Frank La Vigne

Fear and Loathing in .NET

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Monday, January 05, 2009 #

Del.icio.us Links for 1/5/2009

posted @ 1:02 PM

The MSDN Developer Conference is Coming to DC!

The MSDN Developer Conference is coming to Washington DC January 16th.

The event is $99 and you get primo content from the PDC on Azure Services Platform, Windows 7, Silverlight, Surface, Parallel Programming, Live Mesh and more!

Some great speakers are lined up: Vishwas Lele, Andrew Duthie, Pete Brown and yours truly.

Here is the official agenda:

 

Time Table

Azure Services Platform for Cloud Computing

Client and Presentation

Tools, Languages and Framework

7:00-8:30

Registration and Breakfast

8:30-10:00

Keynote presented by Stephen Walther

10:00-10:15

Break

10:15-11:30

A Lap Around Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform
Vishwas Lele

ASP.NET and JQuery
David Hoerster

The Future of Managed Languages: C# and Visual Basic
Kevin Hazzard

11:30-12:30

lunch

12:30-1:45

Developing and Deploying Your First Azure Service
G. Andrew Duthie

Developing Data-Centric Applications Using the WPF DataGrid and Ribbon Controls
Frank La Vigne

A Lap Around "Oslo"
David Solivan

1:45-2:00

Break

2:00-3:15

A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services
Dani Diaz

Building Business-Focused Applications Using Silverlight 2
Pete Brown

A Lap Around VSTS 2010
Steve Andrews

3:15-3:30

Break

3:30-4:45

Developing Applications Using Microsoft SQL Data Services
Rob Keiser

ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap
Rachel Appel

An Introduction to Microsoft F#
Matthew Podwysocki


 

Hope to see you there!

 

 

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posted @ 12:08 AM

Sunday, January 04, 2009 #

Del.icio.us Links for 1/4/2009

 

posted @ 2:38 PM

Friday, January 02, 2009 #

Gamer Technology Law Conference

I just received an email regarding a two day conference on Gamer Technology Law.

For our fourth annual conference on Gamer Technology Law, program co-chairs Seth J. Steinberg, Esq., former General Counsel and Director of Business Affairs for LucasArts, and Russell G. Weiss, Esq., head of the Video Game Practice at Morrison & Foerster LLP, lead a stellar faculty of industry experts in a comprehensive examination of the legal and business aspects of financing, developing, marketing and publishing video games today.

Highlighting this conference will be a special address on the State of the Industry by Kenneth Doroshow, Esq., General Counsel of the Entertainment Software Association.

Sign up today, to hear from this outstanding group of industry leaders on March 9th and 10th, in Beverly Hills.

Video games are a big business and, accordingly, there's a lot of legality involved.

Looking at the topics list provides an interesting angle on an interesting and ever growing business.

 

posted @ 7:35 PM

Microsoft's Cloud Computing Tools

Have you been eager to play with Windows Azure for a while now, but weren't sure exactly where to start?

Fortunately, there's this page on MSDN: Getting Started with Microsoft Cloud Computing Tools.

The page has links to the team blog, useful bookmarks, and a list of software to download and install.

 

posted @ 6:11 PM

Del.icio.us Links for 1/2/2009

posted @ 11:42 AM

An Early Look at Windows 7 Performance

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet has run a series of tests on a beta build of Windows 7.

Keep in mind that pre-release software is usually more about stability than performance.

But, so far, the results are very encouraging with Windows 7 coming in first when compared to Vista and XP.

Once Windows 7 undergoes performance tweaking, who knows how much better the results will be.

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posted @ 11:37 AM

LINQ vs SQL Reference Table

LINQ is a great technology and has made me rethink the way I process data in code.

Although similar in many ways to SQL, LINQ's designers changed a few things in translation.

These changes, no matter how justified, still cause a little confusion.

Thankfully, Paul Litwin created this table comparing SQL keywords to LINQ keywords in C# and VB.

 

C# LINQ

VB LINQ

ANSI SQL

from

From

FROM

select

Select

SELECT

where

Where

WHERE

orderby

Order By

ORDER BY

join

Join

JOIN

group

Group By

GROUP BY

Distinct()

Distinct

DISTINCT

into

Into

INTO

let

Let

AS

Count(), Sum(),…

Aggregate

COUNT, SUM,… with no group

Skip()

Skip

n/a

SkipWhile()

Skip While

n/a

Take()

Take

n/a

TakeWhile()

Take While

n/a

 

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posted @ 11:22 AM

Thursday, January 01, 2009 #

Del.icio.us Links for 1/1/2009

posted @ 11:38 PM

Happy New Year!

2008 was a big year for me personally and professionally.

The biggest event of the year was the wedding: months of planning craziness and one day of fun.

 

In the middle of the wedding frenzy, we found this amazing house in need of some TLC for a bargain price.

 

It took several months of hard work, but we made this new house a home pretty quickly.

  

On the professional front, I was re-awarded the Microsoft Tablet PC MVP Award in April, appeared as a guest on geekSpeak, and got the ball on rolling on a Silverlight SIG at CapArea.NET.

I've also continued to work as a Membership Mentor for INETA in Maryland, DC and Delaware.

For 2009, I've got some big ideas and plans.

Stay tuned, as I'll be announcing them shortly.

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posted @ 9:02 PM

Tuesday, December 23, 2008 #

Del.icio.us Links for 12/23/2008

posted @ 4:19 PM

WPF Layout Panels Demonstration Video

In this screencast demonstration, Mark Berry shows how to layout a WPF application, covering all the layout panels that ship with WPF comparing and contrasting them.

A lot of this applies to Silverlight as well.

Video Downloads:
WMV | WMV (Zip) | Zune | iPod | PSP | MPEG-4 | 3GP

Audio Downloads:
AAC | WMA | MPEG-4 | MPEG-3 | MPEG-2

Sample Code:
C#

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posted @ 3:58 PM

Star Wars Holiday Special

Yes, the entire Star Wars Holiday Special is available online, from Princess Leia singing to the first appearance of Boba Fett, it's all here in its surreal 70s glory.

As an added bonus, it's downloadable so it can be saved for posterity and you won't have to sneak around like Weird Al did in the video to White & Nerdy.

 

posted @ 8:40 AM

Sunday, December 21, 2008 #

A Special Number of Posts

The number 2600 holds a special meaning to geeks.

It's a number that has a long and rich history.

I couldn't let the moment I hit 2600 posts on this blog go unmarked or uncommented.

2600th by you.

So, grab a bowl of cereal, curl up with a good book and play a retro game system to mark the occasion.