Another Live Writer Plugin

I had an idea for another Windows Live Writer Plugin, and since my KickIt! plugin was somewhat working I started a new one that will insert album information from Amazon.  It'll give readers a chance to quickly get to and buy the album or even the non-DRM MP3 version of the tracks.

Here is the album I was listening to while writing this plugin:

Five Finger Death Punch The Way of the Fist

I'll post more information and some of the code when I fix a few issues with the current version.

SpreadTheWord Plugin

I decided that the easy way that I was allowing someone to submit one of my posts to dotNetKicks.com wasn't the best way for my blog.  Since I write posts that aren't .NET related, why should there be an easy way to submit them?  I wanted to solve this by writing a Windows Live Writer plugin.

First, I created a Windows Class Library and added a reference to the WindowsLive.Writer.Api.dll found in Live Writer's Program Files directory (which for build 12.0.1370.325 is "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer"). I also added a post build event to copy my DLL to the plugins directory ("C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins") at the end of a build (NOTE: If Windows Live Writer is open, the build will fail).

I'm not going to give a lot of detail of the way a Live Writer plugin is written (why rehash what Keyvan Nayyeri already wrote at http://nayyeri.net/blog/Write-a-Windows-Live-Writer-plugin-using-C/?).

I also decided to have my plugin use WPF for accepting input.  Since, I haven't figured out how to get the URL & Title for a post, the person blogging has to enter these.  This definitely isn't the ideal solution, but I wanted to get something working.

What I have so far isn't all that great, but it's working well enough for me to put the KickIt! button at the bottom of this post.

iisreset error

When I started my new job I ran into an issue with running iisreset on Windows XP SP2. If I tried to run iisreset I would get a message saying "class not registered". I was able to get it fixed after searching for a while. This was a few months ago, and today a coworker ran into the same error. It took me a while to find the solution again but this is how we fixed it:

Run each of the following in a command window:
1. regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\atl.dll
2. regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\appconf.dll
3. c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\iisrstas /RegServer

DotNetKicks.com & Blogger Integration

I found this "digg" like site today, called DotNetKicks. It has the same concept as digg, just only .NET related content. Plus you can make money submitting stories!

After I found the site I looked for an easy way to submit any of my blog articles to DotNetKicks. Found a couple of urls (this and this. Well, I used the info in their posts and added the image to "kick it" to all my posts (using Jason's template idea).

UPDATE: I removed the "kick it" image from all my posts. I am working on Windows Live Writer plugin that will let put the image on only the posts that I want it on.

Compacting a VirtualBox Hard Drive

I had a hard time figuring out how to reduce the size of my virtual hard drive. It is actually pretty simple once you figure it out. After "zeroing" out the free space with "nullfile-1.02", shut down VirtualBox and run (in a command prompt from the VirtualBox install directory):

VBoxManage modifyvdi "FullPathOfFileToCompact" compact

XP Cleaner v1.1

I finished XP Cleaner v1.1. It is easier to use and runs faster now (at least on initial startup).

IIS 7 Admin Pack

If you are running IIS7 you should try out the Admin Pack. There are quite a few additions that look like they would be very useful. Check it out here. If you are running Vista, make sure you have SP1 installed before installing the Admin Pack.