column as primary key/autonumber field and jqgrid posts back an ID as well. Mind you, that is the ROWID and not the ID of your record. In a demo app. this can easily go unnoticed as those two are the same when you just add a few records.
After reading up in the docs, and trying to add an extra parameter to the save call (which accidently broke the whole grid), I simply added a hidden column that contains the primary key.
The table I used for this demo was a simple Employees table with an id, first and lastname.
Here's what the javascript looks like:
var lastsel; jQuery("#list").jqGrid({ url: '/GridDemo/GetGridData', datatype: 'json', mtype: 'GET', colNames: ['IdNr','Id', 'FirstName', 'LastName'], colModel: [ { name: 'IdNr', index: 'IdNr', width: 40, align: 'left', editable: true, editrules: { edithidden: true }, hidden: true }, { name: 'Id', index: 'Id', width: 40, align: 'left', editable: false }, { name: 'FirstName', index: 'FirstName', width: 200, align: 'left', editable: true, edittype: 'text', editoptions: { size: 20, maxlength: 30} }, { name: 'LastName', index: 'LastName', width: 300, align: 'left', editable: true, edittype: 'text', editoptions: { size: 20, maxlength: 30}}], onSelectRow: function(id) { if (id && id !== lastsel) { jQuery('#list').restoreRow(lastsel); jQuery('#list').editRow(id, true); lastsel = id; } }, editurl: "/GridDemo/GridSave", pager: jQuery('#pager'), rowNum: 10, rowList: [5, 10, 20, 50], sortname: 'Id', sortorder: "desc", viewrecords: true, imgpath: '/content/themes/steel/images', caption: 'Employees' }); });
The IdNr is the hidden field, with the edithidden: true editrules you make sure it gets posted once a row has been edited. I choose for inline editing, there are other forms of editing in the jqgriddocs.
As you can see the editurl is where the data that has been edited will be posted to. That controller action looks like this (using linq2sql, but ofcourse any type of model will do) :
public ActionResult GridSave(int id,int idnr, string firstName, string lastName) { jQueryGridModelDataContext db = new jQueryGridModelDataContext(); Employee e = db.Employees.SingleOrDefault(p => p.ID == idnr); if (!(e == null)) { e.FirstName = firstName; e.LastName = lastName; db.SubmitChanges(); return Content("true"); } else { return Content("false"); } }
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or if I made some sort of horrible mistake :).
jQuery Search box and Asp.net MVC
This is a simple run through on how to create a fancy search box, that has suggestions underneath the input box, and that also can do autocomplete. For this example I used the Chinook database from codeplex and the Artists table and the autocomplete jquery plug-in that you can find at pengoworks.com.
There are plenty of jQuery plug-ins that do the same thing, I picked this one as it's very easy to use. As the docs show, the only thing you need to do is hook your input text box up to autocomplete and provide the url where it gets it's data from. The view looks like this.
<asp:Content ID="headerContent" ContentPlaceHolderID ="headerPlaceHolder" runat ="server">  <link href="../../Content/jquery.autocomplete.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />  </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">
Look for an artist
 <form action="/Artists/Search" method="post" id="searchForm"> <input type="text" name="searchTerm" id="searchTerm" value="" size="10" maxlength ="30" /> <input type ="submit" value="Search" /> </form>
 </asp:Content>
As you can see I usually have a container in the header of the master page where javascript and custom css files go. Note that you should use the Url.Content method so you get the proper urls when you deploy this on a 'real server'.
Now for the backend, we need an action that returns a string of results to the autocomplete call.
public ActionResult getAjaxResult(string q) { string searchResult = string.Empty; var artists = (from a in _db.Artists where a.Name.Contains(q) orderby a.Name select a).Take(10); foreach (Artist a in artists) { searchResult += string.Format("{0}|\r\n", a.Name); } return Content(searchResult); }
By using linq to sql I get the top 10 results from the database from the Artists table and return that as a string to the autocomplete call. The user's input string is a string called q that is put into the action as a url parameter like this: artists/getAjaxResult/?q=symphony. In order to make that work, you need to add a route to the routes table.
routes.MapRoute( "ArtistSearch", "Artists/Search/{searchTerm}", new { controller = "Artists", action = "Search", searchTerm = "" } ); routes.MapRoute( "ArtistAjaxSearch", "Artists/getAjaxResult/", new { controller = "Artists", action = "getAjaxResult" } );
The first route is used once the user has pressed the submit button, the ArtistAjaxSearch is used for the autocomplete script.
So what happens when the user presses the submit button, whether or not he picked an item from the autocomplete results ?
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)] public ActionResult Search(string searchTerm) { if (searchTerm == string.Empty) { return View(); } else { // if the search contains only one result return details // otherwise a list var artists = from a in _db.Artists where a.Name.Contains(searchTerm) orderby a.Name select a; if (artists.Count() == 0) { return View("notfound"); } if (artists.Count() > 1) { return View("List", artists); } else { return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id = artists.First().ArtistId }); } } }
As you can see, when a single result is found the details view is shown to the user, by using a redirect to the details method. If there is more than one result, the list of artists is shown. When nothing is found, a simple message is shown. You can of course move the search term to that view as well, to show the user what input he did etc., but that is straightforward stuff.
Another way to do this, would be to insert the artist table as an array and let the autocomplete script use those values for it's magic, all on the client side. This would be doable as long as that table wouldn't get too long. If there are 1000s of records, this wouldn't be a very good solution ;).
Hope this helps someone out there :), feel free to add any comments or questions !
jQuery-Ui Tabs and Asp.net MVC
Clay made a comment on my previous post and asked how I would use asp.net mvc with jQuery-UI's tabs. I have slapped together an example project that shows how you could implement the tabs in an asp.net mvc web site. I created an ajax and a regular tab example.
Basically I use a partial view for each tab. This partial view is then also used for the ajax response.

