LetsTalkCode.com

#5 & #6 Mixed Sessions

JeremySharp — Sat, 17 May 2008 07:34:00 -0700

Some great discussions in the FishBowl on TDD & BDD .. Then moved over to Inversion of control jump start and ended on advanced javascript & CSS session. Both of which were given by Ben Scheiman a Principle Consultant with Sogeti, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. (@subdigital)

BLOG: http://flux88.com/

About: http://www.flux88.com/AboutMe.aspx

laptop running out of juice notes will have to be inserted later.

Austin - #4 jQuery

JeremySharp — Sat, 17 May 2008 05:51:00 -0700

John Teague talks about a business problem at his company Callaway golf that he ultimately solved with jQuery.

Notes:
--jQuery can be compressed to 12KB
--Easy to manipulate DOM
--TIP&TRICK: Essentially recommends combining your JavaScript files into one.
--Big fan of FireBug

Sites:

Austin - #3 LINQ to SQL

JeremySharp — Sat, 17 May 2008 03:22:00 -0700

Prescriptive Data Access in .NET 3.5
Brian Orrell

Description: Review the "right way" to develop data access and management applications using VS2008 and LINQ. Many things have changed with LINQ to SQL many developers have difficulty separating the hype from the real-world applicability of these new technologies.

BIO: Pariveda Solutions , Vice President
Brian Orrell is a Vice President with Pariveda Solutions. He has over fifteen years of technology consulting experience in a variety of industries and technologies. His emphasis is on the delivery of enterprise solutions utilizing Microsoft .NET. His areas of expertise include designing, developing and maintaining web-based and distributed object systems. Mr. Orrell has led large-scale development engagements for large utility companies, airlines, shipping companies, educational and non-profit organizations.

Notes:

Do you check data during the time your user pulls it changes it and hits save???

Austin - #2 mixed sessions

JeremySharp — Sat, 17 May 2008 03:09:00 -0700

I bounced around a little focusing on three sessions.

Building Applications with Dynamic data
Jason Kergosien
Coding for Stupid Useres
Gordon Montgomery
Programming Microsoft Business Rules Engine
Rick Garibay

These were all nice sessions. Notes will be Com'n

TechEd INETA Mini-Summit

jay.smith — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:54:58 -0700

Attention User Group Leaders, INETA Volunteers, and Speakers! INETA would like to invite you to join us for a Mini-Summit on Monday June 2nd, 2008 at the Orlando Convention Center. We're going to be holding a somewhat informal gathering from 3-7 PM to provide user group leaders and chance to network, meet the new board members, and spend some quality time talking with us about community....

Read full article

Austin Code Camp & #1 Silverlight

JeremySharp — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:48:00 -0700

Well we're here ... Ready to see what this place is all about.. There is a lot of Texas orange around here??? Not for sure what that is all about but I’m sporting my classic white & red Hog shirt! No funny looks as of yet wait until I break out the PIIIIIIGGG SSOOOOOOOOIIIIIIEEEEEEE on them though.

First session - [Unit Testing in Silverlight 2.0 W/ Eric Hexter](@ehexter)

BIO: AspInsider , Director Austin .NET user group, Organized 07 Austin code camp
BLOG: http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/hex/

Notes:
There are 3 DLL's inside the controls that can be used for Unit testing...Its those Dll's that make Unit testing in SilverlIght possible.

No VS2008 CTRL + R + T in Silverlight apps for Unit testing must use an add-on

Using Silverlight Test framework builds the XAP file packaged and ready for you silverlight app

**Jamie Kinsdell using Nunit with Silverlight (need to change some references web config entries.

Jeff Wilcox on Silverlight Project - project template && Item template

Code is in the Austin Code camp repository

NWAsql.com = Arkansas SQL Group

JeremySharp — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:31:00 -0700

I have heard a bunch of people threaten to start a SQL usergroup well congrats to these guys. Its now a REAL deal.

http://nwasql.com/

I look forward to going, the lunch time thing will be hard to make on a regular basis but hopefully I can square it away for the first meeting of this group.

Meeting Details

When:
Wednesday, May 14th, 11:30am - 1:00pm

Host:
Connolly Consulting

Address:
2703 SE Otis Corley Drive MAP

City:
Bentonville, AR 72712

New and Improved - Deep Zoom Composer

JeremySharp — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:15:00 -0700

I have been playing with Deep Zoom Composer since Mix. It was fun but painful all at the same time. Just in case you don't follow theADOguy I thought I would reference a blog post of his: a new version of Deep Zoom Composer.

With the following added features Better exporting, Impoved Design Experience, Better Collection Exports & Help now works.

To get the download: An Update to Deep Zoom Composer

Thanks

Who wants to learn to develop Virtual Earth applications?

JeremySharp — Sun, 04 May 2008 05:35:00 -0700

Last week I got the opportunity to talk to some High School students about how easy it is to create Google maps & Virtual Earth maps on the Internet.

