Jeff W. Barnes

Resource Links from BUG.NET Presentation

jeff.barnes — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:15:54 GMT

Here are the resource links from the “Write Code Like a Ninja: Introduction to Resharper” presentation:

http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
http://submain.com/products/ghostdoc.aspx
http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/
http://tinyurl.com/mlt3tq (TDD Macro)
http://tinyurl.com/mamrf2 (Macro via Resharper)

Thanks to everyone who attended the user group meeting. I was very pleased with the level of attendance as well as how engaging the audience was. Interactive discussions are always much better than a 60 minute monologue.

Speaking for Birmingham .NET User Group on June 9th

jeff.barnes — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:31:54 GMT

On Tuesday, June 9th at 6:30 PM, I will be presenting for the Birmingham .NET User Group. The meeting will be held at their usual venue over at New Horizons.

Here are the details:

Write Code Like a Ninja: A Introduction to Resharper

Have you ever been frustrated with Visual Studio? Do you ever find yourself thinking there must be a faster way to do this? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some shortcut to automate a lot of your repetitive tasks? Fortunately, there is an answer to a lot of these questions. Resharper is a commercial add-in for Visual Studio that is developed by JetBrains. Come and see how this inexpensive product can dramatically increase your productivity to help you write code like a .NET ninja. We will go through a comprehensive overview of the major functionality that Resharper has to offer as well as several tidbits of hidden features within Visual Studio.

Pizza and soft drinks will be provided. We will probably have a license of Resharper to give away as well.

I hope to see you at the event.

Blog Migrated (Again) to Graffiti

jeff.barnes — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:44:19 GMT

About a month ago, I migrated my blog for the second time this year to another platform: Graffiti CMS by the guys over at Telligent. I had just started to settle into using Subtext, but Keith Elder was showing me Graffiti during the MVP Summit. Keith and Woody are using it for the Deep Fried Bytes podcast website. I was really impressed with how it simplifies customizations in comparison to some other blog platforms that I’ve evaluated. It appears to be a rather powerful platform. Similar to Community Server, there is an express edition that is free for personal use (in most cases). I’m currently using the express edition to see what all it can do, but the first tier commercial edition is reasonably priced with some additional features. Assuming everything continues smoothly, I’ll likely purchase a commercial license in the not too distant future.

For now, I have a relatively simple template for the site, but it gets the job done. I found an interesting template from a free website that I am converting to the Graffiti format, but I haven’t had time to finish it yet. Hopefully, it will be up and running later this week. Once I finish getting everything tweaked, I have a number of blog posts that should start to appear. Over the next few weeks/months, I hope to resume publishing a lot more technical content rather than primarily announcements and speaking engagements.

Presenting for BUG.NET on April 14th

jeff.barnes — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 03:13:14 GMT

On Tuesday, April 14th at 6:30 PM, I’ll be presenting for the Birmingham .NET User Group. The meeting will be held at the usual venue of New Horizons. I’ll be giving an overview of the SOLID principles since there has been a extensive attention to the subject over the last few months, and there are a lot of the developers in the area that have been asking for clarity on the principles.

Here is the abstract:

SOLID is an acronym that represents five crucial principles of class design in object oriented development. The terms were originally coined by Robert Martin (aka Uncle Bob). Although these concepts are certainly not new, they have received considerable press in the .NET community over the last several months, but there is still a lot of confusion among many developers regarding their meaning. In this session, we will examine the significance of these principles and examples of how to apply them in your applications.

Windows Azure SDK Update Released

jeff.barnes — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:23:00 GMT

Microsoft has released a new version of the Azure SDK and Azure Tools for Visual Studio. This has been labeled as the March 2009 CTP. To me, the most exciting update is the ability to now run full trust within the cloud rather than being restricted to medium trust. Unfortunately, it appears as though the CTP still does not work completely on Windows 7. From what I have been told, Windows 7 problem isn’t likely to get resolved until the next beta of Windows 7. It is actually a bug in Windows 7 rather than a problem with the Azure CTP.

At any rate, here is the complete release:

Greetings from the Azure Services Platform Team,

We are excited to announce that we have released an update to the Windows® Azure™ SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio®. These latest releases are available here:

Install both the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio and SDK: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=128752

Install the Windows Azure SDK alone: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=130232

What’s new in Windows Azure SDK

Support for developing Managed Full Trust applications. It also provides support for Native Code via PInvokes and spawning native processes.

Support for developing FastCGI applications, including support for rewrite rules via URL Rewrite Module.

