SADev

Reading and writing to Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 from C# - Part V: Full source for reading

Robert MacLean — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:34:31 PDT

[Note: See the series index for a list of all parts in this series.]

A few people have battled with getting all the bits of code scattered in the series together to actually work. This is not only due to the fact they are scattered, but part III for example was not showing the code correctly and there was a bug in part IV. I have gone back and fixed those issues and to help further here is the full code in one big view (click read more if needed to see it).

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.IO.Packaging;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace ReadFromExcel
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            List<Cell> parsedCells = new List<Cell>();
            string fileName = @"C:\Users\bbdnet0758\Desktop\Demo.xlsx";
            Package xlsxPackage = Package.Open(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite);
            try
            {
                PackagePartCollection allParts = xlsxPackage.GetParts();

                PackagePart sharedStringsPart = (from part in allParts
                                                 where part.ContentType.Equals("application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sharedStrings+xml")
                                                 select part).Single();
                
                XElement sharedStringsElement = XElement.Load(XmlReader.Create(sharedStringsPart.GetStream()));

                Dictionary<int, string> sharedStrings = new Dictionary<int, string>();
                ParseSharedStrings(sharedStringsElement, sharedStrings);                

                XElement worksheetElement = GetWorksheet(1, allParts);

                IEnumerable<XElement> cells = from c in worksheetElement.Descendants(ExcelNamespaces.excelNamespace + "c")
                                              select c;

                foreach (XElement cell in cells)
                {
                    string cellPosition = cell.Attribute("r").Value;
                    int index = IndexOfNumber(cellPosition);
                    string column = cellPosition.Substring(0, index);
                    int row = Convert.ToInt32(cellPosition.Substring(index, cellPosition.Length - index));
                    int valueIndex = Convert.ToInt32(cell.Descendants(ExcelNamespaces.excelNamespace + "v").Single().Value);

                    parsedCells.Add(new Cell(column, row, sharedStrings[valueIndex]));
                }
            }
            finally
            {
                xlsxPackage.Close();
            }

            //From here is additional code not covered in the posts, just to show it works
            foreach (Cell cell in parsedCells)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(cell);
            }
        }

        private static void ParseSharedStrings(XElement SharedStringsElement, Dictionary<int, string> sharedStrings)
        {
            IEnumerable<XElement> sharedStringsElements = from s in SharedStringsElement.Descendants(ExcelNamespaces.excelNamespace + "t")
                                                          select s;

            int Counter = 0;
            foreach (XElement sharedString in sharedStringsElements)
            {
                sharedStrings.Add(Counter, sharedString.Value);
                Counter++;
            }
        }

        private static XElement GetWorksheet(int worksheetID, PackagePartCollection allParts)
        {
            PackagePart worksheetPart = (from part in allParts
                                         where part.Uri.OriginalString.Equals(String.Format("/xl/worksheets/sheet{0}.xml", worksheetID))
                                         select part).Single();

            return XElement.Load(XmlReader.Create(worksheetPart.GetStream()));
        }

        private static int IndexOfNumber(string value)
        {
            for (int counter = 0; counter < value.Length; counter++)
            {
                if (char.IsNumber(value[counter]))
                {
                    return counter;
                }
            }

            return 0;
        }                         
    }

    internal static class ExcelNamespaces
    {
        internal static XNamespace excelNamespace = XNamespace.Get("http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main");
        internal static XNamespace excelRelationshipsNamepace = XNamespace.Get("http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships");
    }

    public class Cell
    {
        public Cell(string column, int row, string data)
        {
            this.Column = column;
            this.Row = row;
            this.Data = data;
        }

        public override string ToString()
        {
            return string.Format("{0}:{1} - {2}", Row, Column, Data);
        }

        public string Column { get; set; }
        public int Row { get; set; }
        public string Data { get; set; }
    }
}

Free Visual Studio and TFS training?

Robert MacLean — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:02:32 PST

S.A. Architect will be offering FREE training covering Visual Studio and TFS in both 2008 and 2010 versions! This will be done in real life, so you will need to travel to somewhere in Johannesburg and so to figure out where, all you need to is click Yes on the S.A. Architect home page. Once some numbers have been worked out a venue can be found and it can be arranged!

The only catch is you will need to give up a Saturday for this, and myself and fellow Team System MVP, Zayd Kara, will be there to help or annoy you ;)

DevRally - From fluid idea to reality!

Robert MacLean — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:59:41 PST

DevRally is an event which has been bubbling in my head, and the heads of many others for a while, most importantly Willie Roberts. The idea of this event is that developer focused event which is not run by a vendor, so that open discussion between developers who would never meet about technology can come about. It is also not centralised – it is distributed using conference technologies so that the best speakers can be brought easily (and cheaply) to the audience.

A while back myself and Willie decided to see if we could pull off arranging it and, as usual for this sort of idea, the first thing we did was put up a website and a survey to see what would interest people. Yesterday marked the second step in the process: Sponsors! Both BB&D and Mr. Price have come on board with venues and infrastructure help for the event! Still need a few more sponsors and we need to nail down the dates, speakers and so on – but what this space this event should be a great deal of fun!

DevDays coming to your town soon!

Robert MacLean — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:25:53 PST

DevDays, one of the premier Microsoft software developer is starting this month with events in Johannesburg and Cape Town and will be in Durban next month! Not only does it have great local guys presenting but Bart de Smet and Brian Keller will be there too!
Most importantly I will be there, just admit it you want to see me more than Bart and Brian ;), and will have prizes and giveaways at the BB&D stand!

To see the session list head over to: http://www.microsoft.com/southafrica/devdays/sessions.mspx and once you are sold signup at: https://secure.mseventssa.co.za/DevDays/Landing.aspx

MVP Summit 2010, Sightseeing - Part 3 (Warning Photo Heavy)

Robert MacLean — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:47:55 PST

[The series index can be found here.]

Considering Zayd Kara, Rudi Grobler, and I were in Seattle we took a few days extra to sightsee around the town and so here is some of the highlights from the camera:

First thing we did was find the Needle – since it was the only thing Rudi wanted to see.

