Xperimentality

For anyone that attended my presentations at the Code Camp in Montgomery, as promised, I will get the slide stacks and the code samples out here on the blog in the next day or so!

My wife has been very patient over the past month or so with all the work I have been doing at home and late into the night.  So I promised that after Code Camp last Saturday I would rest my fingers and give her and my little princess of a daughter some attention!  Accordingly, I didn't even crack the computer for the rest of the weekend.

But now I thought I would say a couple of things about how this last code camp went.

On Friday night before the day of the code camp, as is customary, the speakers got together to chat prior to the event.  It was a good night.  Jeff Barnes and I carpooled together and after a fairly short drive down south we met the gang at the Montgomery Brewery and Pub.  The band they had was in costume (I think)!  If you were there, you know what I mean :)  We had some food and good company!  Doug Turnure joined us for this code camp for a couple of reasons.  First, Joe Healy had some pressing matters he had to attend to.  Second, Doug will be taking over as DE for our area in December.  So while our thoughts were with Joe, we welcomed Doug into the Wild and Crazy world of Alabama!

As far as the actual Code Camp, I think we have had our 3rd successful Code Camp.  We had some great speakers, some old, some new, but all entertaining and informative!  As I mentioned in a previous post, the inaugural run of the .NET University occurred at this Code Camp and went well.  I think the attendees got a great look at the four technologies headed their way in .NET 3.0!

The word on the street is that the guys down in Mobile at the Lower Alabama .NET User Group are getting reved up on the fourth code camp.  Looks like it might take place sometime around April or May of 2007!  I'm looking forward to that one.  I guess I need to sand-proof my laptop.  I wish those guys luck and look forward to seeing what they come up with.  I anticipate another great success story.  So as we say goodbye to another code camp, we look forward to the future (and the beach) with anticipation.  Maybe I should start working on my presentations NOW!

Tonight I attended the 3rd Annual AITA Leadership in Technology Awards.  The company I work for, Softech Development, was nominated for the Small Technology Company of the Year.  So I would just like to thank everyone in Softech for working so hard to help make Softech a consideration for this type of award!

On October 13, Doug Turnure announced the official opening of .NET University for business.  This afternoon Doug announced that the inaugural run of the .NET University will take place at the Alabama Code Camp in Montgomery, AL on October 28.

So here is how it is going to work.  If you are not registered yet for the Code Camp, do that first.  Click here to register for the third Alabama Code Camp.  Once you have done that, or if you were already registered, there is a separate registration for the .NET University.  Click here to register for .NET University at the Alabama Code Camp.  You do not have to register for .NET University to attend any of the sessions.  However if you do register and you attend each of the sessions that are a part of .NET University (there are four), you will receive a t-shirt and a "graduation" certificate!  If you want to see what the t-shirts and certificates look like, you can see them on the .NET University Alumni Page.  This is going to be great fun and some really good information.  I am proud to be presenting the WPF .NET University session and expect to see everyone there!

Don't worry if you can't make it to the Code Camp.  There will be plenty of other opportunities to attend a .NET University.

The mission of .NET University is to give a good technical overview of what is new in .NET 3.0 (formerly known as WinFX).  The .NET University consists of four sessions: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and Windows CardSpace.  These are the four new technologies introduced in .NET 3.0.  If you are trying to get up to speed on what is coming soon in .NET 3.0, this is definately the way to do it!

I have been working with a local chocolatier to put together her first web site.  We went live last night.  If you like chocolate, check her site out.  If you really like chocolate, give her a call.  She can put together any kind of package from an individual gift to a corporate gift package.  She has some cool stuff for the holidays too!  She can ship to anywhere.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a chocoholic!  And being a chocoholic, I can tell you, she has some great products!  He shop is really cool.  There is an area where you can actually stand and watch her make stuff in the kitchen.  She makes most of her chocolate products there on site, so what you get is always real fresh.
Well, now that my mouth is watering for some chocolate covered popcorn or some truffles or just about anything, I guess I better let you go check out her site for yourself!
http://www.cravechocolates.com

I have put out my first book review.  I have others I will move out soon.  I read the book a little while back.  The book covers a wide range of topics and thusly no topic in excrutiating detail.  As a result, the only real change you should have to make in the examples in the book are in the mappings.
Read the book review

There are so many things that I have been wanting to get to on my blog but it keeps getting put on the back burner.  I have some WPF examples and articles, book reviews, a new design that is about 50% complete, and on and on and on.  I finally decided to take a few minutes and go ahead and put one of the book reviews out that I have done.  So I have added a Book Review section to the blog.  I don't know about anyone else, but I like to see what others think about a book before I lay out the money for one (especially if you read a number of books a month).  I am going to try to do one book review per month.  Hopefully it will be helpful to someone!

I am a little behind on this.  Been out of town and have been trying to get caught up.  The Windows Live Writer team just release a build 141 with some good updates.  Then shortly thereafter released a build 146 to take into account some of the changes made to Blogger Beta.  I copied the list of changes below:

• Tagging support
• Support for Blogger Beta
• Categories are sorted by name and support scrolling, plus improved support for reading categories from your blog
• Improved startup performance
• Paste is enabled for Title region and TAB/SHIFT+TAB navigation between title and body supported
• Insert hyperlink added to context menu when text is selected
• Title attribute in Insert Link dialog
• Custom date support for Community Server
• Improved keyboard shortcuts for switching views
• Change spell-check shortcut key to F7
• Add ‘png’ to insert image dialog file type filter
• More robust image posting to Live Spaces
• Improved style detection for blogs 
• Fixed issues with pasting URLs and links
• Remember last window size and position when opening a new post
• Open post dialog retrieves more than 25 old posts

The startup performance is listed as having been improved.  This is really evident right away.  If you are currently using Live Writer, start it up.  Then download the latest build and start it up again.  Much better startup time!  If you are not currently using Live Writer, give it a try.

Well the registration for the third Alabama .NET Code Camp is now open!  Each Code Camp here in Alabama has been larger than the last.  This appears to be no exception!  This is shaping up to be the largest code camp yet in Alabama.

The 3rd Alabama .NET Code Camp will be held in Montgomery, Alabama at Auburn University Montgomery.  It will be on October 28th.  Registration will be from 7:00AM to 8:00AM.  We will kick things off with a keynote from the one and only Joe Healy (If you don't know Joe, you should!) and Bruce Thomas of Simplify.  Bruce was the lead organizer on this one and Bruce always does a great job so I know this is going to be a grade A Code Camp.

I have been on the planning committees for the Alabama Code Camps.  The committee is made up of a group of absolutely terrific and dedicated individuals.  I am proud to work with them!  As always we have some great speakers lined up and some terrific presentations.  We have presentations currently lined up on ASP.NET, Windows Mobile, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Vista and .NET 3.0, and lots more!  I will be doing some presentations on Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon).  And Jeff Barnes will be doing some presentations on Windows Communication Foundation (formerly Indigo).  Check out the list of sessions for more information.

I anticipate that it will fill up fast so get on out to the site and register today!  I will see you there!