Beware: I mix tech and personal interests here.
items of general interest, probably to no-one but me.
MonoGame 3.6 now available! Pardon the interruption of the regular MonoGame blog series, but this is important. There’s a new version of MonoGame now available!! Grab MonoGame 3.6 here: http://www.monogame.net/201... There are a bunch of new features, and a small mountain of bugfixes and enhancements. Read the entire changelog here: https://github.com/MonoGame... ......
My Amazon Alexa Skills article in Code Magazine is out now, and it’s the cover article!!! Very exciting stuff. You can find it online, at: http://www.codemag.com/Arti... Or you can download the PDF of the entire issue, at: http://bit.ly/2kZXSrb You can also get a print subscription, at: https://www.codemag.com/Mag... ......
Looks like I'll be speaking again this year at the Syntax Code & Craft Conference, in Charleston, SC. Date: May 18 & 19Topic: What's New in C# 7C# 7 introduces a number of great features, including (but not limited to) pattern matching, tuples, and local functions. Additionally, several existing features have also been improved, along with overall performance.In this talk, we’ll demo the new and improved language features and look at ways to take advantage of the performance improvements ......
The next 6 months are going to be pretty fun (and by fun, I mean hectic.) In addition to a couple of interesting side projects (writing & video), I'm also going back on the speaker circuit. Fortunately, I'll be able to tie a few of these stops to some "vacation" destinations. 3/18: GSP Developers (Greenville, SC) 4/22: Enterprise Developers Guild (Charlotte, NC) 5/15: WNC.NET (Asheville, NC) 7/11: Codestock (Knoxville, TN) TENTATIVE 8/07: RV.NUG (Roanoke, VA) 8/28: DevLink (Chattanooga, TN) TENTATIVE ......
After a mostly great 6 years and 3 months, I'm leaving Magenic. My last day is officially 9/14/12.
I'm going to be taking a much needed break from consulting, to focus on parts of my life that have been, well... rather unfocused lately.
Not too long after the INETA Board elections (mentioned here) I was approached and offered a different role within INETA. Specifically, the role of Director of User Group Recruitment. The mission of this role is to identify and recruit non-traditional (i.e. specific technology focus, such as: XNA, Silverlight, BI, Sharepoint, etc) and newly formed traditional (.NET) user groups into INETA. After some discussion and consideration, I accepted the position and immediately began assembling a team to ......
Background: I have a Micro 3D Printer, which runs (usually headless) off an OctoPrint server, running on a Raspberry Pi 3. I moved a few months ago and the whole setup sat in a box until this weekend. I start setting everything up again. I'm not a Linux expert by any means, but this thing is relatively plug and play, when it works. Fire everything up... led lights come on, it’s running headless (no monitor or keyboard) but I think it’s booted ok. Off to a good start. The OctoPrint server presents ......
I occasionally get asked if we travel "a lot" at Magenic. Sometimes the question comes from job candidates. Other times it's clients, recruiters or friends. To give a simple yes or no answer would be a disservice to the person asking the question. So here is my standard answer:It depends.(That was the short version. Here's the long version...)We do have some guys that are more "national" in focus, and they can travel a fair amount. They also receive a little extra in compensation for doing so. It's ......
When I was at TechEd 2011 in Atlanta, I had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of the DevExpress folks and working out some of the details for a series of Windows Phone Development webinars. Here they are, for your viewing pleasure: #1 Introduction to WP7 Development with Silverlight and XNA - http://tv.devexpress.com/#W... #2 Deeper Dive Into XNA on Windows Phone - http://tv.devexpress.com/#W... The source (in C# and VB.NET) for the demos in this talk can be found in my book, or ......
A couple weeks ago I was watching Netflix on the Xbox 360 in my living room and every so often, it would have to take a moment and rebuffer and just generally spoil my television enjoyment. As I thought about this, and thought about how often I was having to cycle the power on my aging Linksys Wireless G router, I decided it might be time for an upgrade. This is no small undertaking, mind you. With 8 desktop/laptop computers, 1 Windows Home Server, 4 Xbox 360s, 2 Wiis, 1 mini cell tower, various ......
