Roger collected all of his Visual Studio Magazine covers (that is, those issues where articles written by him were featured on the cover) in one blog post. It’s quite impressive!
Monthly Archives: January 2008
Bill gates “last day” video from CES
Thanks to Mike Taulty for keeping me in the loop. For some reason, when linking directly to the video, the sound was wierd, so here’s the MSN video site where you’ll have to watch a 5 second ad first. It’s worth it!
This is funny and it is always a great reminder to see Bill Gates sense of humor and his ability to laugh at himself. I think when we had the meeting with him last month, none of us were thinking of this – we were all so serious. Sheesh!
LINQ – Learn by example
Roger Jennings writes about issues with finding examples of complex LINQ to XML queries. Boy have I been there and done that. One of the problems with learning LINQ is that you have two options
1) learn LINQ very deeply so you can do what you need
or
2) learn by example
With LINQ, I tend to start with a need, do what I can until I hit a wall, then look for examples that will help me and use them to learn even more. But it means that there needs to be a LOT of examples.
I have often likened learning LINQ as well as learning Entity SQL to learning T-SQL. Learning T-SQL has, for me, been an evolution which has occurred over some ten years. I still have to look up the Cast & Convert topic 99% of the time in the docs whenever I need to convert a datetime to a desired char format.
Even if there were 1001 examples, I know that there will always be something I want to do that I can’t find an example for and will have to rely on gaining a better understanding of LINQ in order to accomplish it.
101 Ways to fix Outlook PST files
Well, not 101, but after spending over 15 hours trying to fix a damaged file, I learned a LOT and thought I would share it here.
[A New DevLife post]
CNN highlights “are curvy women smarter?” study
As a woman who is a little curvier from the waist down than I’d like to be, you think I would hail this report, “Are Curvy women smarter?” , as “justfication” – “hey, it just because I’m smart!” (and maybe more potato chips in my future :-)) . But it seems pretty ludicrous to me, especially considering some of the many brilliant women I know who are slim & trim.
EF Mapping to Read Stored Procs, another twist
Entity Framework easily supports mapping to read stored procedures when the query results match up with an existing entity in the model. If your query results don’t, then you have to create a new read only entity and entity set in the CSDL and a new “fake table” entity and entity set in the SSDL and then you can do the mappings. (I show how to do that in this blog post.)
Chris Snyder found a new twist. What if the result matches an entity, but some of the fields inthe result have been renamed? Unless you wanted to create a read only entity to match it. But then you won’t get the change tracking benefits of a entity with a key.
Microsoft hires another Entity Framework/Astoria nut
Jonathan Carter was very interested in Entity Framework and Astoria. Last month, he started working for Microsoft as an Technical Evangelist. So he gets paid to share his excitement about these and other .NET technologies.
Guy Burstein was very interested in Entity Framewrok and Astoria writing lots of posts about the two topics. Today Guy announced that he has started working for Microsoft Israel with the Developer & Platform and Adoption team. He too says he has found the sweet spot of getting paid to do something that you are good at and love.
Congrats!!
Three-dimensional printing!
Jessica Fosler reminded me of a cool article on 3D printers I read this fall. Read more…
[A new DevLife post]
Gee, it’s warmed up to minus 0 degrees
Well, that would be -0.3 degrees. Good day to stay inside and work even thought it’s beautiful and sunny out with still llots of fabulous powder over at Mad River. To some it just means a better day to skin up the mountain than to sit in the chair lift up high in the air with the bitter cold wind blowing in your face. Brrr.
Security focused MSDN & TechNet Events coming to Burlington Feb 26th
According to Chris Bowen’s blog, there will be a TechNet and MSDN event in Burlington on February 26th.
The afternoon MSDN event will be two sessions covering:
MSDN: “Explore IIS7, ASP.NET and Tackle Web Security”
Check out the latest coding solutions with like-minded developers at MSDN Events. Witness the evolution of IIS and see why IIS7 is our most extensible, manageable and secure Web platform on record. You’ll learn how to extend application services – including membership, role management and navigation – from ASP.NET and how to consume them from a wide variety of clients. As a special bonus, we’re also tackling the biggest security risks and clueing you in to the top counter measures available for Websites and Web applications of all kinds. Don’t miss these free, live sessions that are really on your wavelength.
Register for the MSDN event at www.msdnevents.com
The morning TechNet event is also about security:
TechNet: “Secure Your Critical Data”
Step up and save the day with hot new solutions from TechNet Events. Make sure your company’s private information is fully secured – even if it falls into the wrong hands – with Windows BitLocker disk encryption technology in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. You’ll also learn how the new Network Policy Server Role in Windows Server 2008 enables powerful functionality in the form of Network Access Protection. Now you control who can access your network – whether wireless or wired. Sign up now for these free, live sessions in your local area.
Register for the TechNet event at www.technetevents.com