Michael's Coding Den: General

Farewell to TechEd 2008, Sydney

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:59:36 GMT

Teched 2008 in Sydney finished. It were amazing 4 days of intensive sessions and parties afterwards. I attended mostly all SharePoint session about infrastructure, governance and architecture, BizTalk sessions and ASP.NET MVC and LINQ session. The overall impression is high. Not all session were as good as I expected, but SharePoint once where just awesome - Joel Oleson and Michael Noel are just great. Really impressed.

Got a lot of new info, which trying to sort now.

The locknote was run by MS “futuronist” architect, describing how nowadays communication changes our life. The resume is that - expose everything to “services” and “context based devices” are our future.

Can’t wait the Tech-Ed 2009 in Goldcoast and expecting to deliver my SharePoint presentations at TechEd 2009.

Mirror: Farewell to TechEd 2008, Sydney

Attending TechEd, Australia

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:38:34 GMT

Going to attend the following TechEd sessions

Mirror: Attending TechEd, Australia

2008 MVP Award

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:02:37 GMT

Hurray, got the 2008 MVP Award today! They re-awarded me again, since year 2005 in [.NET/C#] area for my achievements in “online consulting” ;)

But this year I’m Australian MVP!

Thinking about changing the area and become SharePoint MVP in the next year :)

8 random facts

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:55:51 GMT

Last 3 weeks were a bit tough, didn't have enough time to blog

I moved back to the Sydney from long client engagement at Canberra government, had 2 short-term engagement in Sydney and was tagged by Mitch Denny regarding 8 random facts.

So, it's my turn

I'm half Russian half Pole - my family roots start from Kraków (Poland), but I was born in Russia.
At high school I took the third place at the sport sniper competition over all regional schools
The first PC I ever seen were Commodore Amiga. I was so stunned and I understood that it's exactly what I wanna do all my life.
The first game I wrote were Sokoban, it were developed on basic with ZX-Spectrum. (somewhere between 1990-1992)
I have some problems with vestibular apparatus - it feel myself dizzy even in cab
I was an active FIDO user (NET5063:27.12)and used TMail + GoldED, also I run BBS with Quake game content
I took the 3rd place at the regional Quake-2 contest at year 2001
I was fired from one of my first jobs for failing the project deadline (8 years ago).

Mirror: 8 random facts

Protect your WiFi connections

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:32:05 GMT

Recently start using the "Hotspot Shield" tool to protect the WiFi connections in public hotspots, which are usually affected by sidejackings.

This tools provide the VPN connection between you and WiFi spot, protecting all your data.

I use this tool all time when use the public hotspots during breakfast or lunch

Twitter map

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:09:39 GMT

"Twitter Blocks" is a nice tool to build the map of your Twitter's neighbours

Mine looks so http://explore.twitter.com/blocks/#laflour

Mirror: Twitter map

Twitter clients

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:41:28 GMT

Today Mitch asked about the favourite Twitter clients.

I use the following 3 clients

Google Talk Twitter - just to update status. No list of users, no replies, no following, nothing.
Twadget (Vista SideBar widget) - my favourite one. List of users, easy to reply and update the status. Always on the screen. Only one disadvantage - can't scroll the list of statuses :( For this reason I use number 3
OutTwik - outlook twitter. Good support of status, replies, list of statuses with pictures. Keep to look through the history, because don't like to switch to different folder to read statuses.

Update: Twitting there http://twitter.com/laflour

Mirror: Twitter clients

.NET 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster Published

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:08:14 GMT

Using this poster we can easily inspect what new was added to .NET 3.5 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7b645f3a-6d22-4548-a0d8-c2a27e1917f8&displaylang=en&tm

The most interesting changes are:

in ASP.NET regarding authentication and roles

System.Web.ApplicationServices namespace provides classes that enable you to access ASP.NET forms authentication, roles, and profiles application services as Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services.
System.Web.ClientServices namespace provides classes that support access in Windows-based applications to the ASP.NET AJAX authentication, roles, and profiles services.

in WCF regarding P2P, new ServiceModels

System.Net.PeerToPeer namespace provides access to peer networking functionality.
System.ServiceModel.Web classes that make up the Web Http Programming Model.
System.ServiceModel.Syndication classes that make up the Syndication Object Model

in CLR

System.DateTimeOffset
System.TimeZoneInfo
System.AddIn
System.Diagnostics.Eventing
System.Diagnostics.PerformanceData
System.IO.Pipes

and etc.