The entrance to the Microsoft Visitors Centre – worth a look at the cool tech. Not enough Visual Studio in there though ;)

A entire store devoted to Lego was almost too much for me! You could even buy individual bricks based on type and colour for specific products.

At the Sci-Fi Museum and Hall of Fame (SFM), I geeked out A LOT (ask Rudi about my running tour of the place). R2-D2 was cool.

Still at SFM the flying cop car from Blade Runner!

Right next to SFM was EMP – Experience Music Project. This is the HUGE concert screen in the lobby.

The Yes time capsule at EMP.

Rudi Grobler, Zayd Kara, and myself in our “band” at EPM!

The Eagle artwork at the SAM (Seattle Art Museum) Olympic Park.

MVP Summit 2010, Shiny - Part 2

Robert MacLean — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:40:18 PST

[The series index can be found here.]

As with any conference event you can expect to fill you bag with trinkets to bring home. You know the stuff which is interesting but basically you would never pay for it yourself and Summit had some of that, but that Visual Studio jacket I got I would’ve paid for :) However this is not about those things, this is about two VERY special shiny things I got to bring home.

Towards the end of last year I was awarded VSTS Rangers Champion award however at Summit I got my “trophy” – it’s a Visual Studio 2008 Team System box, personally signed with a message from Jeff Beehler!

The second special item was a big surprise in that internally in the Team System MVP’s there is an award for the best MVP (think of being called the Tom Cruise of Top Gun), which Ed Blankenship deservedly won! Not to be outdone, I won the MVP in Residence award for spending a ridiculous amount of time away from home and doing stuff for Microsoft. The trophy for this was a photo frame with a certificate signed by Brian Harry!

MVP Summit 2010, Welcome MVP's - Part 1

Robert MacLean — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:09:46 PST

[The series index can be found here.]

The welcome banner goes up at MVP summit!

“Remember this is NDA, no talking about it, posting on the internet, tweeting or sharing in any way” – That message I think is the MVP Summit slogan because it was told to attendees so many times, and for good reason. MVP Summit, for those who do not know, is an invite only conference which Microsoft runs yearly at their head office in Redmond, Washington (near Seattle). The conference attendees are made up of Microsoft staff, MVP awardees, and regional directors which means that the depth of knowledge is massive. I was comparing it to TechEd, except every session is interactive and starts at least at level 300 (Advanced) and most of the audience has the knowledge that they could present it too. I cannot go into the details of the sessions because of the NDA’s but what I can say is that all the sessions were direct, open and honest communication between MVP’s and the product teams.

This is what a session looks like at MVP summit. Plenty of MVP’s in front and product team towards the back.

Stepping back for a second let me explain how I got there: Travelling with fellow MVP’s (and co-workers, yip BB&D has 3 MVP’s) Rudi Grobler and Zayd Kara we left Johannesburg to go to Atlanta (15 hours) and what should’ve been a 1 hour stop in Atlanta – which turned into 5 hours, thanks to Zayd’s bag losing it’s boarding pass meaning we missed the flight (admittedly it would’ve been a heroic run to catch it, but that sealed it). Unfortunately Rudi couldn’t get a seat on the next flight and he ended up in Atlanta for 8 hours! We (me and Zayd) touched down in Seattle very late, raced to the hotel and then raced to our first dinner.

Why are South Africans always the last people at the pub?

Summit would be tiring enough between jet lag, getting up early to eat, catch the shuttle to Microsoft campus, spend your day trying to have your brain not explode and catching the shuttles back – but being the limited time there meant using evenings too for special dinners. So I had dinners with MEA MVP’s, product teams, and general all the MVP’s where plenty of networking and side discussions happen.

Ruari, our fearless MVP lead, giving me the evil eye for disturbing his pool skills (which still didn’t help us win) at one of the dinners.

What I take away from MVP Summit is two fold

Relationships – meeting people you know by email, meeting new people and catching up with old friends.
Guidance – A lot of content is focused on the why rather than the how, this means that I better understand Microsoft and that helps me put myself in a better position at work and in the community.

It really is in the interest of companies to send their employee’s who are MVP’s to the summit (put in conditions to safe guard them from leaving if you are worried about that), because what they bring back, even if they can’t tell you, will help you in the long run.

Rangers Sabbatical, part 6 - What's Next?

Robert MacLean — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:57:23 PST

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

Three weeks away from my family, 32900km in distance travelled, thousands of lines of code written, and hundreds of pictures taken what is the outcome of all of this and what do I do next?

Rangers

One of the activities I took part in during my time in Seattle was a code review session of the work I had done. The outcome of that was a list of cleanup and fixes so I need to get that done, which means my weekends and evenings are not free. I also have documentation to do, part of that will be a blog series on the adapters and and another aspect will be a more formal lab guide so people can set it up.

Moving further from the integration project, the Rangers projects do not stop, in fact this is my forth one to date (and the biggest one I have done)! So I am sure when this moves from active development to a more maintenance cycle I will get involved in some other aspect of the Rangers work. I’m hoping that future projects involve testing TFS from the beaches in Hawaii ;)

MVP Summit

I mentioned in my last post that I will be fixing the lack of sightseeing in Seattle soon – well that will be happening from the 15th Feb! I will be back in Seattle for MVP Summit. This is a private Microsoft conference for people who have won the MVP award and is going to be packed with information, up close and personal time with the product team, and plenty of parties!

I am not going alone, this time I take with me Zayd Kara and Rudi Grobler (both of whom are MVP’s and both work with me at BB&D), so we will spend a few days there after MVP summit to have a look around Seattle! Seattle, you’ve been warning – The South Africans are coming!

For an insight into what summit will be like see the summit teams blog which is filled with info on places to go, sessions to see, what to eat and so on!

Thanks

A final thanks is needed to the people that made this trip happen:

Willy-Peter – the force behind getting me there, organising everything, taking me snow shoeing, listening to me speaking endlessly on the busses, and opening his family and house up.
Carola – the force behind Willy-Peter and an amazing hostess. I was treated like royalty while I stayed with them and I loved our chats in the evenings.
Terry Y. – the unsung hero of these adapters. He works for Microsoft and spent a lot of time debugging issues in the adapters and integration platform with me.
Charles Sterling – opening up your home, feeding me better than I have ever been fed, and showing me life at Microsoft and America.
Bill E. – for taking the time out of your schedule to give me guidance!
Everyone who I met at Microsoft, who most I can’t remember your names because there were so many people, that made me feel very much at home!

