Software Geek

Also see: Yes, it does mean everything

Also see: Silverlight 2 DataGrid walk-through posted

Also see: TransparentProxy

I just  ran into Ted Glaza from Ajax Control toolkit and Silverlight Controls fame and he is getting some of the control developers together (3rd parties, Microsoft as well as in house) to talk about building controls for WPF and Silverlight. 

We will have some folks there are are building the current set of controls that ship in the box for Silverlight and WPF from and I hope some folks from Telerik, ComponentOne, and Infragistics. 

Ted tells me we will meet up in a few tables in the center of the dining room here at Mix tomorrow (Friday) at during the lunch break.

Anyone is welcome be there if you can!

http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2008/03/06/silverlight-and-wpf-control-developer-huddle-at-mix08.aspx

Also see: Publishing: Good reviews, bad reviews, and hurting oooh so many feelings.

Also see: Introducing Microsoft Tagspace

Also see: Startup, Shutdown and related matters

I read a ton. Online, magazines, newspapers. I troll the newsstands for new magazines just trying to see if there is something out there Im missing.

I also get asked all the time what magazines that I do read. I’m not going to go through the list, but I’m going to list two that are must reading for anyone who has an interest in technology. Why ? Because they often cover in technical detail just how 99pct of the bandwidth available to the home is managed, planned and maintained.

It’s amazing to me how all the “internet pundits” truly have no understanding that 98pct of the bandwidth to most people’s homes is not allocated to the internet, its allocated to everything else digital and analog and managed quite differently than the internet bandwidth that you receive. Not understanding the difference between the two (internet and non) pretty much eliminates your ability to understand the future of broadband technology to the home.

To help the uninformed, I decided to share my 2 faves:
Communications Technology

ScreenPlays

These are the 2 magazines that I save every issue of and that I get excited to learn something new.

check em out

Permalink  | Email this  | Linking Blogs  | Comments

http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/02/27/the-2-technology-magazines-you-should-read/

Also see: Prototypes and Java Config with Spring

A few months ago, Alex Barnett excitedly told me about a project he was working on with Pablo Castro , of the Microsoft SQL Server team. Like most things brilliant and game-changing, their invention is shockingly simple. As Alex explained it, project codename “Astoria ” would enable anyone to expose (and query/update) a SQL Server database, in the cloud, via a REST API…yup, simple URLs…over HTTP.

“Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second,” I said, shaking my head and playing for time to catch up and catch on as Alex sat there, his eyes alive with creative energy. “Are you telling me your program allows me to query and potentially update a database in the cloud as easily as I can now query one directly, using my query editor? And my queries will be expressed with something like http://foo/bar/blah… ?” He nodded, “Yes.”

I GET it. I can REST.

Several weeks after our initial meeting, Alex and I sat down with Pablo , Taylor , Dave , and Bob to discuss the possibility of using a snapshot of our beta social bookmarking solution, Microsoft.Community Tagspace , as a sample dataset for the unveiling of Astoria, at Mix07. On Monday, Pablo did just that.

Ooooh, I feel like the cat presenting its prey to its favorite humans on their back porch…

Click Here , for more information about Astoria, examples using a snapshot of the Tagspace store, links to documentation, downloads, videos and, other goodies. Alex rocks.

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Paul Browne writes about the state of (dis)Union in the Java framework space, discussing the following projects: Spring MVC, JavaFX , Google Web Toolkit and Struts2

Also see: App.config Examples

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techtarget/tsscom/blogs/~3/256879990/thread.tss

Also see: Merry Christmas Indeed!

SIGPLAN Workshop on Undergraduate Programming Language Curriculum.

Programming languages play a critical role in computer science by providing a flexible and robust means by which human beings interact with and control computer systems. Programming language design and implementation has advanced significantly in the recent past in response to the increasing pervasiveness of computer science and technology. Unfortunately, higher-education curriculum has not kept pace, and so it does not appropriately reflect the expansive growth and evolution. This lag is a critical challenge because an up-to-date curriculum is essential to prepare a globally competitive workforce, able to generate and to apply new knowledge, and to take the lead in advancing computer science and technology.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together leaders in the field of programming languages with expertise in research, teaching, and industrial use to discuss the role of programming language design, implementation, and application in modern, undergraduate, computer science education. Our objective with this effort is to build a community for these experts to discuss, critically evaluate, and identify the transformational changes needed to best prepare undergraduates to participate in the rapidly changing field of computer science and technology.

In particular, this workshop should provide a forum for the community (1) to evaluate recent changes and likely trends in computing technology and their impact on programming language design, implementation, and application (and vice versa), (2) to discuss the implications of these changes on programming language curricula, and (3) to explore strategies for designing new curricula. For the first task, we will consider trends that include the looming ubiquity of multi-processing systems, the proliferation of domain-specific languages, the increasing diversity of relevant programming languages, infrastructures, and support tools, the growing heterogeneity of device architectures (high-performance computing systems, desktops, game consoles, mobile phones, hand-held devices, etc.), and the increasing complexity of systems (operating, runtime, and application-level). For the second task, we will consider how these trends impact what and how we should be teaching our undergraduates about programming languages. Finally, for the third task, we will explore various tactics for designing new programming language curricula that incorporate the insights from these discussions and yet fit within the constraints of existing undergraduate programs.

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Also see: Passing the Community Torch: In Search of a New Chief Executive in Redmond

I learned my lesson with Fable, so I’ll try desperately not to start a flame war of any sort here. Up front, I’m giving the game a definite thumbs up. If you are the kind of person that likes to flame, then leave now knowing that I’ve given your favorite thing my personal approval.

