The Costall Blog

10 Years running user group meetings

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:41:35 GMT

Check out the NxtGenUG article where I talk about running user group meetings for the last 10 years.

May the Silverlight 4's be with you

Sun, 16 May 2010 18:16:10 GMT

I'll be presenting my popular Silverlight 4 session at DotNetDevNet on the 5th July 2010

I've been to Guy's user group before, it's a great crowd, so i'm really looking forward to this session - I also love the write-up guy has given me...

Why: Because Silverlight has grown up and now it is difficult to choose between Silverlight and WPF even for desktop apps let alone between Silverlight and ASP.NET for web apps. Also because Richard is one half of the Chuckle Brothers (our insurance wouldn't cover us to have an appearance from Dave McMahon at the same time) - you may laugh, you may chuckle but you will surely learn cool stuff about Silverlight.

Details here
http://www.dotnetdevnet.com/Meetings/tabid/54/EntryID/46/Default.aspx

Silverlight Master Class

Sun, 16 May 2010 17:44:28 GMT

We are pleased to announce a discount of £50 off the course price for the Silverlight Masterclass to any, fully paid up, current NxtGenUG Member. When booking for the course please enter NXTGENUGMEMBER promotion code in the enquiry form text. All applications will be validated.

bbits has been delivering Silverlight training world-wide direct to companies since it's first release. They are now delighted to announce that they have been inspired by, and are partnering with, Shawn Wildermuth's successful stateside Silverlight Tour to bring you world-class Silverlight training around the UK.

Silverlight Masterclass in the UK, runs developer and designer 3 day intensive courses at the same venue, allowing for networking time. it also boasts 2 speakers per course,providing you with a more personal level of training, including NxtGenUG's very own Richard Costall. Current early bird prices are £995, with an additional £50 discount for NxtGenUG members - for 3 days training!

The following dates and broad locations have been confirmed.

Midlands - 28-30 July, 2010

For more information visit http://www.silverlightmasterclass.net

Silverlight Training

Wed, 05 May 2010 17:53:03 GMT

Want to get ahead of the game on one of the hottest technologies around - Silverlight 4 - Here it is...

Midlands - 9-11 June, 2010
London - 16-18 June, 2010
Manchester - 28-30 June, 2010

For more information visit http://www.silverlightmasterclass.net

TechEd Berlin 2010

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:44:51 GMT

Thing's were a little quiet after Mix10 on the conference front, no mention of PDC10 or Mix11, So it was great to hear that plans have started to materialise for TechEd Europe 2010, which will be in Berlin on the 8th-12th November 2010.

NxtGenUG have been involved with, and a sponsor of TechEd for 3 of the last 4 years, so it's great to know that this week of deep technical education, hands on labs and networking, with Microsoft employees and International speakers is moving ahead.

If you want to find out about TechEd 2010 in Berlin it's worth signing up to the email list to get the earliest warning on announcements and registration.

As I understand it pricing is set at a Full price conference pass = €1,895, but with an Early discount conference pass (purchase by July 5) of €1,395

If you don't know what TechEd is - Microsoft put it like this...

TechEd provides the most comprehensive technical education across Microsoft’s suite of released, or soon to be released, products, solutions and services. TechEd is for developers and IT professionals who are involved in implementing, deploying or building solutions using Microsoft technologies.

You can also keep upto date by following teched_europe on twitter

More Silverlight 3 Sessions

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:14:18 GMT

My Popular Silverlight 3 session is on the road again, covering 3 more user group sessions. If you are in the area of any of these, drop in and say hi!

Abstract:
Released in July 2009, Silverlight 3 is packed full of features, helping RIA developers in Styling, Graphics, Animations and much more. In this session Richard will go through this latest release in a demo packed session sure to have a wow factor!

NxtGenUG Cambridge - 18th August 2009
http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=235

GL.NET - 14th October 2009
http://www.gl-net.org.uk/Events/october09.aspx

NxtGenUG Oxford - 2nd November 2009
http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=239

See you around the community...

Silverlight 3 Released

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:44:15 GMT

The great news is Silverlight 3 is now released - To think it's only been around 8 months since Silverlight 2 launched is pretty amazing, espceially considering all the new goodness you are getting. Scott Guthrie has a great blog post which covers Silverlight 3, Blend 3 (RC), including Sketchflow here http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/07/10/silverlight-3-released.aspx

For those of you more upto date Tim Heuer has a post covering what's changed since the last public beta, including Zoom, ClearType and caching changes http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/07/10/silverlight-3-released-what-is-new-and-changed.aspx

Enjoy

NxtGenUG 6 - Hereford

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:25:05 GMT

One of the best things I ever did was to start NxtGenUG with Dave McMahon and John Price - To see how it's grown beyond Coventry and Birmingham is remarkable - We couldn't ask for any better coordinators running, Southampton, Cambridge and Oxford and growing the NxtGenUG brand. So it's with great pleasure we are announcing a 6th Region - Hereford headed up by Ryan O'Neill and Richard Wilde starting in March - Welcome aboard guys - good luck

Press Release Below...

"NxtGenUG are well chuffed to announce the start of the sixth UK region this time in Hereford. The group is being run by local developers Ryan O'Neill and Richard Wilde.

The group will have it's first meeting on 17th March 2009 between 7.00pm and 9.00pm in the Shirehall, Union Street, Hereford HR1 2HX. The main speaker will be Guy Smith-Ferrier with a session on Visual Studio 2008 Tips 'n Tricks. There will be the usual NxtGenUG activities of eating Pizza and Swagging-out.

To book your place goto here where registration and meeting is free. Come along and enjoy yourself and get involved in the UK Community in the West of England!"

go on, pop in...

Ireland - Silverlight

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:15:44 GMT

Silverlight Assault Course - Ireland Tour!!!

36 Sessions, 3 hotels, 2 train rides and return flights to Ireland. (plus Swaggily Fortunes). The Silverlight Assault Course is coming to Ireland on the 17th (Dublin) and 18th (Cork). Newly Minted MVP - Chris Hay and Myself will be covering 16 session between us each day with Microsoft Ireland's DPE Martha Rotter providing some additional sessions. We'll be covering many aspects of Silverlight at all levels in our own unique fun and snappy way. We'll also be ending the day with the World Renowned Swaggily Fortunes Gameshow - Starring You! - There's more.. It's FREE to attend.

17th Dublin - Details to Follow - see Martha's Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/martharotter/
18th Cork - http://www.cork.mtug.ie/Events/EventInfo.aspx?ID=a607584a-2fa2-475b-ba8e-4ba9786d9814

Agenda

9:00-9:30	Registration
9:30	Welcome and Housekeeping Martha Rotter
9:40	Getting Started Richard Costall In this Session Richard Costall will get you up and running with Silverlight, explain the constituent parts, build a "hello world" application and even dive into Expression Blend for a bit of Designer stuff.
10:00	XAP File Explored Chris Hay So what is a Silverlight Application, What is a XAP file, how is our content deployed what is our best strategy? In this nugget we dive deep into the XAP file, how a silverlight application is exposed in a web page and how we can dynamically load assemblies. All in 20 minutes, surely not!
10:20	Layout Richard Costall Grid or Canvas? Richard takes you on an introduction to basic layout, which to choose and how to configure them.
10:40	Silverlight Sockets (networking 1) Chris Hay In this nugget we will mess around with network communication via sockets or WCF duplex messages. The supports for these features allow the ability to do chatty things in applications and we will dive straight into it.
11:00	WCF Communication (networking 2) Chris Hay Silverlight is all very nice and all but I'd like to talk back to the web server thank you very much. In this nugget we will communicate with WCF and the most important stuff you need to know. Communicating with a service, Generating a client, Asynchronous Calls, Cross Domain Calls. Another packed nugget.
11:20	Break
11:30	Application Services Richard Costall Can Silverlight communicate with the ASP.NET Provider Model? – Of course it can – Join Richard on his journey of discovery to utilise, Authentication, Roles and Profile in a Silverlight Application.
11:50	Dynamic Languages Martha Rotter Want to use Silverlight but prefer coding in Ruby or Python to C# and VB.NET? No problem. Martha shows you how to write and debug Silverlight applications with the Dynamic Language Runtime so that you can use the development language skills you already have and integrate your existing web applications with Silverlight.
12:10	Syling/Templating Richard Costall From a simple font change to a redesign of the controls. Richard will show how you refactor styling information and build a control with any visual style you wish.
12:30	Images + Media Chris Hay In this nugget we look into Images and MediaElements. At the end of this nugget you should be able to use images and media effectively in your apps. We will build a Media Player, build a media image map, it's going to be fun. You should have a good idea of what's supported and what isn't also.
12:50-13:40	LUNCH
13:40	Brushes, Transforms + Animation Chris Hay At the heart of every good Silverlight application, is the ability to animate things, rotate things, and make things look funky with nice gradients. This nugget is about doing rich stuff with XAML.
14:00	DataBinding Richard Costall Databinding is a first class citizen in WPF and Silverlight is no different. This session will introduce you to the basics of Databinding.
14:20	Using Isolated Stored (1) Chris Hay This nugget is all about understanding Isolated Storage and how you can interact with it. Isolated Storage is the only place you can store data locally, it's probably one of the key features of Silverlight apps and this nugget is about showing you how to use it.
14:40	Using Isolated Stored (2) Chris Hay This nugget is a deep dive into Isolated Storage, where it is on disk, how it is represented internally, how to clean things up when it goes wrong. At the end of this nugget you will know everything you need to know about Isolated Storage (and probably stuff you didn't need to know either), but hey knowledge is power.
15:00	Break
15:10	Gaming Richard Costall Silverlight has a great future as a viral gaming platform. Richard will show you how to utilise a gameloop, the basics on animation, before a demonstration of a true gaming classic.
15:30	User Controls Richard Costall XAML, like HTML can be very Verbose. In this session Richard will show how easy it is to build usercontrols and then utilise them in your applications
15:50	Silverlight Encryption + Compression Chris Hay Wow are we still going on about Isolated Storage. Well this one is really about Encryption + Compression within Silverlight. You don't really want folks peeking at your hard earned data after all.
16:10	Custom Install and Loaders Richard Costall Give your Silverlight application a more compelling and enticing experience with a custom Silverlight Install and application installer.
16:30	Silverlight integration Martha Rotter Silverlight plays nicely with everyone. Want proof? Learn how to use Silverlight with your PHP applications, with Live Mesh and yes, even with Adobe Flash. Yes, really.
16:50 – 17:30	SWAGGILY FORTUNES Gameshow What a better way to end the day than with the ‘Internationally acclaimed NxtGenUG GameShow’ Swaggily Fortunes – Answer Simple Questions and win SWAG!

Hope to see you there....

Silverlight Mix 10 Challenge

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:54:48 GMT

I've entered the Silverlight Mix 10K Challenge (No, that's not a running race - I can't see me doing that). It's a coding challenge to build a Silverlight application in less than 10K - and he built a game called BlockSquash - All the Source code, including the XAML is less than 10K.

Theres a community competition, so head on over an cheer me on by rating my, and the other applications to see what can be done in less than 10K

Rate Richard's app here...

Costall's Disney Day

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:44:29 GMT

I've now been to Disney World 10 times, but couldn't believe it when this arrived....- I've been given my own day in DisneyWorld

Silverlight Error Messages

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:54:42 GMT

Having worked with Silverlight quite a lot recently I've found this page of great value in debugging various scenarios. See how many you can collect!

PDC 2009?

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:13:39 GMT

Announcing PDC2009: November 17-20, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA. After 3:00 PM PST (GMT-8), Thursday, October 30 you can add your name to the PDC2009 mailing list to receive all the latest information.

http://microsoftpdc.com/View.aspx?post=http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/PDCNews/Announcing-PDC2009/

Rock Band - MVP Rock Out

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:13:44 GMT

Gray Short has posted a great video on YouTube of the MVP Open Day - No, you won't see lots of future projects and demos - but you will see some MVP's rocking out on Rock Band, including Rich Costall on drums. Highlights for me was Mark Dryden on vocals for Run to the Hills and Guy Smith Ferrier on guitar!

Great Night

Silverlight UK User Group

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:12:46 GMT

Last week I was over at the Silverlight UK User Group at the Conchango Offices in London. We managed to fill a two hour slot with our Silverlight, XNA and Gaming talk - featuring Miner Willy the XNA/Silverlight Manic Miner Game. Thanks to Michelle and Mark for inviting us. The feedback I saw was excellent. See Below...

“Very informative, interested me greatly due to the background. Designers probably felt left out but the technical ability was outstanding. Really good presentation. Peter is a real talent!”

“Probably a bit less typical designer view as I am interesting in games and games graphics but although technical aspects of the presentation hasn’t completely lost me. Plus really useful to get a idea of what aspects of game graphics are affected by aspects of the games engine. How the way we make graphics can help the game developer, improve performance etc....”

“Really enjoyed the session, good mix, good ideas which can be used anywhere in general programming”

“As a dev and as a fan of retro games & Silverlight I enjoyed all aspects of the presentation. I also liked the tips about using the ASP.NET Providers”

“Well presented by both Richard and Peter. Great organisation of the event.”

“Very good demo, love to see new things in progress. Collision detection stuff was very useful for Silverlight. Would definitely come again!”

“I would like to see a more technical breakdown of how certain techniques were used to overcome problems encountered. Enjoyed the meeting – many thanks”

“Everything was great, can’t wait for the next one! Made gaming interesting to a non-gamer. Really interested in seeing Silverlight with mapping tools.”

The bonus is Ian Smith recorded the sessions in excellent quality for your enjoyment.

Part 1:

Silverlight UK User Group: Silverlight, XNA and Gaming Part 1 By Ian Smith
View in HD Download 360p Version Visit Ian Smith's ExposureRoom Videos Page

Part 2:

Silverlight UK User Group: Silverlight, XNA and Gaming Part 2 By Ian Smith
View in HD Download 360p Version Visit Ian Smith's ExposureRoom Videos Page

Silverlight Release Candidate Available..

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:48:56 GMT

Woo Hoo..

Read Scott's Announcement here

NOTE: This release is for Developers to get their Silverlight Applications ready for the Release version, and is not something you can deploy. So load it on your machine, make sure it builds and runs... and then sit tight for the release...

There's even some more controls, including the PasswordBox

The Covenant?

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:57:16 GMT

Looks like the Covenant are up to their tricks again on the latest teaser video from Bungie for an, as yet, unnamed title. In the image below, before mass destruction takes place you can see the front of a spaceship enter the picture from behind a skyscraper...

Looks amazing and leaves us none the wiser...

On the downside... I really hope the "Maddie, Where are you?" message is nothing more than a coincidence, surely Bungie would have done some research and typed it into a search engine before leaving such a weird clue, else it's just plain wrong.

Call it Snail Mail!

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:04:09 GMT

So, we all refer to the good old postal service as 'Snail Mail' - it can take days to receive something in the post, Electronic Mail almost arrives before you've even sent it! - So it came as an initial surprise when today I received two emails..

Your message

To: XXXXX XXXXXXX

Cc:

Subject: Invoice as promised.

Sent: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 17:40:01 +0100

was deleted without being read on Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:28:03 +0100

Perhaps it's not the mail thats slow, it's just taking somebody over 4 years to 'not' answer their mail....

Silverlight, XNA and Gaming

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:03:09 GMT

Following on from the great feedback we received for our Silverlight, XNA and Gaming session. I just wanted to give you a heads-up on where you can see it next.

1st October - Silverlight User Group [TBC] London
22nd October - Black Marble - Leeds http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Silverlight,%20XNA%20and%20Gaming
22nd November - DDD7 - ??If you want it - vote for it ??? http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/default.asp
9th December - NxtGenUG Birmingham http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=164

here's some feedback from the Coventry meeting

Having spent most of 1985 playing the Amstrad CPC version of Manic Miner to death, I couldn't have chosen another 8-bit classic I'd rather see. Even though Silverlight is still in beta, Rich has managed to do Matthew Smith proud ... just needs the Pythonesque boot death sequence to polish it off :)

Being one of the lucky ones who'd seen a sneak preview of Pete's pet XNA project, it was great to see it presented on the big screen. As if producing the code, 3D models, textures, music and sound effects wasn't enough, he adds "entertaining presenter" to his heavily-feathered cap! Top-notch work Pete, top-notch.

I have been looking forward to this event and so had high expectations - and am pleased to confirm they were fully met.

The XNA Gaming session was the best session I have yet to see - and I have seen most of them. Rich's silverlight brief was a great insight into how well it can be made to work, yet how painful it can be with such a small CLR coverage available to it.

Peter is probably one of the presenters I most admire...he is so modest and quiet yet so capable and knowledgeable. I thoroughly enjoyed his previous XNA session and was really looking forward to this one. It was a great session and am looking forward to seeing the Engine code and how XNA and Silverlight made use of it. I don't know the first thing about game writing - which is perhaps why I am so wowwed by Peter's abilities - but to no only develop but also create all the images etc - he is the full package. Please give us more XNA. Is it just me or is Peter a dead ringer for David Walliams?

It's clear that Pete really knows his stuff. His enthusiasm and passion for writing games really comes through whenever he speaks. He did lose me a little bit with talk of "orthogonal matrix" and so on, but otherwise very good. Would have been a 9 if we'd seen more of the game engine code.

It was obvious from Pete's presentation that he has a real passion for game development and I have no idea why he's currently spending time editing a database script when he can be developing games instead (the pay must really suck). My only criticism is that he never brought his porn laptop with him. Top game developer!

Great fun, brilliant content, superb pizza. Rock on
Excellent session from two great speakers. Rich dropped some great info on Silverlight, the gotchas alone were worth the price of admition

Great talk, with enough meat to get anyone cracking on building the next Halo .. bonus points for using the words Awesome, Gnarly and Dude more than once each

fantastic presentation, showing the cross-platform code and all the animations possible in silverlight was great and presented brilliantly as usual.
Very informative and obviously presented by a hard-core bedroom games writer. But more significantly one that can also present! :) I may have to dust down my copy of XNA and get coding games again!!

Silverlight Beta 1 Expired

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:22:06 GMT

A sample Silverlight site where I work, is no longer working, as the Beta 1 of Silverlight has expired. I'm sure a few people will hit this over the next few dates, whilst visiting silverlight applications built under Beta 1 (which didn't have a go-live licence), so don't blame Microsoft.

The Beta 1 of Silverlight expired on the 1st of September. For more information, there's a great blog here.. http://blogs.msdn.com/dajung/archive/2008/06/16/please-use-on-or-before-date-on-label.aspx

Code along with Taulty

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:20:58 GMT

Resources... No, I'm not talking about embedding resources in your Silverlight Application. I'm talking about the excellent screencasts Mike Taulty has put up for Silverlight 2.0. Short, Snappy, fast paced and just the right length for you to code along. So it's not Paint along with Nancy, but code along with Taulty. (I bet nobody every heard of Paint Along with Nancy).

The cover everything from Layout, Grids and Splitters, HTML/Javascript interaction, binding. - just about everything - and there's 44 of them

Enjoy - I did...

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Mike-Taulty-44-Silverlight-20-Screencasts/

Great Stuff Mike

Been down the pit!

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:25:45 GMT

Here's one reason this blog has been quiet...

NxtGenUG Silverlight Manic Miner

http://www.nxtgenug.net/manicminer

NxtGenUG Co-Founder Richard Costall & Member Pete McGann are pleased to announce their “Silverlight” Manic Miner game Beta is now live on the NxtGenUG site. Manic Miner was originally written by Matthew Smith, under games company Bug-Byte in 1983. The game was a landmark title in the history of gaming.

The original classic features 20 caverns to negotiate, and Pete and Rich had lovingly created 9 of these so far, with more to follow shortly.

Silverlight Manic Miner shares a custom built ‘time based’ engine with an XNA version of the game. A library of c# files is shared between the two systems. The Silverlight edition is also integrated into the NxtGenuG site, through Application services, and registered visitors can have their high scores recorded and shown in a leader board which refreshes every 30 seconds.

Pete McGann, who’s been building games for many years, was particularly impressed with the Silverlight Edition – “When you look at the Silverlight version, you have to be impressed – The compiled code gives it such a performance boost. When I normally write games they languish on my hard drive. We’ve now built a game the world can play”

Pete and Rich will be telling their story at NxtGenUG Coventry on August 11^th 2008

Silverlight, XNA and Gaming
Matthew Smith did it in 6 weeks in the early 80's, now over 20 years later Pete McGann and Richard Costall have built Manic Miner in .NET, with an engine which works for Silverlight and also XNA. In this session Pete and Rich, talk about the .NET engine, implementations and issues on the two platforms - before Pete steps up to take the ultimate gaming challenge...
http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=136

Silverlight Showcase on YouTube!

Mon, 12 May 2008 17:59:58 GMT

So, Silverlight Showcase is on YouTube promoting DDDIreland...

GTA IV - "Freeze Niko"

Sat, 03 May 2008 21:02:38 GMT

All is not well in Liberty City. Having spent around 3-4 hours playing the GTA IV, I managed to inadvertantly overwrite my saved game - This issue was caused by the fact the save game uses the 360 Date/time - I had this with BioShock and when you startup outside XBOX live my Date says 2005. Anyway that on its own is not a major issue, but the fact the game freezes about 1 minute after starting the game is. The 360 Freezes and I have to restart the console. It makes you lose confidence in a title - Should I now return to my apartment and make a new save after every mission (assuming it doesn't lock up)

Apparently I'm not the only one getting it and it also affects PS3 owners too.

I think I'm gonna head back to Pacific City (of Crackdown), The Language is better, the graphics are clearer and it don't lock up!

DDDIreland May 3rd

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:33:15 GMT

DDDIreland - May 3rd -and what a fantastic advertisment - this wasn't done by a developer :-).

Check it out at www.DDDIreland.com

Silverlight - Getting Started

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:23:52 GMT

Following on from my popular session (Thanks Martha) at IMTC in Ireland, i thought i'd start to write up my demos. Part 1 - Getting Started is now on the NxtGenUG Site.

Enjoy

Fest08

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:29:24 GMT

NxtGenUG don't do conferences, they just have a good time and FEST08 which takes place at TVP Reading, promises to be in the normal vein of NxtGenUG events. Great sessions, Pizza and Swag. The theme this year is "Data Today, Data Tomorrow" and there are new sessions from Oliver Sturm on F#, Mike Taulty on the Entity Framework, Dave Sussman on ASP.NET Dynamic Data Controls and Ridgian's BI expert Dave Morrow on SQL Server Analysis Services. There will be the keynote from Rich and Dave and a brand new gameshow called "Who's Session Is It Anyway?

As before its free to all NxtGenUG members and £49.99 to non-members. FEST07 was a memorable event last year, FEST08 will be equally memorable. You'll learn some great stuff about Data related technologies, meet some great people, have some fun and leave with a bag load of Swag! Don't miss it!"

Silverlight Sessions

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:02:50 GMT

I'm just in the throws of putting together a Silverlight 'Showcase' session, which i'll be presenting at the following events - If you want to get an idea of what Silverlight can do.

IMTC - Ireland http://imtc.firstport.ie/agenda.aspx - 2nd-4th April Dublin
NxtGenUG Birmingham http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=108 - April 22nd (Free)
VBUG one day event - http://www.vbug.net/Events/April-2008/VBUG-Mini-Conference--Birmingham.aspx - April 24th

I'm gonna be covering getting started and where it's all heading, and the types of applications you can build in Silverlight - all done in a 'fun' way :-)

Swaggily Question Time

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:44:50 GMT

Wednesday March 19th 2008 is of course the UK 2008 Launch Event. As part of the event, those NxtGenUG Boyz http://www.nxtgenug.net are running one of their gameshows, which will take place about 6.00pm during the evening drinks and nibbles. "Swaggily" Fortunes is a take on the well known TV Quiz show in which teams of contestants are asked, for example, "We asked 100 Developers ... To Name a .NET Language". Those teams that guess correctly what the answers were get to win some fantastic "swag" -- after a few rounds of mayhem!

You can help be part of this 'great' occasion by going to http://www.nxtgenug.net/2008launch/swagfortunes.aspx and answering 8 short questions. Your answers will go towards making up the choices which the teams have to guess. The NxtGenUG lads have run this several times in the past always to great reviews, and it makes for a fun, relaxed way to wind down from the days sessions.

If you'd like us to come and present our gameshow at your event drop us an email here http://www.nxtgenug.net/contact.aspx

Mix08 - Strip Report Part 5

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:13:29 GMT

Vegas Strip Report Part 5

Day 1 of Mix and after a quick breakfast I got in the queue for the keynote. At 9am the doors opened and I managed to get in the middle on the front row, next to Ian Smith.

I’m not going to give a minute by minute account as you can watch it yourself http://sessions.visitmix.com/ or read blogs like Tim Sneaths

I found the keynote really entertaining and informal – there was strange music each time a guest came on – It was like you were expecting them to come in riding on a donkey.

Some things that stood out for me – The deep zoom HardRock application which you can play with http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ , 1.5 million Silverlight installs each day and a first look at Internet Explorer 8 (with offline mode, activities and web slices).

Scott Guthrie did a great job, congrats on the promotion, and I thought the ‘Cirque du Soleil’ presentation with Scott as a wanabee performer was really good.

I then attended the Silverlight sessions to research my upcoming Silverlight session, and also to confirm what information is in the public domain and what is not, and in the evening I went to TAO nightclub for the attendee party. Where I managed to get an Interview with a Podcasting Legend.

Mix08 - Strip Report Part 4

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:11:32 GMT

Mix Vegas Strip Report Part 4

Had a bit of a lie in this morning, well it was 5:45 actually. Did a bit of coding and chilled till about 9:30. Popped into the Venetian food court for egg, sausage and bacon and then headed off to have a look around the Paris Casino, taking in a few others along the way. My back had been hurting a bit from the 12+ miles i’d walked in the previous 2 days, so I slowed the pace down and realised this was more the Vegas pace. I stopped in at the Flamingo and had a go on the slots; actually I spent about 90 minutes on one machine and came out about $60 worse off – which is not bad compared to one hand of blackjack costing $25. Putting a $50 into a slot machine is quite daunting the first time, but when you do win or decide to cut your losses. The machine prints you a ticket of your balance – which you then take to the redemption machine (like a cash point) feed it in, and collect your winnings, err, remains. It’s all part of the Vegas Experience.

When a slot machine says it’s 1c (cent), it means you can play for 1c at a time but all the winnings are scaled down too. I settled at around 30c per go, but there was a lady next to me playing for $3 a go – she must have got through $200 in about 10 minutes. I then moved on to the Paris Casino which has an Eiffel Tower outside it and the mandatory ‘sky painted on the ceiling’ and headed off to find a patisserie, where I had a very nice raspberry cake and a coffee, before returning back out the casino and sat in the sun for 30 minutes, before meandering back.

Vegas is good for couples, for a family holiday go to Disney-World, as there’s nothing really for kids here. As a couple it could be a relaxing different holiday – catch a show, visit some bars, play the tables and then have a lie in and do it all again at another Casino the next day. Then there are all the trips as well. Make sure you bring quite a bit of disposable money.

So i’ve now transformed from a Tourist to become a Delegate, not sure about the registration swag bag, but I’m all registered and raring to go. They have two Microsoft Surface tables here, and the demos look really cool – I’ll see if I can get a podcast interview with the guys.

I then headed over to Treasure Island for the treasure hunt and met up with Ian Smith and Scott Promasi from Oregon – we spent two hours running around the strip following clues and causing a distraction – The results are not in yet, but I think we did really well.

Tomorrow is Mix!

Mix 08 - Strip Report Part 3

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 05:24:57 GMT

Mix Vegas Strip Report Day 3

Johnny Rocket is alive and well and living in the Venetian food court, another example of how huge these hotel resorts are. This morning I set off down the south end of the strip – another 4.2 (direct) 6 mile trip (taking into account the hotel detours). I tracked and found Johnny Rockets, but it didn’t open till 10am, So I attempted to navigate my way out of the Venetian Shopping mall, although it was a bit like those cartoons where you keep seeing the person come back to the same place. In the end I came out of the complex 1/3 of a mile further down the road in the wrong direction.

Next stop was to find FAO Schwartz Toy Store in the Bellagio Shopping mall – easier said than done. I knew it had a huge (3 story high) wooden horse outside – how hard could that be. It would be nice if the maps had a ‘YOU ARE HERE’ sticker on them, rather than having to navigate by shop names. It was around 90 minutes later that I emerged from the shopping complex, having found FAO, which didn’t help my cause – the hard bit was finding the exit. Very few of the resorts give you clear directions or a map, it’s as if they want you to become part of their eco system forever.

Next stop was the Mirage, who’s amazing Erupting Volcano – was being repaired... then to New York, New York, through to Excalibur, where I helped an elderly couple, who wanted fresh air, to get to the exit. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took a bus tour in 1979 and are still trying to find their way out today. I arrived at the Luxor, an Egyptian themed resort, which again was huge. The Luxor actually has some attraction in it. I went on the ‘Simulator Ride’ – Escape from the Obelisk, which was, well ok, but didn’t compare to rides like Back to the Future. My next stop was to a 3D ‘Undersea’ IMAX film – which was pretty good, but I’d have preferred the dinosaur one they showed in the trailer.

So, over miles from my hotel, 2pm and I’d only had an orange juice and a Danish – Mission ‘Rocket’ was put into action. I walked past the Bellagio at around 2:40 just as they announced the fountain show would be at 3pm. This for me was a turning point as this show was fantastic – water jets to music, and architecture aside, was one of the first things I thought ‘WOW’.

In fact they were so good I stayed for 30 minutes to watch the next show, before heading back to the room, via the now legendary, Johnny Rockets.