Rangers Sabbatical, part 5 - Microsoft City

Robert MacLean — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:48:56 PST

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

The second part of my trip, was a short stay in the city of Redmond (near Seattle, Washington, USA) which is where the worldwide headquarters of Microsoft are located. I knew it was big, but I suspected it would be more a big office park… I very quickly stopped thinking of it like an office park but rather like it’s own city, a Microsoft City because it is MASSIVE!

Let me take a step back here, I got off the bus from Vancouver and caught a cab to Microsoft. I expected to have to tell the driver where the Microsoft Campus was, but he knew – in fact he knew it so well, he even asked which building I wanted too (which did not help, since he still got lost looking for the building). Coming off the highway to Redmond all you see is the Microsoft Connector busses and shuttles (they have almost 60 busses alone) which are used to help the staff get around the massive place. A good review of all the transport, which is not just the busses and shuttles, is on the Microsoft Alternative Commuting page.

I didn’t think to take a photo of the busses so here is one I found.

Once inside the buildings, for me that was building 41 (.NET Framework) & 25 (Team Foundation Server) you suddenly feel like you have stepped through the looking glass. Outside Microsoft looks very corporate, even sitting in reception in building 41 looks corporate (except the the people in shorts that walk past every so often); but inside the individuality of people and the passion of the teams shine. Everyone’s office there is different and reflects a lot of personality, be it covered with Australia themed items (like boomerangs) or Star Wars or cats there is plenty of variety.

Looking out of my temp office in Redmond, that is building 42 where ASP.NET finds their home.

The team passion also shines through when you walk around. There are monitors on the passage walls showing burn down charts, information on the number of outstanding bugs for releases and inspirational items. An example of the inspirational items I saw, was with the reporting section for TFS. This team have a section of the passage wall with a dozen or so different looking reports up there. I can imagine a developer standing there looking at them and getting inspired on how to improve their reports, or getting an idea on a different way to show data. For security and NDA reasons there are no photos of this, but if you looking for what it is like you should watch the a Channel 9 video where they tour the SQL Reporting Services team – it is EXACTLY like that.

In Vancouver I stayed with Willy-Peter and his family, which meant I needed a new family for Redmond and Charles Sterling agreed to open his family and house to me which was brilliant! Charles gave me deep insights into Microsoft life and the history at Microsoft which you would expect from someone with his depth of knowledge. However I did not know that Charles is also an AMAZING cook – the dinners at his house are some of the memories which I will remember for a long time. He also showed me what the life in America is like, things like shops being open at 10 at night, Netflix (which is a pipe dream in South Africa), self checkout (that is a dream for many criminals in South Africa) and played a lot of Halo 3 with me! It was a very enlightening experience and has really helped me normalise my views of America, which until then were very based off South African media and American movies and TV shows (oddly there is not nature disasters everywhere as shown in movies) so I owe Charles a huge thanks for all of that!

Unfortunately the time there was too short and too busy for me to do sightseeing, but I will fix that soon!

Rangers Sabbatical, part 4 - Sights of Vancouver

Robert MacLean — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:31:29 PST

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

Vancouver, BC, Canada:

Host of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympics games
Where the X-Files was shot for the first five seasons
Home of the Canucks ice hockey team
And where I stayed for two weeks!

While there I took a few hundred photo’s (thanks to my sister for lending me her camera) which I thought I would share. Not all of them, but some of the highlights that will stay in my memory long after my code is no longer used.

Work

My laptop felt a little threatened by the two 24” monitors my desk came with.

If you ever wondered how Willy-Peter keeps pushing out content all the time…

After 5 days of no sun, when it finally came out, I went outside and took a picture (just in case it went away again) – South African’s are powered by the sun.

Dry Africa

While travelling I took a chance to drink all the drinks you no longer get in South Africa

Vancouver

The floating Olympic sign with Stanley Park behind it – taken from the Sea Bus.

This Harry Potter like house is actually a house boat. I had never expected for them to look so much like houses.

FOOD! This was taken in Granville island, where you need loads more stomachs just to get through it.

SNOW

As someone who had never seen snow before, one of my big highlights was when Willy-Peter and his family took me up Grouse Mountain to go snow shoeing!

At the base of Grouse Mountain – no surprises that they shot some of the X-Files here, it is just so spooky from below. Once up there is is beautiful.

Modern snow shoes aren’t like tennis rackets anymore.

Carola and one of our snow shoe guides on the top of the mountain!

Rangers Sabbatical, part 3 - MCDC

Robert MacLean — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:23:41 PST

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

The MCDC (Microsoft Canadian Development Centre) was where I spent most of the day during my trip sitting and focusing on code, drinking Dr Pepper (yet another drink no longer available in South Africa) and bugging Microsoft staff for assistance. I sat next to Willy-Peter in the unofficial VSTS section of the building and as is my luck the other person next to me was yet another South African working for Microsoft, named Adrian (who works on the data warehouse in TFS).

One of the cool Lego based art works inside the MCDC.

The MCDC was just like any development company I’ve seen in South Africa, but what really struck me was seeing how much time is spent on conference calls and see what dedication these people put in to shipping quality products. Weekends and evenings are not time to relax but time to continue pushing.

An evening with Willy-Peter (far left), his two sons and myself in typical Microsoft delivery mode – evenings are for getting more done.

Not only is the work ethic amazing, but the amount of non-coding activities required to deliver a high quality product that they must do is equally amazing. Two aspects really stood out for me, first was the amount of work the SDL (Security Development Lifecycle) adds to the project and how all aspects of a project is checked and re-checked for security issues. The second is that is understood that VSTS release has been delayed because performance and watching how much focus is put into solving the performance issues was really amazing. Listening to the performance improvements that are being made I have no doubt that they will solve it.

