Sean Deasy » Software Development

Irish Microsoft Technology Conference

Sean — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:30:07 +0000

The Irish Microsoft Technology Conference will be held in Dublin on June 7th and will host a wide range of speakers including Tim Sneath from Microsoft. The sessions will cover topics such as:

Building Silverlight Applications using .NET
Visual Studio “Orcas” and AJAX
Microsoft Expression Studio
SDLC the Team System way

and lots more. Here is the full agenda.

The conference is organised by MTUG (Microsoft Technology User Groups of Ireland) and IrishDev.com in association with Microsoft Ireland.

The price of the conference is only EUR50 including lunch. You can’t really beat that!

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MTUG Cork Event was great

Sean — Tue, 29 May 2007 22:23:25 +0000

I attended the Agile with Team System and DB Pro event hosted by MTUG Cork on Monday night. The evening was broken into two sessions, Brendan Lawlor firstly presented â€œCan Microsoft Development be Agile?â€ which was an excellent presentation. Brendan began by describing what he meant by Agile by drawing an unexpected but excellent analogy to Zara (an agile company in the clothing industry). He then proceeded to show how his company (Decare) has implemented the agile methodology using Microsoft Team System taking advantage of continuous integration, unit testing and refactoring capabilities built in. I really enjoyed the talk especially since I am an ethusiastic CruiseControl.Net /Nant / NUnit user for the past two years.

The second session was entitled â€œIntroducing your Database Objects to the Agile Process Using Microsoft Visual Team Systemâ€ presented by Alan Crowley. Alan explained how with the emergence of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals that the database has really been integrated into the software development process. Database scripts and schemas are now treated as a standard artifact and can be subject to the same processes as regular code, including source control, refactoring and unit testing. It really showed that Microsoft have put some thought into how to bring in the work of the DBA or SQL Developer into the software development process.

Overall time well spent with two very interesting sessions. Looking forward to more MTUG Cork sessions in the near future. Thanks to Joe Gill as ever for organising everything.

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Configuring Source Control Provider in Visual Studio.NET 2003

Sean — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:04:07 +0000

I am working on moving a .NET 1.1 App (Visual Studio.NET 2003) from Visual SourceSafe to Perforce Source Control. In Visual Studio.NET 2005 it is easy to change the source control provider by going to Tools -> Options -> Source Control -> Plug-in Selection. Unforunately in Visual Studio.NET 2003 it is not quite so straightforward and it isn’t possible to change the source control provider directly from the IDE. You need to modify the registry to actually change the source control provider in Visual Studio.NET 2003. I found a nice little application (Source Control Provider (SCP) Selector) that sits in your system tray that allows you to change the source control provider just by selecting the appropriate one from a list. It worked a charm for me!

Source Control Provider (SCP) Selector

http://www.kilic.net/weblog/archives/000183.html

Update: You will need to restart Visual Studio once you change your source control provider, it isn’t sufficient to just close and open the new solution.

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5 podcasts that every .net developer should be listening to

Sean — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:06:00 +0000

One of the best ways for a software developer to keep up to date with all the new technologies is to listen to podcasts. I find podcasts a great to keep up to date on the latest .net technologies while I’m commuting to work.

Here is my list of top five .net related podcasts that every .net developer should be listening to in order to keep up to date:

HanselMinutes
This is my favorite .net podcast of all. It is presented by Scott Hanselman and Carl Franklin and they discuss .net related topics. Some shows are about the latest .net tools and other shows are interviews with .net experts. The shows are produced very professionally and the quality is top notch. Each show is only around 20-30 minutes so there is no waffle just great info!

Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman and hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds.

http://www.hanselminutes.com/

Dot Net Rocks
Dot Net Rocks has been around for many years with their first show produced in 2002. It is a weekly talk show for anyone interested in programming on the Microsoft .NET platform. The show is hosted by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell and most of the shows are interviews with .NET experts. The shows are typically slightly over 1 hour and have very good content.
http://www.dotnetrocks.com

ArCast
Arcast is a podcast about design and software architecture. If you are a team lead/architect or just generally interested in system design in the .NET space then you should tune in. It is hosted by Ron Jacobs and since 2005 he has been interviewing architects around the globe for the show.
http://www.skyscrapr.net/blogs/arcasts/

Polymorphic Podcast
Polymorphic Podcast is hosted by Craig Shoemaker and deals with a wide range of .NET topics and interviews with .NET experts from around the globe.
http://www.polymorphicpodcast.com/

ASP.NET Podcast
The ASP.NET podcast (as the name suggests) is more focused on the ASP.NET and is hosted by Wally McClure. So if you are interested in ASP.NET, Ajax, JSON, etc. then this is the show for you.
http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/

If you haven’t caught on to the great benefits of podcasts I seriously suggest that you subscribe to the podcasts and start listening. At a time when there is a huge amount of new technologies / products being released this is a great way to say up to date.

Let me know what you think!
Do you listen to these podcasts already ? Are there other great .NET podcasts that I missed?

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Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 now available as free download

Sean — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:10:24 +0000

The latest version of Microsoft’s answer to VMWare Workstation is now available. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is now available to download for free. I am a huge fan of virtualization and I use VMWare Workstation on a daily basis during the software development process. I hope to post more in the future on how I use VMWare Workstation.

Virtual PC lets you create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer. Use virtual machines to run operating systems such as MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2. You can run multiple operating systems at once on a single physical computer and switch between them as easily as switching applicationsâ€”instantly, with a mouse click. Virtual PC is perfect for any scenario in which you need to support multiple operating systems, whether you use it for tech support, legacy application support, training, or just for consolidating physical computers.

Download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

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Joel on Seven steps to remarkable customer service

Sean — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 13:21:29 +0000

Excellent article about providing first class customer service in the software industry from Joel — he should know, he runs his own successful software company.

Seven steps to remarkable customer service

Here are seven things we learned about providing remarkable customer service. Iâ€™m using the word remarkable literallyâ€”the goal is to provide customer service so good that people remark.

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Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft

Sean — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 18:46:15 +0000

Here is a list of great free software apps and tools available from Microsoft

Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft

Some of my favorites:

SyncToy – helps copy, move, and synchronize files with digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops.

Fiddler – a HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP Traffic, set breakpoints, and “fiddle” with incoming or outgoing data. Absolutely necessary if you are doing any kind of web development.

Process Explorer – shows information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. You can hook this up to be a replacement for Windows Task Manager. I never use boring old Task Manager. If you are not using this already then you should start now.

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Sysinternals now available as a single download

Sean — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:08:57 +0000

Sysinternals is an excellent suite of tools by Mark Russinovich (now working in Microsoft) that should be in everyone’s toolkit.

Download Sysinternals Suite

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Visual SourceSafe daylight saving time issues in 2007

Sean — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:08:41 +0000

Starting this year in 2007, the start date and the end date for daylight saving time (DST) in the United States will change. DST in the United States will start three weeks earlier and will end one week later than in previous years. DST will start at 2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March and will end at 2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November.

If you use Visual SourceSafe 2005 you will need to take action. If you do not update the servers and client computers, you may lose check-in information

If you use Visual SourceSafe 6.0, all you will need to do is change the clock on the computer at the appropriate time.

Visual SourceSafe daylight saving time issues in 2007

General info from Microsoft on the preparing for the change.
Preparing for daylight saving time changes in 2007

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Some performance tips for VMware Workstation users

Sean — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:47:58 +0000

Steve Richards has some performance tips for VMWare Workstation.

Some performance tips for VMware Workstation users

Being a big VMWare fan, I am always looking to squeeze that extra bit of performance out of VMWare. I’m going to implement these and report back with the details. I am already using Tip 2, I always run VMWare images on a second hard drive for performance reasons.

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