Courtesy of Google Analytics, here are my top 10 most-read blog posts from 2011:

Posts published in 2011 only:

1. Entity Framework Week Part 2: Conventions and Fluent Mappings (8 March)
2. Entity Framework Week Part 1: Introduction, Configuration and Initialization (7 March)
3. Entity Framework Week Part 4: Features and Further Investigations (10 March)
4. Entity Framework Week Part 5: Concluding Thoughts (11 March)
5. Entity Framework Week Part 3: Runtime Issues Encountered (9 March)
6. Google+ – By Jove, I Do Believe They’ve Got It (7 July)
7. It’s A Small World (9 April)
8. Password Management for Mortals (28 August)
9. American Express Statement Download Functionality (19 September)
10. Schoolboy Error of the Day (17 August)

All Posts:

1. Team Foundation Server – Sharing Binaries and Class Libraries Across Multiple Projects (17 March 2007, Last Year #1)
2. A Serializable KeyValuePair Class (17 September 2006, Last Year #2)
3. Entity Framework Week Part 2: Conventions and Fluent Mappings (8 March 2011)
4. Spot The Misleading Graph (19 February 2007, Last Year #3)
5. Is My String Empty? Some C# Performance Metrics (30 July 2004, Last Year #4)
6. Postcode Validation (23 May 2007, Last Year #5)
7. TFS: Using Alternative Diff/Merge Tools (19 May 2009, Last Year #8)
8. MSB3247 – Dependent Assembly Conflicts (4 December 2008, Last Year #6)
9. WCF – NHibernate Unit of Work Behavior (9 April 2010, Last Year #9)
10. An MVC Gotcha and the PRG Pattern (9 April 2010, Last Year #14)

Almost everyone who has wandered past the various desks that I’ve occupied over the last year has passed comment on my Wacom Bamboo Pen Graphics Tablet:

So, let me say a few words about my experiences with that.

For the longest time, I had been perfectly content to use various Logitech VX / MX mouses as my secondary input device, occasionally using a Microsoft Arc Mouse (very convenient to carry around in my rucksack).

But in the Spring of 2010, I developed a nagging pain in my right forefinger. It sounds silly and trivial, but over the course of a couple of months it developed from a barely-susceptible twinge to something that was genuinely impacting my life – I struggled to open Coke bottles or turn the key in our garage door’s stiff lock.

I turned for advice to Joe Steele, my personal guru of alternative input devices, and someone who I knew had previously suffered with RSI. Dr Steele confirmed that my symptoms mirrored those that he had experienced some years previously, and prescribed a course of two tablets – one for home use and one for client sites.

The Wacom Bamboo is an excellent piece of kit, and reasonably priced compared to other tablets and decent mouses. But it does take quite some getting used to. There is a knack to moving the pen around just above the surface of the tablet – a gap small enough that the movement is perceived by the tablet (and the mouse cursor moves), but without actually touching the tablet (which leads to dragging-and-dropping). This is particularly problematic if you venture anywhere near Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer – it was quite embarrassing how many times I checked strange folder/file moves into source control in the early days of my Bamboo usage. This acted as a good lesson to steer clear of Solution Explorer and get into the habit of navigating using ReSharper instead!

Overall, it took me a good few months before I was as fast and accurate using the Bamboo as I was using a traditional mouse. This could be quite frustrating when I just wanted to get something done, and on a number of occasions The Wife snuck into my office and caught me of an evening, guiltily risking my health with an old VX Revolution. As with many things, perseverance is the key – having Bamboos at both home and work certainly helped. Over time the pain in my finger subsided and has now disappeared altogether.

Two specific tips if you’re thinking of giving the Wacom Bamboo a try for day-to-day computing use:

Firstly, be sure to configure the device to use “Mouse Mode” rather than the default “Pen Mode”. Mouse mode “moves the screen cursor with a ‘pick up and slide’ motion similar to using a traditional mouse”, whilst Pen mode “sets the cursor so that its movement corresponds with the position of your Bamboo pen on the tablet – wherever you place your pen on the tablet, the cursor will jump to a corresponding point on the screen.” In my experience, Pen mode led to the cursor jumping wildly around the screen unless I gave consideration to where on the tablet I was placing the pen – a very unnatural experience after many years of using a “traditional” mouse.

Secondly, I suggest mapping the lower button on the barrel of the pen to the “double-click” action, as trying to emulate a double-click by tapping the pen nib on the tablet twice in quick succession is awkward – a problem which compounds if you need to perform many double-clicks, such as navigating around a file hierarchy in Windows Explorer.

I mentioned a few years ago that a keyboard makes a hell of a difference – well, it turns out that selection of secondary input devices can also make a huge difference to the long-term viability of a career, if you can invest the time to become proficient in their use.

So yesterday was the last Bank Holiday before Christmas, the kids go back to school in the next few days, and across the nation you can hear the sound of central heating systems creaking back into life. It’s all a bit depressing – unless you happen to be working for the slightly delusional Autumn-deniers in swiftcover.com’s marketing department:

This is a quick post aimed at my non-technical friends and family which I’ve been meaning to publish for some time. I am reminded of my intentions every time I hear someone lament that they have too many passwords to remember, or reveal that they use the same handful of passwords for all sites that they frequent (usually incorporating the names and birthdates of their nearest and dearest).

Do I need to recap why password reuse is a very bad thing?

(and it’s not just the black-hats you have to worry about, it’s the incompetent service providers too, as the recent well-publicised hacks of Gawker and the PlayStation Network have shown).

So, what is my suggested solution to this problem of the modern age?

I have long since given up trying to memorise passwords, or indeed racking my brain devising suitably strong passwords for each site I visit. There are many fine password management applications out there which excel at both these tasks – I use and endorse KeePass Password Safe, a free and open-source application which is available for many platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

By saving my KeePass password file to my DropBox, I have all my credentials easily available from all the machines I use at home and on client sites. Both DropBox and KeePass have apps available on Android (and iPhone), so my credential management solution neatly extends into my mobile life (and means I always have a copy of my passwords to hand – useful for when evil clients choose to block DropBox).

Yes, I still need to memorise at least one password (to protect the actual KeePass file) – this is a lengthy pass phrase chosen using techniques similar to those described in this XKCD comic.

If you’re still relying on your grey matter to retain an ever-expanding list of passwords, I strongly recommend you consider offloading the burden to some dedicated software such as KeePass. Then take the time to visit all the sites you frequent and change your weak, oft-used passwords for unique high-entropy ones.

I’m not saying that I wouldn’t enjoy watching Birdy the Mighty: Decode 2, you understand; it’s just that I’m uncertain how Amazon came to this conclusion based solely on my choice of secondary input device.

Of course, now that I’ve clicked on the DVD out of curiosity, Amazon’s homepage has me pegged as a veritable manga fiend…

See also – Amazon’s Uncannilly Accurate Recommendation Algorithm