All posts by Craig Murphy

Podcasts

044 – Aaron Parker on Microsoft Application Virtualisation

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Second the in the Twelve Podcasts of Christmas 2008!

It was a hot summer day back in May 2008. As geeks, the sun wasn’t an attraction, we had other things to do. We had a Vista Squad user group meeting to attend! Aaron Parker was speaking about application virtualisation using Microsoft’s SoftGrid product (now known as Microsoft Application Virtualisation).

Podcast feed – subscribe here!

This podcast: http://www.craigmurphy.com/podcasts/044-Aaron-Parker.mp3

Resources
Aaron’s blog

The Twelve Podcasts of Christmas 2008
01 – Kyle Baley on ALT.NET and Brownfield Development in .NET
02 – Aaron Parker on Microsoft Application Virtualisation
03 – Caroline Bucklow from IT4Communities: charitable software development
04 – Eileen Brown on IT Professionals, TechNet, Women In Technology & Girl Geek Dinners
05 – Stephen Lamb on security, community, Linux and Twitter
06 – Cristiano Betta on Geek Dinners
07 – David Yack and Jonathan Carter on ALT.NET, MVC and Community
08 – Andrew Fryer on SQL Server 2008 and “upgrade”
09 – Viral Tarpara on Collaboration, SharePoint, Open Source (Port 25) and Community
10 – Guy Smith Ferrier on Internationali[s|z]ation, VS2008, .net 3.5, C# language features
11 – Matt Dunstan on event management, “engagement” and life as an Application Platform Manager
12 – Stephen Lamb on his new role in marketing / PR

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Podcasts

043 – Kyle Baley on ALT.NET after ALT.NET Beers II

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One of Twelve Podcasts of Christmas 2008!


Kyle Baley: follow Kyle on Twitter

Earlier this year I was priviledged to be able to record a short podcast with Kyle Baley. I’m not usually so slow at getting content such as this produced and published online. 2008 has been different, I’ve spent a lot of time in London and as such have enjoyed / endured the travel that goes with that. I’ve also endured my first dental work in many years, costly financially and in time too. All things told, everything mounts up and something has to give…finding time has been hard! FWIW, a 15 minute podcast like this one takes roughly an hour to produce.

Kyle is one of the many well-respected CodeBetter.com bloggers. Recorded live outside Italian Graffiti (their web-site does need a face lift, yes?) near Soho, London, just after ALT.NET Beers 2, organised by Sebastien Lambla. There is some traffic noise, please grin and bear it, one has to grab podcasts with superstars as and when they arise, rarely is there a quiet room to hide in!

Photos of the event can be found here.

Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham are working on a book, Brownfield Application Development in .NET, published by Manning. This podcast was recorded in June 2008, the dates given in this podcast were accurate at the time of recording! Please visit the Manning web-site for further release information.

Podcast feed – subscribe here!

This podcast: http://www.craigmurphy.com/podcasts/043-Kyle-Baley.mp3

Resources
Kyle’s blog (and on Twitter)
Kyle and Donald’s book
CodeBetter (and on Twitter)
Joel on Software

StructureMap
StructureMap is a Dependency Injection tool written in C# for .NET development. StructureMap is also a generic “Plugin” mechanism for flexible and extensible .NET applications.

Ninject
Stop writing monolithic applications that make you feel like you have to move mountains to make the simplest of changes. Ninject helps you use the technique of dependency injection to break your applications into loosely-coupled, highly-cohesive components, and then glue them back together in a flexible manner. Dependency Injection: The Manning book can be found here. Follow Nate Kohari, creator of Ninject, on Twitter.

LLBLGen
LLBLGen Pro, the #1 O/R mapper and data-access tier generator for .NET, generates a complete data-access tier and business façade/support tier for you (in C# or VB.NET), using an existing database schema set. In seconds. The generated .NET code is compiler-ready and can, being compiled by the .NET C# or VB.NET compiler, be used immediately by other applications.

Skillsmatter
Skills Matter supports the Agile and Open Source developer community, by organising free events, training courses, conferences and by publishing thousands of podcasts on ideas and technologies that drive innovation.

The Twelve Podcasts of Christmas 2008
01 – Kyle Baley on ALT.NET and Brownfield Development in .NET
02 – Aaron Parker on Microsoft Application Virtualisation
03 – Caroline Bucklow from IT4Communities: charitable software development
04 – Eileen Brown on IT Professionals, TechNet, Women In Technology & Girl Geek Dinners
05 – Stephen Lamb on security, community, Linux and Twitter
06 – Cristiano Betta on Geek Dinners
07 – David Yack and Jonathan Carter on ALT.NET, MVC and Community
08 – Andrew Fryer on SQL Server 2008 and “upgrade”
09 – Viral Tarpara on Collaboration, SharePoint, Open Source (Port 25) and Community
10 – Guy Smith Ferrier on Internationali[s|z]ation, VS2008, .net 3.5, C# language features
11 – Matt Dunstan on event management, “engagement” and life as an Application Platform Manager
12 – Stephen Lamb on his new role in marketing / PR

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Podcasts

The Twelve Podcasts of Christmas!

