Monthly Archives: April 2007

Bonnie Raitt and Windows Vista

Just Rambling

 Wierd connection right? But ever since I started using Vista, I have had the song “Have a Heart” (from Nick of Time) pop in my head frequently. There is something about the tone and length of the “Default Beep” (Windows Ding.wav) that matches the very first “Hey!” of that song! (Though of course Bonnie Raitt sings it a million times lovlier than my computer.) It’s crazy. “I can name that tune in one note!”, right? But still, every single time that beep sounds, the tune starts up in my head and I finally had to share this.

The joke here is that Microsoft actually hired Robert Fripp to create the many of the sounds in WIndows Vista, though I don’t think the little Ding comes from anywhere but a computer.

INK at MIX 07

Tablet

Tablet PC/Ink related sessions & HOLs I see on the MIX site:

SESSION:
Ink for Designers and Developers
Speaker(s): Sam Geroge – Microsoft
Audience(s): Designer, Developer
Imagine if your users could add handwritten annotations over online photos, greeting cards or video (including live playback of your handwriting). Learn how to use Ink to take your Web sites to new heights of interactivity, personalization, social interaction, and usability. Learn the key design principles for Ink, and see how to code for Ink in the browser and on the server.

HANDS ON LAB:
Ink in Web Applications
Audience(s): Business Decision Maker, Designer, Developer
Adding ink and annotations makes your Web applications far more interactive and enables users to add their own personal touch. This lab shows just how easy it is to add ink and annotation, which integrate seamlessly with other features of Web development. You will become familiar with a Web page for browsing photos; implement ink support; change the thickness and color of the ink; implement erasing with the back of the pen, and more.

(I think there are more HOLs. I just don’t see them on the site yet)

ADO.NET at MIX07: REST? Dynamic? Hmmmm

Data Access

I found some interesting ADO.NET labs and sessions on the MIX site today!

SESSIONS

Accessing Data Services in the Cloud
Speaker(s): Pablo Castro – Microsoft
Audience(s): Designer, Developer
Come learn about new Microsoft technologies that enable you to make your data available over the Web through a simple REST interface and using open formats such as plan XML, JSON or even RDF. We also discuss the underlying entity framework that makes it easy to model, publish, and program against your data over the Web.

Rapidly Building Data Driven Web Pages with Dynamic ADO.NET
Speaker(s): Samuel Druker – Microsoft, Shyam Pather – Microsoft
Audience(s): Developer
Come learn about how new technologies from Microsoft bring together the concepts of dynamic languages and ADO.NET and allow you to quickly develop data driven Web pages using ASP.NET dynamic data controls, scalable to even the most complex databases.

*note that Andrew Conrad wants to make sure you notice the word DYNAMIC in that session!

Deep Dive on Data Driven Experiences
Speaker(s): Aaron Dunnington – Microsoft, Tim Scudder – Microsoft
Audience(s): Developer
Come learn how technologies like Silverlight, Language INtegrated Query (LINQ), and SQL Server 2005 can help developers build impactful, dynamic applications that reach the broadest possible audience.

LABS

REST Services for Data Access over the Web
Audience(s): Developer
In this lab, build a data service accessible through REST that supports exchanging data in XML and JSON formats, with full query and update capabilities; and build an AJAX-based client and a managed code client.

Rapidly Building Data Driven Web Pages with Dynamic ADO.NET
Audience(s): Developer
In this lab, learn about Project Friday, an incubation effort in the ADO.NET team to enable quick, clean, and iterative development with instant results. Project Friday provides this functionality by leveraging the ADO.NET Entity Framework and the power of dynamic languages.

XNA (Managed) Game Development at VTdotNET tonight

VTdotNetFeed

Tonight’s VTdotNET meeting is a little different for us “must focus on business apps” VTdotNETters. Griff Townsend is coming up from Albany where he has done two XNA sessions (2-D and then 3-D) at the user group there.

I think it will be a lot of fun to open up our eyes to new ways (reasons for) programming. I am hoping that we’ll be able to draw some of the students from Champlain College’s Game Development degree program.

www.vtdotnet.org for more info….

