Latest Posts
While working on my Masters at FIT I wrote a paper about some vision processing that I did with Microsoft Robotics Studio (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/default.aspx) and and iRobot Create (http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=3311368). I was asked if I would post it on a new website that one of my colleagues at FIT is putting together Society of Computational Science (http://www.societycomputationalscience.org). I thought I would also take the opportunity to post it here (http://cid-80ce78240aa8df49.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/RobotShawnWeisfeld.pdf), as I loose anything that is not on my blog. . . .
Here is a picture of my robot and I at a presentation that I did at the Orlando Bar Camp a few years back.
Another in the series of recordings that I have done for INETA Live.
Abstract:
A user interface, unresponsive, unable to provide feedback to a frustrated user. A complex back-end process, performing intense calculations, consuming every available resource. A single thread, starving for more processor time than the operating system can possibly provide. In a world of multi-core machines, one framework stands above the rest, ready to take advantage of today's modern hardware. It's journey, fraught with peril and danger. It's weapons, an arsenal of synchronization mechanisms. Coming this Thursday, from the makers of quality software, the Dallas C# Special Interest Group presents "A Tale of Two Threads". Join us as we take a deep dive into the inner workings of the current .NET threading model and learn how to avoid the many dangers that a multi-threaded application can present. Fear multi-threading no longer and learn how to make your application more robust, more responsive and simpler to debug.
Bio:
Casey Watson (http://caseywatson.com/, http://twitter.com/_caseywatson) is a Senior Consultant with Improving Enterprises, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, avid blogger and proud father. For the last five years, Casey has been focused on helping customers realize business value through the development of quality software products, primarily on the Microsoft .NET platform. As a Certified Scrum Master, Casey is a firm proponent of agile practices and deeply believes in the value of product over process. While at Improving, his focus has been on 3.5 technologies such as WCF and WPF, building rich Windows-based applications for several major financial and retail firms. While not blogging, coding, or updating his Twitter status (@_caseywatson), Casey enjoys spending time with his family and never turns down an ice cold bottle of Blue Moon.
Another in the series of recordings that I have been doing for INETA Live
Abstract:
In this presentation, I will explain event driven architecture, describe the different types of events, demonstrate how events can be related and orchestrated, and provide a basic understanding of how this method can drive the architecture of enterprise systems. In addition to understanding the concepts of event driven architecture, we will explore a working sample built using an open-source .NET messaging framework called Mass Transit.
Bio:
Chris Patterson (http://phatboyg.lostechies.com/) is a Senior Architect for RelayHealth, the connectivity business of the nation's leading healthcare services company. There he is responsible for the architecture and development of applications and services that accelerate care delivery by connecting patients, providers, pharmacies, and financial institutions. Previously, he led the development of a new content delivery platform for TV Guide, enabling the launch of a new entertainment network seen on thousands of cable television systems. In his spare time, Chris is an active open-source developer and a primary contributor to MassTransit, a .NET service bus and messaging framework. In 2009, he was awarded the Most Valued Professional award by Microsoft for his technical community contributions.
My DBA upgraded our server from 2005 to 2008 and when it did my SSIS packages stopped logging messages.
Problem 1:
Well the default logging mechanism in 2005 logs to the dbo.sysdtslog90 table. Well in 2008 they changed the table name to dbo.sysssislog. Not a big deal, but you will never find something if you look in the wrong place.
Problem 2:
Well now that I am looking at the right table, I noticed that my events were NOT showing up. In particular I was looking for the OnPreExecute and OnPostExecute methods. Poof gone, after many searches I stumbled across the following posts:
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/491508/logging-of-ssis-tasks-are-incomplete-when-run-by-sql-agent-job?wa=wsignin1.0
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlintegrationservices/thread/511502a6-99d6-4693-94da-2c317c3f59c6
Ahh, bug in SSIS, I am not nuts, whew, now what. Well on the forum John Welch suggests adding event handlers to the package and using an Execute SQL task to log the event. I only have two packages, it is late, while painful, I will do that. However, by dumb luck I forgot to add the SQL Task to one of my packages, and it still worked. Interesting.
So long story short all I needed to do was add the event handlers, nothing else.
So my package when from this:
To This:
and Poof Success!