MVP beer

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:02:44 GMT

Just found at local Australian shop beer for MVP guys :)

If you are not MVP - using this beer is strongly prohibited ;)

What's new in .NET 3.5

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:35:13 GMT

Except the well-known features like LINQ, Cider and etc .NET 3.5 has a lot of improvements in aspect of BCL, GC, CLR Sercurity, Extensibility

In this article author summarized the links to all .NET 3.5 innovations

PS: VS Orcas Specifications are there: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa948851.aspx

Start using the VS 2008 in the current project

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:19:52 GMT

Today is the first day when I start using VS 2008 "Orcas" in our existed project and I want to say that beta 2 really impressed me.

What I like the best is the "multi-targeting" feature, when you can use the power of new Orcas IDE, but be on the .NET 2.0 platform (our production servers are not ready for .NET 3.5, albeit testing are in the process)

I hope that in the next couple of weeks I wont find any significant issues, and the rest of my team will transfer on VS 2008 too.

The following posts helped me in this switching: 1, 2,

PS: I already want the wide-screen monitor :), because VS Orcas is aimed for this type of screens

PPS: The overview of what's new in Orcas is published in VS 2008 White pages and the list of features is there

".NET Tips & Trick" articles are hosted on the msmvps.org site

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:50:37 GMT

Recently I decided to publish my collection of ".NET Tips & Tricks" articles on the separate site to get your feedback.

This collection includes recommendations and suggestions in such areas as CLR, Threads, ASP.NET and etc.

I really appreciate your comments and ideas about what to add, what's wrong and what to improve.

You can find the articles there http://msmvps.com/blogs/laflour/pages/net-tips-amp-tricks.aspx

MVP Renomination

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:13:40 GMT

YESS!! I was re-nominated as Microsoft MVP for the second time.

First time was years 2005-2006, as Visual C# MVP.

This time the same category for the 2006-2007 years.

"city map" for Enterprise Architects

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:20:40 GMT

When you come to the enterprise architect role the most important part is to create the kind of "city plan" for the enterprise.

I found the following list is the minimum you need to create

List: business processes
List: business users
Table: cross-reference between p.1 (business users) to p.6 (business processes)
List: strategic information areas
Table: cross-reference of interactions between p.1 (business processes) and p.2 (information areas)
List: available application and services
Table: cross-reference between application and services
Table: cross-reference p4. (application and services) to p.3 (business processes and information areas)

For such reasons I've used the Visual Mind (http://www.visual-mind.com/) + RequistePro (for the relation matrix) but, I consider the Visio 2007 allows to do the same things

Google Reader - Shared RSS as a new blog

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:49:55 GMT

Just added a new feature "shared RSS item" to our "devkids.blogspot.com" team blog.

This is a Google Reader's feature which allows you to shared the most interesting items of your RSS and they will be available as the post of new blog. Cool, isn't it?

I've seen the number of bloggers who just posted the links to other resources in their blogs. Google Reader automates this process, now you can just share the post and it will appear in specific Google's blog.

I've add this features to the sidebar of our teamblog at http://devkids.blogspot.com with my shared RSS items.

The direct link to my shared items is: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/17877331264742925153/state/com.google/broadcast

"DevKids on blogspot" - new blogging with Alex Meleta

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:24:51 GMT

The new team blog "Dev-Kids" (with Alex Meleta ) has been created today on blogspot http://devkids.blogspot.com. Welcome!

You wanna know why?! Read this "Together over here".

PS: This doesn't concern my blog, nothing happens with it :). It's Alex idea to start the new blog, in lieu of his one at http://spaces.live.com/ameleta, because he doesn't like the idea that commenters need LiveID to post feedback. So, I decided to support and share the idea of "team" blog, coz time to time I got something I wanna share but it's out of bounds of my blog specific

PPS: "Team Blog" is really cool feature of blogspot. We really like it. Hope that Spaces will realize this some time :)

Which podcasts do I listen to? (from Greg)

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:42:05 GMT

Greg posted the list of Tech podcast. See it there.

