With as many new modules as I've created for my web sites and shared between them all, I've developed a need for custom sections in my web configs.  That way it's easy to copy and paste setting for a component into a new (or existing) project and not worry about overlapping (i.e to config elements with the same name).  I've been doing this for a long time but it always took me 4 or 5 lines of code to access the values in the elements.

Here some example web.config code:

<configuration>

   <configSections>

      <section name="RSS" type="System.Configuration.DictionarySectionHandler, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>

   </configSections>

   <RSS>

      <add key="ContentType" value="text/xml"/>

      <add key="Title" value="Site Construx's Article RSS Feed"/>

   </RSS>

</configuration> 

Here's how to access the custom config element with a single line of code

	(string)((Hashtable)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("RSS"))["Generator"];

If you're having trouble with this feel free to post a comment and I'll help you out!

In a 1 on 1 meeting with one of my senior developers today the topic of Continuous Integration with Cruise Control.NET was brought up.  We have a unique situation were we have Team Foundation Server as source control and backlog tracking, but not being used for Continuous Integration, instead we use CruiseControl.NET.  Needless to say with approximately a dozen developers working on our solution, we've encountered some weaknesses in trouble shooting broken builds.  Ultimately our weakness lies in a lack of experience...developers are so afraid of breaking the build and causing other people pain that they just don't try much and therefore don't gain much experience in troubleshooting broken builds. 

Ultimately, my conversation with the senior developer revolved around what he could do to further educate the team and get us using CI more extensively.  In hindsight I would have recommended that if he could get people using CI at home on their own personal web sites and projects their knowledge would increase exponentially faster than any effort we could do.  Funny how hindsight is so clear. 

After experimenting with the Time Value setting on my Canon 10D setting it on about 1/10 of a second, I was able to get some nice river pictures.  I really like the photos and the effects that they were captured on our vacation this month.