However not everything to do with the trip to the MCDC was easy. On a number of days I had to take the trip to and from the MCDC by myself (instead of following Willy-Peter) which started some interesting impromptu tours of Vancouver from the side of the bus (anyone says I got lost, is just a liar). However the public transport system is amazing, there are plenty of busses and trains which are all well sign posted and only once was I unsure how to get back, so a quick SMS to Willy-Peter, who checked the amazing online system.

The view of an oncoming sky train out of the front of a sky train.

The three parts of the public transport that blew me away were the sky trains, which are completely automated, the sea bus (which is a huge boat that ferries people across the river) and the online system. I used the online system for one trip I made, which I will post about in part 4, and you put in the time you want to leave, start and end locations and it figures out a number of routes that include busses, trains and sea busses to get you there.

The sea bus (in the middle of the shot) is coming in to port with Vancouver city in the background.

Rangers Sabbatical, part 2 - Pants on the floor, and shoes in the basket

Robert MacLean — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:43:29 PST

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

I write to you today from the back of a bus in Vancouver, Canada! It’s 7h20 in the morning here, although my clock and body are telling it is 17h26. This is the first of two busses and a train I am currently using to get to the Microsoft offices. This is a far cry from my usual sitting in Johannesburg, South Africa traffic! What is going on?

Last year I joined the Rangers projects and as part of that (an unexpected and enjoyable part) is a three week trip to Vancouver, Canada and Redmond, USA. The purpose of this trip was to finish, polish and deliver the TFS Integration Platform adapters I have been working on. At the same time this gave me the opportunity to see what life is like at Microsoft and more broadly in North America!

I had never heard of the shoe bomber before this trip, but this ass has ruined flying to America for the rest of the world. That is my belief after going through airport security. While at OR Tambo Airport (or Johannesburg International), I have never had to take my shoes or belt off for any flights to the countries in Africa I have been. However being an American inbound flight there was an additional check before the flight which was the first of the very many times I would take my shoes off.

The trip itself was from Jo’burg to Atlanta, USA (red line below) then a connecting flight from their to Seattle, USA (blue line) and then finally a bus to Vancouver, Canada (yellow line).

Map from http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps2.htm and pins and lines added by me (not accurately)

The first flight was interesting mostly for the in-flight entertainment which was brilliant where I was able to watch a bunch of classic movies on the flight! Post the Christmas bomb scare there has been a heightened security which meant I missed my connecting flight to Seattle. This gave me the first chance I got to experience the service driven culture that many people leave South Africa for. Delta Airlines were great and got me on the next flight!

This flight to Seattle was interesting as it was the first time I could try American style Coke, aka Coke with corn syrup in place of sugar, that the cast of Major Nelson’s Podcast have spoken about before. I completely understand now why they are sneaking Coke over the borders because it really is just too sweet.

Later, at SeaTac airport, I was able grab a Cherry Coke which we do not get in South Africa, and that was much better!

However the most interesting part for me was the bus ride from Seattle to Vancouver. During this ride I got to see the Space Needle which thought would be bigger and also saw the huge harbour that is Seattle. For some reason I had never thought of Seattle as harbour town because it is inland a bit, but the fjords and rivers that run in this part of the world allow it to be a very impressive one. This was also the first chance I got to check my email in over a day as the bus had free WiFi!

Oddly enough crossing into Canada didn’t require my shoes to come off, so I guess it’s only America that is at war with the people who conceal bombs in shoes and underwear. Finally after 28 hours of travelling (16 hr, Flight to Atlanta; 3 hr, Getting through customs and waiting for flight; 5 hr, Flight to Seattle; 4 hr, Bus to Vancouver) I finally met Willy-Peter at the bus stop in a very rainy Vancouver!

Rangers Sabbatical, part 1 - Prologue

Robert MacLean — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:40:17 PST

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

Welcome to the first part of a series of posts which I wrote during and after my Rangers sabbatical. In future posts I will talk about the trip in detail, but this post will just cover the history of the trip and what all these odd terms I may use mean.

The Rangers

The rangers are NOT related to any of the following:

A football team

A TV show

A military group

An ice hockey team

The Rangers are group of individuals which is made up of internal Microsoft staff, mostly from MCS (Microsoft Consulting Services); MVP’s (external people awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award) and key community leads.

The Rangers are linked to a specific Microsoft product, in my case it is VSTS (Visual Studio Team System), and not all products have a Rangers team.

The goal of Rangers is to fill in the gaps in products with custom solutions and guidance – so that may include information on how to run TFS (Team Foundation Server) on a virtual machine, quick reference posters for the product, or additional tools.

This is different from the MVP program, where you are awarded a MVP for work you have done because you become a Ranger for the work you will do and there are specific goals, projects and guidelines for the work.

A more in depth view of the Rangers team and the structure can be found at in the post on VSTS Rangers Positioning Rangers and Projects.

Normal Process

The normal process for all Rangers work, even those who work for Microsoft, is that this is an extra effort team. Meaning that you have your day-to-day job and this is done in evenings, weekends or on bus rides. This really becomes a labour of love for the product.

Me working on a bus during the sabbatical. Picture from Willy-Peter Schaub

Sabbatical

The sabbatical is a new idea to the Rangers, where an external person (MVP or community member) takes leave from their day-to-day and spends time working directly with the product teams. For VSTS this means that you would need to be in one or more locations, since the VSTS/VS/Rangers team is spread out between Vancouver, Canada; Seattle, Washington, USA; Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Hyderabad, India and China.

Map from http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps2.htm and pins added by me (not accurately)

This idea is so new to the Rangers that I am the first person to take part in it and me this meant I would spend two weeks in Vancouver and a week in Seattle.

NDA

While this trip was not a business trip for me, it was business for Microsoft and I got access to a lot of info, people, places and experiences which I cannot talk about because of the NDA I have with Microsoft. So if you ask yourself why this seems so little for the amount of time, part of it is that the NDA doesn’t let me and the second part is that the technical aspects of the work will be covered in a separate series.

How I Build Presentations, appendix 2: Gadgets

Robert MacLean — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:56:00 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

Part of presenting a good presentation is using the right tool for the job. Often that may mean PowerPoint to present content, or demos to help get the point across. Sometimes it means building an entire slide show system out of the technology you are showing off to (as I did with jQuery). In this post I will open my bag of gadgets I tend to use in my presentations.

