WCF Test Client

9 months ago
by Rob in

Every time I set up Visual Studio on a new machine, one of the first things I do is add the WCF Test Client tool to the Tools menu.  This tool lets you call methods on your WCF web services to test them.  It can be found here:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\WcfTestClient.exe"

Rob

Convert AAC to M4A

10 months ago
by Rob in , ,

I needed to wrap an AAC file in an M4A container so I could load it into my Windows Phone 7 (WP7) music collection.  First I downloaded the FFmpeg software from here:

http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

Then I unzipped the files and ran the following command:

C:\FFmpeg\bin>ffmpeg -i "song.aac" -acodec copy -absf aac_adtstoasc "song.m4a"

That solved the problem of not being able to add an “MP3″ tag to my audio file.

Rob

Successfully changing the MAC address in VMware

10 months ago
by Rob in

I have been fighting with VMware Workstation 7.1.4 for the past day trying to change the MAC address of a Windows guest virtual machine. I tried a number of recommendations from around the web, but the one that finally worked was setting a static MAC address as follows:

  1. Edit your “<vmname>.vmx” file with a text editor like Notepad.
  2. Determine if you have a line similar to the following:
    1. ethernet0.addressType = "generated" (Note: that's a zero after "ethernet", not the letter o)
  3. If so, change it to the following.  If not, just add the following line:
    1. ethernet0.addressType = "static"
  4. Then add the following line, where each two-digit number can be any legitimate hex value, e.g. 00 through FF:
    1. ethernet0.address = "00:0c:29:12:34:56"

This solution was found here, along with another solution that did not work for me.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=507

Solved: The (Visual Studio) project file * has been moved, renamed or is not on your computer.

11 months ago
by Rob in ,

I renamed my Visual Studio 2010 (VS2010) Solution (.sln) and Project (.vcxproj) files today.  When I opened the Solution, it could not find the Project file, thinking it was still in the old location.  To solve this, I had to exit VS2010, delete the project’s .suo file, restart VS2010, open the Solution, and then re-add the Project file.

I found this answer here, in reference to VS2005.

Display Unicode Characters on the Windows Console

11 months ago
by Rob in ,

Even in today’s mostly-Unicode world on Windows, the console (i.e. cmd.exe) still defaults to using OEM code pages (i.e. multibyte characters).  To set the console to Unicode mode, use the following code:

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <io.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
   _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
   wprintf(L"\x043a\x043e\x0448\x043a\x0430 \x65e5\x672c\x56fd\n");
   return 0;
}

This information came from two great articles by Michael Kaplan:

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