You can now use the Amazon Look Inside feature to view many parts my book that is going to be released June 22, 2009.  So if you are interested use the links below to go to different parts of the book or search for specific things.

• Front Cover
• Table of Contents
• First Pages
• Index
• Back Cover
• Surprise Me!
• Search Inside This Book:

Tags: Book

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I have always been driven by the idea that computers and to the greater extent the internet should be as transparent as possible to the users.  People shouldn’t care about what the hot new websites are to meet people with similar interests.  In fact I think this is most of the problem why people are becoming more and more disconnected from each other on a personal level.  And more and more disconnected from the human experience, of social interaction.  There is so much communication that is lost when you cannot see a person face to face, and experience things in the same environment that they do.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could find and meet new local people with similar interests, hobbies, and ambitions, whatever they maybe.  The Internet currently excels at all of this even getting people physically together to meet.

However, this requires a lot of active participation of the person searching and trying to find the right website where everybody of a particular interest meets, and then you need to find somebody locally who is willing to meet up for dinner or a gathering of some kind.  This is a lot of work to find people who are interested in the same stuff as you are.  And it is no wonder so many people just give up.  Now imagine that barrier is removed and finding people with similar interests, hobbies, and ambitions is a passive activity.  Where you are automatically alerted to a new person or group in your area that shares your interests, sort of like Google Alerts for real life.

I would really like to start working on this problem with a small group of developers and people that share a similiar passion to physically connect people in a meaningful way with other people that share their interests.

Tags: Google Alerts, Real Life

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The Managed Fusion URL Rewriter, that I work on and that runs this blog, was featured in PDC 2008 by CJ Saretto (Senior Program Manager for Microsoft Home Server). He used it as a reverse proxy to demonstrate streaming video and music from Windows Home Server to the internet from a simulated internal home network.

I have cut down the actual video presentation to the segment that mentioned the Managed Fusion URL Rewriter. If you want to skip to the good parts in this segmented video, I recommend:

• 2:20 - Managed Fusion URL Rewriter is first mentioned
• 7:00 - An impressive video demonstration streaming through the rewriter

Clips comes from about 18:00 minutes in to http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/ES12/

If you are actually wondering why I am bringing this up now, and not 6 months ago when PDC 2008 was going on… Well it is because I just found out about it at the end of last month, 5 months after the fact. And to be totally honest the video presentation blew me away, because that is some serious bandwidth to show a video of that high of a quality. Especially because the ProxyHandler.cs code was suppose to handle at most small images and HTML being served from a remote server.

Tags: Managed Fusion, Managed Fusion URL Rewriter and Reverse Proxy, PDC, PDC 2008

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Here is my presentation from Code Camp 2009.1:

You can download the software seen in this presentation at:

• Microsoft Visual Studio Express
  
  http://www.microsoft.com/express/download
• Microsoft SQL Server Express w/ Tools
  
  http://www.microsoft.com/express/sql/download

And Sara Ford’s best selling book on the subject, appropriately called Microsoft Visual Studio Tips.

And because she is such an awesome person all the royalties from the book are going to a scholarship fund to help pay for the the costs of sending Hurricane Katrina survivors to college. So if you are interested go pick up a copy.

Top 3 of my favorite tips from Sara Ford:

1. Did you know… You can create toolbar buttons to quickly toggle your favorite VS Settings? – #372
2. Did you know… how not to accidentally copy a blank line? - #050
3. Did you know… How to optimize Visual Studio for multi-monitors? - #381

Tags: Code Camp, Code Camp 2009.1, philly.net, Public Speaking

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In this economy you have to do everything to keep your skills fresh and current so that employers find you a desirable hire.  I really though the tips provided in 8 Ways to Recession-Proof Your Programming Career where spot on when this article came out last year.  And now that the TechRepublic has released 10 kills developers will need in the next 5 years.  I have decided to give you some of my favorite Wrox books that align very well to this TechRepublic article.

Learn C#

Learn ASP.NET

Learn ASP.NET MVC

didn’t think I would leave my book out, did you?