Now first off, I do not use every gadget in every presentation (right tool for the job again), but these are my favourites which I use often.

Logitech V450 Laser Wireless Mouse

I have a fairly standard wireless mouse from Logitech which is actually a great tool for a presenter, because you can use it to move forward through slides like a slide clicker device from around the room – no more being tied to the table. I can use the mouse wheel to go backwards too. While there are more dedicated mice for this job, a simple wireless does it just fine.

Windows 7

Windows 7 is my choice for presenting because of a number of great features it has specifically for presenters, which are all available via hot-keys!

Keyboard combination	Description	Screenshot
ÿ + P	Easily enables you to turn on a remote screen in either duplication or extended mode. No more funny fn+F something that is hardware specific.
ÿ + X	The mobility centre is only on laptops, tablets etc… but on those devices you can change a number of settings quickly. Most important for presenting is the Presentation Settings option which allows you to Set a specific volume Disable the screen saver Set a specific wallpaper (so you can hide that picture of the Bulls Cheerleaders when you present, and have it reappear when you are done) To configure it click the projector icon (that is actually a button).
ÿ + + (That is windows key and the plus key) ÿ + -	These two keyboard shortcuts enable the Windows 7 magnifier which allows you to zoom in on something with the plus, and zoom out with the minus. What makes this really great is the fact it is a live zoom, so you can type and work still while zoomed in!

Visual Studio 2010

I know it’s still in beta, but it really has replaced VS2008 as my IDE for demos for a few reasons:

The IDE is now based on WPF, so it looks much clearer when projected on screen.
The built in text zoom feature means I can zoom in and out of code easily.
Multi-targeting of the framework means that my .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 demos can all work in a single IDE.
The extension support is so much better than the old add-in model, and being able to drag images into code or have twitter integration in the IDE is a great plus.

SysInternals ZoomIt

SysInternals has a tool called ZoomIt which has been a stable of my demos for ages as it contains three powerful features:

The ability to zoom in – originally just static but in newer versions it also has a live zoom like Windows 7 has.
The ability to draw on the screen – So often I want to highlight code or some text on the screen and ZoomIt makes my screen a canvas with arrows, text and free drawing. This can be combined with the zoom feature.
Count down- You can fire up a full screen count down, which not only scares people sitting next to me on a plane but also allows me to have a timer for when a session will start. This is most useful in my full day (or longer) courses where there are smoke or lunch breaks.

ZoomIt Screenshot is taken from Ben Craigo’s blog

Rule 18

A self built application for managing text snippets for usage during demos.

The core idea is that while in a demo, I often need to type code on the screen however this is error prone and time consuming, so what else can I do? Visual Studio does support putting text in the toolbox, however this has failed on me in the past, so I do not trust it. Visual Studio also supports snippets which are a bit of overkill to setup, especially if I have a number of back to back sessions. Also what about outside Visual Studio? What are my options in PowerShell for instance?

For a while I have used a simple text file and copy/paste which is great since it means I can include it in the slide deck, I won’t forget about it, and it works everywhere. Yet it is not elegant, and remember what I said about changes on the screen – flipping to notepad the whole time is very distracting.

So I built a Rule 18 which is a simple application, where you put snippets of text into it, the application will automatically assign each snippet a keyboard shortcut and when you press that shortcut the snippet is copied to the Windows clipboard – ready to be pasted into any application you choose to use. Now you just have to remember the shortcut keys (which is why they are in my demo scripts)!

Rule 18 also stores the data as XML which means if I do not have the app or it is crashing, I can fall back to the notepad way of doing things!

How I Build Presentations, appendix 1: Simulate a type writer with PowerPoint

Robert MacLean — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:56:28 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

So the first of the appendixes of this series is an idea I had for the presentation: animate the content of the code slides so it looks like it is being typed. This never made it into the final presentation because each slide change (i.e. changing from one slide to another) causes your audience to lose focus on you a look at the screen. Animation is a powerful tool to help get your point across but you should not be just animating for wow factor, because then the audience will just watch the slides and ignore you.

Anyway for those who can find a good use of this effect, here is how to do recreate it. Note I am using PowerPoint 2010 Beta 2, but this should work in previous versions too.

The above image shows what the slide looks like at the start. The white block is just a normal text block with some text in it. I have turned on the animation pane as I will need it later. First select the text block, and choose the Appear animation effect.

The animation pane will now have each line as an appear, set to show individually on click. So click one will show the white block, click two will show “static void Main()” etc… Not really what we want… yet.

First I removed the first item (the Content Place Holder) as I want the white block there from the start, then I select all the remaining animations, right click, and select Effect Options…

In the options dialog I change the Animate text setting from All at once to By letter and I change the delay per letter (hidden behind the drop down above) to 0.25 as that seems to be a better speed for this and finally click OK.

Next, in the Animation Pane, I select from items two to the last item and right click again and change to Start After Previous which means I do not need to click for each line to appear. That is it, now you have a decent typing effect in PowerPoint.

I recorded a video of it which you can view by clicking here.

I <3 Nokia

Robert MacLean — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:30:23 PST

The management at Nokia have scored a big point today with the big announcement in the UK yesterday where they have made Nokia Turn-by-turn FREE. This has solved the headache of paying Nokia for convenience and also showed Nokia is aware and dealing of the moves of the big players like Google.

How I Build Presentations, day 6: Dry runs

Robert MacLean — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:19:22 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

So today the visible changes to the slides are minor, the work really revolves around finishing up the demo script and minor cleanup. Today is maybe the most important day of work for a presentation as it is the day I do my first set of dry runs! Dry runs are vital because if you want to be successful you need to practise, practise and practise more.

All this practise is part of preventing the dreaded demo crash! Interestingly the stats on session scores show that demo crashes are one of the biggest causes of low speaker scores so you want to make sure you do what ever you can to prepare for them. On the right is a tweet that Anu said about no matter how hard you plan to avoid crashes they can catch you. Now it may look unprofessional to have a crash, but in Anu’s case she shows more professionalism because she had a backup in case her demo crashed: the live bits and so she could continue with her demo.

