2009 is coming to as end and it’s time to look back on what we did this year. Here is the list of 10 most popular posts of 2009 on this blog: WPF XAML Data Binding Cheat Sheet Getting a WPF application to pick up the correct regional settings WPF Printing Part 2 – The Fixed Document WPF Printing Part 1 – Printing Visuals WPF Data Binding Cheat Sheet Update - The Internationalization Fix ...

I’ve upgraded the software running this blog, everything should continue to work exactly as before but if you see anything wrong please send me a message or leave a comment. Earlier today someone managed to insert some unsafe HTML into a comment on this blog, the actual comment didn’t do anything (it printed the word “test”) but the same technique can be used to insert malicious code into a comment. This was possible due to a bug in my blogging software, the bug was fixed for the latest version so I dropped everything and upgraded the blog. ...

I’m moving this blog, the Nbd-Tech web site, e-mail and everything else to a brand new web server. I’m trying to complete this move with no interruptions – buts its likely there will be some intermediate problems while services switch over. I apologize in advance for any problems that ay happen – and if you can’t use this site or send me e-mail just wait a little and try again.

I’ve just released version 2.5 of yaTimer – my time tracking application (3 days ahead of schedule). yaTimer 2.5 is a free upgrade for all customers, you can get the latest version from the upgrade page.

I’m writing this here because this information is hard to find, searching for related keywords will get you a lot of incorrect answers, I hope this post will save someone (maybe even me) time in the future. Windows Firewall and non-secure FTP traffic Windows firewall can be configured from command line using netsh command. 2 simple steps are required to setup Windows Firewall to allow non-secure FTP traffic 1) Open port 21 on the firewall: netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="FTP (no SSL)" action=allow protocol=TCP dir=in localport=21   2) Activate firewall application filter for FTP (aka Stateful FTP) that will dynamically open ports for data connections: netsh...

Disclaimer: This post talks about unreleased software, there will be some small changes before the yaTimer 2.5 is released, yaTimer 2.5 will be a free upgrade to all existing customers. yaTimer had the option to run in the system tray almost from the beginning, the icon change color if you have active timers and a balloon popup can show you the list of running tasks. In this version the tooltip and balloon popup tests are a bit nicer, there are two new option in the right click menu (Pause all and Restart Paused Tasks) and everything you can do from the...

Unless there’s some huge showstopper bug yaTimer 2.5 will be released on or before December 20th 2009 and will be a free upgrade to all existing customers. I’m currently working hard on testing yaTimer and fixing bugs, when I’m happy with the quality of the software I’ll release it. As always, I have a very long list of features that didn’t make it into this version, and if you asked for one of those features I’m truly sorry – but in any project you have to make painful decisions about cutting features or the software will never be...

The Disclaimer: This post talks about yaTimer 2.5, version 2.5 of yaTimer isn’t released yet and as such can change before the release, yaTimer 2.5 will be a free upgrade for all existing customers. The “set total time” feature existed in yaTimer almost since the beginning and adding an easy way to add and subtract time has been one of the most requested feature ever. On a side note, requests for this feature have virtually stopped since releasing the last version, there’s an important lesson there for software developers and I’ll write a blog post about it...

Disclaimer (again): version 2.5 of yaTimer, my time tracking software, wasn’t released yet, the feature I talk about here may change until the final release, yaTimer 2.5 will be a free upgrade for all existing customers. This is an often requested feature, and one that I objected to for a long time, when you start or stop a task (your choice) a small balloon will pop up and ask you to enter a comment for the newly created timing event. If you ignore the message it will fade out and disappear after a few seconds. The reason that I objected to this...