This one is as simple as the title says… I just wanted to get a list of all NuGet packages I’m currently using in my ASP.NET MVC 4 project.

If you look at the NuGet Package Manager window that you can access by right clicking a project in Solution Explorer and then selecting Manage NuGet Packages… you’ll see that there’s an Installed packages option on the left vertical menu. This is good and all but the manager doesn’t have an option to export the list of installed packages to a simple .txt file.

Figure 1 - NuGet Package Manager listing Installed Packages for the project

One interesting thing is that NuGet uses a .XML file called packages.config that resides in the root folder of every project to actually fill the above window. Every time you add or delete a NuGet package this file is updated to reflect the changes.

This is the content of my packages.config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<packages>
  <package id="AttributeRouting" version="1.5.4426" />
  <package id="DataAnnotationsExtensions" version="1.0.1" />
  <package id="DataAnnotationsExtensions.MVC3" version="1.0.1" />
  <package id="jQuery" version="1.7.1" />
  <package id="jQuery.Ajax.Unobtrusive" version="1.0" />
  <package id="jQuery.UI.Combined" version="1.8.17" />
  <package id="jQuery.Validation" version="1.8" />
  <package id="jQuery.Validation.Unobtrusive" version="1.0" />
  <package id="jquery-globalize" version="0.1.0" />
  <package id="knockoutjs" version="1.2.9.0" />
  <package id="log4net" version="1.2.10" />
  <package id="Microsoft.Web.Optimization" version="0.1" />
  <package id="microsoft-web-helpers" version="1.15" />
  <package id="Modernizr" version="2.0.6" />
  <package id="MvcSiteMapProvider" version="3.2.1.0" />
  <package id="Newtonsoft.Json" version="4.0.8" />
  <package id="NLog" version="2.0.0.2000" />
  <package id="RavenDB-Embedded" version="1.0.700" />
  <package id="System.Web.Providers" version="1.0.1" />
  <package id="T4MVC" version="2.7.0" />
  <package id="WebActivator" version="1.2.0.0" />
</packages>

This file serves the purpose of this post but it’d be a nice addition to the NuGet manager if it had a button to export the list of installed packages in a better formatted way. Just an idea.

Just let me take the opportunity to say “I Love You NuGet”. You let me explore the plethora of knowledge of fellow developers scattered all over the world in an easy way with the push of a button. I have no better words to describe you! You contribute enormously to the world development. Keep evolving!

I’ve been collecting data regarding the battery life cycle of my Apple’s magic mouse and wireless keyboard. I thought it’d be good to post this data here so that you dear reader can draw your own conclusions about how long should the battery life last.

This is interesting data to look at because I like statistics and it’s good to analyze data. It helps you predict what to expect… Obviously the batteries’ lifespan changes according to how much time you spend using these devices. In my case I tend to use the computer 8 hours/day on average.

Just now I decided to search for a neat app ( Finch for Mac ) so that I can track the time I pass working on the computer. This will for sure give me more accurate data in the near future. For now I’ll have to take this data for granted…

Take a look at the following Google spreadsheet:

As you see the keyboard has a great autonomy and there were periods in which I didn’t work as much as I’d like on the computer because the mouse charges used to last 3 weeks. This denotes periods of inactivity. Now that I’m doing more intensive work the mouse battery lasts only 1.5 weeks. This is half the time previously taken to drain the battery.

For the record: I also own an Apple’s battery charger. Recharging the batteries is an easy task. Once more I’m contributing to the environment.

All these Apple devices are great IMHO as it’s the case with everything made by Apple!

The only “complaint” is that I think the mouse should have a greater autonomy. Maybe this will be the case with more recent technology iterations.

Blogger recently launched gadgets support for dynamic views. This is really cool and was a missing piece to go with dynamic views.

One of the things that I really didn’t like about the gadget bar is that it’s hidden (docked) in the right side of the window. It’s difficult to see and so I Googled about an undocked version but couldn’t find it.

Figure 1 - Blogger docked gadgets sidebar (barely visible) or could we say hidden?

Here I show you how to get an undocked version so that your visitors can enjoy the gadgets bar in its full glory. Follow these simple steps:

1 - Select the Template option at draft.blogger.com

2 - Click the Customize button

3 - In the Window that opens select Advanced

4 - Select Add CSS

5 - Copy & paste the following piece of code in the Add custom CSS field

#gadget-dock
{
    right: 0;
}

6 - Click Apply to blog button in the window top right corner

You won’t see the change applied immediately.

Now go and open your blog and you should see an undocked gadgets bar!

