Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 10/26/2014

Saturday, November 01, 2014

Microsoft MVP Summit (If you're there and you see this guy, say Hi!)

This week I'm at my first Microsoft MVP Summit (woot!), here to as much attend the sessions as to try to network. As I look at the MS MVP roster, as I've said before, it's pretty darn humbling. I mean, these guys and gals are pretty darn awesome! Maybe if I hang out with you/them long enough, some of that awesome will rub off. :)

If you see me, please say "Hi" (if I don't say howdy first ;) and let's chat. And let me buy you a beer or two...

Guess who's a newly minted Microsoft MVP?
Microsoft MVP Award Unboxing

Want to be a Microsoft MVP? Here's a couple what, where and how's...
Aidan's "Beginners Guide To The MVP Summit"
Hey Microsoft MVP’s, pluralsight has got a great deal for you! A complimentary 1-Year Standard subscription to the entire Pluralsight On-Demand training library

[Bucket List item checked off] I'm the DZone Featured MVP of the week!

Thursday, October 30, 2014

MVP Showcase at the Microsoft MVP Summit 2014 (Think "Wow, I wanna talk to... and... and... and... and..." )

The Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog - MVP Showcase at the MVP Summit

What has quickly become a favorite among attendees at the MVP Global Summit is gearing up for its third installment. The MVP Showcase, happening this Sunday from 16:00-19:00 at the Hyatt in Bellevue, gives MVPs the opportunity to share their current projects, network and discuss new technological trends.

"The MVP Showcase adds an additional layer of networking, collaboration and fun to the MVP Summit," says Community Program Manager and MVP Showcase organizer, Kari Finn.

MVP Presenters (in alphabetical order):

..."

THIS is one of the best things about being a MS MVP, being able to chat and connect with all these MVP's (among so many of the other MVPs.... it's actually pretty darn humbling) and the connection to the Product Teams/Groups. I mean, it's like... wow...

[Bucket List item checked off] I'm the DZone Featured MVP of the week!

Want to be a Microsoft MVP? Here's a couple what, where and how's...
Aidan's "Beginners Guide To The MVP Summit"
Hey Microsoft MVP’s, pluralsight has got a great deal for you! A complimentary 1-Year Standard subscription to the entire Pluralsight On-Demand training library

A glimpse at how Infragistics uses a C# to JavaScript transcompiler, powered by "Roslyn" (.NET Compiler Platform)

Infragistics - Mike Dour's Blog - Client-Side Excel Library CTP

If you haven’t seen it already, we recently released a 100% JavaScript-only, client-side Excel library for Ignite UI and I’m super excited about it. It allows you to read, write, and manipulate Excel workbooks. You can even create and solve formulas, all from inside the browser!! It was released in 14.2 as a CTP so we could get your feedback on it, but we will be releasing a complete RTM version in 15.1. You can find information and a live sample of it here. Definitely check out the overview page, which is packed with important information for using this library.

But that’s not even the coolest part. Not only did we deliver a purely JavaScript library for Excel workbooks, but it has all the features of our existing .NET Excel libraries. Did we re-write the entire C# Excel library in JavaScript to provide this level of feature parity? We could have, but it would have taken a lot of effort getting there not to mention the ongoing challenge of maintaining feature parity between the versions and addressing bugs in both implementations. So we came up with something better. We built a C# to JavaScript source-to-source compiler, or transcompiler. We have actually been using this for a few releases now to deliver some of the Ignite UI controls, but it was missing support for some constructs being used in the C# Excel library. So we really beefed up its language support as well as changed its semantic analysis engine. Now based on Microsoft’s .NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") for C# semantic analysis, our transcompiler is able to read in our existing C# Excel library and generate semantically equivalent JavaScript code. There are still a few rough edges to smooth out, but we are currently addressing these issues to deliver the highest quality Excel library we can in the next release.

Unfortunately, one of those rough edges was in documentation. ...

...

So hopefully this can help you get started with the Client-Side Excel library preview. There are a few things that don’t work properly yet (such as loading files with dates), but what we have provided should give you a good sense of what’s to come in 15.1. Please let us know what you think and if there are any pain points with the API or ways you think we can do better to make this library as easy as possible to use. Let us know at igniteui@infragistics.com. We look forward to your feedback. Thanks!