A short email/surfing session later and it was time for the Sirens of Treasure Island – The second great show I’d seen today. A Pirate ship full of scantily clad ladies, who caught one of the pirates and tied him up – the stuff dreams are made of – I’d better be careful I might start beginning to like the place Looking forward to tomorrow – it’s Mix Registration Day and the Mix treasure hunt – I’ll search that pirate ship.

Mix 08 - Strip Report Part 2

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:09:23 GMT

Mix08 Vegas – Strip Report Part 2.

Soldier Down! Andres and I had wondered what happened to John Allwright the previous night as he didn’t appear for a trip out in the evening. It turns out the half yard of ‘long island ice tea’ had taken him out. Corporal Andres was sent to rescue him but got no response from his room. 48oz was too much, but he recovered in time to head over to the Wynn Resort for a brunch of All-U-Can-Eat buffet. Which brings me back to my ‘money-draining theme’.

The sign said: Champagne or Bloody Mary Buffet - $29.95 – So the question here is how much is a champagne or Bloody Mary buffet? $29.95 – Wrong! If you wanted the Champagne or Bloody Mary ‘with’ the buffet it’s $36.95. That’s like saying Fish & chips is £3.99 but if you want the fish it’s £6.99. Having said that, the buffet at the Wynn was very good, covering most tastes in food and a large selection of cakes.

Fully loaded with food, and the staff at the Wynn having to re-stock all the dishes we headed in different directions. I plumped to head up towards the Stratosphere, a walking round trip of 5 miles. This is where I had a gamble. Not on the machines, but at every block where you take your life in your own hands at the junctions. Some of the crossings have nothing; others have signals which give you 10 seconds to get across the road. Linford Christie would struggle to get across 14 lanes of traffic in that time, let alone people pushing pushchairs. Each block seemed to lose a layer of Vegas polish and at the Stratosphere, the area was quite rough. On the way I around a few hotels – Circus Circus, was worth a mention. It’s in need or refurbishment, (In Vegas Terms – this means it gets flattened), but it actually has a mini theme park enclosed in a dome – Something for the kids in a city that is not very kid friendly.

So with that I headed back to my room to relax for a bit, get my Silverlight Advent Calendar running under the lastest build of Silverlight and then head out for a burger at Johnny Rockets and watch the Sirens of TI show at the Treasure Island Resort.

One hour later and it looks like Johnny Rockets is no longer there, despite it being on the map – it didn’t appear on the large map in the Grand Canal shopping complex. It also turns out that the Sirens of TI® who with their mesmerizing and powerful song lure the pirates to their cove, then stir up a tempest strong enough to sink a ship – couldn’t perform because it’s too windy. That’s right they “stir up a tempest strong enough to sink a ship” and couldn’t perform as it’s too windy.

So all in all a strange day – Tomorrow is off up the other end of the strip and hopefully I’ll get to see if those sirens will perform for me tomorrow

Mix 08 - Strip Report Part 1

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:51:28 GMT

Mix08 Vegas – Strip Report Part 1.

So I’m here in Vegas for the Microsoft Mix08 Conference, which starts on Wednesday. The web is on the edge of its next iteration and I wanted to be here to get the vibe. I’ve been working with Silverlight 2.0 for a while now (under NDA) and it’s going to be a good conference – when things get announced.

After almost 11 hours on the plane, I have arrived in Las Vegas. Yes, the flight is long. I watched 3 movies, The Bourne (something or other – 3^rd one), A Ben Stiller film, where he gets married and regrets it and StarDust – an all-star cast film, which seemed to be an excuse to have an all-star cast film. I also managed to spend 2 hours of development on the laptop, before the battery started to fade away. I didn’t have a power lead long enough to stretch from premium-economy all the way back to economy. I met John Allwright (who works for Microsoft), at the airport and we shared a cab to the hotel. Incidentally Vegas airport terminal is about the same size as Coventry terminal, which is interesting because the airfield is, the same size as Coventry itself.

So we arrived at the Venetian, boy is this place over the top. If you listen carefully, beyond the slots and gaming tables you can hear the money draining away from you credit card. “Would you like to pay $45 per night extra – to have a view of the pool?” – “err No!”. A less subtle example is The ATM machines in the Casino’s. They charge $7.99 for a $20 withdrawal.

John and Andres (who we also met at the airport), couldn’t check In as their rooms were not ready, so they came to drop their stuff off in my room.

When we finally found my room (a problem I have every time I leave it). I pushed the keycard in the door and said “I love it how American’s call these room’s suites, when all they are, are a bed...” With that the door opened and a huge room appeared before me. The room is two-level, with two double beds and a plasma TV on the top level and a seating/office area, with plasma TV and Fax machine, on the lower level. The room has seats for 15 people (why, is that, when the maximum room occupancy is 4?), or 16 including the toilet, but no internet connection [UPDATE: There is wired internet access (fast too) for $9.95 per 24 hours], , so I’ll be off to find the free wireless in the lobby later.

The bathroom is huge, the bath is as deep as the Suez Canal, and the taps can fill the bath in about a minute, or the bathroom in 75 seconds.

We then hit the strip for a couple of hours, had a few beers, and a ‘half yard – Margarita’ – which makes finding the room a LOT harder. We visited the Bellagio, and Cesears Palace (all of which look the same inside), and gave our critique review on many of the specialist boutiques “Gems and Ruby’s of Africa” – don’t think that will be replacing the local cost-cutter in Nuneaton.

I find it interesting how all the escalators into the Casinos are working, but all the ones going out of the Casino are ‘being maintained’.

The gaming tables have minimum and maximum limits, typically $35 to $5000. So I won’t be visiting them then, not because I’m a high roller, but because $35 is a lot for the spin of the wheel or turn of two cards, and besides that’s the same cost as two lap-dances (so I’m told). It says the typical payout on the slots is 92% - well I put $6 in machine and didn’t get a dime – I asked the woman, walking past, where my $5.52 was – but she didn’t seem to understand!

Tomorrow is time to explore...

Should i put my money on Red or Black?

ASP.NET Upload Users

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:52:26 GMT

I was recently tasked with uploading a load of users into an ASP.NET site. Initially SQL Server was earmarked for the job, but then I realised that the passwords are all one way hashed in code. So either I could key all these in using the registration page, or I could write something.

Crude but it worked, most of the stuff is fairly obvious. One point to note was I needed to render the status returned from the CreateUser Method to show progress in the text box - you can get the value of an enumeration with the following:

[Enum].GetName(GetType(MembershipCreateStatus), _y))

Here is the code...

Dim _file As String = Server.MapPath("filename.csv")
Dim _sw As New StreamReader(_file)
Dim _line As String = _sw.ReadLine()
While Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(_line)
Dim _bits As String()

_bits = _line.Split(",")
If (_bits.Length = 5) Then
Dim _x As MembershipUser
Dim _y As MembershipCreateStatus
_x = Membership.CreateUser(_bits(1), _bits(2), _bits(1), "<sec question>", "<sec answer>", True, _y)
If _y = MembershipCreateStatus.Success Then

Dim _p As ProfileCommon = ProfileCommon.Create(_bits(1), True)
With _p
    .Firstname = _bits(3)
     .Surname = _bits(4)
     .EmailAddress = _bits(1)
     .Address.PostCode = ""
     .Telephone = ""
     .Save()
End With

End If

TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & String.Format("{0} - {1}" +
System.Environment.NewLine, _bits(1), [Enum].GetName(GetType(MembershipCreateStatus), _y))
End If
_line = _sw.ReadLine()
End While

Where have you been?

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:40:19 GMT

Ok, So I'm sorry, not blogged for a while... with Life, the user group and everything, things have been busy.

My Zune and I joined the Gym - What a great way to get fit and watch / listen to TechED/Mix sessions, while on a bike or rowing machine - (well listening on the rower). On Wednesday I rode 7km whilst listening to a session from Mix07 on Search Engine Optimumization (SEO) - Tonight I'm going deep with AJAX (DEV08). I will update you with how the Zune copes with Sweat dripping on it...

From a Technology point of view, my main focus for 2008 is Silverlight - I see this technology being the say as HTML when it first appeared, a web revolution. Silverlight is still in it's infancy, but i've had an opportunity to be involved with early adoption of this technology and have seen the future - Silverlight, does though, raise some very thought provoking questions.

Could Silverlight and Flash be powerful enough to move the web up another iteration? (and when will this happen : 1yr - 2yrs, more?)

Given a clean sheet of paper - what will Web User Interfaces of the future look like?

Where is this all heading for the next, next Web?

PDC 2008 Announced

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:27:06 GMT

Its been a long time coming, PDC 2007 was 'postponed', but now PDC 2008 has been announced for October 27th-30th in Sunny Los Angeles, California - Read (very little) about it here...

PDC 2005 was awesome. I learnt so much there, It's a great chance to get a heads up on the next-next release of products from Microsoft...

Dave and Rich Micro-Presentation Video Online

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:39:28 GMT

The Mix07:UK sessions are online - That's not new news, but they've just added Dave and Rich's legendary Micro-Presentation. Live the Legend!

Described, by some, as the 'Ultimate' Micro-Presentation, Dave and Rich had just 6 minutes and 40 seconds to deliver a session on user groups at Mix07:UK. The slides auto-advanced after 20 seconds. Surely nothing could go wrong in 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Download and view the presentation here, to see Dave and Rich in action, and you'll be rewarded with some other sessions afterwards...

Coventry NxtGenUG

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:21:41 GMT

Hot on the heels of the Incredible Alan Elston's Presentation Skills Session, which is top of the NxtGenUG charts at the moment, we get ready for Christmas, with our Home-Brewed Silverlight 1.1 Session. Chris Hay (Cambridge Coord) and myself will be giving hints and tips on working with the Alpha Preview of Silverlight 1.1 - Expect some tinsel, Pinata's, Pizza and the odd.. or 20+ demos. Another great night coming to NxtGenUG Coventry.

NxtGenUG Coventry - 10th December 2007 (Cambridge on the 11th December too)
I'm Dreaming of a Silverlight Christmas

"I'm dreaming of a Silverlight Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know. Where the buttons glisten and attendees listen to hear, great demos in the show.I'm dreaming of a Silveright Christmas With every web Page I write. May your devs be merry and bright And may all your pages not be white. I'm dreaming of a Silverlight Demo With Chris and Rich on Stage. May your SWAG be expensive and bright And may all your Pizza be large.

Chris Hay and Richard Costall will present a variety of Silverlight nuggets, aimed at highlighting the pitfalls with Silverlight 1.1. This will be a demo heavy session, so fasten your seatbelts. "

Event details here

BioShocked

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:17:51 GMT

So I've now finished BioShock and I mst admit, it was excellent. One of the best 360 games out there. A first person shooter, some scaryness and a deep and well thought out plot - gripping stuff. BioShock slips into my top three XBOX 360 Games, alongside Halo 3 and Crackdown. I've not played the Orange Box yet though so, that could knock one out - but which one!

Rapture is liberated

Speaker Idol

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:14:55 GMT

So TechEd is over, and what a year - 6 Podcasts, 5 Speaker Idols (4 rounds + final), 4 NxtGenUG Gameshows, One XSLT session, two FishBowl interviews and a lot of fun! Oh and I even managed to get to some sessions this year. Speaker Idol was fantastic though, Here's some details below on Jeff Wharton from Australia, who scooped the "speaker Idol" trophy!

Dave and Rich are thrilled to announce that Jeff Wharton has scooped the title of being TechEd Developers 2007 Speaker Idol.the top title comes with a 'speaking' ticket to TechEd 2008, where Jeff will get a presentation slot, plus a trophy and a metre of MSPress books. Jeff presented a 5 minute session on Raid Technology, and why developers need to care.

Dave and Rich dressed up, with Jeff Wharton, Winner of TechEd 2007 Speaker Idol

Second place went to Karl Davies-Barrett, who presented on WPF within window forms applications. Karl wins a Ticket to TechEd 2008 and a half metre of books. Maciej Pilecki took third place and Bill Ayres came fourth.

The finalists, Judges, Us and Karen Young. Thanks to Mick Lohan GamTUG

The final had been really exciting, with all competitors giving excellent presentations, and the judging panel of Kate Gregory, Guy Smith-Ferrier, Bart De Smert (Winner of Speaker Idol 2006) and Rafal Lukawiecki (top TechEd speaker) having to choose the eventual winner.

The Audience hear one joke too many from Dave and Rich (that was one joke)

Details of the event can be found here, on the TechEd site blog

My EX - XBOX 360

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:02:04 GMT

So, on Monday night, I was faced with the 3 red lights of doom on my XBOX 360. I had the machine for almost 2 years, and it had served me well. It had also given me the pleasure of completing Halo 3 on Heroic, and not told me of it's illness, until Master Chief had finished the fight.

We'd spent many a happy hour together, fighting the flood, scoring goals, photographing splicers, feeding Pinata's and winning numerous battles.

The laugh and joy is now filled with an empty space, beneath the TV, and just moments ago, I watched the UPS van drive off into the distance laiden with my parcel. Thomas and Oliver have reverted to Nintendo DS's, like nothing has changed, but I cant bring myself to it.

20 Working Days they say...

Richy and Andy Blues

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:33:18 GMT

I've done quite a few presentations in my time, but last night was an experience like no other.

Every 3 months the employees of 1st Software go out, enjoy unlimited beverages and a stopover and build on the incredibly spirit that lives within the organisation. Putting on nights out like this are not cheap, but very much appreciated by the staff and the ROI, whilst being transparent, certainly pays back with buckets of interest, (plus hangovers too).

Last nights theme was '1st factor' with employees taking to the stage to perform. This was not a karaoke night, with all the entrants rehearsing and getting dressed up!

Andy Brown and I opened the night with "Blues Brothers - Everybody needs Somebody". We came out to the intro, in the suits and shades, and the place went wild - I've never experienced this intensity before. We performed our song and set the place on fire. The roar from the crowd at the end was incredible, it was like performing at Wembley! The quality of all the acts was exceptional, and whilst we didn't win, we certainly got the show off to the right start.

What a night.

Andy and Richy can be hired to perform at your local event :-)

Where can it be? ...

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:40:29 GMT

We really are running out of time on the missing TechEd ticket. I spoke to the person involved in the ticket hunt (previous clue) and they reakoned that it 'disappeared' (yeah right) while they were eating, and that "I'd know where"...

Hmmm.. I'm gonna have to think back on this one...

Deadline is coming...

Southampton NxtGenUG

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:53:02 GMT

NXTGENUG OPEN A NEW REGION IN SOUTHAMPTON!

Then there were 5! Two months, two new regions, first Cambridge now Southampton. Yes, The Next Generation User Group (NxtGenUG) is expanding (again) and this time they're heading South. The latest and warmest region of NxtGenUG is Southampton. The region is being organised and run by John McLoughlin and Rick Allen two local guys who have sourced a venue, projector, screen, pizza, swag and speakers all on their ownsome - all that a User Group needs or could ask for!

As ever when a new NxtGenUG region opens they insist on having a 'Launch' extravaganza, and this one is no different! The event will be held on 18th October 2007 at St Andrew's Hall, Southampton. The main speaker for the evening is top UK Community speaker Guy Smith-Ferrier speaking on Astoria and there will be a SQL Nugget from Dave 'Readyboost' McMahon. Pizza and Swag will be present also in abundance. All the details of the meeting are at http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=85, and you can register for the event as always through the NxtGenUG website. Don't miss out on this event which kicks off at 6.30pm and finishes at 9.00pm, as there is only ONE launch meeting after all.

NxtGenUG are a User Group focused on current and future technologies and provide monthly meetings in Birmingham, Cambridge, Coventry, Oxford and Southampton. They love technology, chatting, pizza, swag, Halo 3 (well Richie Costall does) and having a laugh. If you're in one of their areas, get along to one of their meetings and get involved in the UK Community, its well worth it socially and professionally! Visit their website at http://www.nxtgenug.net

999,999 Dreams to Go

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:03:02 GMT

There's not been a lot of blogging activity recently, as I've been on my vacation to DisneyWorld in Florida, and boy did we have a great time.

I have to admit that I'm an old hand at this, my 9th visit to Orlando, but each time we discover something new, or different in the World. We decided to treat ourselves this year and checked into the Disney's Yacht and Beach Club hotel. Upon check-in we were informed our room had a 'Lake-View' and was on the Concierge-level. (we needed to use our room key in the lift to get to this exclusive level).

We also got named as the 'family of the day', and after 9 hours on a plane, customs, and a 30 minute bus ride, rather than feel hot and sweaty we felt like royalty.

The room had the most fantastic view, nothing beats sitting in your dressing gown, watching the Epcot fireworks, sipping a beer, from the balcony outside your room. The Staff were excellent, I can't fault this visit, the concierge were really helpful and the senior management went out of their way to speak to us and help us.

Each day we came back to our room we met an assortment of 'towel' animals, and on the last day we left our own creations for the housekeeping ladies - bet they had a laugh with those.

The Disney parks were fairly busy, but we used our tried and tested tactics to make the most of the day, and also got chance to use the Yacht and Beach Club's Stunning pools - almost 3 acres of Sandy, watery fun - Yes the pool had a sand bottom.

Some Florida Vacation tips...

1. Get to the park as early as possible, grab a quick breakfast and be there before opening time. If you are a resort guest, use the magical hours to get an additional hour in the park. The first hour is so important.

2. Hit the back of the park first and then work forwards - many people arrive, stare at the map and then do the first attraction they come to.

3. Use FastPass to access the most popular rides with little or no wait.

4. Eat Early. Take lunch 12:00 - 12:30. Get a chance to get out the sun and have a sit down meal. Places like the Rose and Crown do great English Food - change from Burger or Hot Dog.

5. Leave the park mid afternoon for a break in the hotel pool, and then pop back for fireworks, or do the fireworks after a relaxed day at a water park.

6. Drink loads and make the most of the air conditioned buildings.

7. keep the kids interested, KidKot at Epcot is a great way to get them interested in the countires around the World Showcase at Epcot.

8. Arrive early for the shows, such as Fantasmic, in Disney MGM Studios, (90 minutes minimum), otherwise you may not get a seat.

9. Wear comfy shoes, you can easily walk 5 miles in a day.

10. Pick a hotel on Disney if possible, especially if you are with kids. Forget the hire car, get return transfers and use the Disney buses/boats and monorails to get you around. Universal is around a $40 taxi ride away, or Mears provide a shuttle for $16 per person round trip.

11. Buy a big SD Card for your camera, you're gonna take a lot of pictures. This last trip I took over 1,000.

12. Study the maps of the parks before you go, and when you get to the park - Grab 5 or 6 along with the times of events that day - most shops also have these maps/times. Chances are one will get lost, one will get wet and one will get ripped.

2007 is the year of the 1,000,000 dreams at Disney World and Disneyland in California. The prizes themselves range from anything like a pair of mouse ears, or a Disney trading pin, right up to a night in the Cinderella Castle or membership to the Disney Vacation Club. Thank you so much for the upgrade. I don't know if anybody is keeping count, but I think Disney now only have 999,999 dreams to go, which incidentally was both Thomas's and my score on Buzz Lightyears Space Ranger Spin - we both maxed out!

Bye Mickey - See ya real soon!

NxtGenUG Cambridge

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 09:54:25 GMT

NxtGenUG are absolutely delighted to announce the opening of a brand new NxtGenUG region - this time in Cambridge. So now Developers from the flatlands of East Anglia can gather together to learn, chat, eat Pizza and get 'swagged' in the 'NxtGenUG Way' along with their counterparts in Birmingham, Coventry and Oxford. The region will be run by Chris Hay and Allister Frost who live and work in the area. Chris and Allister have put in a great deal of effort to get the region off of the ground including securing a fantastic venue, courtesy of non-other than Microsoft Research Cambridge!

The 'Launch' meeting will be held at Microsoft Research on Tuesday 18th September 2007 and will feature Mike Ormond from Microsoft DPE speaking on Silverlight Microsoft's new Rich Web Application Development Platform. We'll also have a speaker from Microsoft Research covering a fanscinating new subject such as F#, watch out for details! Finally Rich, Dave and John will be there to do something or other, probably involving 'swag' (tut). Anybody is welcome to attend the meeting whether they are a NxtGenUG member or not. Just go to the NxtGenUG site at http://www.nxtgenug.net, register for FREE and book your place! The evening starts at 6:30pm and ends at 9pm.

As with other NxtGenUG regions details of events at Cambridge will be available at http://www.nxtgenug.net/EventList.aspx, and we know that Chris and Allister have a bunch of great sessions planned for Cambridge over the coming months.

Also check out the NxtGenUG site for Articles, 'Radio Style' Podcasts , Interviews, News Items, Competitions, details of membership and much more at NxtGenUG

The Server committed a protocol Violation - The Sequel

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:41:04 GMT

This error seems to be haunting me, i'd already got round it once, and up it pops again.

This time the error, which occurred accessing any website on my local machine, through IIS, was being hampered by Skype - which decided to take-over ports 80 and 443 - nice one!

Big thanks to Martin Kulov's blog entry, who saved me from a very embarressing demo.

Win a Ticket to TechEd!!!

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:29:23 GMT

Win a ticket to TechEd Developers with NxtGenUG and Microsoft.

NxtGenUG is offering one lucky winner a ticket to Microsoft’s premier European developer conference : TechEd Developers in Barcelona : November 5^th – 9^th 2007. To be in with a chance to win the ticket register on the NxtGenUG site and enter the TechEd ticket treasure hunt. [Terms and conditions apply]. Visit the NxtGenUG TechEd home page for more details...

http://www.nxtgenug.net/TechEd07/default.aspx

Make sure you read the instructions - The world is a big place!

VBUG Elections

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:13:27 GMT

Just been catching up on the blogosphere and found out that the VBUG elections are underway. Most people who know me, know I was the regional coordinator for the midlands - for five and a half years, before setting up NxtGenUG.

Graham Parker, and Caroline, built an incredible community, and it's a huge challenge and opportunity to take VBUG onto the next level.

Andy Westgarth and Tim Leung have both blogged it, and entered the race, looking at Chairman, and vice Chariman respectively. I know both Andy and Tim very well, either would be more than capable in these roles, although I'd like to remain impartial and wish George Gallagher and Phil Pursglove luck with their bids too...

So VBUG members, make your vote count, read the manifesto's and vote !

How loud?

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 03:04:56 GMT

How loud do you have to whistle, for a dog in the car in front, or behind, to hear you?. - I know you have all sat in traffic and whistled to get the dogs attention in the car in front (and wondered this?)

You'd have to take into account, windows being open and speed travelling, but assuming the car is stationary, and the windows are open - I was sitting in traffic, and each time i whistled farily loud, the dog in the car behind seemed to respond (ears pricked up), but the dog in front didn't - I suppose the breed of dog is also important.

Admit it, you all do it...

Presenting at Mix07 UK

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:34:49 GMT

Mix07 UK is shaping up to be an excellent event. I was lucky enough to see some of the speaker line up, and whilst i'm not going to spoil the surprise yet, I thought i'd let one cat out of the bag

Dave and Rich will be there, presenting... Silverlight... NO.. XSLT... NO... SWAGGILY Fortunes - could be.

So to help us, can I ask you go to the NxtGenUG site: this page and complete the form (If you are logged in and drawn from the entries I will give you some great swag!)

Keep you eyes open on the Mix07UK site over the next week or so.. It's gonna be a wicked event...

Mix07

Silverlight and Powerpoint

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 04:37:01 GMT

I've just started playing with Silvelright 1.1 - Exciting stuff. I love being able to write c# code which runs on the client, not having to worry about Javascript is a great leap forwards. Silverlight 1.1 is missing quite a bit of stuff at the moment, which is forgiveable as it's early days for version 1.1. The lack of Databinding makes it hard to 'bind' data to controls and the flow layout panel has disappeared, so i have to calculate layout positions.

But this left me thinking...

What Silverlight really needs, and probably in Blend is 'Smart Art'. I'm really stuggling to create nice graphics, as i'm graphically challenged. Powerpoint 2007 enables you to create really great looking slides using Smart Art - Reflections, Bevels, Shading - this is what i need for Silverlight.

The other side of the coin is that Powerpoint could really benefit from WPF/Silverlight - The animations and timelines, c# code - could take powerpoint to the next level. WE have nice graphics in powerpoint and some transititions, but thats about it - WPF could help with interactive/animating charts... hmm I wonder...

Gained the Lead..

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:19:51 GMT

It took around 45 games, but now i'm getting used to the controls and won my first slayer match in Halo 3. The game is visually stunning, the new weapons and tool add a different slant to the game - notibly the bubble shield. It will be sad when we get to the 10th June and we have to wait until September 26th in Europe to get the game..

You can even save a film of your games, now if only they could be accessed via the internet..

Crackdown and Halo 3 are two compelling reasons to buy a 360 this year.. and we're only just beginning...

The server committed a protocol violation.

Fri, 18 May 2007 11:03:04 GMT

I just spent the best part of the day looking into an integration error. The problem occurred when the webclient class was downloading a zip file from a remote site. It worked in our office but not on site. We got the following error.

The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseHeader

Thanks for that - really useful.

So here is the useful part:

The problem was cause by the fact the zip files were being blocked and a txt message being inserted in it's place, although the extension was NOT being renamed. So we had myfile.zip (2kb) which contained the text about why the .zip type was blocked. The main clue was the file was only 2kb and couldn't be opened in WinZip. So if you get this error, try opening the file in notepad - the answer may be under your nose.

Thanks to my colleague Tim Hill for reminiscing about a company he used to work with, where the same thing happened.

I hope this helps somebody else...

Finish the Fight - 26th September

Wed, 16 May 2007 06:09:38 GMT

Halo 3 release date in europe (25th in the US) :

26th September 2007

need i say more?

Tags: halo3

Pacific City - Update

Thu, 10 May 2007 03:28:08 GMT

The guys over at TeamXBOX have got an article on the new content (2 downloads - 1 free, 1 paid - 800 points ) for CRACKDOWN - they also say its coming this week: New cars, new weapons, challenges, achievements and a cheat mode... It's a massive improvement to an awesome game...

Heres the press release...

Microsoft Game Studios and Realtime Worlds provide explosive new cars, game modes and weapons for critically acclaimed Xbox 360 exclusive “Crackdown.”

REDMOND, Wash. — May 10, 2007 — Thought Pacific City was well on its way to becoming a wholesome, law-abiding community? Think again, Agent.

Microsoft Game Studios and Realtime Worlds today announced that there is still more crime to be purged and new ways to purge it with the release of both free and premium downloadable content for the critically acclaimed Xbox 360™ open-world action title “Crackdown™.” The content will be available for download from Xbox LIVE® Marketplace today.

With more than 900,000 units of “Crackdown” sold-through in only two months, Microsoft Game Studios and Realtime Worlds are extending the game’s unparalleled experience, offering gamers several exciting new features, including vehicles, weapons, game modes and seven highly explosive, new Achievements. In addition, Agents will have free access to improved mission time trials, an option to repopulate gangs and kingpins after they have beaten the game, a vehicle impound garage, and the long-awaited Keys to the City — a comprehensive cheat mode including new “super agent” abilities and the option to create ramps, vehicles and explosives anywhere in Pacific City, at any point in the game.

For 800 Microsoft® Points, Agents can also access the full “Crackdown” armory, which includes three unique vehicles, four new devastating weapons, co-op game types, an Agent “cloaking device” and an added dynamic street-racing mode.

The new and improved street-racing mode brings several white-knuckle races to the streets … and everywhere in between. Agents can win by any means necessary — via speed or sabotage.

Vehicle selection is imperative to an Agent’s success, and the premium vehicle additions will help gamers dominate their foes. The Agency Buggy, fitted with a turret for the new, ultimate fast-firing projectile chain gun, is the vehicle of choice in rough and tumble off-road races. The low-profile battering ram of the Agency Armored Vehicle is strong enough to knock vehicles out of the way and protect Agents from an onslaught of gunfire, and is fitted with an independently aiming rocket turret. The Agency Racecar is the high-speed car of choice on the long stretches of city pavement.

In addition to a flocking rocket launcher (the MSK Lobber) and the all-powerful MZ360 Mini-Gun, the premium content will feature both proximity mines and the HRX Harpoon gun capable of stopping crime in its path by nailing criminals to nearby cars and walls.

In addition, if a player who has yet to purchase the PDLC content enters into a co-op game with a partner who has, that player will be able to preview the new content for the duration of that game.

For gamers interested in dashboard content, one new “Crackdown” theme will be available for 150 Microsoft Points, as well as four exciting new picture packs at varying prices.

And finally, on May 16, owners of the specially marked packages of “Crackdown” will be able to access the long-awaited “Halo® 3” multiplayer beta from the in-game menu.

So whether it’s through the free or premium content, “Crackdown” gamers on Xbox LIVE are bracing themselves to hit the streets of Pacific City once again. Now, get out there, Agent, and kick crime where it hurts.

crackdown

Countdown to the Fest

Wed, 09 May 2007 16:41:54 GMT

Just a reminder that FEST07 (http://www.nxtgenug.net/fest07) the one-day Developer event organised by those NxtGen Boyz : Rich, Dave and John, is just around the corner. It's on May 23rd at Microsoft UK in Reading and the headline speaker is the outstanding Rafal Lukawiecki who has topped the polls at TechEd for the last 7 years. He's speaking twice and will be talking about Vista Security and Future Trends in Software Architecture. The other speakers are look pretty good too, with Oliver Sturm, Mike Taulty and Daniel Moth being joined by Lorna Brown of Microsoft Research which should be a really interesting session. The Boyz are also going to do one of their 'gameshows' as a finale in which I understand large amounts of 'swag' will be handed out.

