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People

Jeremy Miller on Thursday’s “Ignite Your Coding”

by Joey deVilla on March 16, 2010

Jeremy Miller

This week’s Ignite Your Coding podcast features Jeremy Miller, Chief Software Architect at Dovetail Software, the coolest ISV in Austin. In our one-hour webcast, my co-host John Bristowe and I will discuss a wide range of topics, from newer OSS efforts in the .NET developer community and how they’re trying to reduce friction, AAA-style mocking instead of record/replay mocking, the effective use extension methods for cleaner/readable/easier unit testing, jQuery magic, and many other topics.

imageIn case you were wondering what Ignite Your Coding is all about: It’s all about helping you, the software developer, find ways to stay on top of the technological, economic and social changes that affect you and your work every day. We got our hands on some of the biggest thinkers and doers in our field and asked them if they’d like to chat about the industry, how they got started, where they see the opportunities are, how they deal with change and how to be generally awesome. We got some big names from the Microsoft/.NET world, but we also went farther afield and got some people from beyond that world as well, because a different perspective is often helpful.

If You Want to Catch the Live Webcast on Thursday and/or Ask Jeremy Questions…

You’ll need:

If You Want to Listen to a Recording of the Webcast Later…

We’ll make it available in MP3 format soon. Watch this site for details!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Meet the Stars of “The Hangover 2”

by Joey deVilla on March 15, 2010

Joey deVilla in a Hawaiian shirt, Glenn block in silver lame shirt and fun fur jacket, and Glenn Block in a striped shirt

Actually, from left to right, it’s me, Ward Bell of IdeaBlade and Microsoft’s Glenn Block, whom John Bristowe and I interviewed in the most recent Ignite Your Coding webcast. Ward and Glenn have forgotten more about building composite apps than I will ever learn. If you attended the “Building Composite Applications with WPF and Silverlight” session in my track at TechDays Canada 2009, you saw what was essentially Ward’s presentation; he’s the only reason I know anything about Prism.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Mario Cardinal at ConFoo

by Joey deVilla on March 11, 2010

image

I’m in Montreal at ConFoo, the “web techno conference” where both open source and Microsoft technologies are the topics. I did a presentation on ASP.NET MVC earlier this morning, and as I write this, I’m watching Mario Cardinal talk about REST. I’ve seen him do this presentation before, but I always enjoy watching his sessions; they feel more like techie conversations over coffee (or beer) than lectures.

You’re probably wondering what that pirate flag draped over the lectern is all about. I put that up there for my session to declare my allegiance. It’s a reference to the Pirate/Ninja personality spectrum, where:

  • Ninjas prefer to work quietly in the background, while
  • Pirates like to work flamboyantly, swashbuckling and yelling “Arrr!”

If you know me, you know where I fall on that spectrum.

(I also brought a goalie mask in case I needed to talk about JSON. Get it? Goalie mask? JSON?)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Ignite Your Coding: This Afternoon with Glenn Block!

by Joey deVilla on March 11, 2010

Ignite Your CodingIf it’s Thursday, it must be time for me and my fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe to host another live Ignite Your Coding webcast!

clip_image001

This week’s guest is Glenn Block, a Program Manager for .NET FX at Microsoft. Glenn’s one of the go-to guys on Prism, Unity, MEF and ways of building maintainable and reconfigurable applications out of pieces that you can assemble and rearrange in general. We’ll talk with him about building composite applications, design patterns, the “alphabet soup” of SOLID, DI and IoC and whatever questions you ask him.

If You Want to Catch the Live Webcast on Thursday and/or Ask Glenn Questions…

You’ll need:

If You Want to Listen to a Recording of the Webcast Later…

We’ll make it available in MP3 format soon. Watch this site for details!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Ignite Your CodingThis Thursday, my fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe and I will host another live Ignite Your Coding webcast, where we’ll interview another high-profile software developer and pass along some of your questions.

This week’s guest is Glenn Block, a Program Manager for .NET FX at Microsoft. Glenn’s one of the go-to guys on Prism, Unity, MEF and ways of building maintainable and reconfigurable applications out of pieces that you can assemble and rearrange in general. We’ll talk with him about building composite applications, design patterns, the “alphabet soup” of SOLID, DI and IoC and whatever questions you ask him.

blocks.png(We don’t have a photo of Glenn Block, but we do have the image to the right, which is the symbol for MEF – that’s Managed Extensibility Framework – which is one of Glenn’s projects. It’s a lucky coincidence that Glenn’s last name is also featured prominently in the image.)