While you guys know I have something of a fanboy crush on Infragistics (come on, I've been using their stuff, in many forms since its VBX days... ;) that's not why I'm blogging about this. What I wanted to highlight is how they are using .NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") as their transcompiler to take the C# and generate JavaScript...

"...We built a C# to JavaScript source-to-source compiler, or transcompiler. We have actually been using this for a few releases now to deliver some of the Ignite UI controls, but it was missing support for some constructs being used in the C# Excel library. So we really beefed up its language support as well as changed its semantic analysis engine. Now based on Microsoft’s .NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") for C# semantic analysis, our transcompiler is able to read in our existing C# Excel library and generate semantically equivalent JavaScript code. ..."

That's just cool. And something I wonder if they will productize? (If so, that wouldn't be cheap as I bet that's some serious IP). Still the fact they even share that this is some of their secret sauce is nice (see, I'm not a fanboy for just any reason.... ;)

The Brent Ozar New All-in-One Download Pack (and discount on their commercial stuff secret)

Brent Ozar - Announcing Our New All-in-One Download Pack

We give away a lot of stuff – scripts, setup checklists, e-books, posters, you name it.

But we kept hearing a theme from folks: “Wow, I’ve seen one of your tools before, but I had no idea there were so many others!” In order to get everything, they had to go all over the place in our site.

To fix that, we’ve got a new easy button: our free SQL Server download pack. Now when you get anything, you’ll get everything in a single zip file, plus get email notifications whenever there’s a new version.

Enjoy, and hope we make your job suck just a little less.

[GD: POST Leached in FULL... Come on, it was just a few sentences!]

All of the awesome free Brent Ozar and team downloads in one? Yeah, that's cool.

The discount secret? You have to subscribe to their RSS Feed to see... :)

What if Windows 3.1 had a baby with Windows 95? Windows 93 (and you can play with in your browser...)

OSNews - Try Windows 93 Today

What if Microsoft released an operating system in the chasm between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95? It might look something like Windows 93, an interactive art project by Jankenpopp and Zombectro that you can try right in your browser.

Try Windows 93: The Hilarious OS That Never Was

If you didn’t live through the jump, it can be hard to describe the cultural revolution between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Its taskbar ussured in an era of “multitasking”; its built-in web browser put the world’s information at your fingertips; its “Start” menu, complete with its own ~$10 million Rolling Stones song, was pure optimism rendered in bits.

But what if Microsoft released an operating system in the chasm between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95? It might look something like Windows 93, an interactive art project by Jankenpopp and Zombectro that you can try right in your browser.

The experience of the OS is hard to put into words--it’s Windows imagined in some parallel universe, with plenty of retro homages to the weird OS quirks of yore.

...

It’s surprising just how deep you can dig in Windows 93, thanks to content like GameBoy emulators and pixel editors that have actually been pulled from various sources across the web. I spent a shameful amount of time giggling nostalgically, until suddenly, a beach ball of death showed up on my screen. At first, I figured it was just another one of Windows 93’s jokes until, moments later, Chrome froze and then crashed.

...

..."

http://www.windows93.net/

What is very ironic is that, for me at least, the site seems to work better in Chrome. :/

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Visual Studio Online RESTs, crosses the Pond and gets Hooked...

Visual Studio - European Datacenter & REST 1.0

European Datacenter

By popular demand, with today’s update, you can now create VS Online accounts in the Azure “West Europe” region, based in the Netherlands. You can get started by going to http://visualstudio.com and creating a new account. The account creation page will auto detect the data center that’s nearest to you, or you can click the “change options” link to override the choice

...

Visual Studio Online REST API version 1.0 is here

In May, we announced the public preview of a new set of REST APIs for Visual Studio Online. Today, we are happy to announce that these APIs have graduated to 1.0 release status. This marks an important milestone in our journey to support easier integration between Visual Studio Online and other services, including your own custom tools and services.

The 1.0 designation means we have locked these APIs from any breaking changes going forward. As a developer, this means you can bind your app to the 1.0 API version and sleep well at night knowing future Visual Studio Online deployments won’t break your app.

Although the 1.0 set is locked from a breaking change standpoint, it is not locked from a feature standpoint. New APIs can be added to the 1.0 set and nonbreaking enhancements may even be introduced to APIs already released. A few existing preview APIs (like Git Pull Requests) remain in preview today, but will eventually graduate into the 1.0 set (this is mainly due to significant changes coming soon).

