Scrum Master Checklist – Four pages toward helping a Scrum Master succeed

Michael James - An example checklist for ScrumMasters

“…

Another popular article of mine, also intended for people who already know Scrum, or to supplement training: An example checklist for ScrumMasters. This is to show some ways an effective ScrumMaster can make a huge difference in team and business performance.”

Thanks to Michael James for dropping me a comment with this example checklist. Example or not, as it is I can see where it will help me. There’s a number of items in this checklist that remind me that my learning and growth as a ScrumMaster is far (sigh, seemingly very far sometimes) from complete.

(via Comment from Michael on post New Scrum Quick Reference Card from DZone/Refcardz (Reg-ware))

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Scrum Resources

Managed Stack Explorer – .Net 2/3/3.5 (i.e. CLR 2) thread hang, stack trace and managed process monitor utility (with source)

CodePlex - Managed Stack Explorer

“Welcome to the Managed Stack Explorer Homepage!

Do you ever need to get stack traces for your .NET 2.0 applications? Want a quick and easy way to monitor managed processes and threads? Need a way to view a thread's stack trace to investigate an application hang? If so, Managed Stack Explorer is for you.

Managed Stack Explorer is a lightweight tool that allows you to do just this. Simply copy the executable anywhere and start monitoring your stack traces today.

…”

Microsoft Downloads - Managed Stack Explorer 1.0 – English

“…

File Name:	MSESetup.msi
Date Published:	6/6/2006
Language:	English
Download Size:	1.5 MB

Managed Stack Explorer is a simple executable, no install required, that can be copied and run anywhere the .NET Framework 2.0 is installed. MSE uses the Debugging and Profiling APIs to attach and then immediately detach from an application, only suspending the application / thread for the minimum amount of time required to obtain the stack trace.

This download contains the code signed version of Managed Stack Explorer 1.0, written internally by Microsoft. Visit the Managed Stack Explorer Project Homepage on CodePlex for source code, community-collaboration, and updates.

…”

A couple years old, but it’s an easy bet we’re going to see .Net 2/3/3.5 (aka CLR 2) code around for years yet to come, so this utility (which has source included ;) still has some legs.

And of course having the source (C#) is a huge plus in my book… ;)

(via If broken it is, fix it you should - Neat .NET 2.0 StackViewer to troubleshoot hangs/performance issues)

Sysinternals Autoruns gets audio/video codec support

Sysinternals Site Discussion - Updates: Autoruns v9.5, PsLoglist v2.7, PsExec v1.95

“Autoruns v9.5: This update to Autoruns, a powerful autostart manager, adds display of audio and video codecs, which are gaining popularity as an extension mechanism used by malware gains automatic execution.

…”

Nice. That will come in handy…

Microsoft Axum – A .NET language for safe, scalable and productive parallel programming through isolation, actors and message-passing

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Axum

“A .NET language for safe, scalable and productive parallel programming through isolation, actors and message-passing.

Version:	0.1.0
Date Published:	5/8/2009
Language:	English
Download Size:	89 KB - 6.3 MB*

Installer: Axum is an incubation project from Microsoft’s Parallel Computing Platform that aims to validate a safe and productive parallel programming model for the .NET framework. It’s a language that builds upon the architecture of the web and the principles of isolation, actors, and message-passing to increase application safety, responsiveness, scalability and developer productivity. Other advanced concepts we are exploring are data flow networks, asynchronous methods, and type annotations for taming side-effects.

Programmer's Guide: Use this simple and easy to follow programmer's guide to learn how to create safe, scalable, and responsive applications with the Axum language.

Language Specification: A detailed specification of the Axum language.
…”

Though a curly-brace/C# like language this still looks kind of interesting. :p

Now I really need to get a quad core machine so I can really put something like this through its passes.

For additional information, check out the Axum team blog

Gesturing at Visual Studio – VSGesture 1.0

Visual Studio Gallery – VSGesture

I like the idea of my my “gesturing” at Visual Studio serve a purpose beyond simply venting… LOL

The text and video are in Hangul (I think) but it looks simple enough to figure out.

Note: If you’re developing on Windows XP it looks like there are additional Tablet related downloads required…

“Legal Guide for Bloggers” - Forewarned is four armed (because with the legal system you need four arms… ;) or Freedom as in Speech

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Bloggers' Rights

“If you're a blogger, this page is for you.

One of EFF's goals is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected.