If you are a member of NxtGenUG its a free event. If you're not a member its a measly £59.99 for a day of information, fun, food and of course 'swag'. It's not a Microsoft funded event, and the guys have to cover some costs of speakers and incidentals. To register just go the NxtGenUG site http://nxtgenug.net/fest07, its all pretty simple. Any probs drop them a line at enquiries@nxtgenug.net

This looks like it's going to be special and different event, best get along ...

Oh there is also a Geek Dinner the night before http://www.zimakki.com/wiki/Fest07GeekDinner.ashx is Zi Makki's Wiki, and you can go to this even if your'e not attending the event itself.

Missed Mix07

Wed, 09 May 2007 16:38:42 GMT

If you missed Mix07 - and in particular the keynote, you have two great choices. The sessions are available online, plus Dave and Rich have a trip report in Podcast#33

Mix07

500/500 - Life back

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 02:37:49 GMT

I now have my life back after last night I discovered the 500th agility orb in Crackdown - I'd been on 499 for around 1 week and have spent a good few hours looking for the elusive orb which turned out to be in Volk.

We had a cracking XNA and Games night in Coventry last monday - read the review here

Now it's heads down fo Fest07 - if you've not registered check it out - it's going to be a great event

Halo 3 - Birthday Present

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:57:53 GMT

Its just been announced that the Halo 3 Mutltiplayer beta will be available on May 16th (just after my birthday) and will run through to June the 6th.

gentlemen start your controllers...

Start Listening

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:26:09 GMT

I will be presenting on Windows Speech at the Developer Group in Reading on the 16th April - Information and agenda here.

The demos will show the famous Speech videos and some new stuff I have come across in my travels.

Good to be back

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:24:16 GMT

So I am now back from the MVP Summit - a great week. You can read about part 1 here. including piccies. There is also a couple of videos on the NxtGenUG videos page including a classic Mike Hall interview and a ride on the Seattle Duck.

Dave Got to ask Bill a question about Tablet, which has found its way onto the web via Hugo an Australian Tablet Fanatic!

We recorded 8 podcasts in all, as well as attended the sessions. One of which has a unique Virtual Earth Competition.

Wow - that wasn't so hard was it Rich!

Scott Gu in Red Versus Blue

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 07:40:45 GMT

This is really funny. Scott Guthrie makes his debut in Red-Versus-Blue (a 'cartoon' based on Halo).

And guess what... he gets to talk about ASP.NET AJAX

Watch here... (requires WPF/E)

DreamScene Preview Now available...

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 02:48:48 GMT

Happy Valentines day from Microsoft,

DreamScene Preview (not final version) is available on Ultimate Extras.. try it now :-), but remember its only for Window Vista Ultimate

DreamScene allows you to have a video as a background to your desktop, and boy does it look great!

Big announcement...

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:43:41 GMT

Wow - It's time.

Now that we have got over the excellent WebDD, and we know we will have to wait a while for another conference, it's time to announce NxtGenUG Fest07. this is the first NxtGenUG ~~conference~~ Festival, and as in normal NxtGenUG style we want to be a different.

So we are really pleased to announce NxtGenUG Fest07 - Into the future: a one day event which will be held at Microsoft TVP campus in Reading.

Paid up NxtGenUG members can attend for free, and we currently have an early bird for £54.99, for non-members, just follow the instructions on the site.

The agenda is yet to be finalised, but we have some cracking speakers lined up, and I can't keep quiet any more about the main one, but you'll have to drop in on the site to see who it is (and no it's not that McMahon bloke).

http://www.nxtgenug.net/Fest07

Webdd

Vista Speech Nugget

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:46:45 GMT

Part one of my Vista Speech Recognition Video is on the NxtGenUG site now.

This is the first half of the video nugget (aka Grok Talk) which I presented at DDD, WebDD and a couple of user group meetings.

Enjoy, Notepad, playing Solitaire and Surfing the Web.

DDD, WebDD, NxtGenUG

The other side of the fence.

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 07:50:19 GMT

On Saturday I got to attend WebDD - a conference aimed at both designers and developers, held at Microsoft's campus in Reading (TVP). Normally at these events, I spend all day preparing for a session, but this time, with the exception of my Vista Speech Recognition Grok Talk at lunchtime I was a free man.

Firstly, massive thanks to Phil and Dave for putting this together. It takes a lot of effort to coordinate an event like this, including the website, speakers, and hosting the day - a big pat on the back for them, or a beer or three well deserved.

I appreciate the amount of work the guys put in as NxtGenUG will soon be announcing their 1st annual conference, but more on that in the next blog...

Speakers are important, and they don't come much bigger than Microsoft's GM for developer tools - Scott Guthrie. Scott presented four sessions on the day, (or five if you count the re-run of the Orca's session at lunchtime), of which I managed to attend one. Scott is a real IronMan of a presenter, and basically was presenting or being interviewed all day!

I attended Scott's talk on Orcas - a great session. One of the big things for me was that Orcas supports Multi-Targeting. The ability for the IDE to target different versions of the .NET Framework. So you can load up your 2.0 ASP.NET project in Orcas, use the benefits of Nested Master Pages, Javascript Intellisence and debugging, and 'proper' css support (via the new expression web engine built in) along with Split screen Designer/source view, which uses a new algorithm to keep is speeding along.

I decided to attend some different sessions, so didn't attend Scott's Building end-to-end websites part one and two. I opted for the Expression Web session, which was good. I'd have liked to see more demos, but Jon had a few techincal difficulties when Dave plugged a USB stick into Jon's MAC.

The other session I attended in the morning was by Patrick Lauke, who clearly knows his stuff. Patrick talked about building great web-sites and explained CSS pitfalls. My main feedback on this session, was too much time was spent at the start on powerpoint. Dive straight into those "who thinks this is good?" demos - they were really interesting. Patrick ran out of time, so we missed a lot of demos - good session though.

At lunch I did my Vista Speech Recognition Grok talk, Dave did DIY certificates, John did developing for Media Centre and some other guy... oh, yeah Daniel Moth did Vista Gadgets. They seemed to go down well with 50-60 people watching and joining in and I got a huge round of applause for writing a "Hello World" application in vista Speech.

I wanted to attend Scott's talk on WPF/E, but it was full, and I ended up being lured into a talk on CardSpace by Barry Dorrans. His session was described as the Overflow room for Scott's talk, once in, the facade fell off, just like the child catchers trailer in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - and we set off on a talk about CardSpace. Barry is an entertaining speaker and explained CardSpace really well, using 'state of the art' powerpoint animations. It was an entertaining way to end the day, even if when it came to questions, he was asked "When will WPF/E be available" - It was actually the first time, I actually thought I understood what cardspace is!

NxtGenUG, like 4 Chaps from Blighty, were lucky enough to interview Scott Guthrie. The transcript is on the site and Scott will feature on our next podcast.

All the Chicago 1 sessions (Scott Mainly) were recorded and will be available on the WebDD site soon.

So, albeit a long day, It was great and demonstrates the power of the UK community. I am already looking forwards to the next WebDD!

WebDD NxtGenUG

Tagged !

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 16:59:20 GMT

The king of Internationalisation, Guy Smith Ferrier, has tagged me, so here is 5 things you probably didn't know about Richard James Costall.

1. I love Florida, and Disney World in particular. Walt Disney has arguably created more happinness than any other person on the planet. I once even designed my own theme park attraction which I sent to Disney - It never made it, but I hope it gave them some inspiration. I own almost as many books on Disney than I do on IT.

2. I trained in Wado-Ryu Karate for 12 years, making brown belt (2nd Kyu) after four years. I then carried on training, without taking a grading, as I wanted to focus on training and not aiming for the next belt. I have learnt a lot about life from my Karate Instructor.

3. I'm a wanabee cartoonist and created my own character, Lossi the Velociraptor http://www.costall.net/default.aspx?art=67

4. I spent the first 10 years of my developer career in a Digital Equipment authored language called DIBOL (on Vaxes and PDP's) - I once overhead one of the salespeople saying "We get a low turn around of developers, because there is nowhere for them to go" - I decided it was time for a change, spending time in C and Unix, before getting introduced to VB in about 97'

5. I do not like going to the dentist or to hospitals. I gave blood a couple of times (following my youngest son's heart surgery), needle in, no problem, give blood no problem... but when it comes to taking the needle out I go white as a sheet and have to lie down - I can't explain this reaction.

So who should I tag, John Price (sort your blog out), Dave McMahon - if I can get this up before he gets his done. Mike Taulty, Ian Moulster and Alex Homer... there you go guys

Give us a Grok Talk!

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:06:43 GMT

One of the great things about events like DDD, WebDD and User groups such as our NxtGenUG is the ability for members and attendees to wet their feet on the presentation circuit.

At NxtGenUG we have nuggets: 10 minutes talks on something cool or interesting, for many it's their first presentation, and for most of them the start of something exciting.

If you are attending WebDD, then why not do a grok talk (same idea as the NxtGenUG nuggets). The Grok talks as DDD4 were received really well...

so get your bits together, and give it a try. Who knows, in a few years you may be speaking at TechED (unbelieveable? - just ask Dave McMahon or myself)

See you there..

Technorati tags: WebDD NxtGenUG DDD

WebDD Registration Open

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:37:17 GMT

What are you doing?

Stop reading blogs and get on over to the WebDD site and register (I have even got the direct link for you), or you'll be sorry.

Scott Guthrie's going, so if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for you!

WebDD, WebDD1

Living the dream

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:27:12 GMT

I was driving home last night and the car in front of me had a big sign on the rear window

Achieve Your Dreams - Live your dream forever.

I won't promote the web-site. but you could probably guess it...

Two points of observation here

1) He was going home the same time as me

2) He was driving an 'N' reg fiesta - whats all that about? - "My dream is to own an 'N' reg fiesta." Perhaps he didn't bring the Bentley out in the rain.

It was weird how that gave me the wrong message. If he'd have been driving a new car, people would have thought, "i'll want some of that". Still I am sure somebody in the ~~pyramid~~ organisation will be dirving around in a very flash car...

So close, you can almost taste it...

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:01:11 GMT

WebDD is getting close... Registration will open soon...

But if you can't wait any longer why not register for the WebDD BackNetwork.

The WebDD Backnetwork is a social network site for all those interested in the WebDD event. The Backnetwork is not limited to event attendees and can be used to network with other interested parties and to discuss the event.

I am over the moon that Scott Guthrie will be coming over for WebDD - It really shows the power of the UK Community, in what is already looking like an awesome event.

great work Phil!

WebDD, WebDD1 Technorati Profile

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:12:57 GMT

Meetings are normally bad for developers, unless they are NxtGenUG ones...We have Coventry, Birmingham and Oxford all booked for January, February and March - so make your new years resolution to get up to speed with all the technology that's coming out and come along to a local user group meeting...

Here's January including the Microsoft DPE team coming to Coventry on the 23rd to talk about Vista and Office... a night to remember!

Its Mobile Device Night (Coventry)

January 15

TechED Speaker and MVP Andy Wigley drops in on NxtGenUG Coventry for an evening of two parts. Covering different aspects of mobile development.

Object Orientation (Oxford)

January 17

Have we got object-orientation all wrong? "Object Thinking" (ISBN 0-7356-1965-4) by David West asserts that we have. Alan Dean explores this assertion, and demonstrates self-describing objects / self-evaluating rules with code examples.

VISTA - From the Inside (Birmingham)

January 22

The Association of Midlands IT Professionals (MITPRO) and NxtGenUG team up to bring you an evening of Vista! Matt McSpirit and James Senior, otherwise known as "The Vista Boyz" from the Vista Partner Technical Specialists will talk about the various features of Vista and how they can relate to the SBS world. Aspects of Office 2007 will also be discussed

Roadtrip - Vista and Office (Coventry)

January 23

Want to hear about Vista, Office 2007 and .NET 3.0? From Monday 22nd to Friday 26th January the Microsoft UK developer team will be touring the country to bring the story to many organisations of all types. In the week they hope to deliver 12-15 sessions of around 90 minutes each – depending on the amount of travelling between each location. On Tuesday 23rd January they will be coming to Coventry where NxtGenUG will be hosting the evening.

Theres Podcasts....

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 03:59:30 GMT

And then there is Podcasts...

Listen to the Dave and Rich review of 2006 here.

It covers our favourite, swag, presentations, interviews and podcasts of 2006 - recorded in a special location ;-)

Smart Client or Smart Kid?

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 08:25:46 GMT

I often get asked about Smart Client applications when talking about Windows versus Web Applications, and marketing are always after using the buzz words to check for conformance.

Smart Clients are defined as having Online/Offline capabilities, Auto updating of themselves, and makes use of the local machine resources.

So here is a really cool example of a Smart Client - The XBox 360

You can play online/offline - either way you get a great experience. The XBox will update itself as Microsoft release updates - This is brilliant as the console software is evolving month by month; new features keep getting added and the user doesn't have to worry about installing a CD and it uses it hardware to the limit :-)

Last night we had a NxtGenUG meeting

We talked about Media Centre, developing applications for it, and also using the 360 as an Extender. We took along a 360, fired up Halo 2 and played online against my son. Once again the attendee casualty list was high. Not only did Thomas beat everybody, he also knew which game I played him - that's too good!

That deserves a place on the Halo 3 - Beta Multiplayer Programme.... anybody listening?

new 360 Compatibility list

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 08:11:26 GMT

Microsoft have released another compatibility list for the XBox 360 - December 2006

the updates includes: Whacked,Conker, Far Cry, Incredibles and Shark Tale...

The list now includes almost 300 xbox titles, so after christmas,print out the list, head over to your local game store and have a mooch around the pre-owned bins for some great XBox game bargains.

Still no sign of Midtown Madness though..

Bungie Xmas Pressie

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:39:24 GMT

Bungie have just announced the existence of a 7 minute documentary of Halo 3, which will be available on XBox live Marketplace NEXT WEEK!

"you'll be able to see the entire thing in 720p and surround sound some time next week. It's a very interesting piece. especially if you're interested in Campaign mode."

Happy Christmas from Bunige..

What a cracker..

Out of Controller

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 07:03:05 GMT

Oliver gets very excited when playing on the XBox 360, numerous times the Controller has landed up on the floor (Big controller, small hands). A couple of times I said

"It's a good job we havent got a Nintendo Wii, otherwise it would be through the screen."

The Nintendo Wii features a wrist strap to stop such things happening, although it turns out the strap is not strong enough and 3.2 million of them are being recalled!

"Nintendo has recalled 3.2 million wrist straps for its new Wii console after reports of enthusiastic users inadvertently sending the motion-sensing controller crashing into their TV screens.

Nintendo Co Ltd spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said Friday that the first version of the controller strap "turned out to be insufficient in its strength for some customers," so it would be replaced with a thicker one."

Read it here..

You know you have made it...

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:49:17 GMT

When you appear on Channel 9

We filmed this at TechED Barcelona, Sarah Blow, Guy Smith Ferrier, Brian Long, Dave Mcmahon and myself, joined Charles outside for a chat on communities...

watch it here

PDC07 Announced - Booyah!

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:24:40 GMT

I had an awesome time at PDC 2005 here,here, here, here, here, - Seeing all the new stuff being unveiled, having so much swag that my bag broke and meeting load of great people.

PDC07 has now been announced, back in Los Angeles on the 2nd-5th October 2007 - mark those days..

If the rate of the dollar stays the same it will be a bargain!

Security should not be obstructive.

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:54:32 GMT

On my way home last night, my car hit a pothole and this morning I came out to see the my tyre was flat (only at the bottom though :-)).

What has this got to do with security? Well I am glad you asked. I drove over to Britannia tyre repair, handed over the car and sat down.

There must have been 5 or 6 people who came into the reception, only for the mechanic to return after 5 minutes to say "where's your wheel nut locking kit", only for the customer to go, "err, It was in the car... I think..." or "err do I need them?"

I remember when it happened to my last car, in the end they chiselled them off, but the hassle it caused at a time when I needed a quick repair.

I am sure many wheels get stolen every year, but this seemed to be an example of obstructive security, a bit like extremely long and complex passwords for logins - I wonder what Steve Lamb would be saying...

Actually he;d probably say... "Security should not get in the way, if it does its been done wrong"

Yes, it did get repaired, quickly too, thanks Britannia.

Want to play Halo Beta?

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:06:20 GMT

Grab you frags and head on over to one of the following websites, to enter a chance to play the beta of Halo3 - YES... this is for the UK...

www.rewiredmind.com
www.360monster.com
www.britxbox.co.uk
www.msxbox-world.com
www.totally360.com
www.xboxliveaddicts.co.uk/forums/index.php

If you are not from the UK - head on over here to find out where to go...

http://www.playfuls.com/news_8570_Halo_3_Beta_European_Sign_up_Pages_Bungie_Update.html

I own a Salamango

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:50:33 GMT

No, it's not a James Bond Villian.

I have been playing Viva Pinata, and it makes a great change from first person shooters on the XBox 360. I managed to breed this by accident, I won't spoil it by saying how, but some experimentation went on. These little beauties can be sold for 2,000 gold coins, so they are becoming quite lucrative.

I also had my first Doe-Nut take up residency in the Costall garden, but frogs are barred for eating Newt-Gets. the sours are a bit of a pain, but vegetable production is going well and I have even got some organisation going in the chaos that is my garden.

Well done Rare, cracking game - right I am off to attempt to get the crocodile - I bet that eats a lot of pinatas.

Woo Hoo what a beauty.

Viva Pinata!

Vista the Movie

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 11:35:01 GMT

I have just got back from Birmingham where I sat in on a Microsoft EVO launch Roadshow for Partners.

The session was different as it took place inside an Odeon Cinema, and yes we were all treated to popcorn and ice cream. Steve Clayton didn't walk around with a torch though saying shhhhh.

Vista is extremely impressive - even more so on a large cinema screen. I think it should have been compulsory to show and XBox360 game or the new Halo trailer.

In the first presentation we saw the top 20 features of Vista/Office, including the wonderful Flip 3D, Vista Search and preview pane; although the last 9 was the 9 games. It was a shame there was no Vista Speech Recognition - one of my favourites (if i'd have known I could have done my Vista Speech Recognition Grok talk), or showing tags or UAC, but to be fair there is so many of them...

Microsoft also demonstrated installing a clean PC with Vista and Office, although an incorrect format command gave the audience the impression that it really took 60 minutes. Let me clear this up now, yes the guys can install Vista and Office in less that 10 minutes, from a USB drive and without a CD install.

The second half of the session talked about the opportunity for partners, and covered 'Genuine Windows' and the different SKU's available for the Vista and Office products. It's great to know that if you buy a PC now, you will be able to get a Free upgrade to Vista and Office on release (Jan 30th)

Being the fantastic photographer that I am, I took loads of photos, but they all came out blurred...

You ever wonder what's up there?

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:29:31 GMT

The teaser for Halo3 aired last night...

Not in game footage, but a video teaser, mainly featuring two children lying in the grass talking about life on other planets. [Could the boy in the story be Master Chief as a child?]

Cut to our hero - Master Chief. Who has almost been blown to bits, his upturned Mongoose, has its wheels still spinning, grabs his helmet off the floor and his scratched battle-rifle and charges into battle against 6 Wraiths (Covenant Tanks) and what looked like Tartarus with (13) Elites? - (difficult to tell).

Not really the odds you like...

See it here...

There also a beta programme you can sign up for to test some Multiplayer action. BUT ONLY IF YOU LIVE IN THE USA!. Sign up here...

Grrrr Grrr and Grrr.... XBox live all around the world, well actually just in the United States... What will I tell Thomas?. Why oh why oh why.... surely we need to beta test Halo3 over the Atlantic...

But could this be a shred of hope from the Bungie site?

"This is phase one. There will be more ways to enter the beta program, so don't panic. We will try to ensure that everyone who wants to participate has the opportunity to do so. The beta will be a world-wide affair, and every region that is elligible to participate, will. Much of the information on Halo3.com applies to the US only - so if you live in a different region, keep an eye on your local Xbox site for details. "

Well - I'm waiting...

Busy at Microsoft today

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:18:33 GMT

I come into work today and 'BAM' - not only have Microsoft made a CTP available to the public of WPF/E - Windows Presentation Foundation - Everywhere, but they have also SHIPPED - yes shipped Expression Web. Expression Web is a member of the Expression family of products and is a professional design tool for building compliant web applications.

With WPF/E richer web applications are one step closer, it's a cross browser solution, so no requirement on .NET.

WebDD - Excellent

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 03:44:05 GMT

Phil Winstanley has been busy - yesterday he announced WebDD.

What is WebDD? Info from the site...

On Saturday the 3rd of February 2007 we are holding a free conference in Reading specifically targeting web developers and web designers in the United Kingdom. The mantra behind the conference is that currently there is no focus on standards, best practice and general patterns based approaches to web development and design being pushed particularly strongly in the UK. Additionally it's rare that the people on the ground are looking ahead at what is coming up and where the web will be in the coming years.

We want to change that and give the British web development and design communities a real fighting chance going forward and we feel a regular conference which is free to attend is a good way of getting the messages out to the wider community.

WebDD web Site

Spot on Phil - this should be excellent; a conference just for Web Developers and Designers. :-)

DDD4 - Cabbages

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 03:31:05 GMT

Yesterday was DDD4, and this community event just seems to get better and better.

DDD, or DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper, is run by the community, with speakers and sessions being picked by the community. The fact it also happens on a Saturday makes it accessible to developers without taking holiday from work. Saturday also means you have to 'want' to be there, and the result is over 300 enthusiastic developers and a great day.

The delgates start to arrive

Dave kicked of the track in Memphis with his excellent SQL/XML talk, Guy Smith Ferrier was covering MSBuild in Chicago2 and Ben Lamb had an interesting session on "How to write crap code in c#".

AT lunchtime DDD tried something new in "Grok talks". The purpose of these is to present a 10 minute presentation on, something cool, in a very relaxed atmosphere. I was slightly concerned that, being at luncthime, nobody would turn up - but I couldn't have been more wrong. 60+ people all sitting on the floor, munching on sandwiches, listening to John Price talking about media centre markup language - the atmosphere was electric, or a Benjamin Mitchell would say - it was smoking. Well done John - great presentation!

I was on next and demonstrated, something I think is really cool in Vista - speech recognition, but instead of a live demo I thought i'd try something new.I recorded a video of myself and 'talked' to myself over the video "hey, Rich" - "oh hi Rich, How you doing". The demo fitted in exactly 10 minutes and went down a treat - "no Way", "wow", were the comments, culminating in a big round of applause for my Hello World application created in speech alone - we also had a great laugh along the way - It was one of the most enjoyable presentations i've done.

I had some great feedback after my session, and that's what it's all about - it was buzzing.

I then had to head of to the Everest suite in building four for Dave McMahon and my session on "TechED review and Quiz". We wanted to do something different this time and I think we achieved it. Anybody who remembers Crackerjack (Crackerjack) from the television, will relate to taking people from the audience and loading them up with swag until the drop something. The questions came in the form of interviews with TechED speakers, such as Ingo Rammer, Anders Heljsberg, Jeffrey Snover and Mike Hall.

The curious arrive for our session

For example we asked Mike Hall, who works on the Windows Embedded team in Redmond. "If Windows Embedded was a sandwich, what sort of sandwich would it be?". We also asked Anders "what is your favourite VB.NET keyword?

If the (4) contestants got the question correct, they won good swag, if they got it wrong the won the good swag plus some rubbish swag - including real Cabbages!. If they dropped something they were out. The competition ended with a guess how much excess baggage Dave had when we came back from TechED, which I can now reveal as a massive 17KG (pure swag). Here is the list of good swag which each contestant left with:

Speaker Shirt
Umbrella
USB Drive
Channel9 Guy
Teddy
K2Net Cap
Teched Developer Tshirt
Bag or Signed Shirt
Expression CD Beta 1
We also had tonnes (or 17 KG) of bad swag, loads of pens, inflatable Microphones, Mints, stress balls... etc etc..

Congratulations to Dave Hearn who won the tie break question and walked away with Uber-Swag : An MSDN Universal Subscription!!!!

Well done to the other contestants, inparticular Patrick who, was laiden with swag and was the real star of the show. We did say our session would not have much content, and that was the case - but everybody had a great laugh.

Patrick and Andrew - at the halfway point in the show

comment of the day was from Mike Taulty "Oh no, they have got Cabbages!"

We also did two interviews with the four chaps from Blighty - Two? Yes Two, Guy Smith-Ferrier didn't press record on the first one - Watch out for a new group forming - "The three chaps from Blighty". Mark Johnson also interviewed Dave and I for Channel9 so watch for that one too soon.

Thanks to the organisers, especially Craig Murphy, Ian Cooper, Jonathon for the web site, Zi for Grok talks and the geek dinner, the room monitors and, of course, Microsoft for providing the venue, excellent food; including Mince Pies and Cream/Brandy butter, Sausage and Egg cobs and Sandwiches and crisps at lunchtime.

Sarah Blow and Barry Dorrans doing... err...

DDD just seems to get better and better, how we beat this one, well plans are afoot, but it's going to be tough - Here's looking forward to DDD5! some good news is Phil Winstanley has announced WebDD - a web focused DDD, and if Phil's behind it - it's going to be good so keep your eyes peeled for more details on that one.

DDD4 Getting Close

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 02:43:52 GMT

Last night I was putting my slides together for our TechED review and Quiz session.

Highly technical this session is not, but we have some great interviews to play, some excellent questions to ask our volunteers and i reckon we will also be giving away more swag than any presentation ever... It's gonna be one big SwagFest.

This morning though I have a cough and cold - let's hope it clears up in time for Saturday....

If you are going to DDD4 and want to win some swag reply to this blog - you may just get on stage :-)

SWAG! SWAG! SWAG! SWAG!

Hot Shower

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 04:00:09 GMT

We've just had a fire alam gone off, so it was grab the Vista Laptop (essentials) and leave the building.

John Price came out the building in a hurry and very wet. It turns out he was having a shower when the alarm went off. Good job he had time to get dressed.

Two Fire Engines arrived and after a tour of the building allowed everybody back in. It's only 8:57am - I wonder what sort of day this is going to be...

The cause of the alarm being triggered was a sensor being set off in the shower! - I wonder what (who) caused that!

Bit Windy

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:04:10 GMT

It was a bit of a windy morning, driving in to work. The rain was coming down heavy, the wind blowing pretty hard, and then as I came intoWarwick I saw a council worker with a Leaf Blower

What a strange world we live in!

Ask and ye shall get..

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 02:38:03 GMT

Halo 3 screenshots - 'Hi Res Screenshots...'

Take a look at these little beauties....

DDD4 - Gets Grokky

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 07:11:09 GMT

For DDD4 we are organising Grok Talk and Park Bench lunch time activities at which we hope to encourage delegates to participate. You can help!

The Grok Talks are open to anyone, a wiki has been setup where people can put down their name and the talk and/or suggest topics for the Park Bench. If you are attending DDD4 we would like to invite you to submit a Grok Talk. As we have had a low response so far we would appreciate it if you could blog about this opportunity or mention it to anyone you know who might be interested. As a reward on the day a MSDN subscription will be given for the best Grok Talk.

Wiki link - http://www.thehughpage.com/DDD4LunchTime

DDD link - http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/default.asp

Big Announcement

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 12:25:10 GMT

Halo 3 - Big Announcement

The Halo 3 big annnouncement is there will be a big announcement next year. Well almost!

Come on Bungie one screen shot, a beta next spring and a CGI video - When will we get some real details about Halo 3, sometimes companies can be victims of their own success. Still we have Call of Duty and Gears of War now to tide us over.

Barcelona - TechED

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:12:18 GMT

I am currently at TechED in Barcelona, both presenting (wow, our second session had over 500 people in it!) and getting content together for Virtual Teched and our NxtGenUG Podcasts.

The keynote was interesting, read a full (well, almost full) report here...

But, something I did not cover in my article was the fact that .NET 3.0 went RTM - How you manage to 'not' announce that is beyond me. Excellent news for developers, not so good for Microsoft marketing!

Oxford NxtGenUG

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:34:57 GMT

NxtGenUG are really pleased to announce the launch of its third region, located in Oxford (UK).

Oxford will be headed up by Renowned speakers Chris Seary, Barry Dorrans, and Dave Oliver.

The first meeting is on the 1st November 2006 .. check out here for details.

Registration with NxtGenUG is free and this entitles you to attend a couple of meetings to try us out. We currently have an introductory rate of £89 per year.

Security Training

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:28:23 GMT

In this 2 day, Dinis Cruz, course (London and Midlands) you will push Asp.Net to the limit and will be shown how ASP.NET applications and environments can be exploited by skilled attackers. Advanced exploitation techniques will be presented together with low-level technical analysis of the .NET Framework. You will also learn advanced defense techniques such including real-time patching of vulnerabilities in the target application, the .Net Framework or the CLR.

Read all about it... for more information

Life Under Vista

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:37:04 GMT

Last week i upgraded my laptop to Vista RC1 and Office 2007 - and wow its pretty amazing, when i go back to XP on my other machines I miss some of the Vista features.

Development has a couple of quirks, but it hasn't stopped my working on the NxtGenUG site - can't wait for this to RTM!

I will document my findings in an article for the NxtGenUG site (hopefully soon)

Two sessions at TechED

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:33:45 GMT

Dave and I have been asked to present another one of our sessions at TechED in Barcelona

DEV303 Triple XXX - XML,XPath and Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)
Dave McMahon , Richard Costall
Tue Nov 7 16:00 - 17:15
This session will cover each of these technologies, what they were designed for, what they are used for and how they relate to each other. The presenters will illustrate XPath, with demonstrations given of how to navigate through the XML Tree using XPath. Many aspects of XSLT syntax will be discussed including conditional statements, loops, templates, elements, attributes and built-in functions. The final demonstration will show how to write custom functions using VB.NET which can not only be accessed by XSLT but also used to debug XSLT documents.

