Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

I attended my first photography meet up Thursday night. I have to say, the League City Photography Meet up Group is a very welcoming and mentoring group with a passion for taking photos. I learned a lot and hope to participate in more events in the future with this group.

The Third-Annual Worldwide PhotoWalk took place on July 24th.

World-wide Photo Walk – Main site

World-wide Photo Walk – Kemah site

Below is the photo submitted to the next level from the Kemah PhotoWalk

 Photo by John Bielick

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David Paulissen demonstrated a nice tip on using Powerpoint 2007 to create a PDF slideshow of your photos. This makes for an easy way to email photo galleries to friends and family.

Start Powerpoint and Select Insert > Photo Album > New Photo Album

Find the folder on your hard-drive containing the photos you want to share and click [Create]

Select a color scheme and add any necessary text to the slides

Select Save As > PDF or XPS

Name your PDF and click [Publish]

The end result is a nicely formatted PDF that anyone can open and enjoy your photos.

Great tip David!

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Software Suggestions

DeNoise – by Topaz Labs

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Links recommended by the group

• League City Photography Group Page
• PhotoSig
• Texas Photo Forum
• DP Review
• DTownTV
• Brazos Bend Facebook page
• SmugMug
• David Paulissen’s Site
• Flickr
• PhotoFocus
• White House Custom Color (WHCC)

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Happy shooting!

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There is a new podcast in town that I have started listening to. It is called the Wizards of Smart and is hosted by Jonathan Birkholz (@rookieone) and Ryan Riley (@panesofglass) and has kind of a “Stackoverflow-ish” format in which they banter back and forth on a range of topics.

I believe it is a great resource whether you are learning application development or trying to keep up with the ever-changing field. Check it out.

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I attended the May South Houston .NET User Group meeting this passed Wednesday. Jason Aubrey did a presentation on iPhone Development Using Monotouch.

High Points Gleaned

Some downfalls of iPhone Development

• Requires a Mac
• XCode/Objective C is difficult to learn
• Objective C is outdated (1986)
• The app store is crowded
• App approval process is painful

Alternatives to Objective C

• Unity – C#/Python
• PhoneGap – Javascript
• Corona – Lua

XCode is the IDE used to develop for the iPhone.

Mono – open-source, cross-platform port of .NET

MonoTouch – C#/.NET SDK for iPhone (developed by Novell)

Requirements for MonoTouch

• XCode
• iPhone SDK
• Mac
• Mono for the Mac
• MonoTouch SDK
• Mono Develop–

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I attended the 2010 Austin Code Camp and like the previous two years, it did not disappoint. There were six session tracks for a day of learning.

Below are the sessions I attended

Powershell Awesomeness in Your Deployment Scripts

Speaker: Eric Hexter (@ehexter)

High Points

• Powershell is basically a command shell on steroids
• Great for scripting
• MS Deploy
• Web PI – Platform installer
• PSake – Powershell build automation tool
• PStrami – Powershell deployment automation tool
• You can bootstrap Powershell via a batch file
• Powergui – IDE for Powershell

Introduction to MongoDB

Speaker: Chris Edwards

High Points

• NoSQL Movement – A movement promoting a loosely defined class of non-relational data stores.
• SQL is not always the best option, nor is it the only one.
• MongoDB – Document-oriented database, schema free
• MongoDB is commercially supported by 10Gen

Other features of MongoDB

• Document-based queries
• Map reduce
• Grid fs
• Geo-spacial indexing

Sites using MongoDB

• SourceForge
• GitHub
• ShutterFly
• bit.ly

Supported OS: OSX, Linux, Solaris, Windows, FreeBSD

MongoShell – the grammar of the shell is pure JavaScript

Links: Slides | Code

Aspect Oriented Programming in .NET

Speaker: Keyvan Nayyeri (@keyvan)

High Points

AOP isolates cross-cutting/supporting functions

It is mainly supported by the Java community

Cross Cutting Concerns

• Logging
• Thread synchronization
• Caching
• Lazy Loading
• Dependency Injection
• Data Binding

Principles of AOP

• Joint-point – points in the codebase where code is executed
• Point-cut – join points using a set theory of advice
• Advice

Potential Issues – Debugging, efficiency

Weaving – Object oriented code with integrated aspects

Frameworks

• Aspect J
• JAC
• LinFu
• PostSharp
• Spring.Net
• Loom.net
• nAspect

Links: Slides

Advance Your Debugging Skills with VS 2010

Speaker: Rob Vettor

High Points

Data Tip – Hover over variables and objects for drillable tips in VS2010. There is also a way to keep the tips visible during debug mode. Using the Pin Tips, you can build your own custom debug windows.

Breakpoint enhancements – Add labels to breakpoints and filter based on those values.

Intellitrace is only available with the Ultimate version of Visual Studio.

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Twitter hashtag: #austincodecamp

My Austin Code Camp 2010 Photos

I did not realize until I was leaving, how close I was to where the plane crashed into the Echelon I building here in Austin a few months back.

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Until next year…

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I attended the April Houston Dynamic Languages User Group Meeting this passed Tuesday. Jeremey Barrett gave a great talk on the Scala language.

High Points Gleaned

• Native on the JVM
• Statically Typed w/type inference
• More concise syntax
• Pure Object Oriented, Mix-ins (traits – kind of like an interface)
• (Sca)lable (La)nguage
• First class functions, closures, etc.
• Erlang-style actors (not distributed)
• Message-passing concurrency
• Operator overloading
• Everything is an object, including functions (functions can be sub-classed)
• Pattern matching – “Structural Typing”
• Java + Ruby + Erlang = Scala
• Lift – Popular web framework written in Scala
• Twitter uses Scala on their backend

Links

• Scala-lang.org – Official website
• Programming Scala: Scalability = Functional Programming + Objects – Book
• Programming Scala: Tackle Multi-Core Complexity on the Java Virtual Machine – Book
• Programming in Scala: A Comprehensive Step-by-step Guide – Book

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I attended my first ALT.NET Houston Open Spaces Conference this weekend. It was very different than any tech event I have ever seen. This kind of conference instills a sense of collaboration which is a really cool thing.