To that end, we have created the Legal Guide for Bloggers, a collection of blogger-specific FAQs addressing everything from fair use to defamation law to workplace whistle-blowing.

In addition, EFF continues to battle for bloggers' rights in the courtroom:

…”

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Legal Guide for Bloggers

“Whether you're a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you've been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post.

Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don't want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that's under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.

The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you're doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn't help - in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven't yet decided how it applies to bloggers.

But here's the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That's why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.

To be clear, this guide isn't a substitute for, nor does it constitute, legal advice. Only an attorney who knows the details of your particular situation can provide the kind of advice you need if you're being threatened with a lawsuit. The goal here is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected.

Please note that this guide applies to people living in the US…” [GD: Post Leach Level: 90%]

Legal Guide for Bloggers - Index Of All Questions

Ignorance of the law is not a defense in the US. The more you know, the more you’ll be able to protect yourself and your blog…

(via Tweet from complexd - Legal Guide for Bloggers)

Newspapers 2.x? The New York Times REST API and the New York Times Silverlight Kit

Synergist - The New York Times Silverlight Kit

“Today we are excited to announce a new alliance with the New York Times around a new Silverlight Kit for the New York Times APIs.  The New York Times has made a number of services freely available to software developers as REST services at their Developer Network:

• Article Search
• Best Sellers
• Campaign Finance
• Community
• Congress
• Movie Reviews
• NY State Legislature
• Real Estate
• Times Newswire
• Times People
• Times Tags

Since Silverlight works very well with REST services, we wanted to make it easy for designers and developers to use these services in their applications.  To do this we are releasing with the New York Times a New York Times Silverlight Kit which includes CLR objects and Value Converter to enable designers and developers to take advantage of these services in their applications.  I first started using the New York Times APIs in my winning entry to the Circus Mashimus Contest at South by Southwest.  In building the kit we had a few goals:

• Make it easy for designers and developers to use the APIs with little to no coding: all XAML
• Include Design-Time sample data to facilitate crafting experiences in Expression Blend and Visual Studio
• Use the MVVM Design Pattern to separate components for test-ability and data binding.

To get an idea of what can be built with the kit, you can take a look at the Artist Explorer and Demo Site, but I’d like to walk through one of the kit components, the NYTimes.TimesTag CLR object and how it could be used.

…”

MSDN Code Gallery - New York Times Silverlight Kit

“…

This is a Silverlight 2 Kit for the New York Times Open APIs. Add this kit to a Silverlight 2 project in Visual Studio or Expression Blend to easily access New York Times APIs for Articles, Best Sellers (books), the US Congress, Movie Reviews, Community Comments, Times Tags, and Newswire information.

…

Kit Demo, http://xmldocs.net/nyt/ (Searching on my home town)

Okay, just how cool is that!?

The NY Times seems to like living on the tech edge (remember their WPF Viewer?) and this is a continuing step in that direction. Newspapers have to re-invent themselves to survive and this is an interesting attempt at that. Free the presentation of the data and the world will be a path to your feed… ;)

“Tico the fairy teaches the Princess how to simplify her data management” in The Manga Guide to Databases

“Want to learn about databases without the tedium? With its unique combination of Japanese-style comics and serious educational content, The Manga Guide to Databases is just the book for you.

Princess Ruruna is stressed out. With the king and queen away, she has to manage the Kingdom of Kod's humongous fruit-selling empire. Overseas departments, scads of inventory, conflicting prices, and so many customers! It's all such a confusing mess. But a mysterious book and a helpful fairy promise to solve her organizational problems-with the practical magic of databases.

In The Manga Guide to Databases, Tico the fairy teaches the Princess how to simplify her data management. We follow along as they design a relational database, understand the entity-relationship model, perform basic database operations, and delve into more advanced topics. Once the Princess is familiar with transactions and basic SQL statements, she can keep her data timely and accurate for the entire kingdom. Finally, Tico explains ways to make the database more efficient and secure, and they discuss methods for concurrency and replication.

Examples and exercises (with answer keys) help you learn, and an appendix of frequently used SQL statements gives the tools you need to create and maintain full-featured databases.

(Of course, it wouldn't be a royal kingdom without some drama, so read on to find out who gets the girl-the arrogant prince or the humble servant.)

