It’s been a while in the making, but the new version of CR_Documentor is out.

It took a while because I did two pretty major updates to it.

First, I totally overhauled the syntax preview generation so each preview style (NDoc or Sandcastle) uses the same syntax preview engine. As part of that, I added a bunch more testing and support for complex syntax like multiple type parameters with multiple type constraints per parameter. What? What does that mean? It means you can see stuff like this in your preview:

And, of course, it works in VB, too (which, based on the way Sandcastle does it, actually all ends up on one line…):

The other thing I did was add support for serving images and other files, so now when you look at the preview for a class and see all the members listed, you see the associated icons, too. Not a huge deal, but it does make the preview more authentic.

Hopefully that adds to you documentation preview enjoyment.

As always, it’s free. Go get it!

I know technology is fallible and I know my standards are probably far too high for things, but I find that once a technology or gadget has shown its imperfections to me by way of failing or misbehaving, I have a really difficult time being excited about it or trusting it again.

For quite some time I was absolutely addicted to playing drums on Rock Band. I’ve always thought I would be a decent drummer and while I know it’s not “real drums” it’s fun and fulfills that tiny dream. I bought the Ion Drum Rocker kit and totally rocked out. Until, of course, I found a problem during practice mode where hitting the yellow cymbal changes the tempo on you. After switching out the drum kit controller like three times with Ion Support (which, by the way, sucks), it turns out the problem is software-based. I also started noticing things start randomly misbehaving, like the kick pedal not registering (or going off by itself), hits not registering on the pads… and that turns out to be a funky combination of static buildup, needing to unplug the drum controller for a few seconds, and bad luck.

During the course of solving that problem, I honestly lost my feel for it. I don’t play nearly as often now, and it’s because I don’t trust the technology to behave. To do what it’s intended to do. Playing it has become a bit less fun and a bit more worry and stress over why it’s not working.

Last week I got a Droid X. Love it. Had a bit of a weird issue where the speakers suddenly lost volume but fixed it by a simple power cycle. Then we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium this past weekend and I noticed that there’s a flaw with the camera CMOS censor such that in darker shots there’s a noticeable magenta spot, like there’s something on the lens. Suddenly, I’m slightly less trusting, and slightly less enamored with it. I still like the phone, but I find I’m not tinkering with it or messing around with it as much since I saw that.

I stopped at the Verizon store and I’m getting a replacement unit, so it should be fixed when the new unit arrives in a day or two. It’s just… I hope I don’t lose my passion for it. My enthusiasm. It’s shown me weakness, fallibility, and it’s going to take some time for me to trust it again.

I am, admittedly, a perfectionist. I hold myself to very high standards and “it works” is generally not good enough. I’m thinking, though, that even if “it works” is good enough, there’s another question to be asked: is it trustworthy? Can I trust a product or service not to break in the middle of an operation? Even if a product isn’t super-feature-rich, if it does one thing and one thing really well, I’m fine with that.

Reliability is high on my priority list. Is it high on yours?

Every year for Jenn’s birthday we take a trip to the beach with some friends of ours. This year we decided to go down to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.

I took several pictures that I’ll have to post later, but I did get a nice video of the Passages of the Deep exhibit where you walk under the various fish. This particular video shows the sharks in the exhibit.

I’m running Windows Server 2008 R2 as a non-admin user with User Account Control turned on. The stupid Adobe Reader update thing pops up in the corner saying “Update available” and when I tell it to install, I get:

Error 1625: Update failed. Update not permitted by system policy.

Last time I fixed this by using Autoruns and removing the Adobe Updater thing from the list of programs to run. Of course, that means no updates unless I apply them manually, either. Today I found this forum thread with the actual answer:

1. Open C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0 in Windows Explorer.
2. Right-click AdobeARM.exe and “Run As Administrator.”
3. When the “update available” balloon pops up in the corner, tell it to install. It should work now because it has the right permissions.

Done and done. Sort of annoying that Adobe hasn’t fixed this but… well, it is what it is.

Visual Studio has a nasty habit of forgetting your default browser settings at seemingly arbitrary times. Couple that with the fact that you can only really switch your default browser in VS using this “Browse With…” context menu on a browsable ASPX or HTML page (and the fact that in your MVC solutions you probably don’t have a directly browsable ASPX or HTML page) and this whole thing is a nightmare.

Enter Hanselman, who has posted a Powershell solution to the problem. YAY!