I have always been extremely impressed with the Virtual Earth interactive SDK site. If you have to do a project using this technology this is a great place to start!

There were a few things I didn't get the chance to mention thought I would do so here.

I stumbled across a post (Marc Schweigert) who took the ENTIRE Virtual Earth interactive SDK and provided the code in a Visual Studio project and available for download.

To download the solution and all the code: Click Here
There is a really nice site I check regularly that showcases new Google maps: check this blog

Happy developing...

BDD - From the beginning

rtennys — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:24:04 -0700

I've really been wanting to get deeper into BDD, but I'm having trouble getting the opportunity at work. I think it's a combination of two primary problems (I'm sure there are others as well though). First, it has been freaking ages since I've been present at the very beginning of a project. It seems like I'm always pulled in well after development has started which means well after project style and architecture have been established. Second, my company still hasn't made the shift to Agile practices. The word is starting to be tossed around quite a bit, but we're still primarily a big up front design kind of shop. This is affecting my ability to do BDD because of the first problem - if I'm not there in the beginning to sway the way things are done, then you can bet that by the time I'm there a ton of analysis will have been done and I'll have a pile of functional specs waiting for me.

Now then, I do, despite all of this, do my best to take the functional specs that I'm given and turn them into well formed behavior driven style unit tests. The problem is that I'm still very new to it and completely suck. On top of that, I'm expected to teach others at the same time (yes, the blind leading the blind). So I need practice. That's where this post comes in. I thought I'd come up with a bunch of quick and easy side projects where I could experience the entire development life cycle. It didn't take very long at all to get stuck trying to figure out what the next step would be if this were a real project at work. I could of course dig in and just get it done, but I'm much more interested in the process than I am the product at this point (otherwise I would have written these apps years ago!). Enough chatter though, on with something interesting...

Powerball Management

This is the first app that I could think of. I've played the same lotto numbers for years and still after all this time go out and check manually every drawing. So, I thought I'd automate that. Below are the requirements that I could think of written in the "As a, I want, So that" style.

Now this is where I'm stuck. This doesn't seem to me enough information to get started, but acting as the end user, I can't think of anything else I want to say about it.

The initial requirements:

As a player
I want to be notified of whether or not I've won after every drawing
So that I don't have to check manually
As a player
I want to know how much I've won if I did win
So that I'm not curious and have to go check manually
As a player
I want to be notified when I need a new ticket
So that I don't have to remember
As a player
I don't want to have to re-type numbers on new tickets if they're the same
So that I can save time

I'm going to elicit a bit of help on this and will definitely do a fair bit of reading. I'll post my progress and a link to where I end up putting the code.

Happy coding!

Bikes Blues & BBQ - Part 1

jeremysharp — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:18:00 -0700

Not much to talk about from a coding perspective. Phase I was vanilla. More to come soon Phase II will include some Silverlight features. The biker rally is later in the year.

http://www.bikesbluesandbbq.org/

1 of 4 part blog that will talk about a few of the neater features for this site. Please stay tuned.

Community Events - Info

jeremysharp — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:25:54 -0700

::Second Life User Group::

Zain Naboulsi is asking everyone to get the word out for the

Heroes Happen Here Launch in Second Life -- April 26th, 2008.

Click Here to get all the info on the event as well as everything you need to get setup beforehand!

::DALLAS TechFest::

Less than one month:
MORE INFO

Notice - (pulled from Chris Koenig's Blog)
The venue can only hold 500 people, so don’t wait - register today to make sure you get your seat at the Dallas TechFest!

Notice: Changed RSS Feed URL

JeremySharp — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:09:00 -0700

Moving my RSS feed over to FeedBurner.

The new feed is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Letstalkcodecom

In case your feed URL doesn't automatically update please switch it to FeedBurner.

Thanks,
Jeremy Sharp

Team Foundation Server Power Tools

JeremySharp — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:47:00 -0700

I just stumbled across this. Our company has been using TFS for 4 or 5 months now. This is the very first time I have heard of this. That being said I wanted to pass it on. For all of you thinking well this is old news... (you should have told me) :)

To Download
"Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Power Tools is a set of enhancements, tools and command-line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server user experience."

Geek Dinner - Who's in?

JeremySharp — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:05:00 -0700

I'm organizing a GeekDinners.com event .. BUY your own Dinner, no sponsors for this event. This is to talk about anything and everything. Please don't come if your offended by people drinking alcohol.
PLEASE RSVP:
http://www.geekdinners.com/DinnerInstance.aspx?id=9
**Feel free to comment on this blog with any questions!

NWA local geeks wanted
Title: NWA Geek Social
Date: Thursday, May 08, 2008
Time: 6:30 PM (local time)

Location:
Jose's
5420 W. Sunset
Springdale, Ar United States
4797509055
Geek Social, everyone is invited being a geek isn't required. For this event dinner will not be provided. Come to talk about work or come to not talk about work... :)
http://oleforjoses.com/sw-grille.html