archive: 2006/5

2006

Blogging from Word 2007

So I wanted to be one of the cool people who posted to their blog from Word 2007. Yah, wanted to be. I’m not going to be tonight. I have the product installed and it seems to run just fine…..with o

My Tool List

Over the last number of months I’ve been working on building up the toolkit that I use for software development. By no means is it going to be like Scott Hanselman’s list, but it is something that a f

Quotes from Calgary Code Camp

Like DevTeach, there were some memorable quotes from the trip to Calgary. Here we go It’s like sex in my mouth. – said when describing the Ahi Tuna Tacos at Joey Tomato’s. I don’t know if I can sit h

Calgary Code Camp Review

I have to admit that I went to the Calgary Code Camp to attend the talks as well as see how the event was run. Overall the talks were great and the event ran quite smoothly. Two big thumbs up to the

Complaints about Edmug's Last Presentation

There have been a number of people who have complained about Rod‘s presentation at Edmug’s May meeting. The most scathing complaint comes from Mike over at sideline.ca and I’d like to address his comp

The .NET Language Integrated Query Project (LINQ)

To start the Calgary Code Camp 2006 I’m sitting in on Daniel Carbajal‘s presentation on LINQ. I’ve seen a bit on this before, but I’m interested in what new things I’m going to be able to pick up. Th

Calgary Code Camp

Calgary Code Camp is tomorrow. For all you geeks, Steven Rockarts will be there. For all you metrosexuals, Justice Gray will be there. For all you ladies, I’ll be there. For all you taco lovers,

Edmug Presentation Changes

The feedback for Rod Paddock‘s talk last night at Edmug is starting to trickle in this morning and one thing is becoming clear. Some of the attendees were expecting an advanced talk and Rod’s talk di

Edmonton .NET User Group's May Meeting

The Edmonton .NET User Group held it’s May meeting tonight. Rod Paddock presented on Creating Custom Visual Studio 2005 Project Templates. I learned a ton of stuff and had some great discussions wit

WineLog.net

Any of you that know me well understand that I have a weakness for the elixir of life. Today Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch posted on the new Web 2.0 (my thoughts on that are starting to change

Script#...WTF?

Really, this is a great extension (watch the screencast too) of the .NET platform. Having data typing “capabilities” when creating a set javascript routines is invaluable. I’m all for this type of t

Caching patterns

Here’s a great article by Gavin Joyce on the Reluctant Cache Pattern. I like it’s simplicity and the way that won’t bloat the memory usage on the server. The project that I’m working on is by no mea

Why can't more of us be like this?

I’ve worked some crap jobs. I’ve worked some great jobs. The one thing that carries through all these is that at some point I always hated them. I’m not talking about feeling like the morning sucks

Okay, I'm a homer, but....

Have you ever seen any event, sporting, cultural (is there a difference when you talk hockey?) or emotional where the guy who is paid to sing the national anthem, just stops. This was a good kind of

EnergizeIT 2006

Microsoft Canada is trying out a new style of event in June. EnergizeIT will be a live, day long event in Toronto. The difference with this event is that everyone who isn’t part of the center of the

More free tools

I’ve just added another piece of software to my toolkit. RedGate‘s SQL Prompt is now available for free download until September 1 2006. I’m the Igloo Coder and I’m of to get some more intelli in my

Edmonton Blogging Community

Hey all. If you have a blog with some technical content and you’re from Edmonton, leave me a comment and I’ll see about adding your blog’s RSS feed to the consolidator on BloggingOnIT.com. All the s

Edmonton Code Camp

Steven Rockarts has committed to putting on a Code Camp here in Edmonton. I know some of the speakers that Steven is trying to get lined up and if he can do it, this will be a top notch event. I’m g

Back in '92

Oil Country is pumping out the black gold! Tonight the Oilers advanced to round 3 (the semi finals) of the NHL playoffs. According to history buffs this is the first time that the Oil have been this

Abstracting the Developer

Joel Spolsky posted about the concept of abstracting the developer to insulate them and make them more effective at the time.  I read this article and thought “This is great” and then “Damn my la

Agile Development

What is it about Agile methodologies causes them to be “Old Boys Clubs”. I can dig around the internet and find all the information I want on Scrum, Agile or TDD, but all of it is from the developer

Unable to create offline cache location at.....

Today I got back to work for the first time in a week and the weather outside is not helping my ability to concentrate or be productive.  As is my luck, I get back to work and try to fire up Visu

Hockey in Canada in the Spring

I live in the northern most city that is the home to an NHL team, the Oilers. Sure it’s spring, but it is early spring here in the City of Champions. That said the weather is awesome. The Oilers ar

Canadian Online Census 2006

Tonight I filled out the Canadian Census 2006 using their online form. The idea of having the census information gathered online makes complete sense to me. Unfortunately this implementation is a di

Lessons Learned -- Conference Prep

DevTeach 2006 was my first conference and like anything you do for the first time you make a few mistakes. Jason Row has a good post showing a list of things that you should do when going to a confer

Quotes from DevTeach 2006

This week was a blast. Although the User Group leaders are a bunch of pretentious uppety-ups, I did manage to have a good time hanging out with them. We had a great time exploring the city in the ev