A Geek in Every Port

Community Cheerleading

I realized that I am somewhat like a sailor with a girl in every port, except that I’m a girl with a geek in every port.  When I learned that the weather might prevent me from flying the last leg of my trip home from Seattle last night (Seattle to Washington, then to Burlington), I didn’t even have to think for more than a moment who I knew in the area. Andrew Duthie and his ever so lovely (and recently expanded) family live close to Dulles. Talk about a friend; he even came to pick me up at the airport! I got to visit briefly with their 4 yr old who Andrew and Jennifer woke up just long enough for a “hi” (Joseph and I fell hard for each other last time I visited). Wireless, a comfy bed, a beautiful new baby to meet. And happily for me, Andrew has recently become slightly obsessed with making the perfect cup of coffee, which I got to sample before we headed back to the airport this morning. Pretty convenient that he had a flight out this morning too. 🙂 

Presenting at Bellingham and Olympia’s South Sound .Net User Groups

Ineta

Thanks so much to INETA , Andy Robinson (leader of Bellingham.NET) and Paul Mehner and Camey Combs from South Sound .NET for getting me out to the Seattle area to present at their user groups.

I did a session on LINQ to SQL in Web Apps in Bellingham on Wednesday night after spending 17 hours trying to get there. (Snowstorm in Chicago – more details about that crazy flight here…)  I was amazed that people stuck around to wait for me since I didn’t arrive until about 7:45! I did my session from 8 – 10pm and then drove down to Olympia with Paul Mehner who had filled in and did a full workflow session while I was trying to make my way up to Bellingham (what  a gorgeous flight!). I was up for 23 straight hours that day and between the adrenaline and my love for presenting, I think I surprised these guys that I was doing this session from what my body clock defined as 11pm – 1am!

The next night I presented at the user group in Olympia.  This is the first time I recall a user group meeting that served something other than pizza! Camey had gone to Costco and we had sandwiches, chips, soda and chocolate chip cookies. Mmmmm.

This is the 4th time I’ve taught this session on what’s coming up in ADO.NET in the next Visual studio which translates to Entity Framework and the data access integration with LINQ. It’s all so new to most people and there is so much to show. From explaining the concept and purpose behind the entity model, to inspecting the schema files, laying out the various uses and of course, looking at Object Services, Entity client, Entity SQL and LINQ to Entities. Not to mention LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Datasets. It really is just way too much for one session and frustrating to figure out what to show without leaving out key information. In this session, there was a lot of interest in the actual schema files (and it is really important to take the time to understanding them if you want to really leverage Efs potential) so we spent a good amount of time in that space.

All in all, I think I whetted the appetites and curiosity of most of the folks at the meeting and that is really the best I can hope for in such a short amount of time.

On Friday I drove up to Microsoft (1 hour up, 3 hours back in rush hour traffic!) with my bag filled with Vermont Maple Syrup and goodies from Lake Champlain Chocolates and had some great meetings with some of my buddies on the ADO.NET team as well as the Mobility team (that’s TabletPC and more).

After this, I was actually on a mini vacation! And now I’m in a plane flying east in to what promises to be some pretty nasty storms. We’ll see how that goes….

Update – not quite home yet. When I do get home, I will post the links to the demos and powerpoints.

Code Camp 7 New england wrapup (finally)

Just Rambling

It seems each time I start to write a post about the 7th New England Code Camp (“Deer in the Headlights”)  that was at the beginning of April, something has gotten in the way. But once again, this event was a blast and a great success. I drove down to Boston with Dave Burke and Laura Blood who were subjected to a much longer than expected business call that I had to be on. We also lucked out with the weather. The last time we had a code camp in Boston in march there was a pretty bad snowstorm (poor Dave crashed his car on the way down).

Chris Bowen and Chris Pels pulled off another great weekend. The schedule was packed for two days. Jason Haley, who cam ALL the way cross-country for this (and to visit friends and family) pulled together coffee and donuts for Saturday morning. Since I had to do a session first thing in the morning, Chris Pels knowingly saved a few chocolate glazed donut holes for me. Mmmmmm.

I did two sessions (LINQ to SQL in Web Apps and an Intro to ADO.NET Orcas) and led a chalk talk on the Entity Framework. The chalk talk was amazingly fun to do! We were in a small room but it was packed and we spent most of the time looking at the schema files and talking about the potential of Entity Framework in enterprise apps. I’ve never done a chalk talk before and it was an awesome group discussion.

As always, I love sitting in on Richard Hale Shaw’s talks trying to soak up not only knowledge, but learn from his teaching style as well. Richard starts with his powerpoint decks from his training classes that have something like 200+ slides in them. Then based on where the session is going, he pokes around the deck and pulls up appropriate slides to help demonstrate his points.

Naturally, a bunch of us gathered at the Westin Waltham’s hotel lobby bar Saturday night and I finally had to drag my butt to bed, but it was a blast! I definitely look forward to Number 8 and curious what subtitle will be created for it.