This one had me stumped for a while, especially as I couldn't find anything with the internal knowledge search tools. The symptoms are an Excel add-in that runs perfectly on it's own but crashes when run in the Visual Studio 2003 debugger. Actually, if you enable native debugging, it crashed Visual Studio too...

It turns out that by default Microsoft Office applications try to host the most recent version of the .NET runtime. That means you can't attach a .NET 1.1 debugger if you have .NET 2.0 installed side-by-side. The details are here but you basically have three options:

• Develop with Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0
• Use "Start Without Debugging" from VS2003 and then attach a 2.0 compatible debugger
• Create a configuration file for the relevant office application and ensure there is only a <supportedRuntime> element for version="v1.1.4322"

Now playing: Scott Hanselman and Carl Franklin - XML Tools and Technologies

Today's trance mix was recorded in December 1999 and contains a track by Lost Tribe and a few other Hooj Choons works. It ends with another Perfecto favourite - "Sun" by Virus.

Now playing: James Snape - MiniDisc Mix 12 (62.6 MB)

I have a couple of invites available. The first 3 comments to this post with valid e-mail addresses can have them.

Now playing: James Snape - MiniDisc Mix 10 (95.7 MB)

Today's trance mix was recorded in January 1999 and contains tracks by Storm and Robert Miles.

Now playing: James Snape - MiniDisc Mix 8 (60.4 MB)

For the second time I've wasted time trying to work out why the serialized output from the XmlSerializer was missing elements so it's time to write the answer here as a reminder for next time.

Basically the XmlSerializer will not output content that it can't read back in which means that any read only property will not be serialized.

This is not the case for properties that implement ICollection or IEnumerable as collections have their own serialization rules.

I have a large pile of records at home waiting to be mixed but I just don't have the time right now. What I do have is a number of MiniDisc recorded mixes that I made in the late 90's and later. Tastes change but some of them don't sound dated today so I thought I'd put them up here for consumption. I hope to release a few of them over the next few weeks. They are all about an hour long (the full length of a MiniDisc) but won't have a cue sheet or track listing. If you are desperate I can probably find out a particular track for you.

Today's trance mix was recorded in 1998 and begins with one of my all time favourite tracks by The Infinity Project. Enjoy...

Now playing: James Snape - MiniDisc Mix 3 (64.4 MB)

I've just got back from a weeks skiing in Val d'Isère. This is the first time I've been and have to say I'm hooked. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be or maybe the ski school (Oxygene) was suited to my preferred learning style.

The first few days were very sunny so the slopes got a little icy in the afternoon but on Wednesday the snows came and we had fantastic powder to fall into. By the end of the week I was actively seeking out blue runs and even got onto the odd red.

See the photos for more... I'm the guy with the red and black jacket on - thanks for the loan Craig; I guess I need to hit the sales and get my own for next year.

OK, the cat is out of the bag. I'm leaving Exony to join Microsoft as an application development consultant. The decision to leave Exony was extremely difficult given the interesting work they do but the offer presented was too good an opportunity to pass on. I would just like to thank everyone for making Exony such a cool place to work for the last 6 years. I wish you all the best in the future.

Well worth a download:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx

...and it looks like this:

There is plenty of drag and drop, right-click menus and background updates. All in all very nice but it'll take a lot to shift Gmail from my daily life...

Now playing: Storm - Time To Burn

I've just logged into Hotmail to pickup my e-mails before closing up shop for the holiday and was greeted by a message asking if I wanted to join the Live Mail beta. Now I can't resist a beta... So I clicked, agreed and was presented with:

 

Service Unavailable

We're sorry, but the Mail Beta is currently unavailable. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working to restore service. Please try to log back in soon.

The Mail Beta Team

... and now I can't pick up my mail and can't go back so I guess their legal disclaimer was warranted.

Now playing: Taiko - Taiko / Echo Drop