Azure Experiment

As an experiment, I took advantage of a recent Microsoft offer for a free trial to run my website via Azure cloud services. At first glance, this appeared to be a good deal and could bring my hosting costs literally to nothing. The reality of this, however, was much different.
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Converting to AVI

When sharing h.264 (AVC) formatted video in an MP4 container, Windows Media Player may have trouble interpreting this format. In many cases it is simply the audio that causes the issue, but my general methodology is to convert to an AVI container anyway. This tutorial describes how to convert an existing video into an AVI formatted file suitable for Windows XP or later.
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Learning from Microsoft Shared Source

Microsoft has recently revamped what was previously their Reference Source Code Center to be simply Reference Source. This is a site for .NET developers who are interested in viewing the source code for the platform API’s, and like the Java OpenJDK this provides a wealth of learning opportunities for .NET. While I have spent only a few hours going through some of the code, there are definitely some common themes that are worth noting and at the top of my list is design by contract.
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