If You Want to Catch the Live Webcast on Thursday and/or Ask Glenn Questions…

You’ll need:

If You Want to Listen to a Recording of the Webcast Later…

We’ll make it available in MP3 format soon. Watch this site for details!

What’s Ignite Your Coding All About, Anyway?

It’s all about helping you, the software developer, find ways to stay on top of the technological, economic and social changes that affect you and your work every day. We got our hands on some of the biggest thinkers and doers in our field and asked them if they’d like to chat about the industry, how they got started, where they see the opportunities are, how they deal with change and how to be generally awesome. We got some big names from the Microsoft/.NET world, but we also went farther afield and got some people from beyond that world as well, because a different perspective is often helpful.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Happy iBirthday, Steve Jobs!

February 24, 2010

Image created by Chasis Tsevis.
Steve Jobs, Apple iCEO and one of the leaders of the Esteemed Competition, turns 55 today. Happy iBirthday, Steve!
If you want a big honkin’ alternate version of this mosaic, check this out.

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Ignite Your Coding Starts March 4th with Andy “Pragmatic Programmer” Hunt!

February 22, 2010
Ignite Your Coding

It all starts next week on Thursday, March 4th: Ignite Your Coding, the live webcast where we interview some of the biggest brains in the industry, and then hand over the interview to you!
In Ignite Your Coding, my fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe and I will talk to developers who’ve made their mark on the [...]

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Albert Shum on Windows Phone 7

February 17, 2010
Albert Shum

Whenever Microsoft needs to make a radical change in the way they do things, they bring in a hip Asian guy. That’s why they’ve got me shaking things up on Microsoft Canada’s Tech Evangelism Team, and it’s also why Albert Shum is redefining the way Microsoft does mobile phones in his role as the [...]

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The “Ignite Your Coding” Podcast Series

February 10, 2010

Every Thursday in March and April, my co-worker John Bristowe and I will host the Ignite Your Coding webcast series. Each hour-long webcast will feature a guest speaker selected from the bright lights in software development. John and I will start off by asking them about their views on the industry and how to [...]

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Congrats, “Mudge”, on Landing the DARPA Gig!

February 10, 2010
Peter

I met Peter “Mudge” Zatko at the Cult of the Dead Cow’s hotel bungalow at DefCon 8, the 2000 edition of the notorious hacker conference. My coworker at OpenCola, Oxblood Ruffin, was a member of the the “cDc” and introduced me and the other OpenColans to him and the other nicknames in the group: “Sir [...]

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Mathew Ingram Joins GigaOM

January 11, 2010
Mathew Ingram

It’s another “local guy makes good” story: Mesh Conference co-founder, Globe and Mail writer and editor for the better part of two decades, all-round respected Canadian voice in tech journalism and fixture of the Toronto tech scene, Mathew Ingram is leaving the Globe to join GigaOM as one of its full-time reporters.
This is great news [...]

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Sacha Chua’s “The Shy Connector”

November 25, 2009

My friend Sacha Chua is not someone who you’d think of as an introvert, but she is. Hang out in Toronto’s tech scene and sooner or later, you’ll catch one of her presentations, which she does with all with the energetic bounce that is her stock in trade. She considers technology evangelism and outreach not [...]

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Developer Night in Canada: Joel Semeniuk on Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server

November 14, 2009
Thumbnail image for Developer Night in Canada: Joel Semeniuk on Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server

It’s Back!
Developer Night in Canada is back! It’s a podcast featuring interviews with Canadians who make software, from all parts of the industry (yup, not just the Microsoft world), working all over the world, talking all about what they do and the projects they’re working on. It’s hosted by Yours Truly and my co-worker and [...]

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Windows 7: Even Linus Approves!

October 22, 2009
Thumbnail image for Windows 7: Even Linus Approves!

Here’s Linux creator Linus Torvalds, taking a break from the Japan Linux Symposium to pose at a store where Windows 7 was on sale:

[Thanks to Stefan Arentz for pointing me to the picture!]
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Me and Steve B.

October 22, 2009
Thumbnail image for Me and Steve B.

I bought a fuzzy “Cat in the Hat”-style raver hat with a Canadian flag pattern on a whim earlier this year, thinking that I’d probably find a pretty good use for it some day. That day, it turns out, was yesterday, where I turned it into what I believe was yesterday’s only Steve Ballmer photo-op [...]

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