Ralph Arvesen Vertigo Blog

Snakebite

Ralph Arvesen — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:54:00 GMT

I was bitten by a water moccasin (also called cottonmouth) a while back. The kids and I were coming back from a July 4th fireworks display and decided to stop by a stream to see what was out at the time. We came across a water snake and I thought it would be a good idea to get a better look. I was s ... (More)

Twelve plus one = Eleven plus two

Ralph Arvesen — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:30:00 GMT

'Twelve plus one' contains the same letters as 'eleven plus two'. I did not come up with this, but thought it was interesting.

Scorpion in swimsuit, not pleasant

Ralph Arvesen — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:40:00 GMT

I put on my swimsuit and felt a sharp burning sting. It turns out a scorpion was inside my swimsuit and stung me 3 times in the leg before I could get them off... it could have been a lot worse. It was a little more serious than usual since my lips were tingling for a while afterwards.I find sco ... (More)

Big centipede escapes

Ralph Arvesen — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:31:00 GMT

The kids found a Giant Redheaded Centipede crawling around outside so we caught it and put Bob (kids named it Bob right away) in a cage to observe for a few days. It started off well, it ate 7 mealworms the first evening, but we were surprised to discover it had escaped the next morning. Now w ... (More)

DynamicTypeService error in Silverlight projects

Ralph Arvesen — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:11:00 GMT

I ran into an error with web services when updating an application from Silverlight 2 to Silverlight 3. Custom tool error: Failed to generate file: Unable to find service 'DynamicTypeService'. Ensure that the application is installed correctly. This turned out to be a problem with th ... (More)

Visual Studio 2008, missing user-handled column in Exceptions window

Ralph Arvesen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:51:00 GMT

Sometimes I find that the User-handled column in the Exceptions window is missing in Visual Studio 2008. It can be displayed by selecting Tools / Options… / Debugging / General / and checking Enable Just My Code (Managed Only). Then the User-handled column is available.

Snapshot of XAML control, save to image

Ralph Arvesen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:52:00 GMT

You can use the RenderTargetBitmap class to generate an image from a UI element. For example, say you want to generate an image from the XAML element ThePanel.

Make sure Silverlight application runs on different languages

Ralph Arvesen — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:09:00 GMT

It's a good idea to make sure your Silverlight application runs correctly when running on a system that uses a different language. This is not localizing an application (changing the user interface), but just making sure it executes as expected. For example, the following code executes corre ... (More)

Silverlight, handling events for nested controls

Ralph Arvesen — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:51:00 GMT

Silverlight does not have as much support to handle events from unreferenced child controls as WPF. For example, say you have the following control hierarchy and Page needs to handle events from the Child Controls. This is easy in WPF since you can use commands, or UIElement.AddHandler ... (More)

Styles and templates for built in Silverlight controls

Ralph Arvesen — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:02:00 GMT

It can be useful to look at styles and templates for built in Silverlight controls; learn how controls work, figure out why something is not working as expected, or copy styles and templates into your own project. Here are several ways to look at the styles and templates for Silverlight control ... (More)