More WPF Resources

Walt Ritscher of Wintellect was in our offices this week, teaching us WPF. Great guy, really knows his stuff, and has a blog well worth checking out at

http://wpfwonderland.wordpress.com/

There’s a great training site on XAML/Silverlight called Nibbles. Be warned the site is done in Silverlight, so for now you’ll need to use IE and have Silverlight installed.

http://www.nibblestutorials.net/

Fellow southern blogger Keith Rome has a blog on WPF and Silverlight:

http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/weblog/

Tim Sneath has a lot of good info on Silverlight:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/default.aspx

Finally, this isn’t specifically a WPF resource, but our regional developer evangelist and all around swell guy Doug Turnure has a posting of .Net bloggers in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dougturn/archive/2007/08/19/most-popular-bloggers-in-georgia-alabama-and-mississippi.aspx

Update: September 15, 2007 – I wanted to add one more resource. I picked up Pro WPF by Matthew MacDonald (http://www.amazon.com/Pro-WPF-Windows-Presentation-Foundation/dp/1590597826/ref=pd_bbs_3/104-6226587-5048708?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189884771&sr=8-3 or http://tinyurl.com/2pw8z9) I have several of Matthew’s books and have always enjoyed his writing, and this book appears to be another winner. It’s a good companion to the Adam Nathan book, as each book goes into some areas the other doesn’t.

I’m going to DEVLINK!!!

I registered this week to go to DevLink. http://www.devlink.net/ What? You haven’t heard of DevLink? It’s only the best conference bargain on the face of the earth! Two full days of developer sessions, and nationally known speakers. Rocky Lhotka, Rob Howard, Billy Hollis, Kathleen Dollard, just to name a few.

The conference price includes meals, the content on cd/dvd, a Friday night social, and of course a t-shirt! Oh, the price, that’s the best part, all this for $50. Yes, you read that right, FIFTY DOLLARS. I know, I about fainted too, and could kick myself for not knowing about this gem sooner.

The conference is on Friday and Saturday, October 12th and 13th in beautiful Nashville TN. Plenty of stuff for your family to do while you’re geeking it up.

DevLink, I’ll be there, ya’ll come! Tell ’em Arcane Code sent ya.

Microsoft Goes Open Source

For years critics have been blasting Microsoft over their proprietary standards and applications. Over the last few years, however, Microsoft has slowly been answering those critics by adopting internet standards instead of insisting on their own, and releasing more things to the community.

The ability to save Office 2007 documents as XPS comes to mind, as does the ability for CardSpace to use open standards like OpenID. Now, in their next step they are embracing the open source community through the addition of a new Open Source page within Microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/default.mspx

On this site you can find all sorts of information and resources for those wanting to do open source projects using Microsoft software. Links to articles, websites, and the Visual Studio Express editions can be found. I won’t try to reiterate the entire site here, but if you have an interest in Open Source it’s well worth your time to have a look.

In addition is another site called Port 25. It is the outreach site for Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab. Some really cool stuff here on Linux interoperability, as well as the new Dynamic Language support such as IronRuby and IronPython.

http://port25.technet.com/

I can tell right now I’m going to be spending a lot of time on Port 25.

Finally, I should mention a site that’s been around for a bit by the name of CodePlex. It’s Microsoft’s site to host open source project done by both Microsoft folks and those of us in the community. (Well, I say us, one day I keep swearing I’ll find time to crank out some cool project and put it on CodePlex.)

http://www.codeplex.com/

Currently they show about 2000 projects right now, so there should be a lot for you to check out.

No, I don’t foresee Vista going open source anytime soon. But I really have to hand it to Microsoft. Somewhere over the last few years they realized they weren’t the only game in town. Since then they have really made an effort to “play nice” with other communities, and embrace many new open standards. The creation of their Microsoft Open Source site is just another step in that journey.

