Great agile-development Blog to watch

If you’re into agile development check out the Leading Answers Blog by Mike Griffiths.

Air travel becomes a rip-off

Can you guess how much did I pay for this at Logan Airport (BOS) ?

Take a wild guess … and make it wilder … and wilder … and you’ll never guess!  😦

 

I’ll give you a hint: Usually I pay for something like this around $15-$18.

 

Any guesses ? 

 

Answer:   $28.72  – Unbelievable !!!   Believe it!

TechValley CodeCamp, thank you!

This Saturday I was talking about Workflows at TechValley CodeCamp. The organizers (Andrew Badera and Griffith Townsend) did a terrific job making this happen. It’s their first CodeCamp in TechValley and I’d like to wish them more success in the future and that they’ll finally fix the CodeCamp registration site.  [ BTW: The food was way better than at Waltham CodeCamp 😆 ]

Useful links:

Presentation slides – CodeCamp_Workflows.ppsx

Presentation code – CodeCamp_Workflows.zip

70-504 – Congratulations to … me again ?!!!

Just got a confirmation that I’ve passed the 70-504 TS: Workflow Foundation.

And, you can guess, I’m heading to a bar for some beers 🙂 – this becomes a habit and, at this rate, I can become an alcoholic too 😆

How does my Silverlight app finds it’s web services?

In a simple case, your Silverlight app will be connecting to the same Web Site for the web services that hosts the app itself. So the app can take it’s Uri and replace the trailing document name with the WebService address.

Uri docUri = HtmlPage.Document.DocumentUri;
Uri svcUri = new Uri(docUri, "ServiceAdress.svc");

Note that this is a simplified code that explains the idea, so, please, do not hardcode any string constants in your code – it’ll be pretty hard to reconfigure your application later. Use configuration files.

70-502 – Congratulations to … me !!!

It was a looooong wait but it was worth it – just received a word from Microsoft that I’ve passed the 70-502 exam.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post Reflections on the Microsoft WPF Certification BETA Exam (70-502) – it was not a hard exam but it definitely covered a lot of grounds.

Now I’m heading to a bar for beers – I’ve earned it 😆

Albany, NY – see you there

So, finally all my plans have crystallized and I’ll be talking in Albany, NY this weekend about the Workflows.

In this talk I’ll cover the ways you can extend your applications and projects with Workflow Foundation SDK. Use cases where the WF will give you more power and flexibility to solve you project’s problems.

I’ll be covering how you can extend the WF via creation of your own custom activities, designers and designer hosts.

 

For more information check the CodeCamp’s site: http://techvalleycodecamp.com/

See you there.

More on Pash, Mono and CodeCamp #9 …

Chris Bowen just published a summary of the CodeCamp #9 – tremendous success!

I just want to express my personal “thank you” to Microsoft and Chris in particular for providing the facilities and making this happen – I haven’t seen any other community investing so much time and effort into growing itself and success of it’s members.

 

I’m planning to appear at Albany, NY CodeCamp, but haven’t yet chosen a topic to present. Stay tuned …

 

For fans and sceptics of Pash – check the picture on the left: it’s Miguel de Icaza (lead of Mono project) and myself talking about the PoSH/Pash parser rules. Yes, we do talk and collaborate.

 

On the side note: you can see, on the back, Joseph Hill (the guy in a blue shirt, new product manager of Mono project) talking excitedly with Michael Cummings (consultant, inventor and a lead developer of Axiom – 3D open source cross platform gaming engine) – and, YES, Mono runs games now.

CodeCamp (Waltham, MA) was a great success

The last 2 days we had CodeCamp #9 in Waltham. It was a great success – 555 registered  participants (I swear it was 5 more than allowed 550). A lot of great presentations and presenters. I want personally thank the organizers and the participants.

I’ve given 4 presentations – 2 intro sessions and 2 in-depth session. Audience was great, engaging, friendly and asked a lot of good questions.

You’re welcome to download the presentations and the source code. Feel free to ask questions over the e-mail.

1. PowerShell – extending your projects with PowerShell “To Infinity … and Beyond” (samples source code)
2. Workflows are … not only for Business (samples source code)

I hope to see all of you next CodeCamp or during User Group meetings.

Pash – cross platform PowerShell is out in the wild! Announcement.

Pash – http://pash.sourceforge.net/

PowerShell open source reimplementation for “others” (Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc…) and Windows (including Windows Mobile and Windows CE)

About the name

Pash = PoSH (PowerShell) + bash (one of the Unix shells)

Goals

The main goal is to provide a rich shell environment for other operating systems as well as to provide a hostable scripting engine for rich applications. The user experience should be seamless for people who are used to Windows version of PowerShell. The scrips, cmdlets and providers should runs AS-IS (if they are not using Windows-specific functionality). The rich applications that host PowerShell should run on any other operating system AS-IS. Secondary goal: the scripts should run across the machines and different OS’s seamlesly (but following all the security guidelines).

Environment

The current implementation of Pash is written using pure .Net 2.0. It compiles on VS 2008 as well as on Mono. So all the developers can choose the environment that fits their needs and preferences. The produced assemblies can be executed “right out of the box” on Windows, Linux, Mac (or others) without any additional recompilation. Note: for Windows Mobile and Windows CE the produced code should be recompiled against the .NET Compact Framework.

Progress

You’re welcome to get the source code and contribute to the Pash public effort @ http://sourceforge.net/projects/pash.

~50% of public PowerShell classes defined.

~40% of framework functionality operational.

Stay tuned for more detailed info. Trying to figure out how to produce the similar class diff that Mono project is using.

Screenshots

Windows (duh !..)

Pash on Mono + SuSE Linux

Pash on Compact .NET Framework

and (drum roll …) Pash on Mac

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