Three months ago, I installed the NoSpamToday! SMTP Proxy on my dedicated server box (you can read about the adventures encountered in my blog entry Web applications and SMTP proxies don't mix well). Today I had a look at the statistics:

On average, the proxy rejects four out of five mails before they reach the mail server - for reasons ranging from malformed headers, banned file extensions, virus-contaminated attachments, and a SpamAssassin-based spam detection. Needless to say that my inbox is virtually spam-free since then. Neato.

New runtime components are available which are compatible with the release versions of .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, as well as Office "12" Beta 1 (which I don't have anyways).

When I saw the MSDN Magazine article A Visual Studio Add-In That Converts C# Code To Visual Basic I simply had to extend this addin with our parser-based converter. Basically, I took the code I wrote for Code Converter for .NET 2.0 - Online, as well as Offline and put it into the addin, which has now an additonal conversion service in its list (conveniently the first one):

I have also updated the installer (which is now a release build, why was that provided as a debug build in the first place?), to be found in the PasteAsVBSetup\Release directory.

PasteAsExtended.zip (721.36 KB)

Enjoy!

Downloads are available for x86, x64, as well as the documentation.

It is time for a "Dear John" letter to the programmer who came up with this default location:

The Program Files directory! Yikes. And I thought programmers are well aware of the fact that they should not, must not write to this location. But here in Trillian it is the default! Welcome to 2006.

You have heard that many times before - use FxCop! This time you hear a wailing sound from the x64 world, me who is griping about assemblies that ain't cross platform as they should be (like you are using ints instead of IntPtrs for doing PInvoke...). Please, please check your assemblies with FxCop, even if you use only those rules:

Thank you so much for considering!

Today, I got my MVP award package, which kind of makes it fully official. No surprise with my area of expertise: Visual Developer ASP / ASP.NET.

http://www.3dvelocity.com/articles/win64compatibility/win64softlist.htm

Very useful. And sad, because even the latest Nero / InCD doesn't support x64. No packet writing software for me.

Update There is a packet writing SW for Windows XP Professional x64 according to this press release. But what are they thinking? The trial version ships without the packet writing software InstantBurn. Come on.

When will the misery end? Initially, I only bought 2GB of memory for my x64 workstation. But I intended to add two more from day one, and today was the day - two additional Kingston KVR400X64C3A/1G DDR-400 modules were delivered to my doorstep. So in theory 4 modules would yield 4GB of memory.

Not so fast, Buster. Exactly. After finding out the hard way (blue screen and various other sorts of lock-ups), it looks suspiciously like the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium does not like four DDR-400 modules! (the ValueRAM site hints at this, and there are discussion threads too) that pretty much takes the biscuit.

Is there anything working on Windows XP Pro x64? I think not. Point in case: I just tried to install the Intelli* software for my Microsoft Laser Desktop 6000:

Now come on. This is Intelli* v5.4, a version that is newer than anything to be found on MS' download servers (where you won't find x64 versions either).

Windows XP x64 at this point in time is only for people who are willing to put up with below-par driver and application support. This experience almost comes close to Vista Beta 1...

Update Turns out I was one day too early. The new version 5.5 can be downloaded now, and it supports 64 Bit (IntelliPoint 5.5 x64, IntelliType 5.5 x64 [one download for x86 and x64]).