Text 1

Text 2

Text 3

 < % Html.RenderPartial("_tab1", Model); %>

 < % Html.RenderPartial("_tab2", Model); %>

 < % Html.RenderPartial("_tab3", Model); %>

There is no database access in the example project, I sort of simulated a database by using a service model that provides the viewmodel that holds the texts that are displayed in the three tabs.
Regarding the ajax controller method, it would of course be better to not get the entire viewmodel in a real world situation and then pass that on to the view, but since this is a brief demo I thought I could get away with this in this example ;).
public ActionResult getAjaxTab(int id) { string viewName = string.Empty; TabExample.Services.tabTextService serv = new TabExample.Services.tabTextService(); tabViewModel myModel = serv.getTabViewModel(); switch (id) { case 1: viewName = "_tab1"; break; case 2: viewName = "_tab2"; break; case 3: viewName = "_tab3"; break; default: viewName = "_error"; break; } System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000); return PartialView(viewName, myModel); }
I am using this js function to update the tabs.
function getContentTab(index) { var url='< %= Url.Content("~/Home/getAjaxTab") %>/' + index; var targetDiv = "#tabs-" + index; var ajaxLoading = "<img id='ajax-loader' src='<%= Url.Content("~/Content") %/>/ajax-loader.gif' align='left' height='28' width='28'>"; $(targetDiv).html(" " + ajaxLoading + " Loading... "); $.get(url,null, function(result) { $(targetDiv).html(result); }); }
There is a select event on the tabs that you can hook into as well, I just find it easier to just use the onclick event of the tab div's.
Hope this is some help to anybody out there, it was fun to create this small project. If anyone has any suggestions, or questions let me know in the comments !