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Ho ho ho!

Starting today, Friday 12th and running up to the 23rd, I will be posting a podcast each day for 12 days!

What to expect: a mix of community chats with speakers and guests at the likes of Heroes Happen Here, VistaSquad event speakers, Microsoft staffers, and ALT.NET evangelists.

If it’s safe for broadcast (after edit), you might hear what happens when you put a handful of Microsoft MVPs around a table and throw in some beer! We have tried this mixing MVPs and beer before, it worked rather well, check out podcast number 15!

Here’s the first one, Kyle Baley on ALT.NET and Brownfield Development in .NET.

The second podcast of Christmas 044 – Aaron Parker on Microsoft Application Virtualisation

The third podcast of Christmas 045 – Caroline Bucklow from IT4Communities: charitable software development

The fourth podcast of Christmas 046 – Eileen Brown on IT Professionals, TechNet, Women In Technology & Girl Geek Dinners

The fifth podcast of Christmas 047 – Stephen Lamb on security, community, Linux and Twitter

The sixth podcast of Christmas 048 – Cristiano Betta on Geek Dinners

The seventh podcast of Christmas 049 – David Yack and Jonathan Carter on ALT.NET, MVC and Community

The eighth podcast of Christmas 050 – Andrew Fryer on SQL Server 2008 and “upgrade”

The ninth podcast of Christmas 051 – Viral Tarpara on Collaboration, SharePoint, Open Source (Port 25) and Community

The tenth podcast of Christmas 052 – Guy Smith Ferrier on Internationali[s|z]ation, VS2008, .net 3.5, C# language features

The eleventh podcast of Christmas 053 – Matt Dunstan on event management, “engagement” and life as an Application Platform Manager

The twelfth podcast of Christmas 054 – Stephen Lamb on his new role in marketing / PR

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Rants

Sky+ built-in COPY failed during November, Star Trek DVD mountain!

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[As quoted in the Guardian SKY HASSLES: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/dec/14/technology-letters-blogs-full]

If you caught my tweets last month, you may have noticed that I noted that my Sky+ box was generating copy protection signals preventing my DVD recorder from recording the episodes of Star Trek from Virgin One and Bravo. Without going into huge amounts of detail, I figured that any time a “What’s on next” caption appeared and occasionally during advert breaks, a Macrovision-like signal was issued causing my DVD recorder to stop recording.

Whatever you may be thinking, I believe that I am entitled to record these episodes for a number of reasons. Firstly, I don’t have time to watch them live – I have a day job, a wife and a kid, time is in short supply. Secondly, the Sky+ hard drive is woefully small at 160GB, of which we get 80GB of personal space, whoopee (yes, I will be doing something about that later). Thirdly, I am simply recording what I would have watched anyway, I’m not recording it to keep per say…I’m happy to buy the DVD boxed set for that. And to be honest, Star Trek is *all* that I watch via Sky, all other programmes I could get via Freeview (if we had a decent signal where I live, moot point).

Courtesy of Liam Westley, today’s copy of the Guardian carried this article by George Cole. Sky could be so good for you…I don’t think so (sorry, couldn’t resist that, Gary!) This explains a lot.

In my humble opinion this is a huge FAIL for Sky. I had even gone to the lengths of buying one of these cables in order to normalise the signal from the Sky+ box to the DVD recorder. Sadly that cable failed miserably, dead on arrival…now I’m embroiled in the returns and refund process, more hassle…all thanks to Sky.

I will of course be testing the COPY feature again this month. However in the meantime, I have some 20+ episodes of Deep Space Nine to catch up on…and I can’t dump them to DVD as I have been doing most nights for the last 8-9 months. Yes, I do have 100+ DVDs chock full of Star Trek to catch up on!

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Security

Antivirus 2009 seems to be doing the rounds…

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A colleague brought his XP-based laptop into the office today. Through a quirk of fate, Antivirus 2009 had managed to install itself. It’s a pretty swish looking piece of malware that looks very much like leading anti-virus programs, even giving you the feel-good factor that it has found infected files and has cleaned them for you. It is, of course, a confidence trick, smoke and mirrors.

It’s most likely to have come from the same stable as WinAntivirus did, as noted here.