DEV359 .NET Hidden Treasures

Dave McMahon , Richard Costall

Thu Nov 9 15:45 - 17:00

Take a trip deep into the .NET Framework and discover many 'hidden treasures' of .NET. This will be a fun but informative session, with lots of demos, looking at those little bits of the .NET Framework that may have passed you by in the normal scheme of things, but could potentially save you hours of development time.

Find out about the WebClient Class, the Stopwatch, IHttpHandler and a other things. Some will really help you while some are just cool. No experience needed, and if you are lucky Dave might sneak in a SQL treasure too. Plus we want you to tell us about your favourite hidden treasures.

In Fact Dave McMahon is doing a third session too on SQL and XML - boy are we going to be busy!

Plus we will be helping create content for Virtual TechED.. keep checking this site..

INETA News

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:10:28 GMT

I am pleased to announce that I have been appointed UK INETA Lead. I will be building on the good work done by Benjamin Mitchell. My role is to oversee (and evolve) the UK .NET developers communities.

The International .NET Association (INETA) provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups.

"It's a great time for .NET communities, with all the technologies emerging from Microsoft. We already have some ideas planned on helping the .NET user groups in the UK, along with building the speaker bureau and getting a structure in place. Voluntary roles are time consuming and I am pleased to appoint Dave McMahon as a UK INETA Coordinator.

Dave is very experienced in all things community, and has also recently organised the successful Ed Gibson Security tour - something which we want to build on and involve more user groups."

see the INETA communities here

You can catch up with Dave McMahon and me at TechED in Barcelona where they will frequent the INETA community stand, and at the soon to be announced UK community leaders day.

Boost Boost Boost

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:08:08 GMT

The classic XBOX title Burnout 3 - Takedown is now compatible with the XBOX 360

"Boost, Boost, Boost people. Its all about speed and control"

Now where is Midtown Madness?

DDD4 - Speaker Submission

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 05:19:00 GMT

Fancy doing a presentation? DDD4 is scheduled for Saturday 2nd December 2006 and is open for session submission. Go on, give it a try - you might just like it!

The incredibly successful DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper (DDD) event, organised by the community for the community has announced its 4th Event (DDD4). Currently its open for speaker session submissions and anybody in the community can submit a session. the agenda is then chosen by the community.

So if you want to give it a try head on over to the DDD site

Crikey!

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:47:07 GMT

After returning froma great Florida Holiday, it was really saddening to hear about the death of the Crocodile Hunter - Steve Irwin.

Steve had an endless enthusiasm about endangered species and wasnt afraid to speak his mind on their protection. His unique presentation style made him the most entertaining widelife presenter and educated millions about the 'other side' of Crocs, Sharks and Snakes. Shaky video camera footage and jumping off the side of a boat to haul in a croc made great television, he should have been used to film the disappointing 'Prehistoric Park' series in the UK.

I fondly rememeber when Steve took his wife Teri out and she was bitten by a snake, and then when Steve lost a lump of his shoe to a Kimodo Dragon - Woo Hoo... and I subsequently used his "what a beauty" line in many of my older blogs.

Thomas an I have spent many an hour watching the crocodile hunter series and will continue to do so, although it wont be quite the same knowing Steve is no longer with us.

Steve, Thanks for all you have done and i am sure there has been some real crocodile tears at Australia Zoo this last week.

Crickey, Thats was close...

Barcelona here we come...

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 01:53:43 GMT

WOW - What can i say, but i am extremely pleased to announce i will be speaking at TechED 2006 in Barcelona in November this year. This is an incredible honour for me to get up on stage alongside the top european speakers

Dave an I will be presenting out famous Triple XXX session, which we have since added to - now known as BCL303

BCL303 Triple XXX - XML,XPath and Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)
Dave McMahon , Richard Costall

This session will cover each of these technologies, what they were designed for, what they are used for and how they relate to each other. The presenters will illustrate XPath, with demonstrations given of how to navigate through the XML Tree using XPath. Many aspects of XSLT syntax will be discussed including conditional statements, loops, templates, elements, attributes and built-in functions. The final demonstration will show how to write custom functions using VB.NET which can not only be accessed by XSLT but also used to debug XSLT documents. So if you were thinking of attending TechED - hopfully this will make your mind up (to go that is :-)) - expect content and podcasts on the NxtGenUG site - i'm off to use the search tool to find myself again

Web.Config Security

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 14:29:18 GMT

The web.config file is an aladdins cave of email contacts, connection strings and file paths, fortunately it can live in the web directory as ASP.NET process will not serve web.config files.

How many times have you upgraded your site, or been doing maintenance work and you go and rename web.config - to - web.config.bak.

Big security mistake, you have just exposed intimate details about your site... and i am sure crawlers out there look for renamed config files... .bak or .txt etc etc..

Office 2007 Icons

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:19:40 GMT

As i am sure you know by now, Microsoft Office will have a new version around the time of the Vista Launch.

Each time the product changes, the icons get an upgrade and this time is no exception, check these out on Jensen Harris's blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/07/26/678606.aspx

Just like watching Brazil!

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:58:09 GMT

On Sunday i was at the world cup.

Ok, so it wasn't the world cup, but a local football tournament, in which Thomas (my son) plays. Sadly we didnt progress through the group stages, but in one game Chetwynd Dragons won 3-0, with Thomas scoring 2 of them.

Its such a proud moment for a touchline dad, last week i'd been on a bit of a downer for various reasons, but those two goals were priceless (when i say pricesless - it cost me £30 in Halo Figures - I promised him a halo figure per goal)

Thomas's first was a tap in, he saw hesitation from the goal keeper and pounced. Thomas's second (and Chetwynd's Third) was a blast from about 8 yards out.

Hot Dog 0.60p
Entry into the Ground £2
Weekly Fees £3.00
Halo Figures £30
Watching your son score his first goal in a competitive match - PRICELESS !

I'm just waiting now for everybody to say he gets his clinical finishing from me :-)

DDD3

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 02:48:58 GMT

Wow... Another DDD (DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper), comes and goes and they just seem to get better and better.

Dave McMahon and I enjoyed our session on ~~Sock Puppets~~, .Net Hidden Treasures, if you attended DDD you can now leave feedback on the DDD site.

Read Daves Full report on our NxtGenUG Site

Windows Vista

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 02:57:45 GMT

I'm sure you all know by know Windows Vista Beta 2, and the Microsoft Office Suite 2007 beta 2 are available.

I just found this great site showing of the benefits of Vista... click here

Whats your Xbox 360 Saying?

Fri, 19 May 2006 04:20:14 GMT

So, XBox 360's have feelings and are now blogging... This is really cool.

I have registered and will let you know what my 360 is saying about me in a day or so...

Must be famous

Sun, 07 May 2006 04:01:21 GMT

You know whenyou are famous as you receive 100's of fake blog postings every day....

Enough is enough. Enter the Clearscreen.SharpHIP control - so lets see how many i get today...

p.s. if you dont get the code right, you dont get the reply submitted, the page will refresh.!

XBOX 360 Owners take note..

Fri, 05 May 2006 03:04:42 GMT

E3, the biggest games show, kicks off next week at the Los Angeles Convention Centre (where PDC was 2005).

I know we cant all afford to go, but hang on... if you have an XBOX 360 it looks like you are gonna get a lot of show content without having to leave the comfort of your own home... with a backstage pass, content is DOWNLOADABLE onto the old 360....

check it out here, but here is a flavour..

Top Events
Clear your calendar now, you don't want to miss a moment. Here are a few of the events planned for the week of E3 on Xbox Live:

Playable game demos and trailers: Experience the most exciting games on Xbox 360™. You'll get to play the same demos and watch the same trailers as those on the show floor.
Game with Fame celebrity tournaments: Go up against your favorite movie and rock stars or pro athletes playing the latest games in the E3 edition of Game with Fame.
Play and Win contests: Win big prizes with the latest Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade titles. We have Play and Win events scheduled every hour of every day throughout E3.
E3 Behind the Scenes: Check out exclusive developer interviews and reports straight from the show floor.
Exclusive hi-def movie trailers: Get a first look at some of the upcoming blockbuster films. You can't get these trailers anywhere but Xbox Live Marketplace!
Limited-edition E3 gamer pictures and themes: Spice up your gamer card or splash a new E3 theme across your Xbox 360 Dashboard with these one-of-a-kind downloads.

could we even see the Halo 3 trailer in our own living rooms - in high def and not in a 240-120 window :-) - i really hope so.

Chitty Chitty Warthog

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 03:49:02 GMT

Continuing on strange things theme. I recently (or rather Thomas) was playing Halo 2 online. I was doing something else when he called me and said...

"Daddy, somebody is flying around in a warthog" (a bit like a hummer/jeep combination).

"You can't fly Warthogs, Thomas"

"This person can". came the reply.

I made my way into the room and there, in true 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' style, was a Warthog flying around the level. The guy was later seen running at lightning speed around the level. I think theres some cheating going on here!

The funny thing about this is the guy only just won, which makes you think - he must be pretty bad at Halo and had ruined what had been an enjoyable game for Thomas.

So perhaps Halo 3 should have an additional option under multiplayer - Lowlifes/Cheats where everyone is invicible, i wonder how long it would take them to realise nobody is being killed... probably quite a while.

MAY LAUNCH DATE CHANGE!

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 02:50:02 GMT

Please Note: The NxtGenUG May Launch Event is NOW on the 15th May and not the 8th May and highlighted in blogs and MSDN Flash.

Click here to see the event details

Sorry for the inconvenience.

ASP.NET Wiggle the mouse

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 02:42:53 GMT

Has anybody else noticed this...(or am i going mad)

Sometimes when you compile and run an ASP.NET application the build process seems really slow, by moving the mouse around it speeds up, the more you wiggle the quicker it goes.. If you dont move the mouse the application will sometimes not even run.

I experienced this in the beta, and even managed to show it to a member of the product team, who described it as 'weird', although at the time we decided it was my machine. Now i have a new machine with a clean RTM build on it and it still happens....

So here is my plea, has anybody else noticed this effect? - please let me know

Free Express

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 02:28:16 GMT

Effective April 19th, 2006, all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions are free permanently. This pricing covers all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual J#, and Visual Web Developer as well as all localized versions of Visual Studio Express.

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition has always been and will continue to be a free download.

Great news...

Atlas - looking awesome

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 08:36:07 GMT

Scott Guthrie has posted on his blog abut the April CTP drop of Atlas - this is worth a read, look at some of the new controls appearing in the Atlas Toolkit! and read about Scott's plans for the future.

To quote Scott - "Yesterday we then made available the first download of our new Atlas Control Toolkit, which runs on top of the core Atlas bits and provides a bunch of cool free Atlas-enabled controls that make even more common Ajax scenarios no-brainer easy to implement. You can run the samples from the Atlas Control Toolkit online here. You can then download the Atlas Control Toolkit "

I particularly like the TextWaterMark extender.

Looking Good

NxtGenUG: Next Generation User Group

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:42:19 GMT

Good Friday - no, its a great Friday!

NxtGenUG - The Next Generation User Group!

John Price, Dave McMahon and I would like to announce the formation of a new User Group called The Next Generation User Group (known as NxtGenUG). The purpose of the User Group is to help its members discover and get excited about all the latest and new technologies coming out of Microsoft such as .NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, WPF, WCF, WF, LINQ, Office 12 and .NET 3.0.

It doesn’t matter what development language is your language of choice, and we will also be covering techniques and technologies currently out there which people are using now. Our first meeting is on 8th May at the Coventry Flying Club. It’s going to be informative and fun, with great speakers from the community and Microsoft and competitions and prizes every month!

So make a note of the URL : http://www.nxtgenug.net . Register with the site and come and join the fun. Membership rates are extremely competitive, and anyone who attended last Novembers VBUG launch extravaganze will know what to expect.

Check out some of the early content - including a rare interview with Soma Somasegar - Vice President of the developer division at Microsoft in Redmond and an excellent interview with Marcus Perryman - Mr Mobile Devices.

We are really excited about this and i hope you are to.. its only version 1.0 of the site and we have SO MUCH MORE TO COME!

Fasten your seatbelts - NxtGenUG is clear for take-off

Old Bikes - Shiny new Technology

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:21:09 GMT

Microsoft Roadshows are coming to the midlands - to show off the latest technology coming soon. This is sure to be an excellent event on the 3rd May 2006 at the National MotorCycle museum near Birmingham. - Best thing of all - ITS ABSOLUTELY FREE.

So jump on the harley and get on over and see some shiny new technology. If you have not come across WINFX then you will be amazed, check out Atlas - and meet me in a new guise to be announced soon.

The 2006 MSDN Roadshow will introduce a range of new Microsoft technologies that enable the creation of compelling, secure applications that span browser and desktop clients; handle the demands of various communication requirements and put people in control of their business.

These technologies will be demonstrated by a custom application that will be built during the event and will bring the WinFX, Windows Vista and “2007 Microsoft Office System” platform to life through the use of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 development tool and including the use of the new Expressions product range. Delegates will be able to take the source for this application and use it themselves after the event to explore these technologies further.

here is the outline below

Time Activity
08:45   Registration opens
09.30   Welcome and introduction
          WinFx - Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
10:50   Break
11:05   WinFX - Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
           A Web-enabled Experience with Altas
13:00   Lunch
13:40   Enhancing the web with Windows VISTA
          2007 Office System Integration
15:20   Break
15:40   WinFX - Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
          Wrap Up and Next Steps
17:10   Close

MSDN - Office 12

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 08:23:15 GMT

Mike Ormond did a great session on Office 12 last night, covering the new UI, Sharepoint, and Excel Services.

Sitting on the front row, we could hear the machine (with virtual pc images) chugging away and we stayed nice and warm from the heat it generated.

Well done Mike, despite some irrelevant questions you did a grand job.

Wonderful thing about standards

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 08:40:29 GMT

The wonderful thing about standards is - there are so many of them !

Whats your thoughts on message standards, i am not entirely convinced and sometimes feel held back by them (ooh controversy)

Bloatware- Standard messages carry a lot of excess baggage in order to comply, even simple messages end up being large for the smallest of tasks
Tweakware - can you really build one message and get it to work on another providers web service without making a single change?
Readabilityware - When you get the 30K response, does being in a standard structure help or hinder you. Could that really be 5K as you throw the rest away - and will this lead to a world angle bracket shortage
Standardsware - whch standard should you adopt and how do you chose one over another

Let me know your success or failure stories with adopting standards or rejecting them and building your own in-house format. I have been on both sides of the fence; Sitting in a hot office with 20 other developers arguing about element names for a standards body and having to consume some of these 5K monster massages when a guid would do.

Laughter - The best medicine

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 07:54:03 GMT

"Last night i thought i saw a dead baby ghost in the road - turned out to be a handerchief!" - Milton Jones

Last night was the 1st Software quarterly doo - Its all about team building and socialising.

I had the idea about doing a comedy night, and i suggested it, so it came to pass, was organised and went down a storm!

Jon Richardson

Jon Richardson was our compere; he was excellent, great at improvising and 'interacting' with the audience.

Rule1: Never sit with your back to the comedian.

Rule 2: Never give a false name

Noel Britton

Noel was the first act, funny in his view on life and props including a banana slicer bought in the states and his shirt which made him look fat (it was'nt the shirt). He took a shine to me and my friend who was sitting with me - but being comedian cannon fodder is all part of the fun of it.

Milton Jones

Milton Jones was excellent, great view on life, excellent gags, which never stopped. He was the extremely surreal and handled the hecklers and chatterboxes really well. I havent laughed so much in a long time. Ask John Price for the Boo joke - hes still laughing about it now!

Rule 3: Never own a cat or live in Scotland, or Birmingham :-)

"Italians - Slanty Eyes - oh, sorry thats Italics" - Milton Jones

An Excellent night great fun. Thanks 1st.

ASP.NET RTM Banana Skin

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 05:38:24 GMT

I just slipped on a Beta 2 to RTM ASP.NET banana skin.

The web.config settings for SMTP mail have changed - here is the beta 2 web.config

<system.net>
  <mailSettings>
   <smtp>
    <network host="smtphost" port="25" userName="***" password="***" from="test@test.com" />
   </smtp>
  </mailSettings>
</system.net>

The from attribute of the network element in the RTM version has been moved into the smtp element

<system.net>
  <mailSettings>
   <smtp from="test@test.com" >
    <network host="smtphost" port="25" userName="***" password="***" />
   </smtp>
  </mailSettings>
</system.net>

Slip - boing!

Presentation - Brain meltdown

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 15:57:51 GMT

I am surprised i can still type, i feel drained, yet excited. I have just completed an extremely intense two day speaker training course with Alan Elston of Leading edge presentations. All i can say is WOW

My only previous training came in the form of a very aggressive director in my early career days and some 'dodgy' guidance recently. I now know how the pro's do it.

Alan is an exceptional trainer, over two days i did 11 presentations on various subjects of various lengths, culminating in an 8 minute presentation, i even have the video to prove it. Our group of 7 were transformed - the difference in the way we present is pretty amazing. I was more nervous doing that, than doing a presentation to 140 people at Microsoft - strange.

I will now look at presentations differently, approach speaking differently and i think i am even beginning to enjoy it. I wont reveal too much here, as its Alan's business, but i would heartily recommend the course, yes its intense, yes you are under pressure, but boy will you be grateful at the end.

A quick search on the web reveals Phil Winstanley has also been through the mill on this one, and had a very similar experience.

This is where i should put the line 'i am off now to watch my video' - but i won't and i am not. I need to de-fry my brain.

Thanks Alan it was awesome - to see you present for 60 seconds on XAML with only 15 seconds briefing, not having a clue about the technology - but delivering a presentation on the subject was just mind-blowing to watch. Thanks to my fellow colleagues and to Melita for organising it.

Spot the VB Differences

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:17:29 GMT

Microsoft are running a FREE event showing how much VB.NET has moved on in Visual Studio 2005. If you are 1.1/1.0 developer, or even a VB6 developer then this event is for you. Register HERE

Its also a great chance to meet up with the legendary Jay Roxe - VB 2005 product manager and ask him all about Stringbuilder :-)

Overview:

Join Microsoft in London for the forthcoming 'VB Differences Event', on the 27th March 2006, which will provide developers with a great insight into the value of Visual Basic 2005 and ASP.2.0.

This Microsoft world tour is coming to the UK, and places are strictly limited. This is a great opportunity for developers to come together and hear the latest in what's new in Visual Basic 2005. Come and hear all the latest advances and benefits in developing new applications with Visual Studio 2005.

Microsoft will take a deeper dive into the development and deployment of the new Windows Forms 2.0, and in particular take a look at the new Windows Forms data features and see how to use these features to bind custom business objects to Windows Forms controls.

You will be introduced to ASP.NET 2.0 using Visual Basic 2005, and for example you can brush up on your skills using Visual Basic 2005 for developing applications for the Smartphone. This event will provide you with a great insight into developing new skills in Visual Basic 2005 to target these new and competitive environments.

Speakers:
Jay Roxe (Microsoft Corp)
Tyler Whitney (Microsoft Corp)
Alexander Holy (Microsoft Corp)

Morning Session:
• Introduction (15 minutes)
• Keynote: What's New in Visual Basic 2005 (30 minutes) - Jay Roxe
• Windows Forms 2.0 Development and Deployment (90 minutes) – Jay Roxe / Tyler Whitney
• Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 using Visual Basic 2005 (75 minutes) – Alexander Holy

Lunch

Afternoon Session:
• Smart Client Development Using Visual Studio Tools for Office and Windows Mobile (75 minutes) – Jay Roxe
• Top Ten Tips and Tricks from the Visual Basic Team (75 minutes) – Tyler Whitney

let us know if you read this and then decide to attend - thanks

XBOX Live - meet your doom

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 16:02:08 GMT

Thomas and i are unleashed on the gamer world... watch out we are coming to get you.

I should be certified - WIN AN EXAM

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:08:53 GMT

Call me crazy, but i went and took a beta .net exam today - which one? i hear you ask - OK as its you...

71-547 PRO: Designing and Developing Web-based Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Why - well i wanted to do my duty and provide feedback to Microsoft on the new exams being rolled out, and i wanted to check the lie of the land around the focus of the exam and difficulty. Taking a beta means its FREE, although you do get around 30% more questions than the final exam. In effect you are testing the exams and you do get 30 minutes at the end of the exam to give feedback on each question (i did run out of time on this though).

At first i found these exams pretty confusing so here is my translation of the new exams:

Microsoft have two developer threads of exams MCPD - Microsoft Certified Professional Developer and MCTS - Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist

MCPD comes in three flavours. One for web developers, one for windows developers and one for enterprise application developers. These are equivalent to MCSD.NET but with a slant on Web/Windows and enterprise.

Professional Developer: Web Developer

Professional Developer: Windows Developer

Professional Developer: Enterprise Applications Developer

MCTS comes in five flavours [expect more to be added] (mostly having 2 exams - SQL and Biztalk Server have 1) covering web developers, windows developers and distributed application developers along with Biztalk and SQL Server 2005. These are equivalent to MCAD but with a specific slant on a technology.

Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications

Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Windows Applications

Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Applications

Technology Specialist: SQL Server 2005

Technology Specialist: BizTalk Server 2006

So lets assume we are a web developer who wants to get certified... what should we do?

To get a MCTS in web applications: you would need to pass the following 2 exams...

Exam 70–536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation
Exam 70–528: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development

To get MCPD in Web Development requires 3 exams or 1 additional for MCTS holders.

Exam 70–547: PRO: Designing and Developing Web Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
Exam 70–536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation
Exam 70–528: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development

Existing MCAD.NET holders can upgrade to this certification with 1 exam

Exam 70–551: UPGRADE: MCAD skills to MCPD: Web Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework

Windows Developer follows the same lines. Which brings us on nicely to the Enterprise Application developer.

To get your MCPD: Enterprise Applications Developer (5 exams)

Exam 70–549: PRO: Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
Exam 70–536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation
Exam 70–526: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Windows-Based Client Development
Exam 70–528: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development
Exam 70–529: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Distributed Application Development

If you have a MCSD.NET you can take two exams which will earn you a MCPD: Enterprise Applications Developer. Its called an upgrade but its really a refresher to keep your certifications current.

Exam 70–553: UPGRADE: MCSD Microsoft .NET Skills to MCPD: Enterprise Application Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework: Part 1
Exam 70–554: UPGRADE: MCSD Microsoft .NET Skills to MCPD: Enterprise Application Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework: Part 2

And NO, VB6 MCSD's cannot use the two upgrade exams, you have to have a MCSD.NET. You can expect to see these exams in full release in May/June time, so get those vouchers ready.

In fact i will give away a voucher for a free exam covering one of the following:

Exam 70–553: UPGRADE: MCSD Microsoft .NET Skills to MCPD: Enterprise Application Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework: Part 1
Exam 70–536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation
Exam 70–551: UPGRADE: MCAD skills to MCPD: Web Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
Exam 70–552: UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD: Windows Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
Exam 70–431: TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - Implementation and Maintenance
Exam 70–235: TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using BizTalk Server 2006

To the person who guesses nearest (3 guesses per person max please) to the number of allowed minutes (initally 195 - 3hours 15 minutes) I HAD LEFT after finishing all 71questions (including reviewing questions i marked), but excluding comment/feedback time which was extra...

Prize : Thanks to Microsoft

Office 2007 - looking good

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:42:27 GMT

Wow, i just came across a blog which links to another blog showing some of the screenshots of office 2007 (which hopefully will appear as a beta two shortly) and all i can say is - looking good.

For many years office hasn't changed, in fact more and more features get crammed in, but nobody uses them because they can't find them. So Microsoft have a rethink - and one of the things they come up with is the 'ribbon' which is like a context sensitive toolbar, that replaces all 37 of the previous toolbars.

But just click on this baby and view full size - Is she looking good or what?

Calling all VB.NET Developers

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 16:13:15 GMT

So what do you think about VB 9.0's new XML Features?

Dim Person = <Person Dept="SQL Server">

<Name>Erik Meijer</Name>

</Person>

Console.WriteLine(Person.Name)

Console.WriteLine(Person.Element("Name"))

Is it a good thing? Can it save developers from the black magic world of XSLT - which could be consider a good thing!

Lets look at the two VB camps

Will the battle hardened VB6/VB.net developers, use XMLDocument based methods to interrogate an XML document or will the rise to the LinQ like syntax to get tasks done quicker. What business problems can this solve to make VB9 even more of a rad tool?
Will the entry vb.net developers/hobbiests, who are not interested in learning XSLT jump on board (or even move from VB9 to VB9) or will they shy away from the syntax?

And finally, does the language benefit from XML within your VB code file, giving a the user the only tool they need to work with all these different technologies (VB9) - wow, or, does it take us back to the ASP days with Spaghetti code - boo .

Come on let me know.. read up on the whitepaper , download the preview and let me and Microsoft know - they are asking and its YOUR language!

DDD3 - June 3rd

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 08:53:40 GMT

The hugely popular DevelopDeveloperDeveloper event makes a return on the 3rd June 2006. Abstracts for sessions are already appearing including a couple of excellent ones from myself and Dave McMahon.

.NET Hidden Treasures
Take a trip deep into the .NET Framework and discover 10 'hidden treasures' of .NET. This will be a fun but informative session, with lots of demos, looking at those little bits of the .NET Framework that may have passed you by in the normal scheme of things. Find out about the WebClient Class, the IComparer interface, IHttpHandler and a few other things. Some will really help you while some are just cool. No experience needed, and if you are lucky Dave might sneak in a SQL treasure too. The session will end with a vote for the 'Official Best 'Hidden Treasure' of .NET'!"

XSLT Live and Unleashed
Following on from the successful XSLT/XPATH session at DDD2, join Richard Costall and Dave McMahon in a Powerpoint free session where XSLT is used to build a web site live and from scratch! On stage, without the aid of a safety net, Dave and Rich will use a range of features of XSLT from simple xsl:value-of to custom .NET XSLT Extensions and show you how easy and how really powerful this technology is. . Due the live-ness of this session, it is almost certain that XSLT debugging will feature at some point.

Dave is also flying solo this year with the following...

The A to Z of Regular Expressions
If you need to do any sort of String handling, searching or manipulation Regular Expressions are your saviour. So what are Regular Expressions, how do they work and why are they so powerful? Regular Expressions have their origins in UNIX and Perl but are now prevalent in most languages today. .NET boasts a rich API for Regular Expressions and this session will cover how to use the System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace to search, splice and dice your strings to your hearts content. The Regular Expression language syntax, the RegEx object, Match Object and MatchEvaluator Delegate will all be examined and by the end of it you will know that Regular Expressions are what you need to solve those String handling/searching problems!

This was an awesome event last time, so when registration opens, get yourself down and then vote for the sessions you wish to see...

Beta 2 to RTM ASP.NET Changes

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 03:48:02 GMT

I am currently moving an ASP.NET application from Beta 2 to RTM (Release to Manufacture) version, for the most part everything went smoothly.

I did however notice that my email links in a gridview had disappered and as a result had to change from a HyperlinkField

<asp:HyperLinkField SortExpression="EmailAddress" HeaderText="Email" DataNavigateUrlFields="EmailAddress" DataNavigateUrlFormatString="mailto:{0}" DataTextField="EmailAddress"></asp:HyperLinkField>

to a template field.

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Email Address" SortExpression="EmailAddress">

</ItemTemplate>

</asp:TemplateField>

Initial scratching around concludes a security exploit was found which this corrects, but its one to watch out for.

VBUG Feb - Beyond WinFX

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 02:52:41 GMT

This sounds like a really exciting session...

13th February 2006

Marcus Perryman - Microsoft

Windows Vista : Beyond WinFX

The next generation of desktop operating system from Microsoft named Windows Vista (codename Longhorn) is due to ship later this year. There is much excitement around the new WinFX technologies that will be available for Windows Vista as well as Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 but what does Windows Vista bring to the developer beyond WinFX? This session will pick some of the improvements in the new platform that will affect the developers targeting Windows Vista such as security, deployment and connectivity improvements. We will look at areas such as User Account Protection, new diagnostic capabilities, tight RSS integration, integration with new search capabilities and the new transactional file system.

please register through Donna at VBUG. Book early to avoid disappointment...

VBUG - WPF

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 07:45:28 GMT

Last Night 30 members had the pleasure of listening to Microsofts Mike Taulty present on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) formerly AValon.

Not only did Mike perform an excellent session, he also did it on a beta of Windows next generation operating system - Vista, a beta of WPF and a beta of Office 12 for his presentation.

WPF is a part of the WinFX technology, which amongst other things comprises of Indigo (Windows Communication Foundation) and WorkFlow Foundation (WF). All of these technologies traget Vista, but will also run on Windows 2003 and Windows XP.

check out this blog to see what can be achieved

Mike took us through layout, controls, animation, document services, binding and deployment, each presentation leaving the members amazed at the power of this technology.

Finally Mike gave us a demonstration of Sparkle Inteactive Designer (CTP) from the expression suite and showed us what can be achieived using it for just 20 minutes (plus a hands on lab)! - see his blog and video here

There was a short interlude, for delicious mushroom soup, sandwiches, sausages and chips (thanks to Alison and the Coventry Aero club for preparing the food.

What amazes me more than anything is the sheer volume of products appearing from Microsoft and their subsequent quality. Vista, Office 12, WPF,WCF,Workflow, to name a few, all delivering state of the art functionality - a lot of these a testiment to the power of .NET

Thanks so much to Mike for another excellent performance.

Comments?