The process is quite ingenious if you ask me. On Friday evening, the attendees come together to suggest topics and then vote on the suggested topics. Next, the facilitators basically set up the agenda for the next 2 days.

Four Principles of Open Spaces

• Whoever comes is the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• When it’s over, it’s over

The Law Of Two Feet: If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds him or herself in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their two feet and go to some more productive place.

 

Sessions I attended

• Git
• NoSQL MongoDB
• Virtual Brownbag – One Year Later
• Build Scripts w/Powershell
• Promoting an Atmosphere of Refactoring
• Design Patterns

Links and Resources

• ALT.NET Houston Wiki
• Twitter Search (#altnethou)
• My Event Photos

I will definitely be attending this conference in the future and highly recommend for any developer.

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For the first time in a while, I attended the Houston Area SQL Server User Group meeting and I am glad I did. Especially since I walked away with a free (signed) copy of the book SQL In A Nutshell.

The speaker was Kevin Kline (@kekline) and the topic was The Top 10 Mistakes on SQL Server.

High Points Gleaned

10.  Disks – Thinking space not IO (insufficient I/O, poor choice of RAID type, not enough spindles, etc.)

09.  Ignorance – As an IT professional you should know how SQL Server works at an “internals” level.

08.  No trouble-shooting methodology

07.  Going with the defaults – Autogrow/autoshrink on DB’s, default filegroups, etc.

06.  Security as an afterthought – SQL attacks are the #1 hack on the internet today.

05.  Inadequate automation

04.  Wrong feature or technique for the job

03.  Apathy without change management

02.  Inadequate preventative maintenance

01.  Backups <> Recovery

Links

• Kevin Kline’s Blog
• White Paper for Top 10 Mistakes on SQL Server
• SQL Server Pedia
• Quest Software

Announcements

May Meeting: TUE 5/11 @ 11:30AM – How to Protect SQL Server with DPM 2010 – Presenter: Javier Calvillo, Microsoft

Special Meeting: TUE 5/18 @ 6:30PM – Essential Database Maintenance – Presenters: Kimberly Tripp & Paul Randal, SQLSkills

July Meeting: TUE 7/13 @ 11:30 – Topic TBD – Brent Ozar

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I attended the April Houston Dynamic Languages User Group Meeting this passed Tuesday. Cameron Laird (PhaseIT) gave a great talk on the Python language in general.

High Points Gleaned

When Google first released it’s app engine, Python was the exposed language.

Python is the language of BitTorrent, YouTube, Reddit and more.

It fully interoperates with Windows Forms, WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET and Powershell

Several implementations of Python

• CPython (C)
• IronPython (Microsoft)
• Jython (Java)

Embedding is the exposure of an application’s internals (objects)

Python is an Extension Language

Links

• Python Programming Language – Official Website
• Book: IronPython in Action
• Houston Python Enthusiasts
• How to Write a Spelling Corrector

Announcements

New Twitter account – http://twitter.com/houdynlang

ALT.NET Open Spaces 2010

I attended the February Houston .NET User Group meeting. There was a great turnout (80-90) considering how bad the weather was. The sponsor was New Horizons, an independent IT training company.

Announcements
Some people from TechSmith will be here for next month’s meeting
Meeting #100 is coming up quick. There will possibly be big prizes

Main Presentation
Markus Egger from EPS Software did a great presentation on C# 4.0 focusing mainly on the Dynamic aspects.

Types of .NET Lanuages

• Traditional – C#, VB.NET
• Functional – F# — Book recommendation: Expert F#
• Dynamic – IronPython, IronRuby

Dynamic (Python, Ruby, JavaScript) – Advantages

• Simple
• Implicitly typed
• No compilation

One of the main disadvantages of dynamic languages is the lack of Intellisense support.

Static (C#, VB.NET) languages – Advantages

• Performant
• Intelligent tools
• Better scaling

DLR – Dynamic Language Runtime

DynamicObject class

REST

Named and Optional Parameters

Improved COM Support

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Markus Egger’s Information

• Presentation and Demos for C# 4.0 Dynamic Programming
• Email – MEgger@eps-software.com
• Twitter – @MarkusEgger
• Blog – http://www.MarkusEgger.com/blog

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A couple of weeks ago I attended the Houston C# SIG meeting. Ken Getz did presentations on both Silverlight and LINQ to Objects.

Silverlight

Ken defined Silverlight as a programmable browser plugin that supports animations, vector graphics and videos.

Some features include –

• Works on Mac/Linux/Windows
• Client-side technologies
• Uses XAML for declarative design
• Expression Blend – best software to use for Silverlight/XAML design
• Visual Studio 2010 includes the components needed to build Silverlight apps out of the box

The following site allows you to verify if your pc is able to run Silverlight applications http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx

Silverlight is basically an HTML page with an <object> tag.

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LINQ to Objects

There are several LINQ providers –

• Objects
• SQL
• DataSets
• XML
• Entities

Example Usage

string[] geeks = { “Sheldon”, “Leonard”, “Howard”, “Raj”};

var myQuery = from g in geeks
              orderby g
              select g;

Console.WriteLine(“My Favorite Geeks”);

foreach (var x in myQuery)
{
    Console.WriteLine(x);
}

Ken provided a very informative presentation on LINQ to Objects and I am glad I was able to catch it.

Ken’s LINQ demo code

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