Arcane Fun Fridays: The Eighth Dimension

I realize the entries this week on facts and dimensions can be enough to give even the most stalwart geek a pain in the pocket protector. So allow me to wrap the week yet stay on the topic of dimensions with a movie suggestion:

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension

(http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Buckaroo-Banzai-Across-Dimension/dp/B00005JKEX )

This fun little romp from 1984 has a large collection of now well known stars such as John Lithgow, Peter Weller, Christopher Lloyd, and Jeff Goldblum. The hero, Buckaroo Banzai is a brain surgeon, particle physicist, and rock star. His experiments in the eighth dimension land earth right in the middle of an interplanetary war, and that’s just the first few minutes of the movie.

You have to watch this several times in order to catch all of the jokes and subtle humor. I think the funniest line is from Lithgow, playing an apparently insane but in reality alien possessed Dr. Lizardo, who keeps telling everyone “”Laugh-a while you can, monkey boy! You all are-a gonna die!”

After a week of sifting throught facts and dimensions, it’s great to be able to relax and spend a little time with Buckaroo in the eighth dimension. And even if you don’t get to see the movie, at least remember Buckaroo Banzai’s advice…

“No matter where you go… there you are.”

Standard disclaimer: I don’t make any money or have any financial affiliation with this flick or anyone who sells it. Just a cool movie. So there, monkey boy!

Arcane Get-A-Ways

It’s always great to get away with your coworkers every so often, in a situation away from the office. That’s where I’ve been the last few days, in the mountains of north Georgia. Very pretty country, and our big team building event was a 6 mile canoe ride.

Unfortunately there was no internet access in the lodge we were in. Seems it was being renovated and they hadn’t gotten around to hooking it back up. They barely got the new carpet installed before we arrived. (I was the first one there, and as I was walking in the carpet layer was driving away).

It was a weird experience being internetless for several days. It’s amazing how used to connectivity we’ve all become in such a short time.

Speaking of connectivity, I now have a Pownce account. http://pownce.com/arcanecode/ . I’ve only just started it, will try to figure out how to most effectively use it over the next few weeks. Meanwhile if you have a Pownce account feel free to send me a friend invite.

I also read that WordPress now has a good integration with Facebook, and am considering a Facebook account. Let me know your thoughts.

Finally, I’ve updated the Arcane Lessons page ( https://arcanecode.wordpress.com/arcane-lessons/ ) with more lesson plans, be sure to check it out.

Being a Better Developer… In 6 Months

Scott Hanselman’s show this week was killer. (http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=90 ). In it, Scott and Carl discuss a thread going around the internet, namely how to become a better developer in six months. They had some excellent ideas, some of which they were passing along from other posters, some were theirs. The post that seems to have started the whole thread was done buy a guy named Justice Gray, back in April. http://graysmatter.codivation.com/HowIAmBecomingABetterDeveloperPart1OfInfinity.aspx or http://shrinkster.com/qvx . Just recently he posted a follow up at http://graysmatter.codivation.com/AnUpdateOnGoals.aspx or http://shrinkster.com/qvy .

I like the whole concept, and am going to implement my own version of it. And the first step is to declare what I’m going to do, so without further ado…

I’m going to start by reading a chapter a week from a book. Now, I know that doesn’t sound like much compared to the plans of others to read a book a week, but it leads to my next step…

I will work all the code samples in the book. Reading is one thing, but doing is even better. Personally, I find I get a better understanding when I actually type in the code samples and run them. And not just run what’s in the book, but tweak it, experiment with it. And then what will I do with my knowledge?

I will teach what I learn. The best way to learn is to teach. I’ll blog, talk with my co-workers over lunch, give presentations, but in some way I will give back what I learned. But I won’t stop this learning process with just books.

I’ll increase my listening of podcasts or videocasts. I recently got an inexpensive MP3/WMA player, which I load up with podcasts. This left the 1 gig card on my iPaq free, which I’ve loaded some videos on. Since the iPaq is portable, it increases my ability to watch these videos. Since I’ve blogged so much about podcasts in the past, I shan’t continue talking about them.

I’ll create at least one new presentation and give it to a user group. Again, the best way to learn is to teach, and there’s no better place than with your peers at your local user group.