"Very Good Presentation, WinFX seems Brilliant"

Delegate

"Thanks again for the VBUG invite, it was fascinating stuff. I'm off to order something worthy of all this upcoming technology, rather than my current klunker of a PC"

Delegate

Pixar Perfect

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 06:31:13 GMT

At Last - Disney have made a decisive move and acquired Pixar - details here

After all the messing around done by Micheal Eisner and his subsequent - semi-departure plus the campaign by Roy O Disney and closing of traditionalanimation studios. Disney have finally made a stand and the realisation that animation is their game and needs a definitive future. Now, given this is sorted, heres to a big push of reinvestment in the theme parks - no more carnival rides, lets get back to rides that make the park special, oh and give Paris a helping hand.

Being a Microsofty, am i bothered that Steve Jobs is on the board ? - no, good luck to him, lets hope he can help drive Disney forwards.

ASP.NET 2.0 - Where to Start

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 02:45:28 GMT

So you have just fired up Visual Studio 2005 for the first time, want to build a web site, but are wondering - where do i start!

People often mention this to me, the number of classes in asp.net 2.0 has risen from 400ish to 1200ish and many major new features have appeared, especially the provider model which enables you to implement a membership system, including: Login, Registration, Forgotten Password, plus all the database tables and stored procedures to make it work.

I think one of the first stops must be the ASP.NET starter kits (written for 2.0), you can then explore all the code and, if you like, use them in your project.

The starter kits cover Personal Web Sites, Club Web Sites, Time Tracker and a PayPal enabled eCommerce Kit.

They are a great way to learn asp.net 2.0, and along with the Quick Start Turtorials will give you a good heads up on all the new features.

Go on - check them out, I learnt something from them!

XSLT Performance

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 02:36:15 GMT

Whenever Dave and I do our XSLT presentation, we normally get asked about large XML documunts and performance.

I have just come across this excellent Scott Hanselman blog entry where he is working with an XML document around 250MB in size. It makes an excellent read and solidifies the evidence around the .NET 2.0 XSLT processor being around 10X faster than the 1.1 version.

Great work Scott.

Best Features

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 03:17:51 GMT

I was recently asked for a list of the best features which we used in our launch extravaganza, and whilst i cant put the videos up, here they are... (in no particular order). There are so many features the list could have been a lot longer..

Chris McGuire
Edit and Continue in VB.NET and C#

Sara Ford
New docking features in Visual Studio IDE.

Jeffrey Richter
New Finalization method in .NET framework 2.0

Richard Costall
WebParts in Asp.Net 2.0

Dave Sussman
Master Pages in ASP.Net 2.0

Andy Brown
Generics in VB.NET & C#

Dave McMahon
Native WebSerices in SQL Server 2005

John Price
Refactoring support in VB.NET 2.0

Carl Franklin
BackGround Worker Process in 2.0

Richard Campbell
Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer combined in 2.0

Brian Randall
The My Keyword in VB.NET 2.0

Chris Anderson
New toolbar control in Windows Forms 2.0

Alex Homer
XML query in 2.0

Benjamin Mitchell
String.IsNullorEmpty in 2.0 Framework

Brad Abrams
String.Contains in 2.0 Framework

Paul Somers
Biztalk Server 2006 flat file import wizard.

Mike Taulty
Code snippets in Visual Studio 2005.

Robert Villerhamosa
Compatibility of the framework 1.1/1.0 applications running on framework 2.0

Orcas CTP

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 04:00:18 GMT

Wow - a CTP of the development tools for Orcas - covering Indigo - WCF and Avalon - WPF is now available for the RTM of Visual Studio 2005. You can download it here

you also need the Jan CTP of the WinFX runtime.

Not only that but the latest betas of Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation can go live with a go live licence from Microsoft.

Remember: dont install this on your production machine

VBUG - WPF Jan 30th

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 03:03:23 GMT

Mike Taulty (Microsoft)

January 30th 2006
In this session we'll introduce the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code-named "Avalon") which forms part of the WinFX wave of technologies scheduled to be released at the time of Windows Vista later this year. The WPF provides a consistent set of .NET programming interfaces with capabilities which span rich user interfaces, documents and multimedia. The programming model is exposed in the traditional way through a compiler and a set of libraries but also through a new persistence format known as XAML. We'll take a look around the WPF from the bottom up, introducing the main functional areas such as UI, documents, data binding and deployment and we'll look at the purpose and format of XAML and its future tool support.

Please register through VBUG

Bill Gates CES Keynote

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 08:39:57 GMT

I got up really early this morning and watched the Bill Gates Keynote from CES. WOW!

Bill Gates kicked it off, talking about the home of the future, monitors like picture frames on the wall, monitoring programs, news and weather he is interested in, along with pictures of the family and all touch screen too.

Aaron Woodman did a demo of vista, and showed the excellent user interface, along with a demo of Alt tab, now known as the flip feature and Flip 3D. He went on to demonstrate the windows SideBar, which is like an extension of the taskbar, but with more real-estate and also the SideShow feature, which is new to laptops, and comprises of an auxilary display, which can be utilised even when the laptop is off, so you can check emails, flights and meetings withot opening up the laptop.

Internet Explorer 7 had a demo too, showing off the phishing protection and tabbed browsing, when you can also see thumbnails of all the open web pages. Justin Timberlake came on stage to help with a demo between Microsoft and an MTV initiative called URGE.

Media Centre was demonstrated, and is looking really interesting, plus we saw HD DVD (DVD on steroids), showing that whilst watching a movie, you can seamlessly turn on/off commentary and the producer could even point to things in the film, along with being able to get a BIO of the actor/actress in the particular scene/ along with upto date film history. HD DVD will be an external add-in for XBOX 360.

There was too much for me to cover in this report, and too much for anyone to take in, everything looked so cool.

but it all ended up with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, first trading insults about each others weight, then trading punches

(XBOX 360 - Fight Night 3) It has to be seen, its so funny. No mention of Halo 3 though. What will i tell Thomas when he gets back from school?.

It really shows how much progress Microsoft are making in a variety of directions, i cant wait to have on of those screens at the desk Bill sat at, or even the 'Magic' table to appear at the airports.

What was you favourite thing?

MSMQ Triggers FREE

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 03:45:01 GMT

I wrote a chapter for a MSMQ book, which saw the light of day in June 2004.

Whilst searching for some stuff today i came across my complete chapter online, covering MSMQ Triggers...

If you've reached this chapter, you should now have a good appreciation of the value that MSMQ adds to your architecture. This excellent middleware tool enables applications to communicate with each other in an orderly and reliable manner. If a receiving application is not running, its messages are queued until it is started.

MSMQ triggers emerged alongside MSMQ 2.0 and became available as a separate download (see http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/technologies/ communications/msmq/default.asp; this download could also be applied to MSMQ 1.0 on Windows NT). With the launch of Windows XP Professional, both MSMQ 3.0 and triggers became a part of the operating system.

This chapter is devoted to MSMQ triggers, and we cover the following topics:

What exactly MSMQ triggers are
How triggers access the message queues
Installing triggers under Windows 2000 and Windows XP
Creating and using triggers

INTRODUCING TRIGGERS

Triggers are a supplementary feature, empowering MSMQ to perform a specific action upon receipt of an incoming message in a queue. The action can take the form of the invocation of a method within a COM component or running a standard executable.

Let’s take a step back from this and consider the typical MSMQ application setup without the aid of triggers. A common architectural design would use a "Service" application on the receiving end of the queue that’s constantly polling for new messages. When new messages arrive, it simply reads them from the queue and performs whatever processing that it’s supposed to do. However, if the receiving application is not running, the message resides on the queue until the application is executed or restarted.

So without further ado, here it is for you to enjoy. Perhaps Apress dont know about this, or they gave my chapter away to promote the book, either way, if the whole world can read it then why can't my friends.

If you enjoy it you could always buy it :-)

2005 Thats a wrap

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 16:07:48 GMT

So here we are, 31st December 2005. I must say this year has been the best for me. Obtaining the status of MVP is one of the proudest moments of my career, and i hope to be flying the MVP flag for years to come.

I got to attend the PDC in Los Angeles and had a trip to Redmond, both of which were awesome experiences, and not forgetting appearing on an episode of DotNetRocks.

We also took the Midlands VBUG group to the next level, with a wicked array of speakers and a launch party that rocked the world!. To Dave McMahon and John Price i say thanks, for all your excellent help over the year, John helped a lot with the meetings and Dave and I have formed a unique speaking partnership, which worked well at VBUG annual conference and DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper2 and which we hope will grow of the the next year.

Next year already has some major things in the pipeline, hopefully we will talk about them soon.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and you all have a wonderful new year. See you on the other side!

This is Richy and his 360 signing off for they year.

The Wonder of Woolies

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 08:18:24 GMT

I just had a call from Woolworths, they have a XBOX 360 with my name on it (i had only put my name down about a week ago)

WOO HOO !

more news to follow Shortly!!!!

Wow, What a machine, we bought Call of Duty 2, its just an incredible game. Thomas and i are working our way throught it.

So the main question is what about all the xbox games - do they work? - The green ones currently do... So about 50% of my games as supported on the 360, at least its a start. This was using the December update, which i downloaded, otherwise olny Halo and Halo2 are supported when you buy the console initially. Microsoft believe all games will eventually be supported and will be regularly providing updates.

Call of Duty - Finest Hour
Burnout Revenge
Burnout 3 Takedown
Conflict Vietnam
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Indiana Jones
Dead or Alive 3
Mechassault
Midtown Madess 3
Medal of Honor - Frontline
Medal of Honor - Rising Sun
Rallisport Challenge 3
Crimson Skies - High Road to Revenge
Fifa 2004
XIII
Turok Evolution
Halo
Halo 2
James Bond 007 - Nightfire
Pro Evolution Soccer 4
Forza Motorsport

Pro-Evolution 5 is supported, but not 4, but the biggest missing names are Midtown Madness 3, and the Burnout series - both of which are major titles and i hope will appear in the next update.

Playing with Models

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 15:33:19 GMT

My son Thomas and I have been getting into airfix models recently. We have lots of fun making and carefully painting them.

Panther Tank Information from the Airfix Site

The Panther tank was designed in 1941 as the main equipment for Germany's armoured divisions, replacing the earlier and lighter tanks with which the Panzer units had commenced the war. Weighing 45 tons and armed with one 75 mm gun and two light machine guns, the Panther proved the equal of the Russian T34 medium tank whilst completely outclassing the American Sherman. By the end of the war, nearly 5,000 Panthers had been produced and it remained the supreme medium tank, although lacking in sufficient numbers to counteract the Allied armour. Dimensions consisted of an overall length, excluding gun, of 22 ft 8 in, a width of 11 ft 3 in and a height of 9 ft 7 in. Armour plate varied in thickness from 20 to 110 mm.

But when there is a geek involved computers will inevitably play a part. So a few digital pictures later, a cut and paste exercise on paint shop pro, and a download of an image from the internet and there you go.

pretty cool (click to see larger images).

But which one is the best? you decide and settle an argument between Thomas and myself

PDC, KPL and PONG

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 02:43:11 GMT

So there we have it, a full year of meetings. I hope VBUG members in the midlands feel they got value for their membership this year, we had sessions on:

Security
The Launch Extravaganza, Covering VS2005,SQL 2005 and Biztalk 2006
ADO.NET
XSLT/XPATH and XML
ASP.NET
Mobile Devices
Web Services
Indigo
Serialization
Streams
Threading

Last night was broken up into 3 parts, the main one being Pizza. I covered my trip to the PDC, the benefits,scale, my experiences and explaining emerging technologies such as:

Windows Vista
Office 12
Expression Suite
ASP.NET Atlas
Indigo
LinQ
Windows Workflow Foundation
IE7

All PDC sessions are HERE - but not for loong

Dave McMahon, round off the night with a great demonstration of KPL - Kids Programming lanuguage, taking us back to the early home comuputer days. KPL is a great introduction for kids into the world of programming, Daves son had managed to get a game going in about 6 hours, the main thing was he enjoyed it.
Finally we had some books and a copy of (VS2005/SQL2005/Biztalk 2006 and Exam voucher) - one prize to give away, i was going to ask some questions about the PDC, but then i thought ...

lets have a Pong competition, and three of our members played in a round robin competition (first to five) Mark Farmiloe, running out the eventual winner.

What a great year of meetings, culminating in a pong play off. Hopefully the members have enjoyed it as much as i have and a big thanks to John Price and Dave McMahon, who help bring all the crazy ideas to reality, and to all the speakers for giving great presentation and making it all worthwhile. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

XBOX 360

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 04:00:57 GMT

I want to get one, but something tells me it will be after Christmas.

Still, we are currently playing Call of Duty - Finest Hour, Pro Evolution 2004 and Halo 2 on our beloved XBOX.

Raiders of the lost Orc

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 10:09:06 GMT

Indiana Jones - Raiders of the lost Orchestration.

As a colleague put it, Working with Biztalk is like Indiana Jones, one wrong step and you get a sword through the head.

I am now in the world of security around web services and the nice message:

The Messaging Engine failed to register the adapter for "SOAP" for the receive location "/CostallTEST_Proxy/CostallTEST_WebServiceOrchestration_WSPortFinal.asmx". Please verify that the receive location exists, and that the isolated adapter runs under an account that has access to the BizTalk databases.

Solution to follow - yeah right.

Turns out, the Application pool on IIS (on 2003) did not have access priviledges.

On to BAM...

NOTE: The BAM addin for excel is found in the Biztalk Install Directory - ExcelDir sub-directory BAM.XLA - took me a while to find this nugget too...

Biztalk 2006 WOES

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 20:09:51 GMT

I wouldn't say i was a Biztalk virgin, in the past our paths have crossed on a couple of courses, and i can find my way around the mapper, send and receive ports and put together an orchestration.

Now i am in at the deep end, so i thought i'd knock up my own little example..

Create Input Schema
Create Output Schema
Create Orchestration
Receive from a port (file location)
Perform a transform (map a few fields)
Send to a port (file location)

Great, quite easy so far.. OK time for a build.

oh, i got an error - lets see what it says...

you must specify at least one already-initialized correlation set for a non-activation receive that is on a non-selfcorrelating port

Do i care?, should i care?, why didnt you tell me when i was creating these things, a wizard page would have been nice...

I managed to fix that, on the receive shape set Acitvate=true - Obvious Really.

I just also spent half an hour on my messages coming out of an Orchestration. The book (Biztalk Server 2004 - Unleashed) says use the format :

c:\filepath\%Message_ID%.xml

Biztalk will put the message id in automatically - great, although the book is wrong (or Beta 2 of Biztalk 2006 has been changed). It is now:

c:\filepath\%MessageID%.xml

I have a feeling i may be making a few of these posts... so off we go...

[Latest] AAARRGH!.

I just spent around 6 hours trying to expose my Orchestration as a web service, both the Orchestration and the Ports type modifiers are set to public, being farily new i assume its me although something deep down is saying it should be really easy. The Web Service publishing wizard fails to find anything (I am using VS2005 RTM, Biztalk 2006 - Beta 2 and Windows Server 2003 - Standard).

I would have thought the wizard would have told me it couldn't find anything and given you some recommendations (where is clippy - "i assume you are tring to expose your orchestration") . I did find a similar blog entry which gave me cause for concern here - anyone have any ideas?

UPDATE: This is now fixed - even though you select your assembly locally, the Wizard will examine the deployed one in the GAC, so you either need to set the version to 1.0.* in the project properties or build and then deploy your application.

VS2005 Flavours

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 10:07:23 GMT

I keep being asked things like...

Does VS2005 Professional come with sourcesafe?
Can i do Office integration in the Express Products?
Is there XSLT support in Express?

Click here to find the list of answers and see the flavours of VS2005

.NET, Nudity and Expensive Drinks

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 07:07:22 GMT

Last night was the Cambridge VBUG launch extravaganza, this was where we repeated the excellent launch meeting we did in Coventry. We made our way across the A14 car park into Cambridge - the Anglia Ruskin University, got set up and plunged into the extravaganza. The members watched the 18 videos and then voted...

Just before the results we broke for drinks, 3 jugs of orange juice and some Tea Bags - apparently they were charged £50 by the canteen - no wonder students dont have any money!!

here is the winning 6 in reverse order... points are shown in brackets (xx)

[Joint] 5th Richard Costall - ASP.NET WebParts (95)
Just to show Coventry or Cambridge - people have no taste, i was hoping Cambridge would appreciate real functiontality

[Joint] 5th Andy Brown - Generics (95)
6th in Coventry and sneaks up almost 1 place in Cambridge. Costall denies him on aggregate.

4th John Price - Refactoring in VB.NET (131)
Well done John, consistant performance over the two venues. Even if you nearly got into a fight with a heckler during your video about that THIRD PARTY ADD-IN they call refactoring.

3rd Dave McMahon - Native Web Services (137)
Dave was hoping that featuring nudity in his presentation would get him a place on the leaderboard, and tonight it paid off. When asked to comment John Price quoted Daves position above him as an "anomaly" or "freak result". What happened to Dave Sussman, who in Coventry did his presentation live, and i had to step in at Cambridge and present Master Pages - see the feedback

The same 2 horses lead the pack again.... (yawn.. yawn)

2nd Chris McGuire - Edit and Continue (146)
Even got votes from the c# developers - after clarification, we should have said no edit and continue was not in c#, but thats just playing dirty.

1st Mike Taulty - Code Snippets (181)
Here he is again, the Mike Taulty fan club followed us to Cambridge and banished any hope of us capturing the trophy from his specially made cabinet. Mr Taulty we will get you next time....

All in all we had a good night and finished off with a Curry.

VBUG Winter Conference

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 07:52:01 GMT

The VBUG Winter Conference at Microsoft UK Office in Reading is over for another year, and to beat this one i think planning will have to start right away for next year.

Top of the list was the appearance of .NET Rock Stars; Carl Franklin (RD & MVP) and Richard Campbell (RD & MVP) off DotNetRocks [must have been a real star who persuaded those two two come along], along with Mark Miller (we knew the three of these had to be physically kept apart to keep the conference going) and Jackie GoldStein (RD and MVP).

Carl Franklins keynote, told his life story with an 'alternative powerpoint' presentation, which went down a storm and got the conference off to a memorable and very entertaining start.

Annie Matthewman, Rob Mcdonald, Matt Deacon, Dave Sussman (MVP), Tony whitter and Steve Harris also spoke, along with Yours truly, Dave McMahon and Andy Brown.

I got to storm Mike Taulty's session in order to present him with his best feature award [VIDEO 3mb zip]. Mike was impressed with its quality and more so that we had got it engraved!

The end of day 1 culminated in a live DotNetRocks episode covering 4 developers whos spent the day building front ends in ASP.NET, Windows Forms, Office and Mobile to handle a fictitious set of banking web services.

Point have to go to Graham Parker (Windows) who used the browser control and intended just to HTTP to Steve Harris (ASP.NET) Solution. That didn't work, but Graham still had time to build his solution. The office space was interesting; VSTO provides a compelling story for office users who want more, but dont want an application writing to handle it. Rob McDonald gave a great session on this.

On the evening of day 1. We had a crystal ball evening [What a great idea!], Covering Indigo (WCF - Windows Communcation Foundation), DSL and Avalon (WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation). Beer and technology dont really mix, so apologies to Mike Taulty, Annie Matthewman and Rob McDonald if Dave McMahon was out of control. Also thanks to the Angel that answered our prayers and brought us down a Pizza - which we scoffed.

I presented two sessions in the end.

One on Compatibility 1.1 and 2.0, which featured the infamous Costallator application (touted as being Halo 4 by early critics and subject to all attendees signing an NDA). Shame though that it kept breaking under 2.0 and a good job Andy Brown knew why (strange that!). It also showcased a new game show idea - Breakety Break, (with annoying theme tune) where attendees had to spot the code breaks. This session went well, although the attendees were still not convinced about the excellent work Microsoft have done in making 1.1/1.0 applications 90+% compatible with 2.0 of the framework - Sorry guys i tried.

The second session (added at the last moment) was the good old XPATH and XSLT, presented by Dave MCMahon and Myself (Affectionately known as the Chuckle Brothers). Both these technologies are extremely powerful and it was pleasing to get so much enthusiasm in questions and chats after the session, in what was the graveyard shift on the second day.

Also were you the guy that dozed through that session? i dont think i got a photo, but i need to look through my pictures, good to know we put you at rest!

One guy in particular, had loads of questions and could not believe the announcements made at PDC surrounding Visual Studio ORCA's and the Microsoft Expression Suite.

Highlight for me, must have been giving Carl Franklin a lift to his hotel, it was almost a Mondays show in its own right, i have to get a recorder.

XSLT back by popular request

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:39:45 GMT

Next Wednesday and Thursday (23rd-24th) is the annual VBUG Conference held at Microsoft's Thames Valley Park in Reading. Originally I, along with my colleague Andy Brown, were doing a talk on Compatibility. It turns out a gap has appeared in the agenda and once more the Chuckle Brother (or Morecambe and Wise , depending on your sense of humour) has been asked to rerun the incredibly entertaining XSLT/XPath session.

So lucky VBUG attendees, come and see what all the fuss is about and help us decide which of the comedy duos Dave McMahon and Myself are like. (Dave is getting a bit obsessed with the Chuckle Brothers, so please vote for Morecambe and Wise) - He asked me about growing a moustache...

See you there...

Extravaganza VBUG

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:37:20 GMT

"Excellent Evening - Great Fun - My Developer mate should have come to this instead of seeing some Icelandic band in Birmingham!" - Member Feedback

Thats a wrap, 5 months from inception to delivery; the Coventry VBUG VS2005 Launch Extravaganza brought the house down last night. John Price and i had felt we'd covered VS2005 and SQL2005 over the last 12 months and wanted to do something 'slightly different' - and hence the extravaganza was born.

The Evening started off with music and a countdown presentation, which then led into Johns excellent 'A long road' presentation which showed images of microsoft and Visual Basic from the early days. This presentation gave John enough time to rush out the fire escape, down the stairs, change into his tux and come back in, just in time for the 'heres Johnny' audio.

John then awarded the 'best seats in the house' prize, with its own bar service, flowers and nibbles on the tables. Ray Starkey and Mark Farmiloe (two long serving VBUG members won this exclusive prize).

Next was My big entrance, armed with an inflatable guiter i appeared from behind the screen and called - 'Are you ready to rock?'. John had changed my entrance music to 'Chuckle Vision - The Chuckle Brothers' [Rule 1: Never let anyone touch your powerpoint].

"Very, Very Entertaining" - Member Feedback

I made my keynote speech and explained how everyone was here... Well almost, i then went on to play videos from:

Graham Parker
Rebecca Bursnall
Mark Anderson
Brian Randall
Brad Abrams
Benjamin Mitchell
Carl and Richard (DotNetRocks)
Chris Anderson
Scott Guthrie
Don Box

Each video got an applause, then i went into 'What would Steve Ballmer Say?' - and played the Developer Developer Developer video. That got an applause, i taunted the crowd, then in one of those moments that make your hairs stand on end. Clicked the mouse and said - "this is what he really said".

Cue the Personal message from Mr Ballmer himself, CEO of Microsoft.

"Greetings Richard and VBUG Coventry, Sorry i can't be there, you all have one great VS2005 and SQL2005 Launch party"...

Steve, if you are reading this; you reached out and made everyone feel so special. Thank you. The members went wild!

"So Creative and Steve Ballmer CEO as well, Fantastic !" - Member Feedback

On with the Show and the main event, with a short distraction to show the 'We Share Your Pain' Video. I had gathered 18 Presentations from people of their best feature of VS2005, SQL2005 and BizTalk 2006 with an exclusive trophy shipped in from the states for the winner.

The standard of videos was excellent, i had submissions from Chris Anderson; Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell; Robert Villahermosa (from the compatibility team).. the list goes on and on. but what would win...

"Great Night - Thanks for the invitation. Comedy, Prizes and Beer. What more could you want"- Member Feedback

The members watched (and laughed) their way through the 18 videos and then voted... here is the winning 6 in reverse order... points are shown in brackets (xx)

5th Richard Costall - ASP.NET WebParts (146)
I love this feature, they give the end user an excellent experience and you can build them in about 3 lines of code. My video was 3mins:27seconds and featured, my children, humour and a Halo sound track (and still i only managed 5th!)

4th John Price - Refactoring in VB.NET (157)
Brilliant Video John, (gutted the fact you beat me) This goes to show how important Refactoring is to VB.NET Developers. I'd go as far to say if this featured wasn't a third party plug-in but was been built in to VB.NET IDE it would have won. Hopefully the VB.NET team will learn from this in the future, especially considering the MY keyword scored (18) points.

3rd Dave Sussman - Master Pages (169)
Dave went Kamikazee and did his presentation live. Master Pages are an excellent feature of asp.net 2.0 and deserve a slot in the top 5 (albeit behind WebParts).

In the end it was down to a two horse race, although one of them only had three legs and had one of those wheels at the back (You have to have seen Mikes video to appreciate this gag)

2nd Chris McGuire - Edit and Continue (201)
Wow - Chris is a dev on the Visual Studio IDE, and his video came via Sara Ford. So out of nowhere, this dark horse stormed into 2nd place with the feature developers initially had loved and lost - and now found again. Great Video Chris.

1st Mike Taulty - Code Snippets (206)
I am stuck for words on how you describe this 'video masterpiece' from Mike. The first time i saw it i laughed for about 20 minutes after it had finished. Mike took us on a crazy roller-coaster ride of Code Snippets, in the style of a dodgy salesman, talking about 6 words a second. Code Snippets are an wicked feature, but when presented this way - blew the audience away.

Mike you are a star - a model Professional - and Bonkers. I will present you with your award at the VBUG Conference. Congratulations you really deserve it (even if ASP.NET WebParts are better).

In the other significant battles Richard Campbell's (86) Integrated SQL beat Carl Franklin's (81) 'Background Worker Thingy' by a mere 5 points. Benjamin Mitchell's String.IsNullOrEmpty (70) outrun Brad Abram's String.Contains. (53). Despite using nudity in his presentation, Dave McMahon's Native Web Services Scored (77)

"Best Event by Far - Taulty Rules!" - Member Feedback

With the food, Cutting of our SQL Server, Visual Studio and Biztalk Cakes!!!!! and voting out the way, we cleared the table of infinite prizes containing:

6 Vouchers - For VS2005,SQL2005 and BizTalk 2006 (yes all 3)
3 Office 2003 Professional (full)
1 Full set of Microsoft Exam Books
1 Signed ASP.NET T-Shirt (By Scott Guthrie)
17 T-Shirts
10 Books
4 SIM card Protectors
2 Inflatable musical instruments
1 Rubiks Cube
4 Thermal Mugs
15 Packets of Mints
1 Microsoft Fleece
1 Signed by Scott Guthrie T-Shirt (I wanted that!)
4 CD Holders
1 CorkScrew
3 Juggling Balls
1 Wrist Exerciser
1 Star Wars Video
3 LinQ WhitePapers
2 BaseBall Caps
2 Playing Cards
5 Badge Holders
1 Ridgian Shirt

What a night, Thanks to everyone, especially John Price, Dave MaMahon (read his account here)and Dave Sussman for helping. Microsoft for donating some prize (Thanks Melita), INETA and to VBUG; Especially Rebecca - you will be missed. This event is dedicated to you. Thanks for all your help and good luck in the future.

The big question remaining is will Mike put his trophy on the line in an attempt to retain it at the Cambridge meeting on the 30th!

"I Cant wait for the Vista Launch" - Member Feedback"

Is that a Challenge?

Out to Launch

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:19:30 GMT

Phew, what a couple of days. Monday i headed down to the bright lights and big city of London, as a Community Member and MVP, to attend the launch meeting at the London Stock Exchange. I caught up with Craig Murphy (and shook his hand) and Lorna Williamson and after a while we entered the auditorium to listen to a live Stream of Steve Ballmers Keynote speech in Seattle.

One of the main things Steve announced was that the Express Editions would be FREE - incredible really and a great move to get the next generation of developers on board. SQL Server 2005 had supported over 93,000 concurrent users - who says its not scalable! and everyone attending the launch event would receive a free copy of

Visual Studio 2005 - Professional
SQL Server 2005 Standard edition
Biztalk Server Developer

sorry chaps.. i think all events are full, so read on...

Steve had hardly left the stage when we were ushered out of the room and onto the fun bus (which i'd called the Bustalk Server) for our journey up to Birmingham for the main launch the next day.

The bus itself was like a stretch limo inside, although lacked beer and a toilet (one essential and one luxury - in that order). Benjamin Mitchell, Dave Sussman and I were part of a group of 10 people on this merry - but lengthy 3 hour - tour.

Cut to Wednesday morning and after a vegetarian salad the night before the bacon sandwiches (note: plural) the next day (at 7am!) were a welcome sight. I had actually made a error in my Breakfast strategy, as after that i went to the executive breakfast meeting, where another full breakfast was laid on. You have to - to be polite. I now had enough protein to tackle the 1,400 developers hungry for information on VS2005 and in particular ASP.NET on the Ask the Experts stand.

I had some great questions, almost non stop all day, thanks to those who i spoke to, i really enjoyed it.

A lady approached me and asked if she could ask a few questions, 'Sure' i said only to turn to see a cameraman and sound man. They then went into record mode and asked me questions about the day. So i will apologise now, if you work at Microsoft in the UK and head off to next years briefing, when the show the video, you'll say "i come all the way over here, and there's that Costall again".

Our ASP.NET Chalk and Talk went well, Dave ran it well and i chipped in now and again, we played the We Share Your Pain video to lighten the mood, which went down well particularly as the session was 5:30pm - 6:45pm. During the day i had got a bit of an impression people had not looked at Visual Studio 2005 yet, this session confirmed my thoughts to be untrue, there was some great questions.