Figure 2 - Blogger undocked gadgets sidebar (now visible)

I hope blogger gives the option to customize this without the need for CSS code. It’ll be easier for its users and will provide a better experience for blog’s visitors…

EDIT

To answer Hannah’s question: if you also want to customize the background colors of the gadgets bar, you can apply these styles following the same procedure described above:

.gadget-icons
{
    background-color: red;
}

.gadget-title
{
    background-color: red;
}

.gadget-selected .gadget-icons
{
    background-color: yellow;
}

One thing to remember here is that as the gadgets’ icons are white you must choose a background color that’s not too much whitish.

Play with the colors and enjoy!

I'd like to know any app that shows a list of the files that lie within a compressed file .zip or .rar. If the list could be ordered by file size it'd be great! It could be any software that runs on Windows or Mac OS since I use both OS using Parallels.

Why this is important to me?
The answer is that sometimes I need to send a compressed file to someone and this file generally contains lots of coding files that are part of a Visual Studio Solution/Project for example. I just want to send a subset of those files. There are some big files like DLLs and database files scattered everywhere in a lot of folders that don’t need to go with the compressed file.

So how can I avoid spending time going through all those folders/files, looking their size and deleting one by one to make the final compressed file to be uploaded smaller?

I thought about asking this question at SuperUser. To tell the truth I already had the question typed there but before I could post it and after a few tries by myself I got what I wanted using WinRAR with an easy play of menu commands. So how can you do this? Follow me…

1 - If you don’t know or don’t have WinRAR or use another file archiver, you can get it at:
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

I use WinRAR in its evaluation copy incarnation that once in while pops up a dialog asking you to purchase it. It works great even if you don’t want to purchase it… take it easy.

2 - At first compress the folders and files you want without getting bothered about the size of the resulting compressed file. After installing WinRAR it’s available in the context menu of any file or folder in Windows Explorer.

3 - Open the compressed file in WinRAR and play with the menu just a little bit. Go to the Options | File list and select Flat folders view and Details menu options.

Figure 1 - WinRAR listing the files of a compressed file (trunk.rar) by file size

Taking the above screenshot into consideration (it lists the content of a trunk project folder compressed), we can see that it has 1554 folders and 1624 files. This compressed file alone has 87 MB in disk when the actual uncompressed content has 193 MB in size but it’s still pretty big to send it over the wire… I have a lot of folders and files to go through if I want to delete the big and unnecessary files to try to decrease the final size! As you see, it also contains many duplicate files in different paths… it’s pretty daunting just to think about a manual scan. A visual scan in a single screen is much better. How do you get a big picture of this compressed file?

4 - Order all the files by size by clicking the size column header.

5 - Select all the files you want to remove/delete from the compressed file in just one go. One can do this in two different ways: clicking a file and holding the ctrl key and clicking another file to select not contiguous files OR selecting one file and pressing the shift key and clicking another file to select contiguous files. After this it’s just a matter of right clicking the file selection and executing the Delete files command.

Hope this useful tip helps you someday!

This is another post to add to my MP3 series…

Yesterday I tried to add/import a folder full of MP3 files to my iTunes library. Just after adding I opened iTunes and went check those MP3s. To my surprise the MP3s were not added to iTunes. I had a hard time trying to find those files since iTunes moved them from their initial location to a special folder called Not Added. My MP3s ended up here:

/Users/leniel/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes/Not Added/2012-01-16 14.34.38

Note that iTunes created a folder inside Not Added named with the date and time the import operation occurred. The folder Not Added also stores image files and whatever file iTunes doesn’t recognize as valid files to be imported.

Now I see that I have some folders like that one - that are being created since 2010-9-17 (when I bought my Mac mini) and some of those folders have MP3 files that I didn’t notice were missing in my library.

Then I realized that for some odd reason iTunes rejected those files. I googled about it with "iTunes won't import MP3" and to my delight I found a forum thread in which the user Afric Pepperbird recommended a fantastic tool called MP3 Scan+Repair by Christian Zuckschwerdt. Using this great piece of software I managed to add those MP3s to my iTunes library.

So as way to say thanks I decided to write a post to demonstrate how it works.

1 - Download MP3 Scan+Repair (it's in Beta and is free for the moment)

http://triq.net/articles/mp3-scan-repair-download

2 - Open the App and drag and drop the problematic folder (the one that lies within the Not Added folder) to the app screen:

Figure 1 - MP3 Scan+Repair main screen

3 - Select all the files using command+A and then click the hammer button (mouse button is over it) to repair the files:

Figure 2 - MP3 Scan+Repair listing the files and their respective problems

See the Messages column with the description of what’s wrong with each file… even warnings prevent iTunes from adding the MP3 file to its library.

When repairing MP3 Scan+Repair will try to recreate the MP3s moving the old ones to the trash and writing the new ones to the current folder.

After following these easy steps you should be good to go and add those MP3s files to your iTunes media library.