I’ll look at the source code for an open source project. This is one I really loved from the show. Look at someone else’s code, see how it works, step through it. Right now I’ve got several in mind, first is the Paint.Net project ( http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html ) since I think the graphics would be interesting, and graphics aren’t something I normally get to play with at work.

Next is RSSBandit, http://www.rssbandit.org with the source at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96589&package_id=103276 .The networking concepts in there should be quite useful in many instances. Finally is SharpDevelop (http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/ ). It’d be interesting to see how an IDE works. I’m not sure which of the three I’ll look at, but these are on my short list.

I will learn a brand new or little used technology. There’s a lot of new technology out there, or tech I don’t read much about. Working a lot with the SQL Server BI (Business Intelligence) tools, the upcoming SQL Server 2008 sounds interesting. Of course there’s Visual Studio 2008. And XAML promises to be a hot topic, between WPF and Silverlight I think this will eventually be a “must” for everyone. Those are just some examples, find something that fascinates you and go learn.

The final two items on my list are suggestions from my manager, who my kids have dubbed “Mighty Mike”. I thought these were really good.

I will learn more about the business. No, not the business of programming, although that’s certainly important. I’m talking about what my company does. Most developers aren’t in a job where their company produces software. Instead our programming efforts help support the production of some product, which our company sells. I will learn more about that product, how it’s produced, what processes apply, and what the difficulties are. And finally….

I will get to know my customers. By that, I mean the people who are using, or are affected by the software I write. For most of us, those will be other employees of our company. Meet these people. Get to know them. Buy them a cup of coffee. Take a non-IT coworker to lunch every so often. Setup a half hour meeting with them every so often to learn and understand more about their job. Find out what their pain points are, find ways to solve their problems, offer them solutions to make their jobs better.

Whew, that’s quite the list. It will take a lot of balancing of my time to carry this off, but at the end of it I’ll be a better programmer.

To wrap this up, I’m supposed to tag four other developers, to challenge them as well. So here goes…

First is Jeff Barnes, http://jeffbarnes.net/portal/blogs/jeff_barnes/default.aspx . Payback time! (He knows why, heh heh heh).

Next is Todd Miranda, Birmingham’s newest MVP. Congrats Todd! http://blog.nxtdimension.com/

I think my next victim will be my brother-in-law, Dougal. Even though he’s not fortunate enough to work with .Net, he at least got to do some cool stuff with WordPress. http://dougal.gunters.org/

My final pick is that perfect blend of lunatic and coding genius, Mark Miller. It’s his fault I got deeply involved in coding again. I was thinking of getting into project management, but after seeing his talk at VSLive 2005 I got so enthused about coding again I jumped in with both feet and here I am. So how about it Miller, put down that McGriddle and blog something! http://www.doitwith.net/

An now I challenge you, the reader of this post to go out and be a better developer. Post a link to your development plan. If you don’t have a blog of your own, feel free to post your plan below. Look at others, take the best of the ideas that will work for you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of work to do!

Happy Birthday Anna

7 years ago today, July 6th my youngest baby girl came into the world. Wow how time flies! I’m taking the day off to spend with her and make her birthday really special, so have a good weekend and I’ll see you back here next week.

Arcane Tidbits

Today I thought I’d cover a few items that I found interesting, but were not in and of themselves enough info for an extensive blog post. I call these Arcane Tidbits.

First up is an interesting new Trojan horse that is attacking computers. When you reboot the computer, something pops up that looks alarmingly like the Microsoft Windows Activation screen. It tells you another user has activated your copy of Windows, and demands you enter credit card info as a way to validate your identity, of course reassuring you that you won’t be charged. If you fail to do so it shuts down your PC. PC Magazine has an interesting writeup as well as a link on how to remove this pest at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2147608,00.asp .

Another interesting story from PC Magazine, the first known spam sent out as a PDF file is now in circulation. Read more about it at http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2007/07/more_pdf_spam.php . To quote Patrick Norton (http://dl.tv/ ) “Remember kids, never ever ever open attachments from people you don’t know, and sometimes even from people you do.”