So, after a 12 hour day, i arrive home armed with software, a Microsoft shirt, a rubiks cube and an inflatable guitar. The kids thought it was a productive day, my wife was not so sure.

Its Official

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 05:59:27 GMT

The Coventry VBUG Launch extravaganza on the 14th November has logged the most registrations of any Midlands Regional Monthly VBUG Event, topping the Mike Taulty talk on SQL Server last christmas,. We digged into the archive to find that 47 People had registered for that event. All i will say for now is we broke the 50 barrier.

Woo hoo.

Best Feature VS2005 Video

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:48:11 GMT

For our (VBUG Midlands) launch party we have gone for a unique idea of having a best feature of VS2005 and SQL2005. What amazes me is the quality of some of the entries, it just goes to show how creative developers can be when they feel passionate about something.

But today saw the completion of the 'Costall' production and i'd just like to apologise to the competition in advance for kicking your butts :-). Competition aside though, this event is going to be a lot of fun and we already have the most attendees ever at a Midlands regional meeting.

Its gonna be packed with fun, and packed with people. roll on November the 14th. I hope you enjoy it as much as i already have.

And if you cannot make it on the 14th. The launch extravaganza goes on the road to Cambridge on the he 30th November, plus we intend to record the event on the 14th..

see you soon, i have to polish the trophy

VBUG VS2005 Launch Party

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:06:37 GMT

Is Almost full... Hurry up or you will miss the VBUG regional meeting to end all meetings...

Official VBUG Coventry VS2005 Launch Party

November 14th 2005
Did I Say Don Box?

Forget about the Emmys and the Oscars, the stars will be out on the 14th November for the biggest regional event of the year. Join the Coventry VBUG team in celebrating one of Microsoft's biggest products launches. At this event we will find out officially what is the best feature of the 2005 releases, each revealed passionately by a different presenter.

Can Microsoft's Chris Anderson (Mr Avalon) beat Benjamin Mitchell and will The compatibility team have a better feature than Dave McMahon, showcasing around 15 features and a chance for attendees to win something off the table of 'infinite prizes'

Do Don Box (Mr Indigo) and Scott Guthrie (Mr ASP.NET) wish they were coming, sure they do. Find out what they had to say on the night.

Book NOW as places are limited, oh and I forgot we also have a unique message from somebody else who could not attend . . .

Contact Rebecca at VBUG

VBUGs Very Happy Haunts

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:07:11 GMT

The wind whistled around the isolated building, outside children dressed as Skeletons and Ghosts; Laughed happily as the went trick or treating on this Halloween evening.Little did the VBUG members know, each would not forget that evening, each would be left terrified from the event.

Microsofts very own Van Helsing: Steve Lamb who blogged his experience, gave an excellent talk on viruses, worms and rootkits, along with security in general. At the end members almost felt they had to rush home and check their machines were wrapped up warm, snuggled at home and not being attacked by a chainsaw wielding Worm.

download the SLIDES here (8mb)

In my 5 years as regional coordinator, no speaker had 'Torville and Deaned' the feedback forms, maybe there was some magic in the air on this Halloween night, but Steve Lamb got 5/5 on all feedback. A remarkable achievement in itself, for a talk with no code and no Visual Studio, but which highlights the quality of Steve's relaxed styleand quality presentation (only surpassed by my Halloween Jokes).

Steve demonstrated the very long Security Configuration Wizard on Server 2003. For those admins amongst us thats...

Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next,Next, Next,Next,Next,Next,Advanced,CheckBox,Next,Next,Next,Finish.

He also recommended the excellent Writing Secure Code (Version 2) book.

One of the greatest weapons in fighting these infestations are a series of tools on http://www.sysinternals.com. Rootkits have a 'cloaking' ability, which mean they can hide from taskmanager. Tools at the SysInternals site provide an improved taskmanager.

In the background two pumpkins flickered, one was a c# pumpkin (which had a semi-colon cut into it) and the other was a Dave McMahon Self portrait, although it could have been Eric Morecombe or Barry Chuckle depending on your sence of humour.

To summorise buying a CD online is ok? Read THIS, and then be very afraid...

How safe is your machine...

Id like to shake his hand...

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 14:29:01 GMT

Today i took a trip down to the Big City and the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to attended the Succinctly named Microsoft Event:

Integrated Innovation Enabling Partners to Deliver Solutions with Great Strategic Values

Initially i was asked to provide backup to Paul Murphy who was presenting on Visual Studio 2005 and had asked for some screenshots of Adviser Evolution and some business benefits from VS2005.

[NOTE: Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, went onto MSDN subscriber downloads today.. yep... its LIVE]

I was then asked to provide interaction at the event to Matt Bishop and Bruce Lynn, where 15 minutes into their presentation Matt Said...

"I'd like to Ask Richard Costall from 1st Software if the Marketing statistics of 30% less code are unrealistic"

I replied:

"Yes they are unrealistic, the percentage is a lot higher than than" and then i went on to describe the productivity benefits of ASP.NET for common tasks, and productivity benefits for features which you would not even consider outside of VS2005 (WebParts). I used my "Having VS2005 is like having an extra developer on the team" phrase, Matt asked to be able to quote me on that and i replied: "Do i get royalties" - which got a big laugh.

After lunch, Microsofts Chairman and Chief Software Architect: Mr Bill Gates gave a great talk on Microsoft past/present and future, before taking questions from the audience... Cue the raised hand from Mr Costall

"Bill, Thanks for Visual Studio 2005, it is an awesome product.. Can i shake your hand?", at which i got up walked to the stage and shook the hand of one of the most influential people on the planet (plus one of the richest). Woohoo Result!.

I then asked Bill

"As an ex-developer, do you ever fire up Visual Studio, and which do you prefer, VB.net or that other language i cant remember something # or other"

Bill gave a great reply, how he used to do assembler, then did vb, and also plays with C# and then continued to talk about language innovations such as LinQ.

Eric Nelson approached me at the break, as he wanted to shake the hand, that shook the hand of Mr Gates himself, naturally i obliged.

as Steve Irwin would say. Yeah.. you beauty

PDC Videos Available

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 03:22:59 GMT

The videos from all the PDC session are now available here.

Its a great chance to see all the exciting and cool stuff announced, or catch up on the sessions you could not attend.

Enjoy

len(myString)

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 08:06:02 GMT

I was recently asked at a VBUG meeting what my thoughts were on len(MyString) as opposed to MyString.length.

I believe len() which resides in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, exists for two reasons. the first being the conversion of existing VB6 projects and the second being the conversion of VB6 developers.

Calling len() has a 'slight' performance impact over string.length, but i was wondering how it was actually implemented, so i took a look using Lutz Roeders excellent reflector and here is what i found...

Public Shared Function Len(ByVal Expression As String) As Integer
     If (Expression Is Nothing) Then
          Return 0
     End If
     Return ExpressionLength
End Function

Basically, it calls string.length on the passed string.String.length is my preferred method, its more OO based, and will also make it easier for those c#ers trying to read your code :-). I hope that answered your question.

DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper 2

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 15:30:38 GMT

Today i spoke at DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper 2, which was held at Microsoft, UK - Thames Valley Park. The event had sold out 5 weeks ago, before the agenda was even decided. Over 400 delegates had registered and there was also a waiting list.

Dave McMahon and i performed our XPath/XSLT presentation and it went down a storm. I will go as far as saying it was the best presentation i'd ever done, we got so many laughs, Developers came out of other sessions to see what was going on and we had some excellent feedback. I also got to attend some other sessions. What a great day.

Apparently our session was recorded (audio) which will be available soon and i will subsequently lose my MVP due to comments made (JOKE). Maybe when the VB.net revolution happens, people will point to a presentation at 11:50 in Chicago 1.

Where you there? did you attend our session? What did you think?

"The XSLT and XPath talk by the chuckle brothers was the most entertaining of the day. I noticed one of them taking a photo of the audience, so I grinned like a loony (that's me in the front row, um, grinning). Don't be fooled: although it looks otherwise, I was actually wearing matching shoes." [Check Simons blogs]

I will get our slides together and put them up here. I also have the high-resolution versions of the pictures if anyone needs or would like them.

Dave has also posted a great blog entry on the day including his official apology to the c# community :-) and some excellent photographs, taken by the official XPATH/XSLT team photographer...

The louder you scream, the faster we go!

Mini RoadTrip

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 08:09:02 GMT

This afternoon Dave McMahon and myself are driving up to yorkshire to do a vbug presentaion covering SQL, XML, XPATH and XSLT (otherwise known as TripleX). I will get some pictures up after the event along with the slides.

This Roadtrip is insignificant compared to the one being undertaken by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell of DotNetRocks, who are doing a roadtrip across the states presenting at a venue almost every night for about 3 weeks.

Last time i checked it was the early hours of the morning, so i asked them to give me a wave on the web-cam and here is the result.

Keep it up chaps you are doing an excellent job and i look forwards to meeting up with you again at VBUG conference on the 23rd/24th November.

A Special Day

Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:22:46 GMT

My youngest son Oliver is 3 tomorrow (Sunday 16th October), his age on its own is not that special.

What is special is we are lucky have him with us at all. Oliver struggled to thrive after birth, he was nearly always sick after his bottle and slept a lot. My wife had her concerns and often visited the doctors, although the thought was he had thrush (fairly common in babies).

At his 6 week check he was reffered to George Eliot Hospital; the nurses were not happy and kept him in overnight for further checks, various ideas were banded around, before the decision was made to send him to Birmingham Childrens Hospital for a heart examination.

Adrenalin kicks in at these times as we followed the ambulance to the hospital, by the time we had parked the car, Oliver was being examined and the consultant had made his diagnosis.

Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Drainage or TAPVD for short.

TAPVD is rare, comprising around 1% of all congenital heart abnormalities. A successful operation can usually ensure uncomplicated survival, whereas 80% to 90% of babies with TAPVD die before their first birthday if they are not treated surgically. All of the pulmonary veins draining blood from the lungs should normally be connected to the left atrium. In TAPVD they drain instead into the right atrium, or more commonly into one of the veins from the body which eventually drains into the right atrium.

[Full Article on TAPVD]

Oliver was 8 weeks old when they operated and had returned to his birth-weight, his operation lasted 4 hours and was followed by 4 days in intensive care (on a ventilator) and 6 days on the ward. He was then allowed home and currently reports back to Birmingham Childrens Hospital every 18 months.

To say those times were hard would be an understatement; Liz stayed at the hospital; whilst i ensured Thomas (now 7 - then 4) had a routine at home as normal as possible (Pizzas & XBOx). Oliver now makes up for lost time, his energy seems endless and so does his appetite (not sure where he gets that from). Thomas describes Oliver as a 'a really tough monster, who keeps attacking me'

There is a plaque in the Birmingham Childrens Hospital from the donation made by our family and Friends. It resides in the accommodation centre,which is funded by donations and allows the parents to be nearby following their offsprings operations.

Thanks Birmingham Childrens Hospital for saving Oliver.

Happy Birthday Oliver, you might only be 3, but in my eyes you'll always be a hero..

Secret ASP.NET Technique

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 08:46:07 GMT

This is cool, both Scott Guthrie and Erik Porter have just blogged this information

In ASP.NET 2.0 you can take an application offline by placing a file called app_offline.htm in the web sites root directory. (make sure it has something in it).

XSLT on the Road

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:06:50 GMT

Next week Dave McMahon and myself will get to present our Triple XXX session in Shipley at the VBUG user group on Wednesday night and then on Saturday we will be presenting the session at the SOLD OUT - DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper (or DDD) day down at Reading. You can still register for the Shipley event by contact Rebecca at VBUG.

Dave knows his SQL stuff and also about getting XML out of it, in many ways. I will be introducing XSLT, covering basics, drilling into the syntax and then showing some really neat advanced features. Some of which are new (or a lot easier) in Visual Studio 2005 - which is finally launched on the 8th November. (Which seems strange as i have been working with it for a year now).

Once these sessions are complete we will stick the slides up on our sites.

Major News: MVP Over the Moon!

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 16:45:18 GMT

Words just cannot explain how i feel at the moment. This morning i checked my email as usual. removed the many spam messages offering the full series of Thundercats and the Golden Girls on DVD. When i noticed in the subject of one email;

You have received the Microsoft MVP Award

This year has been fantastic for me, as i covered in this blog entry. But to receive the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award eclipses it all. I am joining the club of 2,500 of the best Developers/Techies/Evangelists and community leaders in the world - and i am really honoured to be associated with these people through the MVP family.

In March i thought going to Redmond for the compatibility would be the highlight of the year, then came PDC and in November i am helping Microsoft at the official launch in November. But no, being presented with the MVP award is just to incredible to think about.

In the style of the Oscars, i really want to thank the management and people at 1st Software, who trusted me when i told them i wanted to build the 1st Extranet in Beta 1 of ASP.NET 2.0, and to VBUG, where over the last 5 years i have had the pleasure of running the midlands group. My family who put up with my ASP.NET fetish and disappearing to VBUG meetings and the States. Finally, i'd like to thank people at Microsoft who make the relationship building really easy, besides building an fantastic set of product. see VS2005 for example and ASP.NET 2.0

Will it change me? No, not at all. I am really looking forwards to Microsofts launch in November and our very own VBUG Midlands Launch is gonna be a great night too.

what a year

Extranet Case Study

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 10:36:58 GMT

In all the excitment of many things going on at the moment i completely forgot to put the link up for the 1st Extranet case Study, which now appears on the Microsoft site.

I am really pleased with this case study as it is a testament to development under a beta product and the excellent work done by the ASP.NET team.

Microsoft claims we write 70 percent less code using ASP.NET 2.0 compared with previous versions. In our case, it was 80 percent, maybe even more. The return on investment is outstanding"

Richard Costall

VS2005 Launch - Birmingham

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 03:25:34 GMT

The Microsoft flagship launch event for VS2005, SQL2005 and Biztalk Server 2006 will be in Birmingham on the 8th November. The event is free to attend, but places are going very quickly. You can register here

Highlights of this event include:

In-depth technical education sessions, new content and demos, hands-on labs, and direct contact with development and database experts
Take part in Chalk & Talk technical sessions or mingle in the 'Ask the Experts' area to get your specific questions answered
Meet the technical teams for informal Q&A
Hear about innovative products, solutions, and services from key Microsoft Launch partners

I am well pleased Microsoft have asked me to attend (in the capacity of an ASP.NET expert and User group leader) , and I will be found on Ask The Experts stand along with a Chalk and Talk session on Asp.NET. So if you are going pop along and have a chat. hopefully i will be wearing an offiical Microsoft launch shirt.

ASP.NET 2.0 Chalk and Talk Abstract:
One of .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005's most popular new features is development of web applications using ASP.NET 2.0. With some customers in production for over a year already, this incredibly stable platform also lets you create web applications in a fraction of the time with other technologies thorough a combination of IDE and platform innovations. Hear more about these and put your own view to our experts in this interactive session.

Believe me its well worth going to this event; that is all i am going to say...

Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 are due for RELEASE on the 14th October 2005. I have been working with Visual Studio 2005 for the last year and it brings awesome productivity gains for the developer and is a release we are all looking forwards to.

My Channel9 Debut

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 07:28:14 GMT

At the PDC this year, there was a 'show off' event, where submitted video that showed off applications using VS 2005 were displayed.

"Thomas Lewis and I would like to thank you again for submitting a video for the first-ever PDC05 Show Off event. We didn’t give you much time to create a video and send it in, but we were surprised at what we received. We are both very impressed at the creativity and ingenuity of our developer community, and we can’t wait to see what we get the next time we do this!"
Michael Swanson
Technical Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation

My Video, which was shown at the event is now up on the channel 9 site.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=121806

VBUG Launch Extravanagza

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 03:07:29 GMT

14th November 2005

Forget about the Emmys and the Oscars, the stars will be out on the 14th November for the biggest regional event of the year! Join the Coventry VBUG team in celebrating one of Microsoft's biggest products launches: VS2005 and SQL 2005. At this event we will find out officially what is the best feature of the 2005 releases, each revealed passionately by different presenters from around the world! The audience will ultimately decide on the winner of an exclusive trophy especially shipped in from the USA. Register before the end of October for a chance to win a place in the 'best seat in the house'! Don't miss this meeting it's going to be SPECIAL and places are limited.

For Registration information contact Rebecca at vbug

VBUG Halloween Spooktacular Mtg

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 02:58:27 GMT

Monday the 31^st October - Halloween Spooktacular
Understanding and Fighting Malware: Viruses, Spyware and Rootkits
Steve Lamb - Microsoft

On this Halloween night, join Microsoft's very own Van Helsing in how to Exorcise your PC. Today's internet is fraught with peril in the form of undesirable and malicious software. These types of software continue to evolve new ways of propagating and ways of embedding themselves more deeply into the systems they infect. In this session you'll gain an understanding of their propagation methods, including buffer overflow exploits how to detect them and how to prevent them. You'll also get a first-hand look at rootkits, which are the sophisticated tools and techniques by which malware attempts to avoid and prevent detection.

Time permitting we can partake in some Apple Mac Bobbing. Book early, were dying to see you....

Contact Rebecca at VBUG for Registration

VBUG Winter Conference

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 08:46:54 GMT

The brochures are out for VBUG conference 2005 on the 23rd and 24th of November and places are going fast, click on the flair to find out more.

We have some great speakers this year including Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell, Mark Miller, Jackie Goldstein to name a few (oh and of course me)

Will My 1.1 Application Run On 2.0?
Richard Costall & Andy Brown
In this session Richard Costall and Andy Brown will demonstrate how Microsoft approaches compatibility testing between versions of the .NET framework. They explain the differences between Binary, Behavioral, Source, Forwards and Backwards compatibility and highlight some of the pitfalls developers could experience. The session will show demos focusing on Windows Forms applications.

PDC - Main Conference Day 2 and 3

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:15:56 GMT

The sheer amount of information being thrown at us is amazing, so day 2 and 3 will have to be combined into one post.

To give you an example we got DVDs containing:

Windows Vista Beta 1
Visual Studio Team System Beta 2
SQL Server 2005 June CTP (all flavours)
Virtual PC 2004 - (Full Licence)
Virtual Server 2005 R2 Beta
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition
WinFX Runtime
Windows Workflow Foundation September CTP
LINQ Prouduct Technical Preview
Windows Vista CTP PDC05 Ultimate Edition
RSS Platform
Windows Server Codenamed Longhorn CTP - All Flavours
Visual Studio 2005 - Beta 2
Visual Studio 2005 - Release Candidate

plus Office Beta when its available and a Full Copy of SQL Server 2005 on its release.

Yesterday i attended sessions on Compatibility, Attractive Windows Forms Design, The Future of WinFS (The only technology not too have a new name, although Windows Storage Foundation (WSF) is my guess).Future Directions of ASP.NET Using Atlas - Part 1. Not forgetting the Morning Keynote with Eric Rudder, talking about Windows Workflow Foundation and announced Microsoft Expression Suite, a set of Graphic Design tools, covering Web Development and Graphic design.

It all came together today when i got to attend 'The future of asp.net' session, where an early Orcas build was shown with Microsoft Expression - Quartz build right into the IDE.

The split pane of web page and source was a welcome site and the CSS support is awesome. The fact you can just drop an xml document onto a web page, and the IDE will take a best guess about what you want to see is incredible. The IDE goes off and creates an XSL for you which will be updated as you make changes to the page (all using css). If you decide you have your own XSL you just drag it over the rendered XML and viola.

You can even see all the css styles which are used for a particular element. Designers can use Quartz outside of the IDE, which is totally compatible with the one in Visual Studio and the designer can create Master Pages and use ASP:Controls without having to use Visual Studio.

I did an Atlas hands on lab, did stop for lunch (just grabbed crisps on the move).

When Microsoft want to throw a party, they throw a party. The windows vista team had organised an evening party in Universal Studios Hollywood. we arrived about 7:30pm to belly dancers, snake charmers, sword swallowers, tables with food and beer throughout the park. Best of all it wasnt that busy, so here is our running order

[Beer]
Jurassic Park
[Beer]
Revenge of the Mummy
Revenge of the Mummy
[Beer]
BackDraft
Jurassic Park
[Food]
[Beer]
Back to the Future
Terminator 2
[Beer]
Van Helsing - Fortress Dracula - Walkthrough
[Beer]
Jurassic Park
Shrek 4D

At 11:30 we were all loaded onto our buses and travelled back to the Hotel.

Today the keynote covered server products, although IIS7.0 looks pretty exciting and will make management significantly easier. I the attended the VB.NET Futures, which mainly talked about the integration of LinQ into the language and the new features which have to be impolemented in order to make LinQ work. I then headed to Part two of the ASP.NET Atlas technology, which i hope to play with soon. Then it was Advanced tools for XML/XSL, followed by Sneak Peak of ASP.NET 3.0 and finally a session on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) formerly Avalon. And i am wondering why i am tired.

Its not only the sessions, i met up with a few Microsoft people today and some other delagates too.

tomorrow is the last day of the conference and hopefully the dust will begin to settle...

PDC - What no XBOX 360?

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 09:07:22 GMT

Where are the XBOX 360's at the PDC|? i can't believe there isn't any here, not even a quick demo, or one in a steel cage.

I think XBOX maketing missed a great trick here, imagine a 8 foot square shiny steel cage with an XBOX 360 in the middle on a stand(even a shell) with lights shining on it and warning signs about getting to close. It would have been awesome...

You have 7,000 Microsoft evangelists, geeks and many XBOX owners at PDC all gagging to see an XBOX 360

But not one in sight - Why (Please someone explain?)

PDC - Main Conference Day 1

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:36:59 GMT

We caught the bus to the PDC at 7:15 this morning, in order to get an early breakfast and a good seat for the keynote sessions. The keynote hall was huge, holding 7000 people, not forgetting all the stage area.

10 lucky winners got to sit in the 'best seat in the house' for the keynote, a really comfy chair, for 10 lucky winners drawn from the attendee list, this turned out to be an important factor as the keynotes went on for 3 1/2 hours. Sadly we were all stuck in standard chairs about 11 rows back.

Bill Gates started the keynote and talked about the past, present and future, switching to Jim Allchin half way through and incorporating really cool demos;

Office 12
Office 12 looks awesome, it has a new naviagtion and menu layout, which makes it look so much cleaner, yet still shows more information! Replace 35 toolbars with tabstrips and group tasks (buttons) in context underneath. The cool thing about the UI is it is still recognisable and usable even though it looks different, all those common tasks are even easier to find. The hover effect was really cool, take for example word, you hover over all the fonts in the drop down and word changes the document so you can see what it looks like, unles you click on the item the document reverts to its original font when you leave the font dropdown.

Excel does lots of neat things, including some really good stylings for chart and the ability to use images, meter guages behind or to the side of numbers.

Powerpoint has a whole raft of controls (groups of controls) for you presentation, they look awesome, so no more drawing many controls, its also easy to switch groups.

Internet Explorer
IE7 is long overdue, but it looks excellent, again a new cleaner navigation style, tabbed browsing (hoorah), and now you can view all the tabs as thumbnails inside the window.IE7 Supports rss feeds and subscription, the print option will attempt to fit the web page on the page, so now you dont get that last 2 inches on a new page or the copyright on a page to itself.

Security is big in ie, especially in anti-phishing and suspicious sites. Enter a known dodgy url and the url bar will go red and warn you about continuing, enter a suspicious site (say an IP address rather than a domain name) and the url bar will go yellow and allow you to report it. IE7 can run in a protected mode where it can only write stuff to the temporary internet files directory, protecting you against malware/spyware. It also has a search built in, so you can search for Costall, and when the results come back control+click on 6 links to open them up in the tabbed browser. It also has a raft of HTML/CSS fixes including the dreaded dropdown box appearing over the top of html menus.

Windows Vista
What can i say, but i want it. It looks awesome and makes XP look very tired, the side bar is back, as you move the mouse over each window in the task bar you see a thumbnail of it, the windows all have this 'glassy' transparency to them and applications can be searched for easily. Watch the demo, i cant put this in words.

LinQ
Imagine in VB.net being able to type

select Process.Name from Processes
where Process.size > 4mb
order by Process.size DESC

and you basically have linq. WOW. The store can be xml, objects, files, Databases.

Atlas
ASP.net 2.0 rocks, and the extenstion that is Atlas will make it a very compelling web development technology. Take for example Virtual Earth or Google Maps, both appear to not make a round trip to the search as you move around the map, giving a great user experience, its this functionality you get with atlas (I have a double session on this over the next couple of days so expect some more in depth coverage). Scott Guthrie demonstrated an Atlas application on IE and then on a MAC running Safari, both apps had the same experience, including drag and drop support.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) - Formerly Avalon
Nothing really new here for me, but this seems to be moving on nicely, WPF uses Direct3D under the covers (and your graphics card) to give you a stunning UI, with animation effects and 3d Effects. Its all XAML, which can be created programatically to.

WPF/E - Windows Presentation Foundation for Everywhere!
A subset of WPF, designed for mobile devices, hosting in web pages (and browser neutral), sounds a bit like a flash plugin!!!

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) - Quiz: Formerly what?
i have a gift for the first person to tell me (Andy Brown, Microsoft employees and attendees can't enter), within 2 days of this post)
WCF is about communication, i have made previous posts on this so i wont go into details.

As you can see this was a great keynote with lots being shown. The keynote overrun so some sessions had to be re-sheduled. In the afternoon i attended full sessions on IE7 and WPF & WPF/E. We then had an evening reception where there was loads of swag, [some] food and [beer] drinks.

What a day, a highlight for me was sitting on the bus back to the hotel, when a Microsoft person got on with a 'Ask me about MSMQ' pin, so we chatted, the crooks of this story is any new people joining the MSMQ team get a copy of MY MSMQ book and are told - 'This is what MSMQ is' and that it was the BEST MSMQ book around...

I met a few people i knew, Walked out of my 1st Session, despite being on the front row and the nearest person to the speaker. I met someone had listened to my DotnetRocks show, I chatted to people on the ASP.Net team, VB.net team and Partner and User Group Microsofties and gathered loads of swag, some to give away at a VBUG meeting.

WooHoo - the tidal wave of technology is gonna hit soon...

Helpful Tip
[Some? people are stuggling to convert UK time to LA time, so i have added the following]
UK is 8 (EIGHT) or (1000 [binary]) (or VIII in roman numerals) hours ahead. In order to convert from a UK time to LA time you Subtract 8 hours.
Hint: Minutes will always be the same.

PDC - Pre Con Day 2

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 01:42:51 GMT

Slept well last night, and was ready for our 'late' 8am start. We ate breakfast at PDC and then headed off for the final day of Pre-Con which today was Building Reusable Class libraries, with Brad Abrams and Krzysztof Cwalina, two Microsoft people who are a part of the Microsoft Code Police.

The talk lasted all day and came with a copy of Brad and Krzysztof's awesome book (I got mine signed) which should become the developers bible and bedtime reading. The days session was really interesting and well presented, covering many areas including:

The Power of Sameness

Consistant code is easier to maintain and easier to read, hungarian notation should not be used (iNumber) and that includes public parameters. camelCasing should be used for parameters and PascalCasing should be used for all other identifiers. SCREAMING_CAPS should never be used and this includes constants. Two letter acronyms IO are ok in upper case, longer acronyms are pascalcased. Variable names should be meaningful but brief.

Framework Design Matters

The process of framework design is VERY different from prototyping and implementation

when building frameworks you should keep it simple for the developer, Krzysztof then talked in depth about making api more usable by being careful with naming conventions and making your classes more usable.

Exception Handling

A few rules:

Dont catch exceptions when you are not going to do anything with them
You should use Try.. Finally 10 time more often than Try.. Catch... Finally
(try... and use finally to clean up reagrdless of what happened, letting the exception bubble up)
Dont catch an exception then return a boolean from the method call
Dont 'eat' an exception (Catch it and throw a new one)
Let the exception bubble up and catch it at the top

i know i have been guilty of some of these in the past, i will do a most comprehensive post later.

After lunch i wandered around to the lounge area only to come across Sctt Guthrie, Don Box and Chris Anderson relaxing on the sofas, AWESOME!. I was chatting to Scott about our extranet project when DING all the lights went out.

Los Angeles suffered a power cut, the entire convention centre and downtown LA, back in our session the show went on in partial darkness and then the lights came back and we were back to normality.

We finished our breakout session and the headed down to the live recording of DotNetRocks, where i got to meet Mark Miller, Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, Chris made it onto the show answering questions and won some pretty cool prizes.

Back to the hotel at 8:30, then out for pizza before retiring for the evening. In other news VS2005 RC1 is now available for download for MSDN Subscribers.

Tomorrow is Bill's Keynote and 6,000 developers descending on the conference centre for the main event.

PDC - Pre Con Day 1

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 01:32:57 GMT

Back to the old us routine of waking at 3am again, so i had plenty of time to prepare for PDC Pre-Con day 1. We arrived early and registered with a few difficulties.

I received my namebadge an it said Richard James - Microsoft, I thought ah well, they have used my middle name insted of my surname and sure i dont mind working for Microsoft as they had booked my ticket. Then i thought everyone i meet will get my name wrong so i'll change it. It turns out the registration crew had booked me against someone else.

We were also given to bracelet tags for today and tomorrows pre-con and were advised to put them on our wrists. The only downside to this is they dont come off until you rip them off and as a result we all will have to spend all tonight with tomorrows tag on. (people who have been to these events before put them on their bags!!!.