In 24 short days*, my (along with the awesome George W. Clingerman) first book will be released: Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4 (or as we like to call it, that damned 550 page monstrosity that nearly killed us) Weighing in at 552 pages and featuring a foreward by the legendary James Silva (Ska Studios, creator of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, I MAED A GAME W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, and more...) this book gives thorough ......
So, I've been kind of a slacker on the whole blogging front. I pretty much took 2010 off from blogging, not necessarily on purpose of course, but I was doing a lot of tweeting and I guess after condensing things down to 140 character bites, I didn't have much else to say here. Unsurprisingly, I've grown bored with Twitter. (I find the busier I am, the less interest I have in what everyone else is doing... go figure.) So, I need a good outlet to talk about the things I'm working on and what I've been ......
I'm sure most of you reading this have heard of, seen or actively used Stack Overflow. If you're like me, you probably thought to yourself... this would be such a great resource for other stuff... like games. Fortunately, that's exactly what www.SmarterGamer.com is. Quite literally, it's StackOverflow for gamers. It doesn't matter if you're into board games, video games, card games, minis games or those weird games you used to play with your older cousin when your mom wasn't home (ok, maybe not THOSE ......
After a lengthy break, the user group support kits from Microsoft have resumed. FedEx dropped off a big white box this morning, so if you are still awaiting yours... it should be there when you get home from work (or maybe in the next couple days.) User Group leaders didn't have the option of picking and choosing the contents for this cycle (or any future cycles, I would assume...) but don't fret, the contents are quite good. Assuming all the "Dev Group" kits are identical, this is what you can expect: ......
Since the new issue of Code Magazine is hitting the stands any day now, I'll go ahead and post my article on Give Camps from the previous issue. GiveCamps Chris Williams This month I’m going to take a brief departure and talk about the growing phenomenon in the developer community known as GiveCamps. If you’ve never heard of these, keep reading (you better keep reading either way, bub). What Exactly Is a GiveCamp? GiveCamps are the brainchild of Microsoft Central Region Developer Evangelist Chris ......
If you're in the NYC area, please consider donating to or participating in Devs For Wendy. (http://devsforwendy.com)
If you aren't in the NYC area, please consider donating anyway to this good cause.
Hello VB Folks, These sessions are designed to be a primer for getting started using various features in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. (Yes, some have already occurred... you can still watch them, just not live.) · Nov 3rd 10:00-11:00AM -Getting Started with IntelliTrace (formerly the “Historical Debugger”) by Habib Heydarian and Justin Marks · Nov 4th 10:00-11:00AM - Getting Started with SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010 by Boris Scholl · Nov 5th 9:00am-10:00am - A Lap ......
What's that, you say? You've never heard of Japanese Bug Fighting? The Bumfights of the Insect world? Imagine this... 30 ROUNDS (yes, that's right THIRTY ROUNDS) of 1 on 1 fights to the death... all building up to the FINAL BATTLE!! Check it out: http://www.japanesebugfight... If this isn't the coolest thing you've ever seen, well... then I want to see what is. I bet the PETA people just love this (and if they don't care... then I guess they're hypocrites... I dunno.) ......
I'm throwing this post out here for you folks to think about and provide me some input/feedback. I'm considering putting together another event: A Geek Cruise... Somewhere between Code Camp and Conference, on a big ship, with large fruity drinks and foreign port visits. Here's what I have so far: Duration: 3 days Location: Caribbean Depart From: Miami, FL (probably) Date: TBD (probably fall... these things take time to plan) Speakers: TBD (but I have a few volunteers so far) Cost: TBD (hopefully ......
In addition to learning WWF (that's Windows Workflow Foundation, Paul) I'm also reading a book given to me at the client, titled: eXtreme Project Management. I haven't read any PM books before, and I've only just started this one. The intent is for me to read, discuss and learn, so I figure why not open it up to a broader audience and see what you think too... 1) Have any of you read this book? It's by Doug DeCarlo, published in 2004. 2) If you have, what did you think? 3) Whether you have or not, ......
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