Microsoft Bloggers, the Movie
Feb 26, 2007
Update: Added Mike Swanson as Matthew Perry based on Brian Keller’s suggestion Update #2: Added Wes Hutchins as Peyton Manning now that I got a picture of Wes Update #3: Added Chris Flores as Ralph Macchio based on John Hipsher’s suggestion Update #4: Added area of focus for each Microsoft person Update #5: Added Raymond Chen as Masi Oka based on Sriram Krishnan’s suggestion and Ian Knox as Paul Bettany based on Lindsay Berg and Elise Peterson’s suggestion I saw this hilarious comparison by Josh Hallet on casting “Blog” the Movie and in the spirit of playfulness, I brought in two consultants, Ed and Brian, to chime in on who would star in a “Microsoft Movie.…more
Developer DJs - Is the Participation Era going to hit the dance floor next?
Feb 26, 2007
No, this isn’t about coding for live, but rather a relatively new movement called Live coding where DJs both mix and code during a live performance. As regular blog readers know, I’m a fan of Developer DJ’s like DJ Bolivia who has some great mixes for when you’re coding. There’s even a concurrent programming language, ChucK, for real-time audio synthesis. **Live Media Stream Editing **I’d love to see this taken to the next level where a DJ could easily edit/manipulate a live video stream of interesting images and video, say using XAML in real-time and have the UI actually change and react to the current tempo/bass of the music.…more
Club Site Starter Kit Project is recruiting
Feb 21, 2007
Zack Owens is looking for volunteers to assist with a new open source CodePlex project that builds onthe existing Club Site Starter Kit. Some of the features he’s looking to add include: Bug Fixes Forums FCK Editor Web Administration Poll Control RSS AJAX Themes Searching CMS-like text editing News page formatted for printing Selectable monthly, weekly, or daily calendar views Calendar pages formatted for printing ASPNETDB.mdf into the main DB Blogs The project is hosted on CodePlex at http://codeplex.…more
Coding4Fun Pushing the .NET Envelope
Feb 21, 2007
Coding4Fun is off the hook lately! Check out these great apps that are pushing the envelope in fun and cool ways Scott Hanselman’s Controlling a Microbric Viper Robot using Windows PowerShell Logo Yeah,PowerShell logo embedded into a Windows Form that can programatically control Robots. (Video demo) Video: Programming Unreal Tournament AI bots Andy Sterland, James Lissiak, and Tom Randell .NET Powered Unreal Tournament AI Bots To show off how easy it is to program Unreal Tournament bots, I created my own “bot” which searches for a player called Dan and kills him on-site.…more
That King Charles Spaniel (English Toy Spaniel) itching and scratching isn't allergies
Jan 30, 2007
*** Update March 6th (+1 month after surgery): **It’s been about a month and Bambino is doing amazingly well. The first couple of weeks were very shaky, but in the last week, we’ve seen him remarkably improve. He’s gained back his interest in playing with toys, he’s regained his energy running around the house and he even jumped on the couch for the first time since before the surgery. The difficulty here is that while he may have his energy back, we still need to watch him and keep him confined for at least another four weeks.…more
Update: Response to BlueJ Patent Issues
Jan 28, 2007
Update: fixed wrong hyperlink On Friday, an alert reader emailed me about a new article by Michael K_ö_lling, the creator of BlueJ, about a patent issued by Microsoft for features in Object Test Bench that are comparable to BlueJ’s Object Bench. I’ll post the full “anatomy of a firedrill” some time later, but for now we can officially say that the patent application was a mistake and one that should not have happened.…more
Windows Home Server for Hobbyist Developers
Jan 26, 2007
A couple of weeks ago at CES, Charlie Kindel and team launched the newest version of Windows, Windows Home Server (WHS), a product aimed at making it easy for anyone, including mom, to setup an automated way to backup her PCs and to share pictures, movies and more. If you haven’t heard of Windows Home Server, go check out the Channel9 video where Rory interviews Charlie Kindel or read Paul Thurott’s Windows Home Server Preview, which has the following final thoughts:…more
SQL Server Express - Pre-Built Database Designs and Publish To Hoster Wizard
Jan 26, 2007
SQL Server Express Starter Schemas The SQL Server Express team got Barry Williams from http://databaseanswers.org to publish 10 pre-built schemas for common database designs to help ease the pain of working with databases and for users to understand what real-world database schemas look like. This helps in that rather than you having to recreate the wheel, you can take and modify these designs and use them as a good start place.…more
Windows Developer Power Tools Book
Jan 26, 2007
Still catching up on old email, but I did want to post that Windows Developer Power Tools was published last Friday, congrats to Jim Holmes and James Avery on pulling together a great collection of tools (170+ and over 1,300 pages). I personally authored the Visual Studio Express Chapter so I guess I can consider myself a writer now, and frankly I’m in good company in the book with Rob Howard, Sara Ford, Adam Nathan, and many others contributing.…more
Should Coding4Fun be available through a blog only?
Jan 26, 2007
If you’re a Coding4Fun reader, please respond! Earlier this week, I asked our Coding4Fun authors what they thought about moving Coding4Fun to being fully blog-based a la Engadget, Make, etc. Many Coding4Fun readers don’t know this, but Coding4Fun actually uses http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/ as its back-end blog engine and the MSDN presence at http:///msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/ is really a “skin” if you will of that engine. Rather than having two sites, we’re considering on moving solely to http://blogs.…more