It also seems strange (perhaps the water) that you have to repeast something twice for example;

crew: Would you like to register?
Chris: Yes
crew: do you have photo id?
Chris: No

crew: hi
Chris: can i register?
crew: do you have any photo id?
chris: no
crew: ok sure ,i can register you...

we had many cases of this with taxi drivers, buying Disney tickets and tshirts, just seems really strange. Anyway we picked up our goodies; tshirt, bag and ticket for the DVD's and after walk around the massive hall, got to play with Windows Vista, formerly Longhorn. The presentation looks excellent, glass styled windows with fade and close effects, an excellent search with and/or custom search, and the ability to add keywords to documents is very welcome.

Quick breakfast thenoff to my session covering SQL for Developers, the speakers we excellent, Brian Randall and Kimberley Trip certainly know there stuff, and Kimberley demonstrated a SQL Database partitioned over 4 USB keys. I did feel though that the session seemed to be two disparate sessions joined together, for example, we see slides on Isolated Snapshot Configuration in SQL 2005 and then went onto what is a table?

I am not sure what these session were aimed at, as my colleague experienced a Smart Client session which didnt really cover smart client issues. Maybe we are already leading edge, but i am certainly hoping to pick up some tips from Brad Abrams session on building classes best practices tomorrow.

Lunch was a beef ciabatta and the entertainment was provided by Benjamin Mitchell, who told us about the minibar in his room which new when he'd taken sweets out of it!

Tonight we should have gone bowling with Microsoft UK DPE. (i'll leave it at that). But we made our own entertainment at Dennys and then to a bar for some beer and pool.

Now its off to be, so i can be awake at 3am...

PDC - A Long Day

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 23:59:53 GMT

Well, here we are in Los Angeles ready for PDC 2005 which starts tomorrow. Woo Hoo.

It was been a long day for us, we'd driven down from Warwick the night before to Heathrow and it had taken almost three hours due to some monster Thunderstorms (in fact many flights had been cancelled) and as a result Heathrow airport was VERY busy.

By the time we were in departures, we had met up with Paul Foster, Dave Gristwood, Eric Nelson amongst many other Microsoft people all geared up for the PDC. So i have probably met half the people on Mike Taulty PDC bingo card already.

11 hours is a long time on the plane, in fact so long that Mike Taulty was reading the SDK docs for SQL and we had a couple of impromptu 35,000 feet chats. We landed 30 minutes late (due to 30 minute late take off) and then had to wait for about 40 minutes for a free slot at the terminal (as if 11 hours was not enought).

Our limo service picked us up and whisked us to the Marriott Downtown and by 5pm we were in done, had a drink in the bar.

The key to 'time travel' is adjusting as quick a possible, and being a Disney Fanatic i whisked Andy and Chris off to Disneyland (arriving at 6pm) and California Adventure for some fresh air and thrills. This was despite our taxi drivers best attempt to not be able

We hit California Adventure and Sherpa Costall yomped it round to Soarin over California (one of my favourites), then we did Grizzly Rapids (where we all got wet) and more importanly a trip on the new Tower of Terror - it rocks... Just like the Florida version this is awesome, and even features a 'double loader' (one elevator on top of another) for more capacity. We all screamed our way up and down the life shaft many times and then hit 'Bugs Life', where Andy got 'stung' and chris jumped out of his skin at the very end following the memorable words

'we request all Honourary bugs remain in their seats while the Insects,Spider, maggots and flees leave the theatre'

We then headed to Disneyland, which as suspected was very very busy (due to 2 Fantasmic Showings and the fireworks) and did a fastpass on Indiana Jones ride, we then grabbed a cheese filled chilled dog in a bap (Andy had cheese in a bap) before jumping in a taxi who nearly ran us over back to the hotel.

10pm and after a quick beer we retired for the evening on what has been a VERY (+8 hours) long day

Tomorrow is Pre-Con day 1 and i'm off into SQL Server mode.

XML Site

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 02:32:06 GMT

A friend of mine Dave McMahon has just got his site up and running, its early days yet, but watch out for some good XML,XSLT and SQL nuggets of information.

http://www.xmlexperience.com/default.aspx?page=home

In the news

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 02:09:20 GMT

Financial Advisor, a weekly publication for IFAs and Intermediaries has published a short article on my exploits on DotNetRocks. The only problem is they showed the wrong page, so i for now will have to make do with being Brad Abrams. See the Review here.

No Blog for a while?

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 02:07:33 GMT

I've been to Spain for a holiday to spend some time with the family.

We had a great week, swimming in the sea, swimming in the pool and eating loads of food. The highlight for me was the day trip to Port Aventura, culminating with a ride on the awesome Dragon Khan the first coaster in the world to feature 8 inversions. I also experienced 'El Tempo Del Fuego' - The Temple of Fire to see the 'Best Attraction'. This was a cross between Backdraft (USH) and Poseidons Advenutrue (IOA) and to be honest having seen it all before was a bit dull.

At the beach we experienced the 'Granny Super Highway', i don't know if this is just a Europe thing, but all the Grannies walk the entire length of the beach in the ankle deep sea, ranting to each other. Criteria seems to be Orange Skin and your stomach needs to be Two thirds of you overall body weight, maybe its a parade of some sort. At one stage Thomas came back to me and said

"Daddy i just seen a Granny on the super highway with her boobies out - gross"

Spain also seems to now be under some EU legislation that you need to be 65 or over to go topless.

Heres the other thing, we go to a Thomson family hotel, where the Childrens disco starts at 9:30pm!! and the family show starts at 10:30pm

Our room (13) was ok, a bit grubby against our usual standard of rooms, and despite the toilet leaking, the patio door not locking, the requirement of Herculean strength to open the cupboard door it served its purpose...

All in all we had a great time...

2 Major VBUG news items

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 15:06:35 GMT

VBUG Annual Conference
Details have now been published on the VBUG site for our annual conference. To be honest with you i am really excited about this event as the speakers are some of the best there are. Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell, Mark Miller, Jackie Goldstein and yours truly. Its a two day affair and covers a lot of material, included is a Crystal Ball evening showcasing emerging Microsoft Technology (an excellent idea, even if i have it myself).

So book the 23rd and 24th of November and contact Rebecca at VBUG, read the brochure here

VBUG Coventry Meeting - November 2005
Its gonna be an excellent month as on the 14th November we have the VBUG Regional Meeting in Coventry. We are going to have a party of a meeting like never before to celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Believe me, you will not want to miss this meeting... We have some great things in the pipeline and its sure going to be fun. Invites will be going out in due course....

Preparations are underway and i am not going to spoil anything in this blog, all will be kept under tight wraps until the night

So VBUG Members put the 14th of November in your diaries......

Woo Hoo, What a beauty !

VBUG Meeting - September 19th

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 14:58:48 GMT

September 19th sees another MVP, and Software Legend enter the Coventry Flying Club in the form of Alex Homer. Alex will be presenting on ADO.NET 2.0 which should make for a really interesting session.

For more information contact Rebecca at VBUG

VBUG Meeting - August

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:58:30 GMT

We had a good VBUG meeting last night to a small gathering which included the consumption of many Bacon Rolls and a few beers, whilst talking about our experiences and watching the 767's take off.

i was asked about resources and links during the evening and here they are again...

Channel9
DotNetRocks
ASP.NET Quick Start Tutorials
Microsoft ISV Program
DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper Day (Saturday Oct 22nd)
Developer Express Controls
Microsoft Certification

ASP.NET Pro Article

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:15:20 GMT

My article on Early Adoption has just gone live on their site, the Article covers my experience of Early Adoption whilst developing an Extranet site in Asp.NET 2.0.

At the end of last year I was tasked with building our company’s new extranet site. The existing extranet had been developed in classic ASP and was becoming difficult to maintain. Layout and navigation was also in need of a spring cleaning.

I had been spending a lot of personal time with ASP.NET 2.0 Beta 1. I was pleasantly surprised with its stability and believed that its new features would save a substantial amount of development time. The project was fairly flexible in its launch date, which is one of the biggest requirements of an “Early Adoption” project.

You can read the full article here

Brian Goldfarb Product Manager for the Web Tools Team blogs about me here, which has some great feedback

Comments?

"That was indeed a great personal experience with ASP.NET 2.0 and its new features along with the changes from Beta 1 to Beta 2."

Feedback to Brian Goldfarb's Blog

On the Microsoft Site

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 09:21:45 GMT

Life is complete...

The dotnetrocks show featuring Andy Brown and myself is a download available on the Microsoft site.... Populartiy is currently at #4966. Come on you can do better than that.

[UPDATE:] we are in position #2760 as of 24th August

and then to top it off, we fire up Visual Studio 2005 and this appears...

Woo Hoo, What a beauty !

ASP.NET Goldmine

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 16:17:47 GMT

Every now and then you strike GOLD on the internet and feel you have to share it. I found some really good TECHED 2005 sessions on ASP.NET and other web related technologies. One of them is presented by my Microsoft ISV Buddy Simon Calvert, and a couple of others by the legend that is Scott Guthrie.

Sit back relax and enjoy... I certainly will

Here they are

Woo Hoo, What a beauty !

What a year... so far

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:10:03 GMT

I was just talking to some friends about what a year it had been, probably the best yet. heres the list so far (in no particular order)

Went to Redmond for a compatibility lab, visited the Microsoft Store and went on a tour of the Campus.
Wrote and Deployed an ASP.NET 2.0 Extranet in Beta1 - 2.
Presented the Extranet (and gave feedback to) the ASP.NET team.
Presented the Extranet to Scott Guthrie (Mr ASP.NET)
Appeared on DotNetRocks with Andy Brown Evangelising ASP.NET, Early Adoption and Smart Client
Attended an Indigo Early Adopters Training Course
Built a great relationship with my Microsoft Buddy Simon Calvert on the ASP.NET team
Presented to 200 ISVs on ASP.NET 2.0 at Microsoft Campus (asked by Microsoft to present)
Presented on ASP.NET, Longhorn (Vista) and Avalon at the 1st Software User Conference to 80 Financial Advisors
Coordinated VBUG Meetings - Attracted top speakers, Jeffrey Richter, Benjamin Mitchell, Dave Sussman, Marcus Perryman
Helping in putting together the 2005 User Conference (Its gonna be a good one)
Presented at My VBUG Regional Meeting.
Provided Microsoft with a Smart Client Case Study.
Provided Microsoft with an ASP.NET 2.0 Case Study for the Extranet (Imminent)
Worked on our Smart Client in VS2005
My MSMQ book shipped over 2,000 copies.
Created an Article for INETA on my VBUG Regional Group
Attended an MVP Dinner in my capacity as a Regional Coordinator for VBUG
Attended the Microsoft VS2005 Launch Plan Meeting
Submitted an Article for ASP.NET Pro (Sept)
Made Some Great Microsoft Friends in Redmond - Colleen, Chad, Jay, Allison, Tim, Marcelo
Worked Closely with my Microsoft PSFD contact Mark Haas
Took part in many web chats, including one with Betsy Aoki (thanks for the t-shirt)
Wrote an Article on early adoption for ASP.NET pro Magazine

and Still to come...

Article on Education for International Developer Magazine (Oct)
Article on Web Development for International Developer Magazine (Dec)
Playing a part in the Microsoft Launch of VS2005 and SQL 2005
PDC
Presenting at the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper day (?)
Presenting at the VBUG Conference in November. (?)
Journalist work around the Smart Client and ASP.NET Extranet

Plus my day job as a developer playing with some of the best software around for the above projects and others i can not talk about yet.

August - VBUG Meeting

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 16:13:19 GMT

They seem to come around so quickly... August VBUG meeting. Holiday time is here, so this month we will have a break from the speakers and enjoy a social night, a beer and some food...

.NET Discussion Forum and Clinic
Featuring John Price, Dave McMahon and Richard Costall, and You..

      - Do you have any questions about .NET?
      - Can you help others?
      - Want to know about Visual Studio 2005 and the future?
      - Do you have any development problems you wish to discuss?
      - Want to know about getting MCSD.NET?
      - Like eating Pizza?
      - Want to chat and network with likeminded individuals?

Monday August 22nd at the normal venue 7pm-9pm Contact Rebecca at VBUG to register

Mark of the Web

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 16:27:34 GMT

I recently did some third party integration work, where the applications were web based. The only way to pre-populate the data was to create a html page, with the posted values in it, save it to disk, and then run internet explorer and navigate to it. All was fine until i found XP SP2 was giving me a pop-up blocker, despite the file being on the local disk.

I found this happened every time, even if i always used the same filename. a few searches later turned up with a little nugget that saved my day, and made our users life a lot easier, no more click and allow content on the popup.

What i found was a thing called 'mark of the web'. basically in your HTML (at the top) you add the following:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">

The HTML page will only prompt for the popup blocker on the first visit (which is why you should name the file the same name each time).

The other key thing here is the (0022), which is the number of characters which make up the url http://www.costall.net

Here is a link to the MSDN Article

DotNetRocks Recorded!

Sat, 30 Jul 2005 14:21:24 GMT

Yesterday, Andy Brown and myself recorded out interview with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell of DotNetRocks. He had a real fun time and discussed Smart Client, Web Applications in ASP.NET 2.0, Building relationships with Microsoft and maintaining them, and also discussed VBUG, user groups and evangelising Microsoft products.

We also revealed our Redmond Car Park incident and our favourite downloads.

Richard Costall and Andy Brown talk about two large-scale production applications, one for Smart Client and the other for ASP.NET, based on the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0. Find out how Richard and Andy deal with compatibility in a varied client environment, hear their praise for the Microsoft Ascend Program, and discover how they use Web Services, ADO.NET, and more!

Listen to the show here

as Steve Irwin would say. Yeah.. you beauty

What Fridge Magnets?

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 15:13:38 GMT

I was recently looking through my digital pictures from the Microsoft Redmond - DevLab Compatibility trip which Andy Brown and I attended, and i noticed two pictures took within a short time of each other. Now i am not saying that Andy or I are souvenir hunters, but take a look and see if you can spot whats changed (click the images for a larger version). I might even dig out a prize for the person who gets the most (probably a Microsoft deluxe Canteen Chair - oops :-))

There is one change i think nobody will get...

BEFORE

AFTER

VBUG Meeting - XSLT

Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:44:52 GMT

Last night night was the July VBUG meeting for the Midlands. Dav McMahon and Myself did a presentation called Triple XXX, covering XML extraction from SQL and SQL 2005, and xpath, followed by me covering XSLT. We have over 30 delegates attend and we both managed a feedback score of 4.3 (out of 5).

We also had an XPath competition, 'guess the node' which went down really well. there was 7 of them and the prizes got better on each one. from a bag of jelly beans, upto a book.

I will post the slides, once i have got them all together in this blog entry.

All in all a good night and we have already had enquiries about presenting our session at other regional group meetings.

Teched Australia

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 10:26:52 GMT

TechEd Australia is coming and i thought i'd mention it despite being a very long way from Australia.

Add this to the fact the announced a 'win a TShirt competition' in which you had to design some flair to promote Teched (See Left). I thought wow, a tShirt, thats great, and set about designing my flair. It was only after i had completed my image in all its glory that i decided to read the terms and conditions, which state the competition is only open to residents of Australia. DUH.

So i sent it off anyway, and decided to stick it on the blog, just so someone can see it. Never mind. (take a look at the TShirt page and see some of the early winners.) here

Still, i am looking forwards to the PDC and hopefully they will have some TShirts.

Windows Longhorn gets its name...

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 09:44:40 GMT

Today Microsoft announced the official name for Windows Longhorn: Windows Vista

See the naming launch here including a video of the announcement, and a a link to the Vista Web pages

Beta 1 will be coming early (3rd) August 2005 and the final product will be arriving in 2006

Happy Birthday Disneyland

Sun, 17 Jul 2005 02:25:29 GMT

Happy Birthday Disneyland - 50 Today, i am sure there will be a lot of celebrations..

"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."
Walt Disney

Disneyland was the first Disney park, having an investment of $17million, and opened in Anaheim, California on the 17th July 1955. Walt used to takes his daughter to parks and zoos, but found he spent his time sitting around while his children had fun, he woundered why the wasnt a place where parents and kids could be together and have fun. The cogs started turning and after initially thinking about buying ann area of land over from his Disney studios nu Burbank, Walt organised so people to survey the possibility of another site.

They decided on an 160 acre area of orange groves in Anaheim.

"I first saw the site for Disneyland back in 1953, In those days it was all flat land - no rivers, no mountains, no castles or rocket ships - just orange groves, and a few acres of walnut trees." said Walt.

"Biggest problem? Well, I'd say it's been my biggest problem all my life. MONEY. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true. From the very start it was a problem. Getting the money to open Disneyland. About seventeen million it took. And we had everything mortgaged including my personal insurance." said Walt

Walt Disney Opening Day Speech Disneyland - 17th July 1955 (listen here)

"To all that come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.

Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America... with hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world."

In 2001 Disneyland welcomed its 450-millionth, making it what must be the happiest place on earth, welcoming over 13 million people through its gates every year.

In Februay 2001 Disneyland also opened its second park Disneys California Adventure (disney site)

VBUG - July Meeting

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 03:06:14 GMT

Another month - another VBUG Session. I have been coordinating the Midlands region for almost 5 years now and its fitting that on that night my talk was on XML and XSLT.

Title                        :               TRIPLE X (XML, XPath and XSLT)
By                            :               Richard Costall and Dave McMahon
Date                       :               25 July 2005
Time                       :               1900 – 2100 (Break 1945 – 20.15)

Overview
XML, XPath and XSLT are three independently defined standards but in reality are three closely associated technologies.

This presentation will talk about each of these technologies, what they were designed for, what they are used for and how they relate to each other. The presenters will illustrate the talk with many demonstrations, showing how to develop an ASP.NET Web Site with a SQL Server database that will present richly styled Web Pages without an ASP User Control or ASP Control in sight!

XML and XML Schema and their relationship will be discussed and demonstrated using Visual Studio.NET. There will then be examples of how to obtain XML directly from a SQL Server database (2000 and 2005). Prior to the break XPath will be discussed and a demonstration given of how to navigate through the XML Tree using XPath. After the break XSLT will be described and used to transform the XML obtained from SQL Server in the first part of the talk. Many aspects of XSLT syntax will be discussed including conditional statements, loops, templates, elements, attributes and built-in functions. The final demonstration will show how to write custom functions using VB.NET which can not only be accessed by XSLT but also used to debug XSLT documents.

Whilst the talk will use Visual Studio 2005 Web Express (Beta) and SQL Server 2005 (Beta) for the demonstrations, this talk is very much about a technology you can use TODAY with the technologies you currently have at your disposal. The presenters use these technologies regularly in their daily work and at the end of the talk you will realise what a fantastically powerful and exciting toolset XML, XPath and XSLT can be, and how easy it is to manipulate a simple document to obtain professional and dynamic Web Pages.

Interested, please contact Rebecca at VBUG.

July .NET Class of the month.

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 03:12:36 GMT

Continuing the new Costall blog-feature showing classes in the framework which save my bacon or helped me out big time:

The July 2005 winner is...

System.Net.WebClient
The Webclient class enables the uploading/downloading of documents over the internet

How it helped...
I am working on a project which integrates with some third party web applications, which provide me with a URL of a document to download, by creating an instance of the webclient, you can download the document and specify where it should be stored in 1 line of code

_wc.DownloadFile(FromURL, ToLocalFileName)

The class also exposes the ResponseHeaders, to enable you to determine the document you are downloading, as the filename may not be shown in the URL. The same task in VB6 is not trivial, one option is to use XMLHTTP.Open method, you get back an array of bytes, which you have to work with....

eg http://www.costall.net/downloads/download.aspx?DOCID=33

Dim _ContentType As String = _wc.ResponseHeaders.Get("Content-Type")

Tune in Soon for another Class of the month....

INETA Newsletter

Sat, 02 Jul 2005 08:29:42 GMT

The INETA European Newsletter was just gone out and contains an article on my VBUG Regional User Group at the Coventry flying club, put together by Ray Starkey (a member) and Myself...

"The meetings are lively, the questions are penetrating and the odd pause now and again to allow the Thompson Boeing 737 to pass out of earshot gives you a moment for silent reflection!"

Richard Costall
VBUG Regional Coordinator
UK Midlands

UG Stories: VBUG Midlands
Two-hundred yards from the main runway at Coventry Airport is an unlikely setting for a user group, but that's exactly where you'll find the Midland branch of the Visual Basic User Group (VBUG) in the UK. The group is one of the most successful of the UK regions, attracting over 40 members on each of its monthly meetings. Richard Costall, Regional Coordinator believes the secret to a successful user group is in the speakers. "My top goal, is to obtain the best speakers for my members, being a part of INETA, with its Speakers Bureau, makes the task so much easier although the proximity of the Flying Club's bar, some pizza and the panoramic window onto the airfield does seem to have some advantages"

In the last few months, 3 MVPs, Benjamin Mitchell, Jeffrey Richter, Jonathan Greensted and Microsoft's Mike Taulty have all delivered sessions. All the lectures are delivered with the aid of a projector with samples in either C# or VB.NET

Costall adds: "Another key advantage to being a part of INETA is their generous contributions in terms of books and software. At every meeting we give away books, memory sticks and the like thus ensuring that members leave with something more than expert knowledge".
Ray Starkey, a member adds: "The Coventry meetings allow me to meet and discuss advanced aspects of Visual Studio with other developers and from these discussions, derive a well informed opinion of the limits of the technology. The Jeffrey Richter talk was worth my annual VBUG subscription alone, and being a part of INETA makes the VBUG membership even more compelling"

Richard Costall adds: "If you live within driving distance of Coventry come and give us, and VBUG, a try. VBUG have membership options to suit most people, and over the next few months we have a number of MVP's and a Microsoft Speaker lined up. The meetings are lively, the questions are penetrating and the odd pause now and again to allow the Thompson Boeing 737 to pass out of earshot gives you a moment for silent reflection!"
The Coventry VBUG User group meets monthly on a Monday night from 7pm-9pm. You can contact VBUG at http://www.vbug.net

VS2005 and Spy Games

Sat, 02 Jul 2005 08:11:53 GMT

This blog entry will self destruct in 5 seconds....

1st Software have a great relationship with Microsoft which we have focused on building over the last 2 years, as covered in previous posts. We have adopted many technologies early, and as a result on Wednesday i attended a pre-launch meeting for VS2005 and SQL.

The event was at Danesfield house hotel and Spa near Marlow, just so happens it was also Regatta week in Henley on Thames. The Car Park contained a Maserati, Porsche, Lotus and a couple of Rolls Royces. Nick Page parked his car nearby and was asked to move it due to vehicles turning - a while later a big Merc was in the same spot.

Danesfield House Hotel and Spa is a picturesque Country House Hotel set within 65 acres of magnificent estate grounds. Set high in the beautiful Chiltern Hills, Danesfield House Hotel and Spa overlooks the River Thames and lies between the attractive English towns of Marlow and Henley-on-Thames.The hotel was converted in 1991 from a country mansion house built in the Victorian era to the magnificent luxury hotel it is today.

NDA prevents me from discussing plans for the launch, but plans are coming on well and there should be some really good events, and some surprises too.

Following the morning presentations and a working lunch, it was time for some spy-games, each team was split into two - Aircrew and Ground crew. The aircrew went and we were left to locate an item on an OS map of the local area, based on cryptic clues for example.

Over the river from the town where the monster was created in words.

See if you can decipher that one (ie the town? and why). I got that one fairly quick and despatched our air crew to photograph the monument. We then set off around the estate to solve 3 more clues to locate the required parts and then launch a 3 foot rocket, which we did but never managed to retrieved it.

Incidentally part of the way round our guide informed us about the building used to be used by the RAF and one night during the war, the aircrew formed a human pyramid in order to leave a footprint on the ceiling (which was really high)... Why did i already know this? was it from watching most Haunted?

Another OS clue and then time to pull the wires on a bomb in the correct sequence, which we did with 7:48 still on the clock. I suppose we should really have left it till it got to 0:02 a la Bond, but we couldn't be bothered.

Then of to the chopper to locate and photograph the Windmill from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was debated buy i had correctly described as a classic. The flight was awesome, so smooth, 150mph across Berkshire, with a graceful landing, most surprising was the fact there was 5 in the back and 2 in the front and we were not in a Chinook!

After landing we took part in a lazer quest, with a gun which fired 'lazer' rounds and also grenades, then back to the chopper, and then the hotel for Pimms on the lawn.

After an hour and an half in the bar the champagne tasting began, an intensive 45 minute lesson on Champagne appreciation conclued with an attempt to identify the type, price and vintage/non vintage of 4 champagnes. Given that i had benefitted from the 45 minutes of expert tuition and some of the questions were 50/50 chance of getting correct, a score of 3/16 was not that impressive.

When asked what you would have i have with Pidgeon? i was incorrect in saying Pizza

This was followed by Dinner a chocolate fountain that needed to be seen to be believed (but you could make some great chocolate kebabs with it) and some casino action.

Off to Bed, see if there were any ghosts in my room... all is quiet, hide under the duvet... any ghosts.. ok the coast is clear, no, one more. 'Any ghosts in here.. let me know'. THUMP. my vbug bag had just fell over, but had been in the same position all afternoon/evening!

Spooky...

Any ghosts want to talk about the Membership Provider in ASP.NET 2.0? all is quiet.. night night.

This was an excellent event, not least from the relationship building point of view, Thanks to all at Microsoft and in particular, Nick Page, Mark Quirk, John Noakes, John Allwright and Ian Moulster.. and many others

We will be driving down to Reading soon to show you chaps some great VS2005 apps.

BOOM!

[PICTURES TO FOLLOW]

Betsy Aoki - Live Meeting

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:28:44 GMT

Today I took part in a live meeting with Betsy Aoki Community Program Manager, and head honcho of the GotDotNet and Microsoft Blogs website. We talked about RSS and blogging best practices. The main surprise for me was the lack of questions from the floor, although the patented Richard Costall random question generator was swtiched to machine gun mode ensuring Betsy was kept busy.

She Blogged on this one...

Q: Will GotDotNet Blues ever be release as a single and if not can i have a GotDotNet T Shirt?
One fellow, bless his heart, asked when there'd be a Gotdotnet blues single cut for the music stores. He, and all the rest of them, are getting Gotdotnet t-shirts for that. :)

I asked Betsy about RSS in general and the recently announced integrations between Longhorn and RSS and also RSS versus PodCasting, Who was the Swag King, plus some questions Betsy would redirect onto the relevant parties.

I do think research is important, Betsy had given an hour of her schedule to speak to us and as a presenter its always unnerving when there are no questions from the floor.

Nice one Betsy, enjoy the overcast grey and wet UK weather, we had it shipped in specially from Seattle.

User Conference

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 04:25:35 GMT

Yesterday was our (1st Softwares) annual user conference at the National Motorcycle Museum ,in which we had 500+ delegates. We were showcasing our new Smart Client application, which the team have been working on, Adviser Evolution.

Adviser Evolution is built in VS2005, and does some really cool things i can't really talk about yet, but the feedback from the delegates was excellent.

In the Afternoon Andy Brown and I did a presentation on Riding the Technology Waves, Andy talked about smart client (Despite the laptop shutting down twice) and i talked about ASP.NET 2.0 (covering our new extranet) and also the Longhorn,Avalon and Indigo messages. we had between 80 and 100 people in our session and feedback was very good especially considering this was a non technical audience.

Lesson of the day: Always use your own laptop for presentations...

"My best presenter award goes to the two technical guys Andy Brown and Richard Costall.

They were not only clear and concise but entertaining. Add in the equipment failure and the Chinese play prop man style fixers and they were unbeatable."

Conference Delegate Email

Could it be true?

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 08:46:46 GMT

Could this (look carefully) really be true?

VBUG - ASP.NET

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 03:16:51 GMT

Dave Sussman gave an excellent VBUG talk to 25 members last night at the Coventry Flying Club on ASP.NET and ADO.NET a subject i am very passionate about.

Dave demonstrated many of the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 including master pages, web parts, the provider model, themes and skins, all set around the WeFly247 project he'd been working on alongside Microsoft. WeFly247 (for beta 2) is due to ship very soon, and is an excellent resource in getting started in Web, Smart client and Mobile development. Not content with attempting to squeeze ASP.NET 2.0 functionality into 2 hours, Dave then went on to talk about the new features of ADO.NET 2.0

There was a break for Sausage and Chips and we walked out on the balcony in the evening sun and watched the Thomson 737s taking off, whilst sipping our beers - a fantastic relaxed atmoshperere. We ended up finishing 20 minutes later than expected, but very few people had left.

Slides here - (size 755kb)

If you attended let me know your thoughts?

June .NET Class of the month

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 02:58:41 GMT

Heres a new Costall blog-feature showing classes in the framework which save my bacon or helped me out big time:

The June 2005 winner is...

System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch (VS 2005)
The stopwatch class gather accurate metrics of elapsed time in Ticks or Milliseconds. This enabled me to use its Start and Stop methods to examine the code to find the performance bottlenecks. The Stop method will just stop the time recording and start will restart the timer, reset will restart the timer. The beauty about this class is it is so simple to use and it is accurate.

How it helped...
I needed to gather some metrics in order to increase rendering performance of a complex form, by timing a particular method over many passes and gathering overall elapsed time. The form had around 80 user controls on it and was rendering in around 1.5 seconds, within the code i was also adding a tooltip. By commenting out the tooltip, rendering cames down to .65 of a second. Sorry tooltip, in this functionality versus performance battle performance wins. I will investigate the tooltip overhead further. The rendering is now well with the tolerance allowed..

Tune in Soon for another Class of the month....