Let’s start with the good. The campaign and story is pretty nice. The cinematic effect is definitely there, something I don’t approve of in games most of the time. In this case the cinematics were rather short and they appear to have answered all of the questions from the first Halo, about what in the hell is actually going on in this universe. Don’t expect a major story though, in all there is about 30 minutes of video (maybe someone will time that eventually). It appears in most cases that the actual game engine was used to produce cinematic sequences. I’m a huge advocate of this process, since it generally reduces the size of the game even if it doesn’t allow for as much eye candy through complex, non real-time, shaders.

Playing from both sides of the story is another great feature even if the movement features are identical between the arbiter and the master chief. Of course you get to use all of the weapons no matter which side you are. A couple of the new weapons are even pretty nice and if you add dual wielding then you can really do some drastic damage. Getting used to the new weapons is a short process, but for the most part, just realize everything is going to take a good amount of shots in order to take down. Nearly every enemy has energy shields now, so making use of a good pairing of weapons is almost always required (for a good run-down of the weapons, head over to GameFAQs where someone has posted a huge review of all of the weapons, relative damage, recommended threat ranges, etc…)

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Also see: Fix ReturnUrl When Sharing Forms Authentication with Multiple Web Applications

Also see: VPC 2007 Dual Monitor support

Also see: Fix ReturnUrl When Sharing Forms Authentication with Multiple Web Applications

Just a quick explanation for why there hasn’t been a new
blog lately.  I’m partway through a 3.5 week vacation on Maui.  I have
wireless & broadband out by the pool, but I can’t seem to find the time to
blog.  Things will return to normal by mid-July.

http://blogs.msdn.com/cbrumme/archive/2003/06/16/51477.aspx

Also see: Win friends and influence your team

In the wake of a recent announcement by Redmond Mayor Rosemarie Ives that she will not seek another term of office, I was invited to and personally interviewed her two most viable successors: Councilman Jim Robinson and former councilwoman, Holly Plackett . I support both of these fine and experienced candidates in their mayoral campaigns, respect them immensely, value their views on community, and consider them both to be my friends and mentors. But don’t just take it from me! If you live in Redmond, the mayor’s election is of great importance to you and most everyone you know. I strongly encourage you to research and get to know Jim and Holly yourself.*

         
     Jim Robinson                   Holly Plackett

After careful consideration and soul searching, I hereby announce my endorsement of Councilmember Jim Robinson to be the next chief executive and Mayor of the City of Redmond.

As a Planning Commissioner , it is my responsibility to represent the interests of the entire Redmond community: its current and future residents, employees, landowners, and business owners in the great little city of Redmond, WA by providing advice and channeling public feedback about current and long range Land Use Planning to Redmond’s Mayor and City Council. Week in and week out for the past five years, I have studied, solicited and listened to public feedback about, and provided counsel on land use planning issues to Councilmember Jim Robinson and the other members of the City Council and Mayor Ives on questions such as:

• How many houses can be built on an acre and where, in the city?
• Should the City build out a Municipal Wi-Fi network?
• How wide must sidewalks be in the downtown area?
• Where should we have bicycle lanes?
• When, where, and how many native trees (and soil) can homebuilders remove?
• How much should existing residents pay for extra sewage capacity to accommodate new development, if any?

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Also see: YouTube Tries to Get Legal

I havent been blogging much over the past several months.  The main reason is time, or the lack thereof.  Since I dont have time to write a “proper” blog post, I’m just going to start sharing some link love…

 

Here are a few interesting links I have spent time perusing today:

• Thirteen Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site  - a great checklist to review before releasing any public website into the wild.
• dhtmlxGrid - an open source (but commercial) editable DHTML grid with AJAX support.
• Edit Individual GridView Cells - an article on how to make clickable ASP.NET gridview cells to allow for a rich editing experience.

http://weblogs.asp.net/lhunt/archive/2007/09/21/link-love-09-21-2007.aspx

Also see: Never keep your emotions bottled up

As a member of Microsoft’s VSIP
program, we have been creating source control plugins for the Visual Studio
line of products for eight years.  As I started my recent foray into the
Eclipse world, I was eager to explore the area of plugins over on this side of
the fence.  So far, I’m impressed.

Source Control and Bug Tracking

The first plugin I installed was our own.  SourceGear
Fortress includes an Eclipse plugin, but I had never even tried it.

My first reaction is that I really like the way Eclipse
handles installation of plugins.  The whole process is managed from within
Eclipse itself.  Under the Help menu is a submenu called Software Updates.  All
I have to do is provide the URL of our Eclipse update site:

http://download.sourcegear.com/Fortress/latest/update

The rest of the job is very simple, essentially automatic.

Once installed, I have several additional views:

src="http://software.ericsink.com/entries/1731_image001.jpg"/>

And some new stuff under the Team menu:

src="http://software.ericsink.com/entries/1731_image002.jpg"/>

And some new items under Preferences:

src="http://software.ericsink.com/entries/1731_image003.jpg"/>

All in all, I have found using source control under Eclipse
to be very pleasant and straightforward.  If this seems like I am bragging
about my own product, I suppose it is, except for two mitigating factors:

1. I personally had nothing to do with this plugin, so this
   is less of a boast and more of a compliment to the efforts of my
   coworkers.

2. In my experience, source control plugins are a lot like
   children.  To some extent, the behavior of a child (or plugin) reflects
   the quality of the structure and guidance provided by the parent (or
   IDE).  In saying that our source control plugin works very well, I am
   complimenting Eclipse.

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