May 2007 Entries

PDC 2007 Rescheduled

That's right, PDC was originally scheduled for Oct. 25th in Los Angeles (LA) has been cancelled and is in the process of being re-scheduled.  To find out more info on the situation, go check out the PDC site: We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones. By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas”...

posted @ Friday, May 25, 2007 8:25 AM | Feedback (613)

A Software Architect's Duties

I've been reading the blog entitled, Coding the Architecture, for quite sometime now and I really enjoy the its content (you should definitely check it out).  Recently there are two entries dealing with responsibility and authority (from an SA's point of view) which hit close to home.  Unfortunately for me, I have responsibility without authority ... which as some of us know, that's not a good combination.  How can you be responsible for something you have no saying (authority) over what happens to it? Do any of you out there suffer from the same fate?

posted @ Thursday, May 24, 2007 3:07 PM | Feedback (618)

Party With Palermo TechEd '07 Edition

Man, Jeff is going all overboard with the planning for the Party with Palermo series (dude, you should quit your job and become a professional party planner!).  As you can see, he even has a badge for the party! If you have the time, check out the party's website and RSVP so we know who's all coming!  I hope to see a lot of fellow MVPs there!  I know it's going to be a blast!

posted @ Wednesday, May 23, 2007 9:56 PM | Feedback (611)

Silverlight Add-In for Reflector

Yesterday, Levi sent me a link to this add-in for Reflector that disassembles a Silverlight applications and shows your the JavaScript to run it.  I must say, it's a pretty nice little add-in (that includes its source) for Reflector.  Below is a picture of the disassembled Silverlight Airlines demo given at MIX '07: Check it out if you have the time, it's pretty sweet!

posted @ Tuesday, May 22, 2007 9:45 AM | Feedback (613)

Support for Subversion on CodePlex

From the looks of it (via Phil Haack), CodePlex will be supporting SVN (both svn.exe and TortoiseSVN) for all of their projects.  Here's the converstaion Jim Newkirk and Phil had: Haacked wrote Mon at 8:24 PM So I can download svn.exe from http://subversion.tigris.org/ and manage my CodePlex source code repository, yes? So are you rolling out Subversion? Or a Subversion facade into TFS? Anything you can reveal? :) jimnewkirk wrote Mon at 7:41 PM To clarify: it's our intention to support the functionality of the command-line Subversion client as well as TortoiseSVN. jimnewkirk wrote Mon at 7:40 PM Phil,...

posted @ Tuesday, May 22, 2007 9:13 AM | Feedback (611)

ArcReady: Des Moines, Iowa

I would like to thank Denny, our breadth AE, for doing a great job at our first ArcReady event last Friday in Des Moines.  During the event, Denny mentioned that Des Moines will be a regular stop on the quaterly ArcReady visits.  If you would like to attend, please post your email on this post (through comments) and I'll make sure that Denny gets you added to the list.  Also, after the event, we held our first ArcCouncil event.  ArcCouncil is an open forum were we discuss various topics dealing with software development.  For example, the meeting started by...

posted @ Monday, May 21, 2007 11:11 PM | Feedback (612)

New Release of ASP.NET Futures CTP

I'm not sure how many of you out there are aware of the ASP.NET Futures section of the ASP.NET website.  Here's the description of the section from the website: ...contains an early developer preview of features providing a wide range of new functionality for both ASP.NET and Silverlight. The Futures release includes early experimental versions of features currently being considered for future versions of ASP.NET and the .NET Framework. The May 2007 Release contains the following components: ASP.NET AJAX Futures Silverlight Controls for ASP.NET Dynamic Data Controls for ASP.NET ASP.NET Application Services Dynamic Languages Support for ASP.NET (sans IronRuby,...

posted @ Thursday, May 17, 2007 6:30 AM | Feedback (611)

Rails Videos On YouTube

Yesterday Nick sent me a link to these videos on YouTube that have the old "Hi, I'm a Mac. Hi, I'm a PC." gestalt to them.  If you have the time, check them out they're pretty hilarious. RubyOnRails vs PHP - Migrations   RubyOnRials vs PHP - Organization   RubyOnRails vs Java

posted @ Wednesday, May 16, 2007 7:55 AM | Feedback (611)

Technical Currently-Reading List

Ok, so I've just posted my current non-technical reading list so now here's my techinical currently-reading list: Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition - Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt I've been playing around with Ruby for quite some time now but I need a good reference book for it.  What other book to read than main source of Ruby knowledge out there!  After the announcement of the DLR (which I've downloaded already), I can't wait to do more of Ruby natively on .NET! Programming WCF Services - Juval Lowy Another great master work by Juval.  If you're currently doing WCF...

posted @ Monday, May 14, 2007 10:14 PM | Feedback (611)

Non-Technical Currently-Reading List

That's right, it's that time again...yep, when I post my currently reading list so you can get a closer look at my thought process.  Here are the books in no particular order: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John C. Maxwell One of my friends from work let me borrow this book from him so I get more acquinted with the qualities of a leader.  I'm at chapter 8 and it's pretty good...it takes me a while to go through the book since I have to pause and re-think of the different times when I had such "leader" experience...whether if it was me...

posted @ Monday, May 14, 2007 10:57 AM | Feedback (611)

Can We Build It?

Yes, we can! (Thanks, Bob!) ... this is a typical answer from project teams that get too involved with the how of their project.  To me, as a member of many good & bad projects, I care more about these questions: For who are we building it? Why are we building it? Are we fullfilling the needs of the customer?  Who's going to maintain it? As a developer/designer/architect/team member, we should be caring more about the needs & requirements of the customer than the way we use tools (Agile, .NET/Java, etc.) to try to solve the problem.  The moment we lose...

posted @ Saturday, May 12, 2007 11:17 AM | Feedback (612)

Converting Custom Collections To and From DataTable

Alright, so for our applications we have a couple of forms that use the DataGridView control to display tabular data (kinda of a common scenario for many business applications).  The data is returned from our services as an IList<T> in which we can just then bind directly to the grid by using the grid's DataSource property.  Pretty easy task...unless when it comes to sorting.  From the looks of it, Ayende has the similar problem that he's trying to overcome... At that point, our IList<T> doesn't cut it.  You could say, well, use an BindlingList<T> and override the ApplySortCore...

posted @ Wednesday, May 9, 2007 1:59 PM | Feedback (655)

Cashing Blank Checks

First, I would to apologize to my three blog readers for the lack of blog posting I've done the past couple of weeks.  Why have I been missing in action (MIA)?  Well, I've been too busy helping management pay for the blank checks they signed earlier this year.  Huh? Ok, I'm totally lost, you say?  Well, a while back our management started to sell the idea for the project of the year to our business partners.  After the initial sale pitches, we were asked to come up with a time line that would guesstimate how long the project would take...

posted @ Sunday, May 6, 2007 8:26 AM | Feedback (613)