Frank La Vigne

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

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:02:00 GMT

Seven Deadly Sins For People Trying to Make Money Online - ShoeMoney®
Lean Manufacturing Blog, Kaizen Articles and Advice | Gemba Panta Rei
10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009
Police set to step up hacking of home PCs - Times Online
Scary
Madoff victims selling memorabilia on eBay - Yahoo! News
When life gives you lemons, sell the lemons on eBay
The NeoCube

The MSDN Developer Conference is Coming to DC!

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:08:00 GMT

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!

Technorati Tags: MDC,WashingtonDC,WPF

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

Frank La Vigne — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:38:00 GMT

Dapper: The Data Mapper
This looks interetesting tool for screen scraping and making mashups.
CodeThinked | Twitter - Techno-charity?
Interesting look at Twitter.
Your First Zune Application in XNA : Virtual Realm
Now that my Zune is working again, I want to create a game for it.
Internet Storm Center - Threat predictions for 2009 - Harry Waldron - Corporate and Home Security
Security predictions for 2009
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US | Energy Bulletin
More on the Russian prof's ideas
Russian Prof predicts the end of the US
Russian professor predicts the end of the US. I smell propaganda.
20 Weird Logos That Work (and Why They Do) - VECTORTUTS
Interesting and inspirational logos

Gamer Technology Law Conference

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:35:00 GMT

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.

Technorati Tags: Law,Technology Law,Conference,Games,Video Game Industry

Microsoft's Cloud Computing Tools

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:11:00 GMT

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.

Technorati Tags: Windows Azure,Cloud Computing,MSDN

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

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:42:00 GMT

An Early Look at Windows 7 Performance

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:37:00 GMT

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.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,ZDNet

LINQ vs SQL Reference Table

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:22:00 GMT

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

Technorati Tags: LINQ,Reference,Paul LItwin

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

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:38:00 GMT

Happy New Year!

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:02:00 GMT

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.

Technorati Tags: 2008,Happy New Year

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

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:19:00 GMT

WPF Layout Panels Demonstration Video

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:58:00 GMT

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#

Technorati Tags: WPF,Layout,Windows,Silverlight

Star Wars Holiday Special

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:40:00 GMT

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.

Technorati Tags: Star Wars,Holiday,Life Day,Surreal,Star Wars Holiday Special,70s

A Special Number of Posts

Frank La Vigne — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:09:00 GMT

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.

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

Technorati Tags: Blogging,Geek,Milestone

Del.icio.us Links for 12/21/2008

Frank La Vigne — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:56:00 GMT

Wii Controlled Robots Made for Combat
It was only a matter of time.
‘Hack Me Elmo’ for the holidays - Technotica- msnbc.com
So many ideas, so little time.
100 Websites With Outstanding Artistic Design | Webdesigner Depot
Inspiration
4 Constant Twitter Mistakes You Should Avoid

Errors Abound: Holiday Edition

Frank La Vigne — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:42:00 GMT

Inspired by the Daily WTF's Error'd posts, here is a little collection of funny things I've seen on the web. [All "Errors Abound" posts]

Perhaps, my XM Radio receiver read Robin's blog post on Holiday Eating Tips, when it told me what it believed in.

When the holiday season is over and we all make New Year's Resolutions to lose weight.

Here's an added incentive to exercise daily in case you needed one I saw at a local retailer.

I don't know what that means and I don't want to find out.

Either way, Trogdor may want to speak to a doctor.

Technorati Tags: Error'd,Humor,Funny,XM Radio,Trogdor

Parody DTV Transition Public Service Announcement

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:22:00 GMT

If you have non-technical relatives, either don't make any plans for February 17, 2009 or shut off your phone. And hide their scissors

Technorati Tags: DTV,Humor,DTV PSA,TV

Del.icio.us Links for 12/18/2008

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:46:00 GMT

'Magical' Gravity Wave Weapons No Threat, Panel Says | Danger Room from Wired.com
Science or Science Fiction.
- The Letters of the 12 Days of Christmas -
A classic from the olden days of the inter-tubes.
20+ Great Greasemonkey Scripts for Improving Your Twitter Experience
Leaks Found in Earth's Protective Magnetic Field | LiveScience
Should we start wearing tin foil sweaters and hats?
The 5 Stages of Twitter Acceptance
So true.
Chinese "poem" on the cover a scholarly journal is actually an ad for a brothel in Macau - Boing Boing
You'd think someone would double check this.

If Two Year Olds Wrote Traffic Reports

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:14:00 GMT

This rather succinct traffic report was on Richmond's official traffic site, long enough to make it into Chris Busse's Tweetstream and for me to get a screen shot of it so that we all can enjoy.

Hopefully, no one was hurt when the cars "went boom."

Technorati Tags: Richmond,RichmondVA,Funny,error'd

Del.icio.us Links for 12/17/2008

Frank La Vigne — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:05:00 GMT

Guide to Flowcharts xkcd Style

Frank La Vigne — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:02:00 GMT

Another gem from xkcd:

Technorati Tags: xkcd,Humor,Flowchart

Del.icio.us Links for 12/16/2008

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:04:00 GMT

Bury me with my cell phone - Computers- msnbc.com
While statistics on cell phone burials don’t exist, funeral professionals agree it’s a fairly common occurrence — at least among the tech-savvy and the young — and some believe we’re only seeing the tip of the wired-to-the-end trend.

New CTP of System XAML DLL Delayed

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:37:00 GMT

Rob Relyea blogs about the delay of System.XAML's preview release date.

From the post:

Our team was planning on releasing a CTP of System.Xaml.dll in November, but we had to reprioritize the CTP as we had several hot issues that we needed to address.
We’re still dealing with hot issues, and don’t want to predict the date that we’ll get around to it, as we don’t want to lead you astray twice. Minimally, we’ll be in the first beta of .NET 4.
We’re hard at work making this new XAML system a reality and integrated with WPF/WF/WCF…sorry for the delay.

and in the comments, Rob wrote this:

Baml2006Reader is a subclass of XamlReader (the new one in System.Xaml). Baml2006Reader is, like the BAML format, pretty WPF specific, although it can deal with non-WPF types, just not as optimially. Right now, we plan to make Baml2006Reader a public class that ships in PresentationFramework.dll.
Yes, you will still be able to use BAML for non-WPF scenarios...in fact you'll likely have some more flexibilities, since BamlReader and BamlWriter will be public, given current plans.

Hmm, a BAML reader/writer.

This could get interesting.

Technorati Tags: WPF,BAML,XAML,Rob Relyea

Errors Abound: Buffers Runneth Over

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:55:00 GMT

Inspired by the Daily WTF's Error'd posts, here is a little collection of funny things I've seen on the web. [Part 1]

I saw this at the local Sam's Club.

If the cash register's buffer is full, what does that mean for the economy?

Speaking of holiday shopping, take a close look at the labels on CDs you may be buying any kids/teens/tweens and make sure there's not Paremtal Advisories on them.

Paremts ought to have a say on what their childrem listen to.

I saw this on the Zune Marketplace, which is usually a source of frustration rather than humor.

Twitter has the Fail Whale, but LinkedIn went high budget and got a wizard.

Ignore the man behind the curtain and come back later.

Technorati Tags: Error,Humor,Zune,Error'd,Geek

Del.icio.us Links for 12/15/2008

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:11:00 GMT