Improved support for the integration of development storage with Visual Studio, including enhanced performance and support for SQL Server (only local instance).

What’s new in Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

Combined installer includes the Windows Azure SDK

Addressed top customer bugs

Native Code Debugging

Update Notification of future releases

FastCGI template

We will continue to release updates to Windows Azure and its tools based on your feedback. Please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=130231 to share your Windows Azure experiences.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Sincerely,
Azure Services Platform Team

Windows Azure Data Center Is Changing Time Zones

jeff.barnes — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 11:54:19 GMT

I just received an email with the following information and wanted to pass it along for those that might be impacted:

Currently, the time zone within Windows Azure is Pacific Standard Time (PST). Soon, we will be migrating to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This is potentially a breaking change for applications which rely on local time.

When will we make the change?
We will start rolling out this change starting Sunday, March 8 at 10:00 AM GMT.

Why are we doing this?
Windows Azure is a global service. To ensure that applications behave the same way regardless of their physical location, it’s important that Windows Azure have a consistent time zone across all geographies. UTC is a natural choice given our global customer base, and UTC is not subject to potentially disruptive changes in Daylight Savings Time.

What’s the potential impact to you?
If your application running in Windows Azure relies on local time, you will be impacted by the migration to UTC. Here are a few examples of potential issues:

Gaps may occur in event logs if local timestamps are used.

User interfaces that depend on local timestamps may show different results.

Local timestamps stored by your application may be interpreted differently after the changeover.

Many applications have already been designed to rely only on UTC time. These applications should be unaffected.

Speaking for HUNTUG on Feb 10th

jeff.barnes — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:47:37 GMT

On Tuesday, February 10th at 6PM, I’ll be presenting at the Huntsville New Technology User Group. The presentation will be an introduction to the Windows Azure platform.

Here is the abstract:

So, you have heard a lot of buzz about cloud computing and this new thing that is coming called “Windows Azure”, but you aren’t sure why it is a big deal or what it is all about. Well, this session may be just what you were looking for. Windows Azure is the new cloud operating system for Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative. It is all about making it easier to build reliable and scalable services by alleviating a lot of the common headaches that service developers currently face today. In this introductory overview, I will focus on the big picture of Windows Azure to help you establish an understanding of the essential concepts, particularly from the perspective of the service developer. The goal is to try and provide you with a general understanding of the purpose of the platform and some of the ways it can be leveraged.

I hope to see you at the meeting.

Session Material from Code Camp

jeff.barnes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:11:15 GMT

As promised, I have uploaded the material from my Lap Around WCF session at the Alabama Code Camp. I would like to express my appreciation to all of those that attended. It was a fun session thanks to everyone being so interactive and engaging. I hope you got something out of it.

The material can be downloaded here.

If you have any questions or problems, feel free to let me know.

Party with Palermo in Seattle

jeff.barnes — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:31:40 GMT

It's that time again. The MVP Summit is quickly approaching, and Jeffrey Palermo is hosting another rendition of "Party with Palermo". If you are attending the MVP Summit or the ALT.NET Seattle event, be sure to RSVP. This is always a fun time and a great networking opportunity as well.

Party with Palermo: Alt.Net/MVP Summit 2009 Edition

March 1, 2009 - Seattle, WA - 7:00PM - 10:00PM

Jillian's: http://www.jilliansbilliards.com/
731 Westlake Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
Ph: 206-223-0300
Cover charge is 1 business card. This will get you in the door and register you for the grand prize drawings.

New Release of Azure SDK

jeff.barnes — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:25:08 GMT

I just received an email a few minutes ago that indicates Microsoft has released an updated version of the Azure SDK and Tools for Visual Studio. Here is the information:

Greetings from the Azure Services Platform Team!

We are excited to announce that we have released an update to the Windows® Azure™ SDK and Visual Studio Tools. These latest releases are available here:

Windows Azure SDK: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=130232
Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=128752
These newly released SDK and Tools include:

Bug and performance fixes
Improved integration with Visual Studio
Performance improvements with execution and debugging scenarios
Improvements to Storage Client and ASP.Net provider samples
Added support to debug Silverlight in a web role
We will continue to release updates to Windows Azure and its tools based on your feedback. Please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=130231 to share your Windows Azure experiences.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Sincerely,
Azure Services Platform Team

I'm downloading the goods right now. It will be interesting to verify some of the improvements, especially around the integration with Visual Studio. Check it out for yourself!