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Flying to Kelowna

The view from my seat on the flight to VancouverThe view from my seat.

Today’s going to be a bit of a whirlwind, starting with a flight to Kelowna by way of Vancouver, with Damir and me doing an EnergizeIT presentation tonight running from 9:00 p.m. to midnight, at least as far as our “body clocks” are concerned. Break out the Jolt Cola!

Here’s Damir getting a little work done while we were hanging out in the Air Canada lounge at Vancouver airport, waiting for our connecting flight to Kelowna:

Damir Bersinic working on his laptop in an easy chair in Vancouver airport's Air Canada lounge

I’ve already been asked “Did you bring the accordion?” Of course I did. One of the reasons I picked a little Silvetta accordion is that it fits in the overhead bin of just about every plane:

Joey deVilla's red Silvetta accordion in the overhead bin above his airplane seat

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Interview on ASP.NET MVC and Open Source at Microsoft

I’m looking a tad sleep-deprived in this interview – I was quite busy around the end of February and the start of March — but I managed to stay conscious long enough at the Confoo conference to do an interview with CT Moore (back in early march) and talk about my presentation, which covered both ASP.NET MVC and Microsoft’s relationship with open source:

Should you not have two minutes free to watch the video, the take-away points from the interview are:

  • I really like ASP.NET MVC. It’s the way I choose to build web applications in .NET and it’s similar to other MVC frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Django.
  • Microsoft’s attitude to open source is that’s it’s not a threat, but an opportunity. We compete with other companies, not software movements.
  • Sleep is good.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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This Week on “Ignite Your Coding”: Richard Campbell

Who’s On This Week?

Richard CampbellThe Ignite Your Coding live webcast returns this Thursday with Richard Campbell. If you’re from the .NET world, chances are that you’ve heard Richard on .NET Rocks! (the online talk show for .NET developers), on RunAs Radio (the online talk show for IT Professionals) or at his many speaking engagements, including those at TechDays. He’s both a Microsoft Regional Director and Most Valuable Professional thanks to his work supporting the Microsoft developer community. For more than 30 years, he’s been helping major organizations design and build applications: Barnes & Noble, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson Health Care Services, Reuters, Subaru/Isuzu and the U.S. Air Force.

John Bristowe and I will talk with Richard about how he got started in the world of software development, the projects he’s working on and how to deal with issues of scalability and performance. He’s applied that knowledge in building a network appliance that accelerates website performance at the company he co-founded, Strangeloop Networks, and we’ll pick his brain about how to make better, faster, scalable applications.

We’ll be chatting with Richard live this Thursday at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Pacific) online.

What’s Ignite Your Coding About?

Ignite Your Coding is a webcast series all about helping you, the software developer. We want to help you find ways to stay on top of the technological, economic and social changes that affect you and your work every day. We contacted 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 hope it informs and inspires you!

How Do I Catch the Live Webcast?

You’ll need:

How Do I Get the MP3 Recording of the Webcast?

It’ll be posted on this blog in about a week.

Who’s Coming Up on Ignite Your Coding?

We’ve got some great guests coming up:

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Scenes from the Project I was Working on Yesterday

Every job has its tedious part, but my job has an unusually high number of moments of pure awesomeness, such as those pictured below. I’ll explain more about the project later, but for now, enjoy the photos!

04 monitor

05 monitor

06 monitor

07 monitor

08 monitor

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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The “500 Worst Passwords”

Hand-drawn list of the "500 Worst Passwords"

You’ve heard the stories about people choosing terribly obvious passwords for their various computer accounts, such as “password” and “12345”, but what are the other ones? In his book, Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection, Authentication, Mark Burnett compiled the most common easy-to-crack passwords, most of which are ordinary words or key sequences that are easy to type on a QWERTY keyboard. I’m amused by some of the pop culture-based passwords, such as “Rush2112”, “8675309” and the X-Files inspired “TrustNo1”.

Someone else — I don’t who who did it — decided to turn that list into the hand-lettered poster shown above. You can click it to see it at a larger size.

In addition to being a good list showing the sort of password you shouldn’t use, it’s also a great name generator. You could take two random items from the list to create new character names for a Metal Gear game (“Tomcat Eagle1” makes just about as much sense as “Solid Snake” or “Sniper Wolf”) or any three to come up with the name of your band or prison softball team (“Bigdick Magnum Juice”).

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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Hoodie as Laptop Bag

Maybe it’s me, but I think that this setup is asking for Murphy’s Law to attack when you least expect it. However, if you’re short a laptop bag and have a hooded sweatshirt handy, this hack might work for you:

Photo instructions: "Just Do It: How to transform your hoodie into a computer sleeve"

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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Be a Windows Phone 7/Imagine Cup Rock Star!

To be a Windows Phone 7 rock star, you could use your favourite rock and roll instrument to promote it like I did…

Red Silvetta piano accordion with "I Love Windows Phone" sticker

…or, if you’re a student, you can build a Windows Phone 7 application and submit it as an entry for Imagine Cup 2010. They’ve just announced a new award – the Rockstar award – for winning apps written for Windows Phone 7, using either Silverlight or XNA.

What Sort of App Submission are We Looking For?

The app needs to be designed with the “consumer” in mind and should be both useful and visually compelling. You’ll need to be able demonstrate your app entry up and running, either in the emulator (which comes with the Windows Phone development tools) or on an actual Windows Phone 7 device. Windows Phone 7 is a completely new phone operating system, which means that it’s a golden opportunity for you to become one of its first developers.

According to the competition site, applications submitted will be judged based on:

  • Originality
  • Consumer appeal
  • The unique mobile-oriented features integrated in to your app. Don’t just blindly port a desktop app to the phone – take advantage of the unique characteristics of its mobile, location-aware, always-with-you, connected-in-many-ways nature!

How Do You Enter the Competition?

  • Register and sign up your team (maximum team size: 4 people) before May 24, 2010 at 11:59 P.M. GMT.
  • Read the complete Rules and Regulations for this award competition. Make sure you carefully review and understand the unique entry requirements, and judging criteria.
  • Your team will submit an ‘XAP’ application package when you’ve completed your application in Silverlight or XNA.
  • Submit your entry before May 24, 2010 at 11:59 P.M. GMT. Use these helpful guidelines and plan to begin the upload process for your entry at least 24 hours prior to the deadline in case Murphy’s Law rears its ugly head.

What Can You Win?

  • First prize:
    • US$8,000
    • A trip to the Imagine Cup Worldwide finals in Warsaw, Poland (July 3 – 8, 2010)
    • A Windows Phone 7 for each team member
    • Serious bragging rights
  • Second prize:
    • US$4,000
    • A Windows Phone 7 for each team member
  • Third prize:
    • US$3,000
    • A Windows Phone 7 for each team member

How Do You Get the Windows Phone Developer Tools?

Go to the Windows Phone 7 Series page, where you can get:

For More Details…

Check out the Windows Phone 7 Rockstar Award page on the Imagine Cup site.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.