Learn Java

Learn PHP

Learn RIA & Web 2.0

I beleive all these books are a nessisty in helping you improve your career.  You don’t have to understand or know all of this technology, but you should at least have one of these books on your shelf.

Tags: programming skills, recession proof

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I saw this code over on Ayende’s website. I see at least 4 things wrong with this code, which was found here.

public object DeepCopy (object value)
{
    try {
        return value;
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        throw ex;
    }
}

See if you can find them all.

Tags: Bad Code

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I have decided to add a new, super secret, feature to Coder Journal. This new feature is still in beta testing, but like any Agile development process, I need consistent feedback to let me know how I am doing. So let me know what you think.

Click Here To View New Feature

Tags: April Fools

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As I announced yesterday I will be speaking at the Philly Code Camp 2009.1 on Visual Studio 2008 for beginners.  As part of this presentation I want to be able to provide the 10 most valuable tips for beginners using Visual Studio.

I did a quick search of the internet last night, on this subject, and everything seemed to point to Sara Ford as the defacto standard on Visual Studio tips.  She even has a best selling book on the subject, appropriately called Microsoft Visual Studio Tips.

And because she is such an awesome person all the royalties from the book are going to a scholarship fund to help pay for the the costs of sending Hurricane Katrina survivors to college. So if you are interested go pick up a copy.

The problem is that she has 251 tips in the book, and 382 tips on her website and I need to widdle this down to the top 10.

Here are my top 3, so far:

1. Did you know… You can create toolbar buttons to quickly toggle your favorite VS Settings? – #372
2. Did you know… how not to accidentally copy a blank line? - #050
3. Did you know… How to optimize Visual Studio for multi-monitors? - #381

What are yours? If you have a favorite please include it in the comments below with a link (if possible).

Tags: Code Camp, philly.net, Public Speaking, Visual Studio

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I will be doing a presentation on Programming in Visual Studio in the Beginners track, which will start at 10:00 AM.  I expect to see you all there.  Also if you have any tips on what you find to be a useful feature in Visual Studio for new developers please leave it in the comments below.

I have included the announcement below in case anybody is going to be in the Philly area on April 18th and want to hang out with a bunch of .NET developers.

Code Camp 2009.1 Anouncement

Our first installment of the 2009 Code Camp series will be held at the DeVry University campus in Fort Washington, PA on Saturday, April 18 from 8:30-5:00. Please register on our web site. Detailed directions are on the DeVry web site or Get Directions from Microsoft Live.

• Lots of code, just say no to slides!
• 8 hours
• 60 sessions (8:30, 10:00, 12:30, 2:00, 3:30)
• 12 tracks including new hands-on Beginner series and the Bonus Track
• 500 seats with tables (laptops welcome)
• Free breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack (expanded menu!)
• Raffles and prizes at 5:00
• Easy parking

All of this is made possible by our Gold partners (HostMySite, Software Logic, RTTS), Silver partners (RedGate, Quest, RTTS, Oxford Computer Group) and our Platinum site sponsors (DeVry University, Microsoft).

Here is the tentative agenda, room assignments and times are subject to change. Check here and here for the latest printable agenda.

Update: My name hasn’t been updated on the speakers list.  But you are definitly going to see me their teaching beginners how to master the basics of Visual Studio.

Tags: Code Camp, philly.net, Public Speaking

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I was reading over on DevTopic today about how 100 Million Lines of Code is pretty common in cars today.  We have come a really long way since 1977 when the first micro-chip was introduced in to the Oldsmobile Toronado, but what I really want to share with you guys is what I found at the end of the post.  I laughed out loud, when I read this because believe it or not this is starting to happen in cars and it has nothing to do with Microsoft.  Just the ever growing source code base that runs modern cars, and the ever growing chance for one of those lines to have a bug it in.

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive — but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single “This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation” warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask “Are you sure?” before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.

Believe it or not #1 from above is happening to a friend of mine on his 5 Series BMW.  And well we are all accepting #10 as a great feature on new cars.  In fact my new 2009 Acura TL, that I just bought, has a button like the one pictured below.

Isn’t it ironic how we laughed at these 10 statments a number of years ago?

Tags: Acura TL, General Motors, Microsoft

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