If you’ve been working in the .Net space for a bit, you’ve probably heard of the new Microsoft Cardspace that is part of .Net 3.0. However, you may be looking for a good basic intro to give to your boss or non-programming friends like system administrators to help them understand it. In episode 98 of Security Now, Steve Gibson gives a nice basic overview of what Cardspace is and how it works.

You can this episode at http://www.twit.tv/sn98 . Steve does get a bit technical, so I don’t know I’d suggest it for your dad (unless your dad is a former CIO like mine) but for your boss, DBAs, or System Admins it’s a good intro on what it is and how it works without getting into the programming. You might want to listen to show 95 (http://www.twit.tv/sn95 ) on OpenID first, as OpenID and Cardspace go hand in hand.

Next a bit of a personal note, I feel like a kid in a Web 2.0 candy store lately. You see, up until this week I’ve been using Hughes DirecWay to get my internet via Satellite. The speed was slow, about 700k down, but better than dial up. The downside is their FAP, or Fair Access Policy. Now I was spending nearly 90 bucks a month for their Professional Level service. Under that plan, I would get FAPped if I downloaded “too much”.

And how much is too much? Good question, I tried to find that out myself and was met with evasive technical answers. The best I could determine, based upon the elusive answers given to me by several tech support personnel, was somewhere around 50 megabytes an hour. Yes, you are reading that correct, 50 megabytes an hour, or about 1 podcast.

And what happened if I downloaded to much? Well I got FAPped as they call it, my bandwidth was choked back to a speed so slow it made dial up attractive. And forget doing VPN on it, it won’t work.

In order to get the speed out of the satellite, Hughes compresses the packets before they go up and down to the satellite via the dish. With VPN however all traffic is encrypted, so it can’t see the packet to compress it. Oh, the sales people don’t mention this, and one even told me it “should work” and I have to admit that once, just once, I actually made a VPN connection to the office. It was so slow though I had time to drive to the office to see the results of a single keypress.

Well happy days are here as AT&T ran DSL to my house last week. The installer could not have been nicer and more professional, and they even called a few days later to follow up and make sure everything was still working. I admit I was a bit dubious when AT&T bought BellSouth, but so far they look like they really have their act together.

My rather long winded point is I now have an 8 megabit connection to the net, with no limitations on bandwidth. No more FAPping! No more latency! No more 90 bucks a month for a service I’m not allowed to use! I’m now free to go explore all the cool Web 2.0 stuff like Skype, YouTube, and more. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about my experiences, but if you know of some cool high bandwidth technologies I can go play with drop a comment and let me know.

And finally, my local Discovery store is closing (sniffle). True there’s still the online store, but it was a lot of fun to go in and browse. I picked up two books I’ve had my eye on for a while at a deep discount. One is Mythbusters: Don’t Try This At Home Unless We Tell You To. It’s a book of experiments you can do with your kids, I intend to give it to my daughters and we can have some fun with it.

The second book is also about Mythbusters, and talks about the founding of the show and covers the stories behind 30 of their most popular myths. I’ve already looked through the first chapter, this looks to be a fun read, and with discounts I bought both books for a mere 20 bucks. You might want to check your local Discovery store as well.

And there you go a few little tidbits for your reading pleasure.

Standard Disclaimer: I receive no considerations financial or otherwise from any of the business or products mentioned in today’s post, and being a geek think the Mythbusters are really really cool.

Happy Birthday U.S.A.

Today is the 4^th of July, and in the U.S.A. a national holiday. I’ll be taking the day off, celebrating my country’s birthday with barbeque, fireworks and special events.

Here in Alabama we have a great place called American Village ( http://americanvillage.org/index.shtml ), a place that has recreated many important buildings from colonial days such as the Philidelphia Courthouse and George Washington’s house. On the 4^th they have a lot of displays, actors recreating historical moments (the Patrick Henry “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech is especially good), and tops the day off with music and fireworks.

Happy Birthday U.S.A.!

