On February 28, 2009 yaTimer will be featured on BitsDuJour.com (a deal of the day site), for 24 hours only you will be able to buy a yaTimer license for just below half the normal price. This is the first time yaTimer is offered at such a deep discount and it will probably be a while before this happens again (if it ever does), so if you are considering getting yaTimer and you like a good deal this is your chance. You can only get the discount from this page at BitsDuJour

Joe needed to hang a picture on the wall, he searched the web for picture hanging technologies and left some messages in some forums, after reading everything he found he conducted a short evaluation of different methodologies and in the end decided to use a nail and an hammer, he drove the nail into the wall with the hammer and hang the picture on it, he congratulated himself for the successful project. Next morning it was time for Joe’s breakfast, he wanted to finish eating quickly so he decided to go with a proven technology for the eating project and reached...

UPDATE: I wrote a more in dept post about getting Wpf to pick up regional settings and even update them on the fly There is a new version of the WPF Data Binding Cheat Sheet, there is a small block of code you have to add to any WPF application in order to correctly format dates and numbers using data binding (I define “correct” as what the user would expect), read on for the full details and the required code for your copy-paste pleasure. By default, when you use data binding and the target property is a string, WPF will format your...

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, what does that mean for you? That most of the time 80% of the profit comes from 20% of the customers, 80% of software crushes are caused by 20% of the bugs, 80% of the technical support cost goes to supporting 20% of the customers, 80% of the people use only 20% of the software features and so on. In almost every part of life (or business) whatever you look at is divided disproportionally – and you...

Setting goals, real measurable goal with a deadline is a huge motivator, when you can objectively tell if you succeeded or failed and you have a deadline to achieve that goal you have no choice but to work toward that goal. When you have subjective goals or you don’t set a deadline the motivation isn’t there because you can’t fail. Set a goal, make sure you can objectively decide if you succeeded or failed – “release second product by 1/1/2010” is a good goal, “work more on second product during 2009” is all but useless. ...

One of the best things about WPF is the advanced data binding support, the Binding class that is used to create data bindings has many interesting and useful options. And I never remember the more advanced options when I’m writing XAML. So I wrote a very detailed “cheat sheet” for the WPF Binding class, I hope you’ll find it useful. WPF XAML Data Binding Cheat Sheet (PDF), latest version, updated February 22. This is the first draft, I’ll update it when I find mistakes and based on comments to this blog post. If this becomes popular I’ll write similar documents for other WPF/XAML features. This cheat...

In yaTimer version 2.3 I’ve completely changed the way yaTimer draws itself and interact with Windows, I’ve done this to be more compatible with Vista and 3rd party window management tools. Unfortunately, I made a small mistake when coding this change and introduced some annoying bugs into the “minimize to notification tray” feature (accessible from the options window). yaTimer 2.3.2 contains the fix for those bugs, it also contain some internal changes that should improve the drawing performance of the software. You can upgrade from any version of yaTimer for free at the upgrade page, just install the new version over any older...