Ben Taylor's Blog

Whenever I am building a new PC I always forget to install some of the tools that I love.  When I remember that I forgot, I then sometimes struggle to remember what that little tool that does some tiny little thing that I love, but has a weird name is called.

No more.  They will now be collated here and perhaps one day, when I grow up, I will have a tools list as big as Hanselman's Tools List.

My .NET Life Would Not be Worth Living Without

• ReSharper - Does it make you 10 times better or 100?  The argument rages.
• Reflector - Lutz Roeder's baby, now with redgate.
• GhostDoc - Spooky how it makes your code look better.
• Visual Studio - What good is a sexy add-in, without a something to add it to?
• Subversion - Source control I trust.  Made me forget VSS and (so far) ignore TFS.
• TortoiseSVN - Explorer GUI for Subversion.  Will my head be turned by Visual SVN?
• Google - Yeah I know.  But when did you last hit F1 in Visual Studio and NOT smash your monitor?
• Firefox Add-ons - I wonder if there is a tool to do XYC?  Yep, someone built it.  See my faves below.

The Rest...

• 7-Zip - Especially now WinZip want to charge me for something every 10 minutes.
• TrueCrypt - The last line between my key chain flash drive and MI5... (this is a joke, packet sniffers)
• RoboForm2Go - The only thing that knows all my passwords.
• Send To Toys - Lets me do things like "Send to Command Prompt".  Although not on Vista right now (for me).
• PlainTextClipboard - Takes all the fancy formatting that other apps put on the clipboard and plaintextifies it.
• JkDefrag - Simple and mesmerising defrag.  Look into my clusters...
• Workrave - Sheep that keeps my ulna nerve healthy.  Reminds me that 12 hours non-stop coding is bad.
• Ultramon - A must have for the multi-monitor warrior (I am only a 2 panel man).
• Fiddler2 - Who doesn't like to sniff HTTP?  It's all the rage and Fiddler is still my fave.

...and Firefox

Firefox - Mainly because of the following extensions:

• Web Developer Toolbar
• FireBug
• HTML Validator
• Delicious Bookmarks
• Google Toolbar for Firefox
• Live HTTP Headers
• Measure It
• Text Complete
• CoolIris (formerly PicLens) ... and currently disabled as crashing Firefox 3!?
• Clear Cache When you're not sure Ctrl+F5 is really getting the page again. Use the broom.

Updated:  26/08/2008 with Firefox section and some other minor edits.

My name is Ben Taylor.  I live in North London and am the Managing Director of Shape Factory which I founded in late 2005 (after 3 months surfing in Nosara, Costa Rica).  Shape Factory specialises in e-commerce consultancy and the design and build of e-commerce websites and systems using Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Commerce Server.  Most of our work is for Tier-1 Consultancies.

Prior to starting Shape Factory I was the CTO of Snow Valley.  My early years (circa 1995) were spent writing real-time foreign exchange dealing software (my first and favourite baby is still on sale as the Reuters Deal Tracker Server).  The Wayback Machine says that I built the first recorded Snow Valley homepage in 1998 (nice colours!).  My later years were spent building and then managing the build of Commerce Server based e-commerce solutions.  Overall I had 8+ enjoyable years with Snow Valley.

I also support PlayerPal (reflectoring will cause nausea) which I wrote for myself back in the day, so I could control iTunes/WMP from a browser (and learn this new .NET thingy).  I have done bits of Open Source and am currently a developer on dasBlog, the software this blog runs on.

Why am I blogging?  Because I need somewhere to keep track of things and Jon Udell convinced me that blogging will give me the best bang for my keystrokes.

And yes.  I know the Shape Factory site is terrible.