Back in the Magic Kindgom

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 16:39:41 GMT

Living 4,500 miles away from Disney World is difficult for a fan, but sometimes things come along to make life easier. Disney VMK is a chat room set in the Magic Kingdom, theres loads of tasks to do, finding 50 hidden mickeys (tough but i did that), play loads of cool mini-games, chat and create your own room complete with furniture. The other night i managed to visit a room and win a game of musical chairs (sad i know).

Why not sign up, leave some feeback with your name and lets catch up and go for a walk around the Virtual Magic Kingdom

This is all done in flash, but i'd be really intested in the hardware and database behind the scenes, managing your scores, credits, possessions etc. The graphics are breathtaking (and animated) and there is sound. It is beta at the moment, so we have no Frontierland or Tomorrowland, but you can go to Fantasyland, and play a fireworks game, hit Adventure land and go on a photo safari on the jungle cruise, or battle other players in the Pirate of the Caribbean game, or spend time on Main Steet, and mix some music and play it on the turntables.

My only gripe is the dictionary is weak, i understand kids are using it, but words are very limited, apart from that the Virtual Magic Kingdom is awesome.

This is my personal room, i bought all the chairs and furniture, and positioned it, looks like there is a vbug meeting in progress, mmm theres an idea.
(i'm the one in yellow)

heres me in main street... reply if you can see the two or even one of the hidden Mickeys.

heres me at the castle, wish it was this quiet at the real parks.

Is that cool or what?

PDC Registration Opens

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:34:47 GMT

Registration is now open but I can't believe its been almost 2 years since PDC2003. I never got to go, but i watched every session on the DVD's and even built an entire Longhorn Prototype on the PDC build for our company user conference, which went down a treat, even if i did have to present it 67 times in one day!

Its not easy pausing a XAML presentation, and trying read blurred markup, to see what a particular attribute reads, but i did it!

This year i hope to get to the PDC, a technology crystal ball, and be a part of the ambience. The sessions are already looking amazing, it would round off an incredible year for me.

I had my first dream trip to Redmond for the devlab and helped Microsoft find bugs and compatibility issues, met with my Microsoft buddy, demoed the Extranet to the ASP.NET team, but most important of all i made some great friends.

I built and deployed an Extranet in ASP.NET 2.0 beta 1 which is now running live on beta 2.

I helped in a Case Study for our smart client application and an Extranet one is in the pipeline.

I presented for the first time at a Microsoft ISV day to 200+ ISVs

We have now moved our development over to VS2005 beta 2 for our new smart client application.

All of the above comes from having a vision and as a direct result of PDC 2003 using just the PDC DVD's which i carry in my bag at all times.

Makes you wonder what i could achieve if i actually made it to the conference!

This year has been the best development year of my career, Thank you Microsoft. heres to PDC2005.

If i get to go then more than anything i hope to meet up with the Microsoft employees who had made our Redmond trip so incredible and to bring back valuable knowledge and goodies to give away to my VBUG user group members.

If i can't make it again i will get some new DVD's to watch as the old ones are getting a bit worn...

VS2005 - November Release Date!

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 10:55:54 GMT

According to Paul Flessners Keynote speech this morning at TechED.. (and subsequent email, my colleague received) which says....

It is official - the countdown to launch has begun! During my Tech.Ed keynote this morning, I announced that SQL Server(TM) 2005, Visual Studio^® 2005 and BizTalk^® Server 2006 will launch the week of November 7. This will be the biggest launch ever for these products, and we're very excited to deliver them to you.

Some of you might be surprised to see that BizTalk Server 2006 has been added to the list of products that will make their debut in November, but from an integrated experience perspective this is an important addition. Many customers already benefit from the integrated development environment of BizTalk Server built on Visual Studio to quickly integrate and automate business processes that span applications, systems and trading partners. By integrating Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006, we hope to change the way you think about and use application infrastructure with your connected systems.

We continue to work closely with customers and partners as we get ready for the launch. To date, we have seven customers that have put applications based on the SQL Server 2005 Community Technology Previews (CTPs) into production and expect to have more than 20 customers in production before we launch. We also had more than 40 partners announce support for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 today. We are in awe of the support and anticipation we're seeing from the industry for these products and expect this support to continue and even increase as we get closer to launch.

Good news, slightly disappointed about the lateness, but we have something to work towards...

TechED (NOT) post

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 14:38:56 GMT

Seems everyone is blogging about Microsoft's TechED which starts today/tomorrow. Unfortunately i'm not there, but thought i'd blog about it anyway as it combines two of my favourite things Orlando and Microsoft.

I nearly made it, but things didn't work out, however today i would have been in EPCOT (Mission Space, Test Track and Soarin) and then took the boat from the International Gateway and gone to Disney/MGM Studios (Tower of Terror, Rock n Roller Coaster, Light Motors Action stunt show and Muppets 3D).

Then i would have registered this afternoon (Sunday), prior to heading off to Bennigans (International Drive) for some broccolli bites and buffalo wings...

Then off to bed for an early night ready for the big Keynote tomorrow.

let me know if you read this and are there or even if you did'nt go...

VBUG June Meeting

Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:59:59 GMT

On Monday the 20th June we have Dave Sussman (MVP) who will be presenting on ASP.NET 2.0. Guests are welcome to attend, but please register though VBUG, Otherwise if your names not on the list, you are not coming in...

ASP.NET 2.0 brings great benefits for the developer with the oft-quoted benefit of "70% less code". For many areas of development this is true, such as with the new security framework to handle membership and roles, master pages to provide site templates and simple two-way data binding. When faced with a new technology its easy to fall into new feature overload and try and use everything, but there are occasions when you need to rein in your enthusiasm, using the technology only where its appropriate. So in this talk Dave will cover not only the new features, but also when they should be used.

About the speaker:

Dave spent 10 years developing software on a variety of Unix and Windows platforms before taking control over his own career. Since then he's worked longer hours for less money, and still hasn't worked out where he went wrong. He's spent the last six years writing full time, has authored over 30 books on Microsoft data and web technologies and works closely with the Microsoft development teams to help bring books on their products to the market.

He's spent the last 4 years working with ASP.NET, was the first person to write books for both versions 1.0 and 2.0 and speaks regularly on ASP.NET at conferences, including Microsoft TechEd and PDC.

Microsoft named him a Software Legend in March 2003 and an ASP.NET MVP in October 2003.

It should be a great session, so get registered before its full.

VBUG - Mobile Magic

Thu, 26 May 2005 03:11:11 GMT

Last night Marcus Perryman from Microsoft gave a presentation to VBUG members on Mobile Device development at Trinity Expert Systems in Coventry. Marcus is extremely passionate about a technology which is moving at an incredible pace, take for example the fact for every 1 desktop PC sold, 3 mobile devices are sold!. Marcus covered the history, the present and the future - Windows Mobile 5, released May 2005 and will be rolled out on new devices over the next 3-6-12 months.

Visual Studio mobile development has evolved, with the ability to run in an emulator which runs a Virtual PC with an ARM emulator, so you code is being tested as real as possible. the whole user experience is much improved

The Audience was dimished, due to the unfortunate collision with the Champions League final, in which Liverpool FC came back from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 and win on penalties.

The highlight of Marcus's demos was to build an application which allowed the user to take a photo on the device (or pick a previous photo), and then select a contact (or add a new one), extract their email address and send the picture as an attachment to an email to the contact. How many lines of VS2005 code 150? - no 15, yes 15. lines of code. WOW.

Did you also know that of the 30+ MB of the framework, about 5MB is down to interop, which is why Interop was sacrificed from the the mobile framework, which comes in at a 1.5mb minimum footprint.

Marcus got a Torville and Dean-esque score on his feedback for all 5's and just one 4 (out of 5).

Great Session in a very very exciting area - Mobile Development. - all we need now is a mobile express edition which would make the development available to the masses, who cannot afford the full blown VS2005, now that the embedded vb,vc has departed. You can also catch Mr Gates Keynote from MEDC here.

Now i wonder, if Windows Mobile 5.0 supports DirectX - Does this mean there could be Avalon support for mobile devices in the future?

You can download the Mobile Development slides here (size: 20mb)

MVP Dinner

Wed, 25 May 2005 09:10:20 GMT

In my VBUG Regional coordinator role i was luck enough to attend an informal MVP dinner which co-incided with the MSDN roadshow at the Birmingham National Motorcycle museum, I met up with Lorna Williamson who coordinates her MVP 'Adopted' Children. What struck me most about this was the met was like a family gathering, not just a group of clever individuals, more a family. I also got chance to speak to Mike Taulty, Marcus Perryman, Mike Pelton and Steve Lamb from Microsoft and Dave Sussman (MVP)

It was a great evening and i was honoured to be there, my only complaint was there were too many great people and not enough time to talk to them all

Smart Client Case Study

Tue, 24 May 2005 05:29:02 GMT

1st Software delivered a Smart Client application at the end of last year, which has subsequently become the suject of a Case Study from Microsoft and includes some great quotes from yours truly... for example (from the word document download).

“We wouldn’t have attempted this development without Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework as we were working to a very tight deadline. Using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0,…would have taken us twice as long..”

Richard Costall, Technical Architect, 1st Software

The 1st Software user conference is coming soon, for all our IFA clients/Prospects and mortgage intermediaries, see the conference microsite here

VBUG - May meeting

Fri, 20 May 2005 16:20:16 GMT

Our Regional monthly meeting for VBUG is next week on the 25th 7pm-9pm

Marcus Perryman
Mobile Device Development
In this session we will take a look at the Windows Mobile software, and the strategy Microsoft has taken in this rapidly maturing market. We will explore the tools used to develop basic applications and how to test these applications on an emulation environment or a real device. We will look at tools in use today and at what Visual Studio 2005 has to offer the mobile developer for targeting the current and next generation of Windows Mobile OS.

for more information or to register please contact Rebecca at VBUG head office

I will also be attending the MSDN roadshow at the Motorcycle Museum on the Tuesday Evening, so drop by, meet, Rebecca and Me and come and have a chat.

ASP.NET 2.0 Extranet LIVE

Fri, 20 May 2005 16:14:52 GMT

On Monday this week we finally put our extranet live, so whats special about that then? Well its written in ASP.NET 2.0 beta 2, which makes it one of the first commercial sites in the world. We needed a special go-live licence from Microsoft to deploy beta software on a production machine, but boy was it worth it.

Our management wanted to redesign the extranet, and i convinced them ASP.NET 2.0 was the right way to go, most of the development was done in beta 1, which really is a testiment to the ASP.NET team for doing such a quality job.

Features such as the provider model and master pages saved days of development time, even though we had to build our own, we could still use many of the 60 new controls, which make common web sites tasks a simple drag and drop affair. We implemented personalisation using web parts, functionality we could not even have considered on previous versions and elected to pre-compile the site for optimum performance.

The site is performing fantastically, the only bugs are down to me the humble developer, we done ASP.NET team, well done Microsoft.

Thanks to Ray Woolcock who worked on this with me and Sharon Taylor who toiled over my content management system to get all the content together.

Anyone thinking of building a web site NOW should seriously consider beta 2 of asp.net 2.0 as it will save you an incredible amount of development time and leave you drooling over its features.

Costall Spotting

Fri, 20 May 2005 16:04:31 GMT

looking through my web site stats, which incidentally reported 21,000 page views (and 2393 unique sessions) in April. I came across a referrer which led me to Jason Zander Microsoft blog which focused on the devlab. read it here. Also Nigel Parker linked to me on the subject of Refactoring

Microsoft Buddy Program

Wed, 18 May 2005 14:49:27 GMT

The microsoft buddy programme has just released its May newsletter, which contains a quote which i sent to them...

"My current [buddy] works on the ASP.NET team and has provided an invaluable amount of support/feedback. Thank you Buddy Programme, Thank you Microsoft. I feel like part of the family J "

The buddy program has been invaluable to me whilst i was working on an extranet in ASP.NET 2.0, resources were scarce, and my buddy was a tremendous asset in helping me get through the 'extreme' world of Beta development. The extranet is now running live. If you are an ISV then sign up for your buddy now, who knows, you might even get Bill himself.

What is the Microsoft ISV Buddy Program?

The Microsoft ISV Buddy Program is all about connecting you, the Independent Software Vendor, with a Microsoft employee who will be your point person within Microsoft. It's about putting a face to Microsoft and helping you get timely answers to your questions and requests. Through this 1-on-1 relationship, your Microsoft buddy will be able to guide you to resources and help you succeed in building solutions on Microsoft platforms.

ASP.NET Provider Toolkit

Wed, 18 May 2005 13:44:13 GMT

I've just heard Microsoft are going to do a Provider Toolkit for asp.net 2.0, this is a great addition and will make rolling your own providers a lot easier, it also seems to be the case that the source for the SQL[insert type of provider here]Provider (and others) will be made available. Excellent news. A quick look on the web reveals who is doing it ..

good luck, you are going to help a lot of developers..

Vb.net Coving or c# Coving?

Sat, 14 May 2005 16:29:39 GMT

So there i am in the DIY (hardware) store, tasked with the project of putting up coving in our kitchen.. now theres 2 lots of coving to choose from

1) Polystyrene, paper covered Coving:

very light
can also buy internal and external corners - instead of having to make them
quicker to put up.

(this is - vb.net coving - RAD Coving, good prebuilt components eg (my keyword))

2) Plasterboard Coving:

Traditional
Heavier - harder to work with
Have to make all corners
Used by the industry

(this is C# coving - used by the purists (trade) - who wouldn't touch the other stuff, less productive until really proficcient)

I buy the vb.net coving, get it all up in a couple of hours, and once its painted no-one will know the difference.

Which would you choose?

IndiGO GO GO !!

Sat, 14 May 2005 16:20:29 GMT

I'm sure you recall a previous blog on Indigos 'alleged' lack of dataset support, well i had an email today from our Indigo Instructor.. who said...

Indigo serializes System.Data.DataSet objects using the new XmlFormatter without complaint, not only when using the XmlFormatter directly, but also when using it indirectly, in transmitting from a client to a service whether the DataSets were configured and populated manually, or filled by a data adapter irrespective of the binding

The XML that is generated conforms to schemas of Microsoft’s.

Craig McMurtry
Technical Evangelist
Connected Systems

PHEW what a relief...

Day 2 - Philosophical OR Practical

Tue, 10 May 2005 04:11:45 GMT

Today i asked the question, "Will Indigo support the serialisation of datasets out of the box?"

Andy turned to me and said : "Shall we leave now". Could it be true, the new XMLFORMATTER does not serialise a dataset?

Surely the answer is wrong or i am missing the point, ok i agree about the philiosophical tenets of indigo, but hey, we have practical requirements today (and tomorrow), we have requirements for Datasets, to be transformed, to be sent to third party reporting tools and to be consumed.

Our current architecture for our smart client uese either web services or local call, we even looked at remoting (for about 15 seconds). All this is configuarable through a app.config file and Indigo looked like an ideal solution as we control both ends of the communication stick.

I feel a bit disillusioned now, hopefully this will be resolved, but currently my view is if the silver bullet of Indigo is just a normal bullet with silver paper on it, then its not going to kill those vampires i expected....

If you put this aside, its a very powerful solution covering all the areas of 'scaryness' over choices between the Transaction world of Enterprise Services, the Resiliance and Guaranteed Delivery of MSMQ, the Interopability and simplicity of Web Services and the performance of Remoting

At the end of the day we went back to the hotel, and then watched Chelsea outplay Manchester United 3-1 to take many premiership records.

Please can someone out there confirm or deny my dataset phobia.. Chrisitian Weyer made a posting on the same lines

Indigo Bullet - Day 1

Mon, 09 May 2005 03:49:58 GMT

Today was the start of a 3 day Indigo course, held at the Regus Training Centre, which is almost on the Microsoft campus in Reading. It meant an early start, Andy was asleep for most of the journey, but luckily i had my iPod mini and DotNetRocks shows for company.

Our trainer was Craig McMurtry, a Technical Evangelist on the Indigo team, who had come over from Redmond.

Indigo is starting to take a really good shape.. so what is it..

"A unified programming model and runtime environment for rapidly building secure, reliable software services with managed code.”
From the Developer/Architect point of view, Indigo solves the problem of which communication technology you should use, Remoting versus Enterprise Services versus ASMX Web Services versus MSMQ, each have their own merits and drawbacks. Indigos aim is to abstract the technology away from the implementation - excellent news for the developer.

Indigo can seem very confusing, and Microsoft must be aware of this as they came up with a nice A,B,C of Indigo.

A - Address - The Where or the service you will be talking to.
B - Binding - The How of how you will be talking HTTP,TCP,MSMQ etc
C - Contract - The What or the messages/contract you will be using.

This becomes more useful when you realise, the developer only really plays a part in the 'C' or contract, the other 2 areas can be configured purely using Web.Config or App.Config.Exe.

We did a hands on lab, then broke for lunch, which was ok, although there didn't seem much of it, which might have been for the best.

In the afternoon we endured a marathon 3 hour session, i really struggled to start focussed towards the end, having been up since 6am, although the midlands VBUG meeting on Indigo in April with Benjamin Mitchell had served as an excellent primer.

Can indigo Serialise types other than values types, e.g. a DataSet ? - someone asked.

Craig is going to get back to us on that one, although a communication model which doesn't support the primary data access object of the .NET framework (which is supported by web services) is a dead duck. (i can't see how Indigo couldn't support it, i am sure i heard the XML formatter with Indigo is far superior to the existing XMLFormatter)

We headed off to the fantastic Thamesmead house hotel in Henley on Thames to check in. Then shot back off to Reading, where we had an excellent dinner at the Bel and the Dragon, along with Mark Haas (1st Softwares PSFD Contact), Benjamin Mitchell (MVP,Regional Director and SOA Guru), Mike Taulty from the Reading DPE team,and Dave Gristwood (Poor mans Don Box)

Then it was back to our hotel to prepare for another Indigo day, oh and why have bullet in the heading, "Is Indigo the Silver Bullet" - lets see in a couple of days, now about those datasets...

Microsoft Partner Newsletter

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:42:17 GMT

I just received a Microsoft Certified Partner Email Newsletter, containing lots of useful information. The Tips and Tricks, with the Windows Shortcut keys, stood out for me, I use Windows + E a lot for Windows Explorer, but how many of you know about all of these?

Maximising the Windows key
Use the Windows key for more than locking your screen	Windows Key + L
Display or hide the Start menu	Windows Key
Cycle through buttons on the taskbar	Windows Key + Tab
Display Find: All Files	Windows Key + F
Display Find: Computer	Control + Windows Key +F or F3
Display Help	Windows Key + F1
Display the Run command	Windows Key + R
Display the Start menu	Windows Key
Display the System Properties dialog box	Windows Key + Break
Display Windows Explorer	Windows Key + E
Lock screen	Windows Key + L
Minimise or restore all windows	Windows Key + D
Undo minimise all windows	Shift + Windows Key + M

Refactoring.. if only...

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 02:46:52 GMT

Refactoring was the biggest omission of VS2005 for VB.NET developers, If only it had.

Reorder Parameters

Extract Method

Extract Property

Create Overload

Surrounds With

Encapsulate field

Reverse Conditional

Simplify expression

Introduce Local

Introduce constant

Inline Temp

Replace Temp with Query

Split Temporary Variable

Move initialization to declaration

Split initialization from declaration

Move declaration near reference

WOW.... it does, with help from Developer Express get the download here...http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/refactor/ . There is also a 3 minute overview. Thank you Microsoft

VB Data Team Chat

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:42:33 GMT

Tonight (Tuesday) was the VB - Data Access Team Chat, strange that Bill Vaughn, and Peter Blackburn are not in as experts, included is some of the pre match banter

Ed_H_MS (Moderator): Geeze - haven't even started and had to ban somone!
richy_roo: Banned - what Bill Vaughn :-)
Ed_H_MS (Moderator): Nah, I'd never ban Bill - he has my phone number! ;-)
dhnriverside: hahaha
richy_roo: it may be a fake Bill :-)
Ed_H_MS (Moderator): richy - we'll see, it will be easy to tell
Bill_Vaughn: It's been a long time... and no it's the real deal.
Bill_Vaughn asked the experts: Question: Okay, is this NDA or not?
richy_roo: Bill - if it is are you pooched?
Bill_Vaughn: Don't get me started...
Bill_Vaughn: I'm in a foul mood. I'm having windows installed here at the house and they are not doing it right

Q: ADO.NET 2.0 seems to have been eclipsed by all the other awesome stuff in 2005, what are the experts top ADO.net 2.0 Features?
A: Some of my favorite features are the new designers built on top of ADO.Net. The typed TableAdapters which allow you to group similar queries and execute with typed method calls rather than having to manually access the parameters collection. Drag and drop UI creation from the DataSources window is also really high on my list because of how easy it makes it to quickly generate a working form with controls bound to your data.

A: For those that are interested in some changes between B1 and B2, please check out our team blog @ http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/category/4754.aspx

https://blogs.msdn.com/dataaccess/archive/2005/04/19/409661.aspx

A: From the design time perspective, things are built around TableAdapters which are basically just typed DataAdapters. We've also introduced a new DataSet designer to help create TableAdapters and focus on the DataSet specific properties. Once you have defined a TableAdapter and a DataTable, its easy to quickly generate UI based on the schema of your DataTable by doing drag and drop from the new DataSources Window. In addition to binding to DataSets, you can also bind to any object in your project through the same UI.

Q: Whats the Teams view on strongly typed datasets versus custom entities passed between tiers? - which and when?
A: Check this out http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/BOAGag.asp

Q: I had a dataset and wanted to sort table[0] by a column of choice, and still expose the dataset as xml Still sorted, i could find an easy way - what is the easiest way?
A: It's been a while since I tried to do this but I believe you can set DataTable.DefaultView.Sort to the name of your column of choice.
Q: thanks, but the dataset stays in the original sequence - so writexml isnt resorted
A: Richy, In ADO.NET 2.0, you can sort the data using a DataView and then create a DataTable based on that view. I just verified this behavior in a simple console app using MyView.ToTable().WriteXml(Console.Out).

With Bill and Pete it was difficult to get a word in edgeways, add in the fact the chat tool decided 'as' was an abusive word, mixed up to make a very interesting chat

TechED 2005 - Sold Out

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 03:14:50 GMT

The day that the early discount ends, Microsoft TechEd site reports its SOLD OUT.

Wow that is amazing, looks like its going to be me watching the streams this year.

Designer Chat

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 16:57:27 GMT

Last night i took part in a designer chat. Here are my questions with answers...

Q: can you outline the scope of this chat - thanks
A: This chat covers how to provide enhanced Visual Studio support for your own classes and controls.

A: This chat is about Building the Design Time for your controls.. The video is posted here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/programming/classlibraries/

Q: we had problems with visual inheritance in vs2003, with the designer 'shrinking our controls' - has 2005 got an improved VI model?
A: Weve tried to do a lot better with Visual Inheritance in 2005, but I can't say we've gotten things perfect. There are some scenarios for Visual Inheritance where we simply don't have enough data in the designer to make the right choices. For VS 2005, we've tried to prevent you from getting into situations where we can't make the right decisions. For your specific case, shrinking controls was commonly caused by your base form being designed at one screen resolution while your derived form was designed at another. We did fix a lot of issues here, including implementing an entirely new form scaling algorithm.

Q: can you outline the design time support changes in 2005 over 2003? - i assume you can use drag lines and smart tags?
A: There are a lot of changes included in 2005 for design time. Here are just a few: smart tags, snap lines, modular persistence, and designer hosting. As a control vendor you have a lot of control over all of these, and the hosting part is useful because it gives your control reach outside of Visual Studio.

Q: "and the hosting part is useful because it gives your control reach outside of Visual Studio" - can you explain further?
A: Yes. Hosting allows the Windows Forms designer to be hosted very easily in other applications. If you write controls that have a good experience in Visual Studio you can reuse that work in applications that want a designer. We did some of this in VS 2002. In VS 2002 you could host the Windows Forms property window and all the editors and custom goop you wrote for your custom data types worked both in VS as well as your own applications that used the property window. With VS 2005 we've done the same thing with the whole designer.

Q Is the a sample/article on this designer hosting anywhere?
A: Not yet. However, we have some very bright folks here on our documetation team who have covered it pretty well, I think. I mocked up a really simple sample in an earlier post. This code will get you a simple designer up and running:
DesignSurface ds = new DesignSurface(typeof(Form));
Control c = (Control)ds.View;
c.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
Controls.Add(c)

Q: does the designer hosting mean i could write an app, which allows the user to go into a design mode and move controls around the form, then click a button and i save the positions?
A: Yes. Designer hosting does not directly support a top level form just swapping into design mode because it relies on an outer window surrounding the form. But you could make it so you click on an Edit button and get a modal window where you could move controls around. Close the model window and you could update your underlying form. We provide the designer for doing this, but you would need to provide the mechansim for telling the designer the "shape" of your form and saving these changes back to the form. That would be easy if Winforms used XML...but it doesn't.

Q: is there sample/msdn article on implementing a feature such as a 'grab handle'?
A: I do not believe there is. Implementing grab handles are actually quite tricky in Win32 because windows doesn't have good support for transparency. You don't want each grab handle to be a window because it would be too expensive, so what you want to do is design a transparent layer to sit over the top of everything. In VS 2002 and 2003 we used a Windows Form control and used the "Region" property to define a complex region that cut out the shape of all the grab handles. This worked, but it didn't allow the grab handles be transparent but still hit-test. For VS 2005 we are using a Windows Forms control with a window style of WS_EX_TRANSPARENT. This works, but there is a lot of stuff you need to do in the WndProc.

VB Language Chat

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 16:57:35 GMT

Just finished... here are my questions and the answers..

Q: I dont want to start on a downer, but many vb devs are concerned low end functionality eg MY, default instance, code snippets target the 'hobbiest', while senior devs lose out on refactoring - whats ur message to the senior vb devs out here?
A: I think that an easy tool is an easy tool. If we make a tool that's easy to grasp, easy to navigate, easy to program in it will be attractive to both junior and senior developers as long as the introduction of those easy features don't get in the way of additional power and rigidity. Giving users the authority to determine which features they want to use is our ultimate goal. And we hope that will scale from the novice to the advanced, enterprise developer. However, your feedback on how well we tread that line is always welcome, appreciated, and considered.

Q: Thanks - I'm a senior developer and love vb.net, (i run a user group in the uk), what do i need to do to ensure vb.net continues to please me as a senior developer in the future of the language?
A: Hi Richy -- I'm glad to hear you love our product!! I think the best way to ensure that VB remains a viable tool for senior developers is to tell us what you need from a tool in writing your applications. What are the most common kinds of applications you write? Where is a majority of your time spent? What are your daily frustrations with the current (and beta) product?

(not mine)
Q: will refactoring in VB be released as a "add-on" etc? why was such important functionality considered essential for c# but not for vb.net?

A: Refactoring is a set of features that enable users to quickly and easily change the code in their application to improve encapsulation, code re-use, readibilty, etc. etc. Each of these improvements are obviously attractive to VB developers. We are keenly aware of the feedback we've received from the community telling us that this is a hole in the current beta product. That's about all I can say right now. ;-)

Q: Have any of the team started looking into the Orcas release yet and how excited are you about the future....
A: Most of the team remains focused on shipping Beta2 and getting VB 2005 out the door as soon as possible. However, some of us have been lucky enough to get some time to start thinking ahead and we've got some very exciting ideas about the future that we're hoping will be very interesting! (Unfortunately, none of them are remotely solid enough to really talk about...)

A: I think Whidbey is the best version of VB yet. We've done a ton to improve data design time through new data binding features, deployment through click-once, forms layout with new controls like toolstrips, make it easier to accomplish the most common tasks using the Fx with My, and to improve the code editing and debugging experiences through snippets, debugger type proxies etc. And of course all of the language features! I hope and expect you to love Whidbey. That being said, I can't even tell you how excited I am to be working on this team right now.

Q: i've heard the MY keyword is extensible - where can i find samples?
A: There should be an MSDN article coming out around the time that the Beta ships

Q: Has visual inheritance changed in vs2005 - we had tremendous problems with the designer 'moving our controls' and had to abandon it..
A: It would be great if you could provide us with specific examples of the problems you encountered.

A: Thanks for the feedback. I'm not aware of this particular issue (it's not my area of expertise.) But I'll pass it along to members of the team who are focused on this feature.

Q: Does Microsoft have a strategy to get more vb applications/developers up to vb.net - it seems a shame with the c# versus vb.net war and now the 'petition' causing the infighting...?
A: Yes, for example, we've opened the VB6.0 resource center (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/), and one of it's purposes is to help people move up to VB.NET. We also have a number of programs in the works and already running to help people move. This is a very central concern for us.

Q: how does a passionate developer get to speak to the 'team' to help ensure vb.net moves in the correct direction?
A: Aren't you doing that now? I think the best way to get really involved in the planning process for VB .NET is to become an MVP. But that's hard work!

VBUG Meeting - Indigo

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 03:01:57 GMT

Last night Benjamin Mitchell did a great talk on Indigo at the VBUG Midlands meeting to 29 delegates. Demonstrating a CTP Release of Indigo on top of a CTP release of Visual Studio 2005 running on Virutal PC is throught with danger and it crumbled, Benjamin's knowledge saved the day and gave us a good insight on V.Next of inter application communication.

Many thanks to Benjamin for the talk, (he said the Coventry Flying Club was the best user-group venue he had been to so far!) INETA for the giveaways, and to the Coventry flying club for putting on hot food, Gone in 60 ~~Seconds~~ Sausages :- we had 60 sausages cooked, which went in 60 seconds, the maths says 2 each, but that certainly wasnt the case. Anyone know where they went?

All in all a good night...

beta 2, beta 2, beta 2

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 07:12:21 GMT

Looks like the beta 2 release date for Visual Studio 2005 is all set for the 25th April... hoorah..