I would like to thank all those that helped put the event together, most notably Toi Wright and Chris Koenig. I had a wonderful team (Cedric, Jag, and Rick) without whom this project would have never been completed. I also have to give a big thank you to Paddy who works with the charity, as she spent many hours with me prior to the event figuring out the requirements. I had a great time working on the website for the Lil Goldman Early Learning Center (http://www.lilgoldmanschool.com) and am honored that the crowd thought our application was worthy of 2nd place. I would also like to thank those that nominated me for the “Loudest Leader” Award, and just remember FIX IT!
Demo of our application
My Awesome Team
From Left to Right: Richard Campbell (of DotNetRocks Fame), me (Shawn Weisfeld), Jag Sandhu, Cedric Yao, Rick Michaels, and Chris Koenig
2nd Place Medal
Loudest Leader Award
Abstract:
Visual Studio2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010 is Microsoft’s latest and most anticipated release of its Application Lifecycle Management tools. Join us as we explore the new features and capabilities of the collection of tools that make up the toolset formerly known as Team System. IntelliTrace, automated UI testing, Test Impact analysis, hierarchical work items, Gated Check-In – it’s all there. Developers, testers, UX designers, and project managers alike will find something interesting in this session.
Bio:
Trent Nix is a Dallas, Texas-based consultant with Notion Solutions, a consulting services firm helping companies improve their software development capabilities through the use of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. Trent is a frequent speaker on Team Foundation Server and application lifecycle management topics at user groups and industry events. When he's not immersed in the ins and outs of software process and Team System, Trent hacks away at web application development and Silverlight. Contact Trent via Twitter at @trentnix or at http://www.trentnix.com.
Abstract:
Traditional debuggers show you the state of your application at the current time with limited information about events that occurred in the past. You must either infer events that occurred in the past, based on the state of your application at the current time, or restart the application to re-create past events. With IntelliTrace, you can actually see events that occurred in the past and the context in which they occurred. This reduces the number of restarts that are required to debug your application and the possibility that an error will fail to reproduce when you rerun the application.
Bio:
Chris is a Principal Consultant at Improving Enterprises and has been helping clients adopt Visual Studio Team System since early 2006. Chris believes that effective software development is achieved through understanding the business opportunity, knowledge of current technology, and use of appropriate software development processes. Chris has consulted with companies in industries including Communications, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, Real Estate and Retail to propose, design, and implement custom solutions involving messaging, collaboration, and integration. Currently Chris is a Visual Studio Team System MVP and contributes to the VSTS community by creating and maintaining TeamSystemLive.com and co-organizing the Dallas VSTS User Group. Chris graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Dallas with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science.
Another in the series of UG presentations that I have recorded for INETA Live.
Abstract:
Microsoft project codenamed "Oslo" was recently branded as SQL Server Modeling Services, but don't get tripped up by the name. SQL Server Modeling still contains textual and graphical modeling tools and a language for modeling data and creating domain specific languages (DSL) and is still being developed by the Connected Systems team. It is a good choice for building enterprise-level data-driven applications and it is also contains general-purpose technology for raising the level of abstraction for creating other types of systems. We'll explore where "Oslo" has been and where it appears to be going, discuss what it means to model in the first place, and then dive into demos using the November 2009 SQL Server Modeling Community Technology Preview (CTP) and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.
Bio:
Stuart Celarier (http://visualstuart.net) is a software architect and technical lead in Portland, Oregon. He is a Microsoft MVP on Connected Systems and a member of the INETA Speakers Bureau. He is a director of Portland Code Camp and a chair of the Birds-of-a-Feather track at seven Tech•Ed and PDC conferences. Stuart is passionate about new and emerging technologies that fundamentally transform software systems and how we create them.
Another in the series of UG presentations that I have recorded for INETA Live.
Abstract:
Come join Microsoft and Notion Solutions as we present the latest tools and techniques for managing your software process to attain quality software using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools provided with this release. These new tools provide significant value beyond what is available with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008.
Getting Familiar with the New Visual Studio 2010: This is an overview of Visual Studio 2010 and ALM tools and highlights the difference between Visual Studio Team System 2005/2008 and the new Visual Studio 2010, including the new Team Foundation Server features, the new modeling and debugging tools, as well as the latest in capabilities for managing and performing testing.
Creating and Implementing Team Plans: Quality cannot be assured without a plan for measuring quality. We’ll show how you can use Microsoft test and lab manager to plan your testing efforts.
Managing and Using Test Cases: Once testing is planned, you can create and run test cases, including test automation and results tracking.
Setting Up and Managing Virtual Test Labs: Microsoft’s testing platform leads the way with cutting edge features to manage virtual labs for testing. You will see how to create lab environments, use them for testing and snapshot them for developer reproduction.