So what do I do for my preparations to make sure my presentations look good and do not crash?

Demo bits

If you look at my previous parts in this series I have fully completed demo, a demo base, the parts I need for demo in an XML file and in the notes of my PowerPoint. All that is just for the code for my demo and so I am covered for a lot of the issues which can go wrong.

Backups

Backups are important, so all my slides and demo’s are backed up to “the cloud”, so that even if I have a serious hardware failure I can pull the bits down and get up and running.

Connections

A lot of demo’s are prepared by sitting at a desk somewhere, normally connected to the internet with a specific configuration setup. However that is seldom where you present them – normally you present them at an event where you may or may not have internet, may or may not have network (wired or wireless) connectivity or even power. Why is that important? Because the change of environment can mean a settings change that crashes demos.

Two examples of this are power and networks. Power is an interesting for laptops since the performance could be changed if the OS detects there is no power – so your demo’s or videos may run slower than expected. In fact for my demo’s I have changed the upper limit from 100 000 to 10 000 as it runs too slowly when not on power.

Network connectivity is also something to check because if you are using a virtual machine then not having network connections could mean that the network on the VM is disconnect and then you cannot connect to the services running on it.

The tip her is to check that your demo’s still work when you not at your desk.

Projectors

Projectors are very different to a monitor and doing a demo on them is MUCH different to how it is when looking at your monitor. The key differences are I want to highlight are resolution, contrast, screen mode and layout.

Resolution

Projectors seem to come out of the stone age as getting above a resolution of 1024x768 is VERY VERY difficult. For me this has been a problem in the past when it came to Visual Studio. With all it’s toolbars and chrome, the code area is so small at that resolution it made it hard to demo. Knowing this earlier means making sure you get your configuration right and your demo will better.

Tip: Alt+Shift+Enter will full screen your code or designer window in Visual Studio – very useful to get the gunk out the way. If you are using VS2010 then you can also undock and maximize the window.

Contrast

One of the worst demo’s at TechEd ever unfortunately was one of mine. I had a great demo planned – beautiful application which was styled in a white, grey and blue theme. When projected to a movie sized screen at TechEd though, the projector was not able to get enough difference between the colours. So the application just looked like a big white screen with shadows. What I had failed to do was test that demo on a projector ahead of the time, else I would have seen the issue and would have been able to fix it.

Screen Mode

When you are doing a demo at your desk you can see the screen and have control over it – when using a projector you are either in duplication mode, which gives you the same feeling or in extended mode where you have to juggle between the projector and you machine.

I once forgot to print my notes (yes, I keep a printed copy of my slide and notes, so that I have yet another fall back) before a dry run with some people. Being still new with the presentation I hadn’t memorised the demo’s which meant I needed to read my demo script on my screen and have my demo on another one. This meant connecting to the projector in extended mode. Well it was a nightmare, I struggle with the difference in resolutions, popup’s occurring on the wrong screen and neck hurt from having to look backwards and forwards the whole time.

So when possible run in duplication mode and make sure your demo’s work well then too.

Layout

Once again when you are in front of your screen and about 30cm away you can see everything easily. However when you are looking at it projected 15m away with 20 people in front of you – where things are on the actual screen becomes important. Easy tips are to avoid the very bottom since it will likely be hidden by heads and avoid the far left and right as some projectors/screens may cut off those portions of the screen. Once again testing with a real projector helps with this scenario.

Tip: I have also started using 16:9 aspect ratio for my slide decks over the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio. This helps the layout because when a slide deck with a 16:9 aspect ratio is projected by a projector with a 4:3 aspect ratio (which most projectors are) the bottom is banded out. This is the same as when you watch a wide screen movie on a normal TV, those blank bands at the top and bottom are added to compensate. That automatically handles making sure you don’t put things too low on the physical screen.

Slide deck at the end of day 6

How I Build Presentations, day 5: Animation and Demo Script

Robert MacLean — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:11:10 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

Today was a very busy day which started off with touching up the slide deck with a little more content and adding touches of animation to the slides. One thing I have learnt is that every time a change happens on screen, be it slide change or animation, the audience looks at that and since people can’t multi-task, they stop listening to you. So while animations and transitions may look flashy they must be used with care or you risk having long pauses or the audience ignoring you.

For this presentation there are a few slides where I want to take the audience step by step through a process as I narrate it to them, however for the rest of the slides there is no animations. Often on very wordy slides people will bring in the content, line by line so that the audience doesn’t get ahead of the speaker. For me I have text, I dump the entire text on the screen at once, which may seem odd since everyone will start reading it. However I would rather have a 5sec pause between slides while people digest the new slide over ten 1sec pauses during the slide as they switch between me and the new text that just appeared courtesy of some animation.

Slide deck at the end of day 5

The next stage is to get my demo script written. To do this I take the demo shell and step by step write out exactly what should occur.

Part of the demo script for one of the demo’s

Normally I do not need this guide, as I will have practised a the demo’s few times and will have it almost memorised, but it is worth creating for five reasons:

If I need to present in the future, I do not need to try and remember what I did. I just read the script, practise and I am ready to go.
When I hand out the presentation, people who look over it can read the script and recreate the demo’s themselves if they choose.
I use a tool to help me with my text (which I will discuss in a future blog post) but if something goes wrong with that tool then the code I need is backed up in the demo script.
In preparing the script I need to run through my demo’s, this gives me my first chance to catch bugs and resolve issues in the demo’s before I get to my dry runs!
Finally it also acts as a sounding board for the demo’s themselves. For example during creation of the script today, I took one demo and split it into two demo’s because it was just getting too much to do all at once.