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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Uncle Vincent wants to carve!
I'm working on something which led me to read about the exorcism of Annelise Michel. That in turn made me want to ask y'all: what's the creepiest and strangest possession/exorcism story you've ever come across?
Anonymous post!
How to make an Anonymous Comment:
Select 'Leave a comment'
Then 'More Options...'
Click the drop-down menu next to 'From:', on the little LJ dude
Select 'Anonymous'
Bam! Done! Now you're a regular ol' nobody.
Keep it nice, community rules apply as usual.
I seeee you!
Now is your chance to go anon and share your secrets! (Although we already know you think Pyramid Head is sexy. You should really find a better hiding place for your diary.)
don't make me turn this post around and turn off anon. I will if there's any harassment, real life gore/crime scene photos, trolling, etc. posted.
Dystopian teen fiction
So I've been reading the Hunger Games series (almost finished the last book!) and this week I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.There is a film based on the book too which I intend to watch tonight.
The plotline from Amazon if anyone has never read it: I chose a deliberately vague one so as not to give certain things away!
Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham - an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. The children there were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there? It is only years later that Kathy, now aged thirty-one, finally allows herself to yield to the pull of memory. What unfolds is the haunting story of how Kathy, Ruth and Tommy slowly come to face the truth about their seemingly happy childhoods - and about their futures. Never Let Me Go is a uniquely moving novel, charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of our lives.
So yeah my mind has been very much on Dystopian teen fiction lately! So has anybody else read it? In the lecture, my tutor gave us a list of similar books which you may enjoy if you enjoyed this one. I've put them under the cut, with a brief description :)
( Collapse )
I am certainly going to enjoy reading these books!
Friendly Reminder for the flood of new members trying to join:
We do this for the sake of the community, not because we like rejecting people. CONTACT A MOD.
Comments are screened if you would like to discuss this right here.
Creep on!
Creative Creepies!
I wanted to share a video some friends and I put together for a contest and invite you guys to share your personal creepy creations!
The video is for our cover of the OP to the amazing and super creepy Higurashi no Naku Koro ni which, if you don't know, if a horror/thriller/omgwhy anime that everyone who likes anime should watch. The video itself was put together by the lovely aeonispi and the art is all me bby ; D (except the chibi's at the beginning. Those are all Ruby!) Warning for slight gore.
So show me what you got!
(no subject)
"We're pleased to report things should be pretty much back to normal now for everyone -- you may encounter a few error pages for a while, but they should clear on a refresh. You should be able to remain logged in, make entries, post comments, etc, without blank pages or connection errors, etc. Huge thanks to both our U.S. and Moscow teams, who have worked around the clock to get LiveJournal restored. Thank you!! [~AZ]"
Now that LJ is HOPEFULLY back up and running, have patience with us. There are posts pending in the queue, lots of new members to approve and emails to answer. We're working on it!
Also, the last attacks removed many, many members for whatever reason. If you find yourself removed, email a mod or leave a comment here and we'll get you back in.
Welcome home, Creepies <3
The Sons of Ben. Number Three.
My elementary school, a few flat, one-story buildings connected by windowed corridors, lay across a narrow access road from the cemetery. A modest playground was situated by the inner curve of the road. I was making swirlies in the sandbox with my fingers when I first saw the tall man standing at the wrought iron fence. He was bald on top, long-haired, the hair a flat brown, damp. He wore tiny wire glasses that sat crookedly across a substantial and accusatory nose. A white shirt that showed shadowed ribs from under a dark grey waistcoat. He did not have to beckon with his long finger; his eyes, a brilliant blue, called me across the road. I was six. He could have been forty; he could have been fifty.
How did I know that he was my father? I had known only that my mother was my mother and had been so for eternity. I had known forever that the man who lived with her could not have been my real father, though that was the charade. He treated me like a baffling stranger, and I was grateful for it.
He was vaguely unpleasant, and one sensed he was somehow...off. The armpits of his white striped shirts were perpetually stained. He spoke bumblingly, in a dopey and sing-song voice. He worked at and for the church in some capacity I never understood, and The Lord came first for him. Perhaps only for him. He seemed removed. His conversations with my mother were hushed and muted and few. They would read most nights; she her romances and he his worn Bible.
But the man at the cemetery was a vital man, a man who looked at the world with fire and at me with only embers, which I regarded as warmth. Warmth and excited recognition. The first time I saw him, as I said, I went to him across the road. He knelt and regarded me, grinning widely. I noted that behind his yellowed teeth was another full set of teeth--top and bottom, also yellow, also pointing this way and that. His gums were red and, below and above his canines, split to the bone.
He said to me that day the following: You must always take what you want, however you can. You'll find, he said, that once you are known for taking what you want, you won't have to anymore. It will be given to you freely.
Then he rose, not without effort, and strode away. I went back across the street and Mrs. Wisert looked at me quizzically and with trepidation. I shrugged and went in to fetch my coat and go home.
The next time I saw the man was not more than a week later. It was drizzling rain. He was by the fence again, and I rushed to his side. He told me I knew who he was. He said, I have some history for you. Listen carefully and do not speak. You were not born alone. You had a twin. I knew that one of you was good and one of you was evil. Like in a fairy tale. I buried the evil boy next to the mausoleum.
He gestured. The mausoleum was a small, windowless brick house with a pointed roof and a small crooked spire.
I only saw him once more, years later, as I was showing my new wife my old school. She was in using the bathroom, and I turned and there he was. He was grinning at me, but he turned and strode away when I approached. He looked like a giant bird to me, somehow, as though black wings would sprout from his back, and he would leap into the air, blotting out everything. He didn't. He merged with the fog.
I walked to where he had stood, and there was a transistor radio leaning up against the fence, rusted with age. A window revealed squarish white numbers along a gray line, a red line bisecting the 8s most of the way to the left. I turned it on and his voice spoke through a squeal of static. "It's an an-teek," he said, drawing out and tasting the word.
When I was fifteen I went to the mausoleum and next to it found a patch of lighter colored grass. I had brought with me a shovel, and I dug as the crickets chirped all around me. The blade hit wood, and I pulled up a small box. I lifted the twisted, torn black clasp and raised the lid. The box was empty. But I remembered from long ago the inside of the box, the smell of varnish and the lines of light that glowed, glowed more faintly, and then disappeared.
I was not the good one.


text: 'Tea Tags' is a series, inspired by labels with questions that a tea make has bound to it's teabags. For a whole year, I saved the labels from the teabags I used for my tea drinking addiction ; ) and each month I had to choose one question that was on them. I used the questions for inspiration, which I interpreted freely. This is the first series in which I used myself as a model. It is still in progress and will have 12 images when it's finished.