To learn more about how to use the APIs, check out Get started with the REST APIs.

To explore the available APIs, see the Visual Studio Online REST API Reference.

Developers with existing apps using the 1.0 preview APIs: you should start migrating to the release 1.0 APIs as soon as possible.

...

Service hooks is out of preview

I am also happy to announce that the service hooks features is out of preview and is a fully supported feature of Visual Studio Online. Service hooks let your app or service get notified instantly when an event happens in Visual Studio Online. With service hooks your app or service can avoid continuously polling to check for changes, such as completed builds, commits or check-ins, or work item changes.

Visual Studio Online supports 14 services out of the box, including ...

Not to be lost in the TechEd Europe news stream, VSO has rolled out two important updates, the REST API v1 and Service Hooks. I love me my official API's! :)

High Five to 5! HTML5 is Done (and what a ride it's been...)

MS Open Tech - W3C Charts a Course for the Future of the Open Web by Finalizing HTML5 Standard

Imagining what the Web might (not) have become without standards, and you will understand why we all must support an open web platform for the future.

Today marks a significant milestone for a great many of my colleagues around the world with whom I have had the privilege of working within the W3C HTML Working Group. Several of us have taken on new roles and responsibilities, changed companies, launched new businesses, or become parents – or in my case, a grandparent - since I joined the W3C HTML Working Group as a co-chair in 2009. Yet we continued to work as a community to produce the W3C Recommendation announced today for the HTML 5.0 open standard.

As a Co-Chair of the W3C HTML Working Group, I have seen firsthand the remarkable commitment that people and organizations from all over the world have contributed to this effort. It has been an open and intensely collaborative process, encompassing a great many passionate and brilliant minds.

Although many of the HTML5 features standardized today were sketched out several years ago, it took a lot of hard work to get the details right. Since 2007, the Working Group has resolved more than 4,000 errors, ambiguities, and controversies recorded in the WG bug lists. The email archive at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/ shows that it took over 45,000 messages since March 2007 to get the job done!

...

html5Doctor - The ride to 5

In recent weeks I contacted around 40 people, a cross section of those who have banged away at, or banged on about, HTML5. I asked them for their perspectives on HTML5 becoming a W3C Recommendation. Below are the words of the 28 people who responded, pretty much in the order they hit my inbox:

..."

IEBlog - Celebrating HTML5 Recommendation with the W3C

Today, while several Internet Explorer team members are at W3C TPAC 2014, the IE team is happy to join Microsoft Open Technologies, other browser vendors, and the web community at large in celebrating the HTML5 specification reaching W3C Recommendation.

This milestone represents many years of commitment from people and organizations around the world to produce and stabilize the next generation of the W3C Open Web Platform. The IE team believes that the standards process is vital to creating an interoperable Web and ensuring that the web just works for everyone.

We’d also like to congratulate the W3C on its 20th anniversary and ...

HTML Guy or not, you have to admit it has changed the way we interact with the web and the world. HTML5 is when we, the internet industry, players and consumers finally grew up a little. The web world is far from perfect, but compared to the past, it's night and day...

SharpDevelop 5.0 is Final as in Final, but "... not the final version of SharpDevelop"

SharpDevelop - SharpDevelop 5.0 Final

After five Betas and one RC we are finally hitting release for SharpDevelop 5.0. Here is a recap of some of the most important features and changes from the various development stages (in short):

SD5 only supports C#. If you need VB.NET (or IP and IR respectively), please stick with version 4.4. The rewrite of NRefactory was the big-ticket item of this release, and supporting one language was huge already.

SD5 is licensed under MIT, instead of LGPL.

SD5 has ILSpy debugging integrated into the IDE.

Loads of "smaller" improvements. Please see my posts in the what's new series, search grouping, go to definition improvements, a new addin manager and how to publish your own addin, class browser goodies, the new resource editor, member hierarchy navigation and many, many more.

Item #1 in this list definitely begs the question "What about VB.NET?" I'd like to extend this question to "What's in the future of SharpDevelop?"

We have componentized SharpDevelop intentionally for what is coming now - the as-of-today core team moving to specific areas of our ecosystem. Think ILSpy. Think AvalonEdit. Yes, this means that the IDE iself is going to take a back seat. There are a couple of reasons for this decision...