Arcane Fun Fridays: Photographic Podcasts

Readers will know I’m a big fan of digital photography, it’s a hobby of mine I like to relax with. For example, here’s a pic I took in downtown Birmingham (the one in Alabama, not England).

I’m also a big beliver in podcasts, I listen to many to educate myself in the .Net world. It occurred to me there’s probably some good photographic podcasts as well, and sure enough I found some good ones. I thought I’d pass along some of the one’s I’ve been listening to, for your listening delight.

The Candid Frame – The host interviews photographers to find out how they got started, their techniques, etc.

http://www.thecandidframe.com/

Martin Bailey Photography – Martin shares his techniques with us.

http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/podcastmp3.php

Jeff Curto’s Camera Position – Jeff concentrates on the creative side of photography

http://www.cameraposition.com/

Tips from the Top Floor – Each week Chris has a new technique for us. You should also check out the forums, they are very active.

http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/

Photocast Network – This is a central site for many shows including the ones I’ve listed above. They also have a few other shows I want to check out but haven’t had the opportunity to as of yet.

You should definitely check out the “Focus Ring” episodes. These are shows where the hosts from several of the network’s shows get together on a single podcast to discuss various topics. By far these have been my favorite episodes so far.

http://www.photocastnetwork.com/

There you go, some podcasts to listen to while you’re out playing with that new camera of yours this weekend!

Arcane Fun… Saturdays?

Sorry for missing my usual Friday post, I was having ISP issues (which are still unresolved, but I’ve done a workaround for now).

This weekend I’ll be participating in something very geeky, it’s called Field Day. Each year on the fourth full weekend in June amateur radio operators (you may have heard them called “Hams”) get together to practice their emergency response preparedness, fellowship and have a good time.

The idea behind Field Day is for the hams in a community to gather at a single location, setup radios, equipment, run off of emergency power, and generally practice what we would do in case of an emergency. At the same time my local clubs are gathered, other clubs will be gathering in their communities as well. We’ll then get on the air and communicate with each other, exchanging brief messages similar to what we would do in the event of a real emergency.

This preparedness has already paid off, several times. In the days after 9/11 amateur radio was the chief form of communication. More recently, the hurricanes that devastated Louisiana, Mississippi, and parts of Alabama provided a wide scale communications effort. For months it was amateur radio that provided the communications links between emergency responders as well as relief agencies like the Red Cross and United Way.

In this day and age you might be thinking “is amateur radio still around? I thought cell phones and the internet got rid of it?” Not so. Most amateur radio equipment can be setup with a minimum of requirements. A decent 12 volt battery, the radio, and some wire in a tree and the radio operator is in business. The internet doesn’t work so well without power, and the cell phones don’t seem to work to well after a hurricane knocks the cell towers onto the ground.

Community education is the other component to Field Day. Often we gather in public places like parks so that we can be seen by folks driving or walking by. This year my clubs, the Shelby County Amateur Radio Club and the Birmingham Amateur Radio Club are joining forces and will be at Oak Mountain State Park near the fishing lake. I’m sure in your community hams will be gathering too.

If you happen to be out and about and see a bunch of guys bent over radios, wander up and say hello. They’ll be glad to show you around, maybe even let you get on the air. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of picking up a microphone and realizing the guy you are talking to is on the other side of the planet, then realizing the only thing making it happen is the little box in front of you and a piece of wire strung up in a tree! Who needs the internet anyway?

Arcane Fun Fridays: Run As Radio

“Hi, my name is Arcane, and I’m a podcast addict. “ I tell the small room full of people.

“Hi.” A crowd of voices echoes back.

“Welcome to Podcast Addicts.” says the group leader. “Tell us about yourself.”

“It’s these podcasts. I just can’t seem to get enough of them. At first it was just listening on the way home from work. Then I started on the way to the office as well. Before long I was listening all the time, grocery shopping, cutting the grass, I’ve even quit watching TV, preferring to improve myself listening to these podcasts instead of frying my brain with yet another mindless sitcom.”

“So, what’s brought you here tonight?” the group leader prompts me.