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What is the TA Portal?
The TA Portal is a securely encrypted web-based platform, allowing for efficient and effective information exchange between patients, referrers and Theranostics Australia staff from anywhere in the world. All information is stored in a secure server, prior to off-site anonymised storage for a legally mandatory 7 year period.
NOTE: The TA Portal is currently in Beta phase. Please ensure to contact us if you encounter an error or issue and we will look to resolve it immediately.
How does the TA Portal work?
The TA Portal allows verified and approved medical providers the ability to create an account on a patient's behalf and directly refer them to Theranostics Australia. Patients are then able to provide Theranostics Australia consultants with accurate and detailed information to help facilitate the development of clinically appropriate management plans. This involves completing a comprehensive questionnaire, while also uploading relevant medical files, such as previous blood tests and imaging results, and any other important documentation to the TA Portal, further assisting the Theranostics Australia consultants in developing a clear understanding of a patient's medical situation. At present, all information is requested in English; however alternative language support is planned for the near future.
NOTE: Patients outside Australia can create their own account and self-refer, Australian patients require a GP or specialist referral.
How do I use the TA Portal?
- • Visit your GP or Specialist
- • Advise them of Theranostics Australia and the TA Portal
- • Registered Medical Providers are able to create an account on your behalf
- • Obtain a GP or Specialist referral
- • Send referral to Theranostics Australia via Email
- • A Theranostics Australia consultant will create an account on your behalf
- • Go to the TA Portal Home Page
- • Click Register
- • Click Patient Outside Australia
- • Enter Your Information into the Registration Form
- • Click Create Account
- • A Confirmation Email will be sent to your dedicated email address
- • Click the Confirmation Email link sent to your dedicated email address
- • Go to the TA Portal Home Page
- • Log In with your Assigned Credentials
- • Agree to the TA Portal Legal Notice and Privacy Statement
- • Complete Questionnaire
- • Click Save
- • Click Browse and Upload Files to my Account
- • Drag Files into the Upload Box, or Click Browse to use the File Explorer
- • Click Upload
- • A Notification is sent to Theranostics Australia


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While you're stopping to smell the flowers this May, you might want to admire some sweet sales too.
Here's everything you should buy (and skip) during the month of May.
Buy: Furniture
We recommended holding off on major household purchases until May. That's because Memorial Day is a great time to buy indoor furniture, patio furniture and even mattresses at discounted prices.
Last year, J.C. Penney discounted select furniture styles up to 50%, while Crate & Barrel offered a promo code good for 15% off select items.
This year, Memorial Day is May 30, but sales often begin at least a week earlier. Some retailers are already gearing up. Remember that some prices are automatically reduced — as was the case at J.C. Penney in 2015 — but other sales require consumers to input a coupon code at checkout.
Skip: Home electronics
We suggest making electronics purchases in November, when prices on laptops, tablets, gaming consoles and other electronics are usually at their lowest, thanks to Black Friday events. Last year, a handful of major stores sold video game console bundles for just $299.
Buy: Small kitchen appliances
While you're outfitting your home with a new sofa, chair or table at Memorial Day sales, check out the coffee makers, blenders and other small kitchen appliances too.
Look for discounts at department stores, such as Macy's, Kohl's, J.C. Penney and Kmart, as well as at home and kitchen specialty stores.
Last year, Macy's offered up to 20% off select kitchen items, and Williams-Sonoma handed out savings of up to 60%. We also saw plenty of free shipping offers for orders above a certain threshold.
Skip: iPhones
Apple recently released its 4-inch iPhone SE. This announcement might have you itching for an upgrade, but hold off for a few more months.
Rumors suggest that the tech company will be unveiling a new iPhone 7 at its annual keynote event in September. If that pans out, prices on previous iPhone models at Apple and third-party retailers are likely to drop.
Buy: Spring apparel
Clothing sales are a given each May. Now that warm-weather styles have been on shelves for a few months, you can expect retailers to bring down prices.
Our best advice for finding these deals? First, check retailers' sale sections or clearance racks both in-store and online. Then register for your favorite clothing store's email list — it might send you exclusive deals. Finally, fill your cart with sale-priced shirts and shorts while you're getting that KitchenAid mixer and coffee table on Memorial Day.
Bonus: "Star Wars" Day
May 4 is "Star Wars" Day, and you'll be feeling the force when you see the "Star Wars"-themed deals and discounts that come on this day each year. Last year, we spotted price cuts on apparel inspired by the movie series, video games and more. If prior years are any indication, we expect savings at outlets including Amazon and the Disney Store.
Courtney Jespersen is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website.