Improving Defect Reproduction with Historical Debugging: One of the goals of reporting defects is to give the development team enough information to reproduce and correct the defect. Historical debugging, video capture and system information improves the ability of the development team to reproduce the defect.
Learning What to Test with Test Impact Analysis: Developers and testers often don’t know what the impact is of application changes. Test impact analysis recommends test cases that should be run based on the changes being made to an application.
Bio:
At Notion Solutions, Inc. our primary focus is to maximize your success with Team System. Our process is unique. We work with you to understand your environment and culture. We ask questions. We provide constant communication. And most important, we deliver a truly holistic approach to adopting Microsoft Visual Studio Team System.
Each engagement is designed to support your business objectives. Using this collaborative technique, Notion assists you with solutions to define and implement a consistent and predictable process to developing software that works within the constraints of your organization.
Contact Information
Email us at info@notionsolutions.com or call Becky Madison @ 972.607.4833
Another in the series of UG presentations that I have recorded for INETA Live.
Abstract:
Zeeshan Hirani (http://weblogs.asp.net/zeeshanhirani) is working on a new book of Entity Framework Recipes for Apress (http://amzn.com/1430227036). In this talk he gives us a preview of some of the things that he will be covering in his book. Entity Framework Recipes provides an exhaustive collection of ready-to-use code solutions for Microsoft’s Entity Framework, Microsoft’s vision for the future of data access. Entity Framework is a model-centric data access platform with an ocean of new concepts and patterns for developers to learn. With this book, you will learn the core concepts of Entity Framework through a broad range of clear and concise solutions to everyday data access tasks. Armed with this experience, you will be ready to dive deep into Entity Framework, experiment with new approaches, and develop ways to solve even the most difficult data access challenges. If you are a developer who likes to learn by example, then this is the right book for you.
- Gives ready-to-use, real-world recipes to help you with everyday tasks
- Provides guideposts for learning core concepts
- Maps out key landmarks for experimenting with your own solutions
What you’ll learn
- Solve the most common data access problems using Entity Framework.
- Implement basic data access design patterns using Entity Framework.
- Seamlessly model your solutions across both code and data.
- Improve data access performance.
- Use data binding to simplify and reduce your code.
- Leverage the recipes to empower your own exploration of Entity Framework.
Who is this book for?
This book is for anyone learning Microsoft’s Entity Framework—Microsoft’s new and primary data access platform. If you have ever struggled to learn a new technology, programming model, or way of doing something, you know how helpful simple, real-world examples can be. For the beginning developer, this book provides concrete examples for common data access tasks. For developers with experience with previous Microsoft access platforms, this book provides a task-by-task mapping between previous approaches and the patterns used in Entity Framework.
Bio:
Zeeshan Hirani (http://weblogs.asp.net/zeeshanhirani) is a senior developer at CheaperThanDirt.com. He specializes mainly in ASP.NET, AJAX, and leveraging OR-mapping solutions like LINQ and Entity Framework in business applications. He has written several articles for CodeProject.com and is an active member in the user-group community in Dallas/Fort Worth. He is a frequent blogger.
Another in the series of UG presentations that I have recorded for INETA Live.
Abstract:
- Do dependencies in your Unit Tests keep you up at night?
- Do your tests pass only when the stars are aligned and your database and file system are in a certain state?
- Are you tired of seeing your Unit Tests end up as Integration Tests?
- What if we told you that you won't have to worry about dependencies in your unit tests EVER AGAIN?
Then join us at the Dallas C# SIG for an introduction to MOQ. MOQ is an intuitive, type-safe and easy to learn mocking library that supports mocking interface as well as classes. Its API is extremely simple and straightforward, and doesn't require any prior knowledge or experience with mocking concepts.
We'll also take a look at PEX, a white-box test generation tool for .NET from Microsoft Research. Right from the Visual Studio code editor, PEX finds interesting input-output values of your methods, which you can save as a small test suite with high code coverage. PEX also enables Parameterized Unit Testing, an extension of traditional unit testing that reduces test maintenance costs.
Bio:
Latish is a .NET consultant with Improving Enterprises (http://improvingenterprises.com), very passionate about software development and can be reached via his blog (http://www.dotnetsurfers.com) or @Latish on Twitter (http://twitter.com/latish).
Another in the series of UG presentations that I have recorded.