PS: My favourite is the Dot Net Rocks and the Architect Casts - ARCast.net (which is not in the list)

The blogs which I read

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 21:51:18 GMT

My OPML file of blogs I read.

Microsoft MVP award in .NET/C#

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 18:11:12 GMT

Ta-da! Has been awarded as Microsoft MVP in .NET/C#.

Fabulous!

My profile is there: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=41E72F19-BE03-466A-A515-3EFABB98B130

Different behavior for stack and heap objects

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 10:01:39 GMT

Joe Duffy describes how to find out whether your object is in the stack or in the heap - everything you need is to use undocumented PTEB NtCurrentTeb() from WinNT.h

Besides he posted a sample of how to check for sufficient stack space.

Errors that drives me crazy

Mon, 15 May 2006 16:32:10 GMT

Missed [Test] attribute and redundand text wrap into XSLT template are phantom erros that really annoy me. Everything works fine, but everything is wrong, especially when you are performing code review.

Agrrr, hours were spent trying to find out these kind of errors. Don't we need to test this stuff or include it into smth like "error guideline"?!

CLI Source Code

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:21:23 GMT

Microsoft have published source codes of .NET CLI.

"...The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is the ECMA standard that describes the core of the .NET Framework world. The Shared Source CLI is a compressed archive of the source code to a working implementation of the ECMA CLI and the ECMA C# language specification..."

I found it cognitive, you can debug and see how CLI works inside.

What is it to be a Technical Evangelist

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:47:36 GMT

Jeff Sandquist (MS Tech Evangelist) is writing what is it to be a Tech Evangelist: http://www.jeffsandquist.com/PermaLink,guid,f58bbef8-5268-4eb3-b96b-6df232c82513.aspx

Specific responsibilities include:

Work with other evangelists, product teams, and product managers to identify and engage with partners and vendors
Manage vendor accounts according to evangelism goals, driving adoption of Microsoft technologies
Support deep engagement activities involving third party compiler vendors targeting the Microsoft managed code platform
Research and distill analysis regarding specific technologies and industries, and feedback from the developer community
Prototype and code with new platform technologies
Work closely with Microsoft product teams to understand, distill, analyze, and influence platform technologies and tools
Develop and execute on strategy around competitive developer tools and languages
Participate actively in the developer community through weblogs, newsletters, videos, and events

It's really interesting role, it's exactly who I'd like to be for the last 2 years, but unfortunately Russia is so far from this.

Searching the company offered Tech Evangelist role, please stand by........ ;)

PS: one more description of this role: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_art_of_evan.html

podcast-ING

Tue, 26 Jul 2005 06:42:05 GMT

Today I'd like to introduce my favourite list of podcasts. If u still aside to podcasting era - read this description in wikipedia and became the podcast adept

- http://music.podshow.com/#
- http://www.podcastawards.com/
- http://davesipaq.com/archive.php?c=22&type=n

There is the list of Windows Media Player podcasting plugins: http://msmvps.com/chrisl/archive/2005/07/11/57023.aspx

.NET interview question list

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:37:10 GMT

For those who is preparing to the .NET interviews I recommend these sites with questions:

Thoughts about PhD in Computer Science

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 18:54:29 GMT

One of these days one of my RSDN (www.rsdn.ru) friends made an attempt to join at University of Cincinnati to the PhD of Computer Science. It will be very nice if world is not changes - US is so worried about national security that person's validation in FBI takes 10th(!) week. And this period is out of I20 visa, no one will wait you for so long. We have a really dilemma. Obviously you need either to be a very lucky man, or to join to the previous semester to be in time on your real date :)

This event returned me to real life, and I started to reckon about taking second attempt to get PhD (previous one in 2003 failed due to changes in writing section)

Jule28 update: He got visa! Congratulations, dude. Let me join to u :)

Back to the .NET

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 11:08:40 GMT

Recently I was shifted to the .NET projects, back again. Now I'm .NET guy \m/, in that time it should be for keeps ;)

I hope I will utilize skills I got in "ALK" (www.alk.ru) and I didn't forget everything I know about it ;)