The app is straightforward and does what it advertises… I’m really satisfied!

This is a quick tip related to something that I just tried today and that worked.

My camera SONY DSC-HX100V has GPS capability built-in but it won't work everywhere and it needs some time to acquire the satellite signal. This way if you just want to take a quick snap you may end with photos that don’t have GPS location in their Exif metadata. GPS is a recent capability when we talk about cameras.

Figure 1 - SONY DSC-HX100V camera with built-in GPS

Taking that into consideration, let’s say you have some photos in iPhoto (Mac OS) or whatever program you use to manage your photos. I mention iPhoto here since it’s the app I use. Those photos don't have a location set due to no GPS signal available where the photos were taken. So how can one add that missing GPS location info/data on those photos? By the way, this process is called geotagging.

This is what I’ve tried and what worked perfectly in my case:

1 - Open Google Maps and find the place/point where you’ve taken the photos.

2 - Right click that place/point you want in the map and select Center Map here.

3 - Click the Link button. Black mouse pointer is over it in the screenshot bellow.

Figure 2 - Google Maps link popup box with URL that contains GPS coordinates

A popup box will open. Copy the text/URL and paste it in your preferred text editor app. The link will look something like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=201266260819946046546.0004a0e1b939dec67f18e&msa=0&ll=-22.428568,-44.619633&spn=0.001983,0.004128

Pay attention to the highlighted part that correspond to the longitude and latitude data.

4 - Select the photos you want in iPhoto to apply Location information and press command+I to access the Assign a Place box. Copy the highlighted text above and paste it in the box. Press the enter key to finish the task.

Figure 3 - Adding GPS coordinates to iPhoto Assign a Place box

This procedure works great when you just want to add GPS coordinates in your photos no matter if your camera has a built-in GPS or not since any photo can be geotagged nowadays.

Hope it helps!

You can check my photos in this slideshow:

As a software developer I like to work with everything that is related to software Localization known as L10n. Besides being a developer working defining the architecture that will be adopted in a given project and doing the hard “FUN” work writing the code, I’m also a translator if you don’t know it yet.

One thing I've been trying to do recently is to be able to use localized strings that are present in an external assembly [ DLL ] using the ResourceManager object.
I have localized strings in resource [ .resx ] files that are specific for each locale I support. I place these .resx files in a separate class library project to maintain things organized.

So, suppose the namespace of this class library is MyProject.L10n and the .resx file name is Localization.resx. This gives me access to a class named Localization within the code. I also have Localization.pt.resx. I support English and Portuguese locales in my project for now. This naming pattern allows me to have in the future a file called Localization.es-ES.resx for Castilian Spanish (as written and spoken in Spain) and another one called Localization.es-AR.resx for Argentine Spanish. During runtime the .NET framework will select the correct .resx file to extract the localized string from based on the current culture the user has set while browsing my website.

After adding a reference to this class library, I'm able to use this code in my ASP.NET MVC project in a Razor view:

MyProject.L10n.Localization.LocalizedString;

This works as expected, but it's not what I need, though. As you see the localized string key [ LocalizedString ] is hard coded. I want to be able to use the method GetString from the ResourceManager object so that I can write code like this:

ResourceManager.GetString(item.DynamicLocalizedStringValue);

The problem and the catchy here is that in order to use the resource manager the way I want, I have to point it to the external assembly this way:

grid.Column(
columnName: "Type",
header: Localization.Type,format: (item) => new ResourceManager("MyProject.L10n.Localization", typeof(Localization).Assembly).GetString(item.Type.ToString()))

This part does the tricky: typeof(Localization).Assembly

In the code block above I’m using WebGrid that is a new helper that comes with ASP.NET MVC 3. It simplifies the task of rendering tabular data. When I do item.Type.ToString() I’m actually getting different values for each row of my grid and I pass this dynamic value to ResourceManager that in return gives me the translated/localized version of a give string key.

Going even further I’ve implemented a Razor’s Helper method in a file called Helpers.cshtml and placed such file inside the App_Code folder. This is the helper’s code:

@using System.Resources
@using MyProject.L10n

@helper GetLocalizedString(string stringValue)
{
    ResourceManager rm = new ResourceManager("MyProject.L10n.Localization", typeof (Localization).Assembly);

    @rm.GetString(stringValue);
}

Now it’s just a matter of calling the helper this way in whatever place/view I need it:

grid.Column(
columnName: "Type",
header: Localization.Type,
format: (item) => @Helpers.GetLocalizedString(item.Type.ToString()))

The above code is way more clear than the one I showed your before…

Hope this post helps shed some light in this subject since the only thing that should be done is to get a reference to the assembly that holds the Localization class and pass it to the ResourceManger’s constructor.