mr mann's mishmash

Silverlight UK User Group [March 2012] Slides

mark — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 23:09:00 +0000

With 4 months lapse since our last Silverlight UK User Group meeting, it was heartening to see that interest has not waned. Thank you for those that attended and supported the group last Thursday! Our presenter of the night, Gill Cleeren made a special trip over from Belgium to break down all the forthcoming Windows [...]

Silverlight UK User Group [March 2012] Agenda

mark — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:15:00 +0000

I know… it’s been quiet. Very quiet on the Silverlight scene indeed. Since our last meeting, “mainstream” Silverlight has been steadily retreating behind the corporate firewall where it still favours rich, interactive, user interfaces delivered via the browser. From the perspective of organising the user group, this has made it very difficult to coax out [...]

Silverlight UK User Group [October 2011] Slides

mark — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:25:00 +0000

There was quite a breeze of announcements, chatter and hype following the /BUILD/ conference in September. Replacing the usual PDC event, /BUILD/ heralded the arrival of Windows8 and the new platform framework (Windows Runtime – WinRT) that enables you to target your applications to desktops, tablets and more. The WinRT platform certainly does mean some [...]

Silverlight UK User Group [October 2011] Agenda

mark — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:27:00 +0000

/BUILD/. Now wasn’t that a conference of suspense! Wow. Windows 8, redefining our interactions and embracing not just the traditional computer, but tablets and other touch devices too. I have not seen such a bold statement of intent since PDC2000 when Microsoft announced it’s plans for a revamp of it’s code/application subsystem – .NET! Now [...]

Silverlight UK User Group – Summer 2011 Update

mark — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:19:00 +0000

Crikey, it really has been 2 months since the Silverlight UK User Group (SLUGUK) last got together for an evening of Silverlight. I’ve always tried to get presenters and sessions lined up so that we can have a SLUGUK every 6-8 weeks… but they are proving a bit elusive at the moment. Coupled with the [...]

AutoMapper Tip: DateTime and UseValue don’t mix

mark — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:41:00 +0000

I’ve been using AutoMapper on a number of projects for a number of years now and it’s always been a love/hate relationship. AutoMapper is a great little .NET class library that takes the pain out of mapping one class to another but sometimes it makes me nervous when I just trust the magic and wonder [...]

Silverlight UK User Group [June 2011] Slides

mark — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:44:54 +0000

Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone 7 all from one codebase? Is it possible? Well, Colin Eberhardt gave us an hour worth of hints, tips and examples of how you can manage your XAML applications to fit these different software platforms. He’s an eager blogger, so his Colin Eberhardt’s blog has many more WPF and Silverlight tips. [...]

Silverlight UK User Group [June 2011] Agenda

mark — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:52:00 +0000

Since MIX11, tech.days.2011 and the AllThingsD conference (where we got a first peek at Windows 8), there’s been yet more mutterings as to the relationship between HTML5 and Silverlight. Shame that within the designer-development community there is still a wave of uncertainty as to the future direction of Silverlight and highlights a common nervousness to [...]

Ordnance Survey getamap – I made this!

mark — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:02:00 +0000

Well, the title is correct in one way – for over a year, I have been the principal design authority on the technical vision and delivery of this new and exciting way to explore Ordnance Survey maps. I won’t by any means deny the fact that I was only one of a small team of [...]

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Management

mark — Sun, 22 May 2011 20:15:00 +0000

This should hopefully be, the final part of what has turned out to be a three part series documenting my thoughts on managing my laptop’s disk resources. It all started when I swapped my old laptop hard disk for a superb 500GB Seagate Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive to help alleviate my disk space [...]

Silverlight UK User Group [May 2011] Slides and Video

mark — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:01:00 +0000

We were packed out at Notcutt House for May’s Silverlight UK User Group. Excellent to see that there is a lot of interest and passion still buzzing about for Silverlight. Mike Taulty was our sole guest speaker of the night and relished the extra time to go into the depths of the new features of [...]

Resizing Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs)

mark — Mon, 16 May 2011 10:34:00 +0000

This is part two of my journey into managing my laptop’s disk resources. Part one, was about moving my working environment to a new disk with minimum of fuss [You can read that post here: “How to turn a physical disk into a bootable VHD”]. Disk management is one of those things that is never [...]

Silverlight UK User Group [May 2011] Agenda

mark — Fri, 06 May 2011 22:05:00 +0000

So, with Silverlight’s main conference of interest over, what did you make of MIX11? Sure, Silverlight was pretty poorly mentioned in the two keynotes as HTML5, Internet Explorer 10 and Windows Phone 7 stole much of the limelight, BUT there was still plenty of breakout sessions that featured Silverlight 4 and beyond. If you weren’t [...]

Windows Phone 7 Backups – Release more space!

mark — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:31:00 +0000

Soon after I installed the Windows Phone 7 ‘NoDo’ update (see my previous post), another update pops up. This time, instead of a functionality update, this one is more concerned with replacing some fraudulent web certificates (more details here). Sounds like a good idea. However, before the update process can get into gear it abruptly [...]

Windows Phone 7 ‘NoDo’ Update Arrives

mark — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:50:00 +0000

Windows Phone 7 released update 7.0.7390.0 to the masses in March 2011. I don’t know why the latest operating system update for Windows Phone 7 is called “NoDo” but it’s been much anticipated to put right a couple of things that are taken for granted on other platforms (namely “Copy and Paste” functionality). Well, it [...]