How I Build Presentations, day 4: Slides

Robert MacLean — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:50:30 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

What a day, when I said yesterday that I could feel it coming together, I did not expect that it would be so fast and now at the end of day 4 the fundamental slides are done! Changes to point out for those who are watching the slides evolve:

The slides I mentioned on day 2 that were in danger of going away, are gone.
I moved the demo’s after the explanations – I have done this because this is such a complicated topic and so I need to do the explaining upfront so that I do not lose people in the demo. Normally I prefer the opposite as it adds more excitement to the presentation.
Another demo has been added – the slide on debugging I just can’t explain well enough in words so that will be a demo now.
Added 5 slides with code in, these are a great alternatives to demo’s because they don’t break (like demo’s can), can keep the session moving forward and not getting bogged down in too many demos and animation can help illustrate the code. I am not using animation here but it is an option. The risk of these code slides is that if you only have them, it may bore the audience. For them I am using them to illustrate alternatives to the demo I will do earlier in the presentation, this seem to be the nice trade off between entertaining demos and getting through it all.
References is hidden now, if people need to see it they can ask or download the slides. No one will be able to copy that many references down during a presentation anyway.

Slides at the end of day 4

We can rebuild him, we have the technology - Rangers Factory Ships!

Robert MacLean — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:12:28 PST

I am very excited that at midnight we shipped the latest Rangers solution the VM Factory!

What is the Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 VM Factory?
The purpose of this project is to build prescriptive guidance around the virtualization of the Visual Studio 2010 and guidance for full automation of the creation of virtual machines. The goal is to help users with the installation and configuration of virtualized environments with least effort and maximum automation.

You can download it from Codeplex

What is in the package?

The download package consists of two ZIP package downloads:

Rangers Virtualization Guidance
- Focused guidance on creating a Rangers base image manually and introduction of PowerShell scripts to automate many of the configuration tasks.
- Virtualization guidance looking at the “why” and “how” to use virtualization for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio, including planning, pre-requisite software, use of non-Microsoft virtualization technologies and introducing use case scenarios.
Rangers Factory Package and Guidance
- Reference walk-through documentation on how to install, configure and support a Microsoft internal or an external factory to automate the installation of Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio environments.
- Microsoft Deployment Toolkit metadata and PowerShell scripts used to create a Rangers factory.

The two little secrets of this is that the guidance, while targeting specific products on VM’s can actually be used as a base for non-VM scenarios and as since products like TFS use a lot of core services, for example SQL, there is a lot that can be used to build on for working with other products. The other secret is that a lot of the PowerShell scripts here are my own work, so I am very excited to see them get used and get some feedback on them!

How I Build Presentations, day 3: Demo shells

Robert MacLean — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:55:45 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

Today’s work focused on the final reference demo for my presentation. For this presentation I need two, first a simple one to get the basic concepts understood and then a second which is much more complex and tougher for me to code. This is not quick task as just this reference demo took me almost 6 hours to get it to the point I was happy. Often during the building of the reference demo’s two side effects occur. The first is that I am learning, so I get the chance to find solutions and blog about them.

The second side effect, is that it makes me think of what sort of questions will be asked during the presentation. It is very important to spend time thinking about this, because while things may seem obvious to me they may not be to other people. Remember that your presentation doesn’t end with the slides – questions afterwards are part of it too and you need to prepare for them.

One of the ways I research is to post questions to StackOverflow

Once I have the reference demos built, I can then take that and build a new application from it – this new application will be the core for the actual demos. This is a tough exercise because I need to separate out the important code from the the bit’s that are needed but do not help enlighten the audience. For example if I had a WinForms app as a base for a demo, I will often have the UI built but I will not have all the events hooked up.

The next step is to figure out the the best way to explain the important code, that could mean typing it in during the demo, copy and paste or even simple un-commenting of code – what ever works best for the scenario as each has various trade offs. After I have done this exercise, I will have one fully developed application and one shell of an application for each demo.

What the reference demo code looks that I built earlier

What the demo shell for the same code looks like – note much less code, not comments etc… a clean slate.

Once I had finished my application base today I went back to the slide deck again. It is quickly changing from being a story board to becoming a slide deck as I work on the content and flow more. For this presentation I can feel I am over the big hump of “what” and starts to come together quicker.

Slide deck at the end of day 3

How I Build Presentations, day 2: Reference demo

Robert MacLean — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:36:39 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

So today marks the first full day on this presentation, yesterday I only invested about 4 hours work into the solution. Most of today was spent on building the reference for my demo’s. This is a functioning demo system that includes many ideas and concepts and is something I build on. This code won’t be the actual demo code because once I have this I can break it down and build my actual demo’s off it.

The reference demo gives me an opportunity to take my ideas, try them out, learn a lot about the issues and enables me to cherry pick scenarios for actual demos. For this presentation the core idea for my demo’s is working what prime numbers are there below a specified ceiling number. To start I coded the solution without any threading, then figured out various different ways of using threads and thread pools to enable threading.

Coding demo’s away in Visual Studio 2010

Once I had those first few done, I went back to the slide deck and started thinking about the order of the slides, where I want demo’s and what the flow will be and finally there is also a bit of cleanup of the slides. One of the things is that this is a process, and so changes occur. Some are small but have big impact like changing the title from Threading to Multi-Threading because that reflects the core theme better and will help people decide if they want to be attend the session. Some may seem more radical, like dropping a few ideas from this already because as the timing and theme seep out they do not fit well anymore. This is to be expected – a lot of this creative work is destructive and this screen shot of the slides at the end of the day, doesn’t tell you how many slides I created to just delete 15min later.

This brings me to another tip, which is always find out when the last possible date is to submit the title and description for your session is. Often your original presentation title/description will change and being stuck with the old ones will either force you down the wrong path or will annoy your audience when they arrive to find the session is not what they expect.

The slides at the end of day 2 – those on the bottom row are in danger of “being voted off the island”, but I am trying to hold on to them because they look so good.

Holy download fever Batman

Robert MacLean — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:32:07 PST

Seems that in the last week, and just in time for me to be in Canada where they have bandwidth, that a bunch of things have become available for download which deserve your attention:

VS 2010 Quick Reference Guidance is now out!

Plus hotfix 1 for it

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Upgrade Guidance is now out!

The new Nokia 5800 firmware (40.0.0.5) is out – which brings it up to the level of the X6 in features now!

Lastly, and sneakily at the end of this post, my latest open source tool is out. Now I am not going to tell you what it is, but it is for presenters (mostly) and requires .NET 4.0 Beta 2 and Windows 7. Hopefully the name will entice you to check out Rule 18!