Abstract:
We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge Weekend
January 15 - 17 2010
This 3-day event matches developers with charities to develop applications for those charities. At the end of the 3 days, all of the participants will vote and the winners will be proclaimed champion coders.
More information at http://www.wearemicrosoft.com
GiveCamp: Coding for Charity
GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals – from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists – donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit organizations. Since its inception in 2007, the GiveCamp program has provided benefits to over 150 charities, with a value of developer and designer time exceeding $100,000 in services!
More information at http://givecamp.org
I used Windows 7 Beta, Windows 7 RC, and now the RTM. All three have been quite impressive. Today, I get an email from a friend in LA that I thought was surely too good to be true. But sure enough it freaking works. My jaw hit the floor!
From Email:
As nice as Windows 7 is to use let’s face it — we always want total control over the computing environment. What we really want is to have total control in an easy-to-use form that puts everything at our fingertips. Enter the super secret Windows 7 God Mode.
God Mode is a simple folder that brings all aspects of Windows 7 control in a single place. It collects all of the Control Panel functions, interface customization, accessibility options, just about every aspect of controlling Windows 7 into a single place.
God Mode is easy to set up too, just do this:
Create a new folder anywhere.
Rename the folder by pasting this name exactly as it appears (copy it first):
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Issues:
SharePoint 2010 Foundation and Server require the Cumulative Update Package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 to use SQL Server 2008 as the backend Database.
Solution:
SQL Server 2008 will not install properly on Windows 2008 Server without SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1. Download Download SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1.
To use SQL Server 2008 for the backend database for SharePoint Foundation or Server download Download and Install Cumulative Update Package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1.
Note: Installing the Cumulative Update Package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 will update SQL Server’s build number to 10.00.2714.
Additional Information:
Fixes Contained in the Cumulative Update
For most of my life I’ve been a fan of goal settings. Furthermore, I usually like writing goals down. However, I must admit that although a fan, I have not remained consistently faithful to the practice year after year. I can tell you though that the practice does work. Sure it may sometimes take a little longer than planned. But the process of setting a goal, writing down, and then periodically checking progress is a good thing.
Last year I set a goal to read six books. The logic was simple. Surely, I could read at least one book every two months. At the end of 2009 here were the results:
- Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice
- Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
- Secrets from a Creativity Coach
- Eric Sink on the Business of Software (Expert's Voice)
- Little Red Book of Sales Answers: 99.5 Real World Answers That Make Sense, Make Sales, and Make Money (Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Books)
- Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
- One Minute Sales Person, The: The Quickest Way to Sell People on Yourself, Your Services, Products, or Ideas--at Work and in Life
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
- Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
- Carolyn 101: Business Lessons from The Apprentice's Straight Shooter
- Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Pro Developer)
- Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)
- The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff
- The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Library Edition)
- The Change Makers: From Carnegie to Gates, How the Great Entrepreneurs Transformed Ideas into Industries
Why is this Important?
To some a reading list of fifteen books may seem like a lot. To others laughable. I believe Teddy Roosevelt read a book per day. This blog post and list is not intend to gloat but to simply share a few key believes.
- Software Development is a career where our skills become obsolete rapidly. So how do we stay valuable? We read about the latest technologies and never stop learning.
- Wisdom beyond ones own experiences can be gained, to some degree, through the shared experiences of others. Remember, success leaves clues for us to follow.
- It’s important to have an understanding of business environment, because many of, dare I say most of us, don’t design and build operating systems or development environments. Most of us develop software solutions for business users and they don’t speak GEEK!
Unexpected Find:
Secrets from a Creativity Coach – This book was a birthday present from my mother. The book was a quick read and a book I couldn’t put down. Any Geek that believes development is an expression on his/her creativity will find value in this book.
The Book Every SharePoint Developer Should Own!
Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Pro Developer)
Favorite Business Book:
The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Library Edition) - One of the core messages of this book is not work for work sake. Think of Office Space and the TPS Reports. How many employees are involved in creating, reviewing, approving, etc. those TPS reports. This book has value to the employee that wants streamline his / her workday and to the self-employed.
Should have read long, long, ago:
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction – I’ve read bits and pieces of this book over the years but kept failing to read it cover-to-cover. This book is a cornerstone in good development fundamentals. I plan to review it again this year.
Share Your Recommendations:
If you are reading this and have any goal setting tips or experiences to share, please leave a comment.