Johnny "The Pimp" Bristowe and the Mad Mexican

Johnny “The Pimp” Bristowe was presenting on Applications with Windows Presentation Foundation this morning when he was visited by The Mad Mexican. Apparentally these two were tag team partners back

Designing Applications for Mulitple UIs Part 1

Beth Massi is a great and knowledgeable presenter. This talk wasn’t quite what I expected (I admit, I didn’t really read the description before hand), but it had a lot of information tat was very use

Creating Custom Setup Applications

I’ve posted before about the fact that Reporting and Installation Packages are forgotten arts. Dan Jurden’s talk this morning is about the latter. Good presentations are tough to do. People in the a

Click Once Deployment

This is a very interesting session. The different ways to release the app into the wild and the fact that the application, when installed locally, allows for a version rollback on uninstall are very

Sustainability and Inverson of Control #2

Finally after 1 1/2 days I finally attended a dud. There’s no question in my mind that Scott Bellware is a smart cookie, but this was a pretty bad session. First I’ll qualify my situation by saying

Clarification on the VSTS checkin/out process

I spoke with Barry Gervin after the presentation to clarify the concerns that I had during the session this morning. When you are working in any environment and you are starting a new work (coding) ta

Lunch Time at DevTeach 2006

It’s darn near lunch time and there’s this dude running around with a quesadilla screaming something about Mexico. I’m starting to wonder if the guy is all there or not. Seems other people have seen

Advanced Version Control with Team Systems

One of the interesting concepts that came up in this talk was the idea that VSTS has you working off of a known working version of the source code. I see a problem with this. Working off a known wor

Extending Visual Studio 2005

To ensure your code has all the XML comments in it go to the project, right click and select Properties. On the Build tab and check the XML documentation file item. This will verify that the signatu

Simplifying Code Generation in a Generic World

Microsoft has released a code generator called Domain Specific Languages. Domain in this case is relating to the IT domain (i.e. forms over data or web app) not business domain. Five principles of co

What constitutes community?

Since I’ve been here in Montreal I’ve had the opportunity to interact with the leaders of the other User Groups in Canada. Without exception they are saying that my description of the Edmonton .NET U

Montreal by night

I was out with the Canada Clan tonight (D’Arcy from Winnipeg, Jennifer from Saskatoon, Nolan from Victoria, Rob from Toronto, Chris from East of Toronto, and Jason from Fredrickton). Things didn’t ge

Defining and Enforcing Good Code

This is one of my babies and I’m really stoked to hear this presentation by Kathleen Dollard. Even better, this is going to be a show on FxCop, something that I’ve always wanted to use, but have neve

How the core ASP.NET Engine Works

Rick Strahl is presenting on the way that the ASP.NET Engine Works. He started by saying that this was a “higher level talk” to start with. Right. He immediately dove into the operational structure

Debugging Smart Client Apps

Cathi Gero is giving a great presentation with all the gory details about debugging. One of the great points was how to get symbol files (*.pdb) to load when the application is being debugged. She’s

DataBinding with Beth Massi

As we all know Microsoft has a passion for drag and drop data binding. We also all know that the standard Microsoft demo is to build an “Enterprise” solution using the drag and drop data binding. Wh

D'Arcy's woes with wireless

So it’s becoming apparent that people from Winnipeg can’t make wireless work. Maybe it’s the early onset West Nile that this year’s mosquitos are spreading. We’ve tried everything to help him. The

DevTeach 06 Keynote

Yair Alan Griver is currently showing some pretty damn cool stuff around the LINQ, DLINQ and XLINQ projects. One of the cool ones is that the VB compiler will allow you to Dim an object equal to a li

User Group Summit

Just got in from finishing off the evening with a few of the UG leaders from around Canada. The summit today was great (pics courtesy of Guy Barette). For a new User Group, my idea was to get in and

What to do when they screw up your drink

We were just out to lunch at a great place. The weather is fabulous and we sat on the deck. It was very difficult to leave and come back here. I ordered a double scotch and the waiter brought me tw

John is getting Flamed

John Bristowe just showed up to the User Group conference and the poor boy is getting Flamed.

Getting to Montreal

Yesterday was travel day. As our plane pushed back from the jetway they tried to fire up the engines (some say this is required, I’m still unconvinced) and all we got was the sound of a 1983 Ford pic

Updates from DevTeach

I’m planning on posting updates on the content and atmosphere from DevTeach each day. Watch for it info here and I’ll do my best to keep you up to date.

edmug.net May Speaker -- Rod Paddock

The announcement that everyone has been waiting for is now being made (okay, Steve said it earlier than me). The may speaker for the Edmonton .NET User Group is going to be Rod Paddock (bio). LIke t

Spring has sprung

I heard a great joke the other day. How do you know when spring has come? The Leafs are out. Today was absolutely amazing. The sun was out all day. It warmed up to the point that my light jacket w

Scott Bellware tees off on the Fr-agilist

Today Scott Bellware let loose with a response to Sahil Malik‘s recent post on Bad Programmer Diseases. I’m sorry to say this, but I’m going to do it straight off and not touch it again. Scott, the

Maintenance Programming

Every application goes through the full SDLC unless the project gets cancelled. No matter what the methodology implemented to manage the SDLC there is one consistent fact: All software must be maint