How I Build Presentations, day 1: Research and Plan

Robert MacLean — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:05:49 PST

For the rest in the posts in this series please see the series index.

I tend to do a lot of presentations for work and in my free time too, and over the past few years though trial and error and presentation courses, I have had to learn a bunch of tricks to prepare for a presentation. What I am hoping to do with this series of posts, is to catalogue, each day, what I have to do in preparation for a specific session. The hope is that through this maybe my tricks can be help you in the future.

The first tip I can impart is that I never get up in a morning, prep a presentation and give it the same day. Why? because to properly prepare, even a short presentation can take days to get right and the more technical or complex the topic the longer it can take. The presentation I will build over this series ended up as a two hour presentation, however it took me almost SIX days of preparation for it.

Currently our team is using Basecamp for task management.

The easiest part of preparing a presentation is getting a topic, because all I need to do is go to my task list and see what has been assigned to me, in this case it is .NET Threading. Based on the type, this case it is a Technical Readiness (TR) session, I know what type of audience to expect and what level but I have no other ideas of how long it will be, will I present using demos, slides, both or neither or anything else, this will all seep out of the process.

The way I start with an presentation is to fire up PowerPoint and start dumping ideas on to slides. What I am doing here is NOT creating content, although some of it will remain as content in the finished presentation.What I am actually doing is setting up a story board for my thoughts. PowerPoint works great as a story board system and it has the benefit that later on, the content that remains does not have to be recreated. At this point there is no spell or grammar checking or animations.

However there are three things in the story board at this stage:

Thoughts, these are slides with just titles or a few words. They represent something I think I should bring up but have not got content for it yet.
Basic content, while it is a story board there is some basic content (often messy and unstructured) that I think will be useful.
Mistakes, I make loads of mistakes – which is a good thing because I will go through the tough learning and make the mistakes so that others so not need to.

The day 1 story board of my presentation

The actual process of getting content for a presentation is fairly mundane. It involves searching on Google, StackOverflow and SlideShare, and adding information I have already.

Inline methods with ThreadPool and WaitCallback

Robert MacLean — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:47:53 PST

Slightly for my own memory (since I will forget in future and at least it's available here), but for an upcoming training session which I am presenting, I wanted to be able to inline a method when using the .NET ThreadPool’s QueueUserWorkItem method which requires a WaitCallback pointing to a method. I did this using the lambda expression support in .NET 3.0+ and it looks like this:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Starting up");

    ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(f =>
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Hello for thread");
        Thread.Sleep(500);
        Console.WriteLine("Bye from thread");
    }));

    Console.ReadKey();
}

StackOverflow with ListBox or ListView

Robert MacLean — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:09:04 PST

I have been writing some multi-threaded code recently where I was initially adding items to the .NET ListBox control and then later changed to the ListView control. In both cases my code I would get a StackOverflow exception fairly consistently when I added the 224th item (my first two items I added manually so it was the 222nd item added via a separate thread). The first troubleshooting tip is that you do not have an infinite loop, which I could confirm that it did not have.

So the first thing I tried, was to limit the number of items which would be added with each button click. Doing this enabled me to go well over the 224/222 limit from before – thus eliminating any thoughts of limit on the number of items the controls could handle.

After some other failed tests I found out it was how I was handling the cross thread communication, being that I had a separate thread add the items to the control which was created on the applications main thread. To handle to cross threaded communication I kept calling this.BeginInvoke, however I never called this.EndInvoke which a lot of places seem to say it is fine. However at some point it will fail, with the StackOverflow exception – that point is dependant on a number of factors (including the worst factor of all: timing, making this one of those issues that may only appear in the field).

My solution was simple, change the standard this.Invoke method and the issue went away.

For the search engines the full exception is “An unhandled exception of type 'System.StackOverflowException' occurred in System.Windows.Forms.dll”.

Most Valuable Indian

Robert MacLean — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:45:04 PST

So yesterday I posted about myself getting the MVP award, well today it got better as my friend, co-worker, fellow VSTS Ranger and S.A. Architect lead: Zayd Kara has also been awarded a MVP for his work with Team System! Congratulations Zayd!

And the award goes to...

Robert MacLean — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:07:59 PST

With the count down clock at T-10 days to my sabbatical trip an email popped into my mail box… it was an email from Microsoft congratulating me on getting the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award for my work with Team System!

What is this MVP Award?

The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft… With fewer than 5,000 awardees worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. They represent the diversity of today’s technical communities. MVPs are present in over 90 countries, spanning more than 30 languages, and over 90 Microsoft technologies. MVPs share a passion for technology, a willingness to help others, and a commitment to community. These are the qualities that make MVPs exceptional community leaders. MVPs’ efforts enhance people’s lives and contribute to our industry’s success in many ways. By sharing their knowledge and experiences, and providing objective feedback, they help people solve problems and discover new capabilities every day. MVPs are technology’s best and brightest…

Richard Kaplin, Microsoft Corporate Vice President

So this is a great honour for me to be welcomed into a group of people who I look up to and respect :) You can see my new MVP profile up at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Robert.MacLean

Presentation Data Dump

Robert MacLean — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:36:45 PST

Over the last year I have done a number of presentations and recently some of uploaded them (unfortunately I cannot upload all, as some contain NDA information) to SlideShare so here is the collection of presentations from the last 15 months or so, in no particular order:

ASP.NET Dynamic Data
JSON and REST
What’s Microsoft CRM all about?
Source Control 101
SQL Server Integration Services
ASP.NET MVC
What’s new in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1

Click the read more link to see and download them...

ASP.NET Dynamic Data

JSON and REST

What’s Microsoft CRM all about?

Source Control 101

SQL Server Integration Services

ASP.NET MVC

What’s new in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1

T-34 days and counting...

Robert MacLean — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:35:10 PST

This morning I got up for a quick cycle and as I road up the last big hill before I got home the sun really started to beat down on me and the swet changed from cooling moist to dripping. This is all at 6am, which is normal for a South African summer day, in fact our winters, in Johannesburg, aren’t too bad too. It normally is around single digits in winter at night and the days go up to 14 or so degrees. I guess that is why Willy-Peter decided to send me this picture – it’s a warning that better go shopping for a jacket or nine.