…”

The Manga Guide to Databases: Mana Takahashi, Shoko Azuma, Trend-pro Ltd.: Books ISBN: 1593271905 ISBN-13: 9781593271909

When I saw this in the May 2009 SQL Server Magazine I just had to share it. Even hours later I’m still chuckling over it… I so want to get this just to have it on my desk… I mean, zomg!  LOL

Windows 7 RC – Now available to the world (Note the RC to RTM statement)

Windows Connected - Windows 7 RC Download now up for non-subscribers

“As promised Microsoft has released the Windows 7 RC download for everyone else today.  They are not limiting the number of people who can download this build, but make sure you get it before the end of July. You can get the build here.

Things you should know:

• This build will expire on June 1, 2010 and you will start seeing bi-hourly shutdowns on March 1, 2010.
• You will not be able to do an upgrade from RC to RTM [GD: emphasis added]
• This is an RC and as with any install it is important you make a backup of your data first
• You should be using a dedicated test machine.
• Minimum Requirements are 1GHz or faster processor, 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit), 16GB (32-bit)/20GB (64-boot) Disk space, DirectX 9 graphics processor

License Key will be given to as part of the downloading process.

…”

I upgraded a machine from Vista to Win7RC and feel in love with it… It just seemed to work, and worked better, both the OS and the apps, than Vista.

But because this was a home '”production”machine I rolled it back to Vista due to “You will not be able to do an upgrade from RC to RTM”. I have to say I think this policy is a misstep. Having the RC timeout is fine/perfect. But not having a supported means to move from the RC to RTM? That doesn’t smell good and will be barrier to entry. Sure many have extra PC’s where we can play with Win7. And there’s Virtual PC’s, etc. Yet if you want real world feedback, then I need to use it in my real world. And I can’t lose that world in a year and be forced to re-install everything. I don’t know about you, but my time is limited and I have to take care where I invest it. I’ll help test the RC sure, but I can’t have my time wasted (and I’m sick of playing the re-install all my apps game… data is easy to backup/restore/transfer, it’s the fricken app install, patch, etc that kills days… days where I just want to use the darn thing).

Wow… I got riled up there didn’t I? Sorry about that? LOL

All that said, I am REALLY looking forward to Win7 and even after using it for just a couple days I miss it.

 

Related Past Post XRef:
A story of Windows 7 and an empty All Programs (and how I fixed it)

PlayOn Channel 9! – PlayOn Plugin for Channel 9

Drewby - Channel9 PlugIn for PlayOn

“I’m a big fan of PlayOn form MediaMall Technologies which is an application that allows you to view videos from popular sites like Hulu, CBS and Netflix on your Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or DLNA-compliant television or set-top-box. I’m also a big fan of Channel9, the “official” unofficial source for developer information from Microsoft.

In a recent release, MediaMall implemented a PlugIn API for PlayOn that allows a developer to add new media sources to the PlayOn menu. Developers have already added several sites including such as Food Network, Adultswim, NBA, NFL, and more (you can get a list here). There is also a generalized player that uses OPML lists of content – there’s a collection of OPML lists here.

I decided to write a PlugIn for PlayOn that would allow me to browse and watch my favorite Channel9 videos and shows. I was delighted to find out that PlayOn is a .NET Framework application and the PlugIn samples were Visual Studio projects. So I already had the skillset to build my own PlugIn.

…

Building a PlayOn PlugIn

The basic functionality of the PlayOn PlugIn is to retrieve a list of videos from some source and translate that list into objects understood by PlayOn. This includes representing some sort of folder structure to PlayOn and then providing the details of a video feed, including the video type (Flash or Windows Media).

There are a couple classes and interfaces provided by PlayOn that you’ll work with when building a PlugIn:

…

I think the easiest way to learn how to use the API is to look at existing PlugIns. There is a good basic sample PlugIn in C# provided by MediaMall that implements these objects. I’ve also provide the source code in both C# and VB for my Channel9 Plugin. You’ll notice that I did quite a bit of refactoring and I also included the Managed Extensibility Framework to make my development of the PlugIn a little more flexible and testable.

…”

MSDN Code Gallery - PlayOn PlugIn for Channel9

“…

PlayOn is software you install on your PC that allows you to browse and watch video from popular websites on your Xbox360, Playstation3 or any DLNA-compliant television or set-top-box. Combined with the Channel9 PlugIn sample, you can now browse and watch your favorite shows from Channel9 on your television.

…

”

 

I’m not, yet, a PlayOn user, but since this was about my favorite weekly cast, included .Net/C# source code, was plug-in based development, and had new stuff like MEF, I just had to mention it. :)