I’m repeating myself, however my advice is simple: if a web page pops up a dialog box telling you that your computer is infected and offers a free clean-up, ignore it. Never install software that offers itself via a web page pop-up, go to a reputable download site (ideally a vendor site) and download from there.

Or, if you are in any doubt, use a search engine to get some more information. Here’s what Google returns for Antivirus 2009 and here’s what Live Search returns. These result should be the first clue that Antivirus 2009 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I still promote the use of these tools for cleaning up: Crap Cleaner, Spybot and HijackThis.

[Update 03/12/2008]
As part of this infection Spybot discovered Win32.TDSS, which includes a rather invasive rootkit. I used ComboFix.exe and Smitfraudfix.exe as discussed over in the Spybot forums.

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Developer Events

DDD7 – where’s my badge?

A number of DDD7 folks have been asking me “where’s my badge?”

In the past Microsoft Events have sent out the badges. Attendees bring the badge with them on the day, the lovely events staff then “click” the badge to a clip and entry is permitted!

For DDD7 the badges will be issued on the day. Confirmed attendees should receive an e-mail advising them of this process. It’s probably worth bringing your confirmation e-mail with you…but this is just me being totally paranoid!

Hopefully this makes sense.

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Developer Events

SharePoint User Group UK (SUGUK) – Edinburgh Meeting, November 27th

Who/What:
Spencer Harbar SharePoint MVP – MythBusters – debunking common SharePoint Farm Misconceptions

Andrew Woodward SharePoint MVP – Test Driven Development – Contrary to popular belief it can be done on SharePoint projects

When:
November 27th

Where:
Edinburgh – The Scottish Parliament building is located in the Holyrood area of central Edinburgh at the foot of the Royal Mile near to the Palace of Holyroodhouse – http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/visitingHolyrood/howToFindUs.htm

Further Information:
http://harbar.net/archive/2008/11/16/SUGUK-Edinburgh-Meeting-November-27th.aspx

Register here:
http://suguk.org/forums/thread/15096.aspx

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Development, OpenXML

Screencast – Word 2007 Content Controls

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At the end of October 2008 I delivered an introductory presentation about the Open XML file formats and how we might use them from within C#, i.e. programmatically. Part of that presentation demonstrated the use of Word 2007 content controls and whilst it was the primary demonstration of the evening, it was one that prompted the most discussion. To that end, I have recorded an improved version of that demonstration, you can watch it here!

During this demonstration, I was using Visual Studio 2008 SP1, the Open XML SDK 2 CTP 1 and the Word 2007 Content Control Tookit.

I would recommend viewing this full-screen, double click on the video below to “go full-screen”. Pressing Escape cancels full-screen mode.

I recorded this screencast in one sitting, however during playback I noticed a minor issue with drag’n’drop inside the Word Content Control Toolkit. It wasn’t a show-stopper, however I decided to record the offending piece a second time – you may notice a slight change in background noise during that transition.

If you have any problems viewing the video below, please let me know.

Word 2007 Content Controls – demo from Craig Murphy on Vimeo.

Need the C# source code? Here you go: get the source.

Further Reading:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mikeormond/archive/2006/08/10/694173.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406053.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/modonovan/archive/2006/05/23/604704.aspx

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Developer Events, Development, Project Management, Scrum

[Event] AgileMalta – 5th December 2008

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I’m pleased to see AgileMalta running its second conference. I have a soft spot for Malta having essentially lived there on and off for many years. It has probably changed a lot, but I still like to think I know Malta and Gozo almost as well as I know the back of my hand. I can’t think of a better mix, the islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino, their people and an agile development conference…

What: Talks given by people who have had a hands-on experience with Agile with international clients. The Key Note speaker is Joakim Ohlrogge. Local speakers are two local persons who actively participate in Agile projects, Aldo Cauchi Savona and Dave Sammut.
Date: Friday, December 5th 2008
Location: Hilton Hotel, St. Julians
Duration: Half-day conference
Price: T.B.A.

Further details can be found here:
http://www.agilemalta.com/events/agile-conference-december-2008/

Overview:
Success in today’s software industry requires a process, an environment and people that are able to achieve business goals within tighter deadlines, without compromising quality or reducing employee moral. Your process needs to be able to be attractive to foreign investment, your employees need the skills to deliver and sustain the process.

Whether you are interested in Agile or seeing how you can improve your own development process, the AgileMalta Conference is a great opportunity for people at all levels to gather together to learn about and share experiences on Agile software development process.

In our first conference we provided talks and discussion sessions for people at all levels to come into contact and learn about Agile. In the upcoming conference we will build upon feedback from the 1st conference and from our website. We decided to provide you with talks on implementing Agile and dealing with common issues when using such a process.

Join the AgileMalta Facebook group here!

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