Also, I am looking for some new reading material for 2010 so recommendations are welcome. :)
I was watching Dr. Who and The Doctor was stuck in 1969. He communicated with the future by embedding Easter Eggs within DVD’s that a friend from the future would own. This episode made me wonder if any of the DVD’s we owned contained Easter Eggs. A quick search revealed that several movies we owned had Easter Eggs. One particular funny one is on the 3rd Titanic Disk. It is an animated rabbit version of Titanic.
Titanic Animated Rabbit Easter Egg
Insert Disk 3
Select the “Special Features Gallery.”
Next, choose the “STILL GALLERIES.”
Next, choose the “PRODUCTION ARTWORK.” But, don’t click “OK.”
Highlight, “view entire gallery” and press the up arrow on your remote control.
A downward pointing blue arrow should appear.
Click on the arrow and a spoof of rabbits acting out scenes from the movie will play.
Reference: Putting the Brakes on SharePoint with JQuery
Thoughts:
I remember the dinner conversation and follow-up emails quite well. Eric was kind enough to share his opinions and experiences further explaining some points I was confused on. Once we dropped the thread, it seemed more more a lesson in communication and properly articulating a point then a technical debate for me. Thinking back to the original dinner conversation I wish I had articulated my point more clearly. For after an email or two it became clear that we were saying many of the same things just slightly different.
Recommendation:
JQuery is just a tool that can be used to solve a problem. It is not always the right tool. In the example Eric uses he demonstrates a solution where the want to use JQuery outweighs the benefit provided. As a result performance was impacted.
Solution:
It would seem obvious not to use JQuery for such a style modification and accomplish it via CSS. Unfortunately, too often this is not what happens. Basically, we fall into the situation where to a hammer everything looks like a nail. The core of the issue is developing on autopilot and not thinking about what is being developed.
I guess I reminded of a statement my friend Roy often makes “…there’s no patch for stupid.”
Long Story Short:
- I agree 100% with everything Eric states.
- There is a HUGE potential for overuse and abuse with JQuery. I would even add-in FLASH, Sliverlight, etc.
- As Covey’s 7 Habits suggest “Know your outcome.”
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- How many concurrent users do you need to support?
- Think (Design) before you do.
- Test, Test, Test (Visual Studio Stress Test, Yahoo YSlow)
Just some additional thoughts. Hope they added some value. If you have anything to add to the conversation please leave a comment.
Another in the series of UG presentations that I have recorded for INETA Live.
Abstract:
Zeeshan Hirani (http://weblogs.asp.net/zeeshanhirani) is working on a new book of Entity Framework Recipes for Apress (http://amzn.com/1430227036). In this talk he gives us a preview of some of the things that he will be covering in his book. Entity Framework Recipes provides an exhaustive collection of ready-to-use code solutions for Microsoft’s Entity Framework, Microsoft’s vision for the future of data access. Entity Framework is a model-centric data access platform with an ocean of new concepts and patterns for developers to learn. With this book, you will learn the core concepts of Entity Framework through a broad range of clear and concise solutions to everyday data access tasks. Armed with this experience, you will be ready to dive deep into Entity Framework, experiment with new approaches, and develop ways to solve even the most difficult data access challenges. If you are a developer who likes to learn by example, then this is the right book for you.
- Gives ready-to-use, real-world recipes to help you with everyday tasks
- Provides guideposts for learning core concepts
- Maps out key landmarks for experimenting with your own solutions
What you’ll learn
- Solve the most common data access problems using Entity Framework.
- Implement basic data access design patterns using Entity Framework.
- Seamlessly model your solutions across both code and data.
- Improve data access performance.
- Use data binding to simplify and reduce your code.
- Leverage the recipes to empower your own exploration of Entity Framework.
Who is this book for?
This book is for anyone learning Microsoft’s Entity Framework—Microsoft’s new and primary data access platform. If you have ever struggled to learn a new technology, programming model, or way of doing something, you know how helpful simple, real-world examples can be. For the beginning developer, this book provides concrete examples for common data access tasks. For developers with experience with previous Microsoft access platforms, this book provides a task-by-task mapping between previous approaches and the patterns used in Entity Framework.
Bio:
Zeeshan Hirani (http://weblogs.asp.net/zeeshanhirani) is a senior developer at CheaperThanDirt.com. He specializes mainly in ASP.NET, AJAX, and leveraging OR-mapping solutions like LINQ and Entity Framework in business applications. He has written several articles for CodeProject.com and is an active member in the user-group community in Dallas/Fort Worth. He is a frequent blogger.