“Well, it’s those jerks over at Pwop Productions ( http://www.pwop.com/ ). You know, the same guys who do Dot Net Rocks ( http://www.dotnetrocks.com/ ) and Haselminutes ( http://www.hanselminutes.com/ ) just to name a few?”

The group leader nods, glancing between me and the crowd, and looking just a bit worried. But since he says nothing, I continue. “Well, they’ve gone and done it again. As if all those great shows weren’t enough, they’ve gone off and created yet another one, Run As Radio ( http://www.runasradio.com/ ).

“Each week Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes talk about things for system admins, hardware geeks, or savvy developers. It’s gotten to where I’ve got podcasts going all the time. My wife says I don’t listen to her anymore, or I think that’s what she’s saying, it’s sort of hard to hear her over the podcasts. She may be saying something about the space aliens trying to eat my meatloaf, but…”

I pause, realizing the crowd is no longer listening to me. In a flurry of headphones and USB connectors they are attacking the computers on the far side of the room, the Run As Radio site flickering as they download past and current episodes to their various media devices. Even the group leader is there, frantically trying to get his Zune to connect to someone.

I smile, and slip quietly out the back door. My work is done.

Arcane Surfaces

By now most folks have heard of the new Microsoft Surface ( http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ ). In case you’ve been busy organizing your Star Wars figures, Microsoft Surface is a technology that lets you interact with the top of a coffee table sized device, as if it were a touch screen. You can draw on it, write, move the windows around and resize them.

It also has the ability to interact with wireless devices. In one demo, a camera is placed on the Surface and the pictures appear to spill out onto the top of the table. Multiple people can “grab” these, spin them resize them, move them around to the delight.

What’s interesting though is the level at which people seem to want to take this. I’ve seen numerous blogs and websites exclaiming how they can finally have their “Tron Desk”.

In case you don’t recall, Tron (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/ ) was a 1982 movie in which Jeff Bridges gets sucked into a computer and has to play games to escape, and TRON is the program that can stop the bad guy. In the “real world” the bad guy (Ed Dillinger, played by David Warner (above)) has a really cool desk.

The monitor is built in, as is the keyboard. Dillinger types on the flat surface of his desk as lighted keys appear under his fingers. Of course in 1982 it was a mock up, but today we do have the technology to do that kind of thing, I recall some early personal computers of that era having flat keyboards, each key was just the slightest bump. Today, my PDA has a touch screen, I can use my finger to key in the password and manipulate the start menu.

So if this is so cool, and do-able, why isn’t everyone using flat desks like the Tron one today? Well for the same reason that I think the Surface is going to see limited use: Tactile Feedback.

Humans, at least for the time being, still like multisensory input. We like the feeling of the keys bouncing against our fingers, or the satisfying click of the mouse as we press it. It’s these tiny subtilities that we don’t think about that make the device usable, and largely unchanged since the inception.

Sure, Surface will have it’s place. I can see it as a big conference room table, or on a conference room wall. Maybe in resturaunts, to place orders or ask for drink refills.

But using the Surface as my desk? No thanks. Not unless it has a USB port for my keyboard!

— END OF LINE —

Grok

After listening to last weeks DotNetRocks episode with Scott Stanfield ( http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=244 ) I took at look at Grok Talk ( http://groktalk.com/ ). This is a great site filled with a lot of video training material.

The cool thing is each video is a mere 10 minutes in length. This is awesome for the busy programmer on the go. Now you can easily download and learn something new everyday without a huge investment in time. I highly encourage you to take a look, I plan to watch one video every weekday.

Speaking of free training, I have been asked to speak at the Birmingham Dot Net User Group tomorrow, Tuesday June 12^th. The meeting starts at 7 pm, and will take place at the New Horizons training center located at 601 Beacon Pkwy W #106, Birmingham AL. The Windows Live map is at http://shrinkster.com/pv8, or the Google map can be found at http://shrinkster.com/pv7 .

I’ll be speaking on SQL Server Compact Edition, showing you how to get started with this cool technology. My notes and demos are already here, just click the SSCE link under categories. Hope to see you there!