...

Long story short - SharpDevelop is far from "done" (we'd never claim that), but we (the current core team) are realigning our efforts for visibility in the near term. This does not mean SharpDevelop is on "life support" or "dead". It means that bug fixing, small improvements and minor features have priority. Big shiny new things are up to contributions which we are more than happy to accept and help with, simply ping us on the developer mailing list to get started.

Like the post title says: 5.0 final, and not the final version of SharpDevelop. ...

I've only been watching this project for a decade and they are only on v5? (cough.... slow pokes... cough)? Just Kidding! These guys rock, with not only an awesome IDE (that's free and OSS), but in all other projects under their belt, like Avalon, ILSpy, etc. And their call out to the community for contributions is very valid. If there's a missing feature, "Don't whine, do..." :)

Monday, October 27, 2014

".NET Serializers Comparison Chart" - Six Serializers compared

manski's blog - .NET Serializers Comparison Chart

There are many object serializers in C#/.NET but their details are often not so obvious, for example:

Does my class need a parameterless constructor?

Can I serialize private fields?

Can I serialize readonly fields?

So, I’ve compiled a comparison chart in this article that will compare the various serializers and their capabilities.

Table of Contents

1 Testing Framework

2 General Capabilities

3 Class/Type Features

4 Fields and Properties

5 Deserialization Type Restrictions

6 Reference Support

7 Other

8 Conclusion

9 History

...

Great post comparing native and one of the bellwether third party components. Great write-up, presentation and content.

"AMBITION" - One of the coolest space mission "communication" short films of the year

blastr - The full version of that mysterious sci-fi short, Ambition, is finally live

Remember that extremely cool sci-fi project we told you about a while back, starring Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen? Well the whole thing has arrived — and here’s what it’s all about.

Though it seemed like the Ambition project might be the set up to a feature film, we guessed it was probably a digital short film. Turns out, we were right. But, what we didn’t know was what the film was created to promote: The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, which plans to be the first-ever man-made device to land on a comet.

...

AMBITION - The Film

www.esa.int/rosetta
www.ambitionfilm.com
Tomek Bagiński’s AMBITION, starring Aidan Gillen (GAME OF THRONES) and Aisling Franciosi (THE FALL), plays a key part in supporting the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Rosetta mission (www.esa.int/rosetta).

The short film tells the story of one of the most important space exploration endeavours of this decade. Just as Gillen’s enigmatic Master encourages Franciosi’s Apprentice to seek out the key to life amidst a rugged alien landscape, ESA has been on a decade-long ambitious journey of its own, to unlock the mysteries of a comet and the origins of our Solar System with its Rosetta spacecraft, hundreds of millions of kilometres from Earth.

AMBITION complements the ongoing communication about Rosetta and adds a “human dimension” to the scientific and technological achievements of the mission, which include curiosity, drive and ambition.

In a word, "Holly crap, that's awesome!"

TFS Cheat Sheet every TFS power user will want - "TFS Command-line Cheat Sheet"

TFS Command-line Cheat Sheet

Project Description
This project provide a Cheat Sheet listing for all Team Foundation Server Built-in and Third tools Command-line.

Built-in

Tf utility

Tfs Build

Tfs Security

Tfs and Project Server

Tfs Delete Project

Tcm (Microsoft Test Manager)

Tfs Config

Tfs Lab Config

Tfs Service Control

Tfs Field Mapping

WitAdmin

Third tools command-line

TFS Power tools

WiqAdmin

TfsClean

TfsCreateBuild

TfsExport

TfsMoveDescription

TfsReg

How cool is that!

One James McCaffrey, Two Succinctly's - "Machine Learning Using C# Succinctly" & "Neural Networks Using C# Succinctly" (& 50 free eBooks)

Machine Learning Using C# Succinctly

In Machine Learning Using C# Succinctly, you’ll learn several different approaches to applying machine learning to data analysis and prediction problems. Author James McCaffrey demonstrates different clustering and classification techniques, and explains the many decisions that must be made during development that determine how effective these techniques can be. McCaffrey provides thorough examples of applying k-means clustering to group strictly numerical data, calculating category utility to cluster both qualitative and quantitative information, and even using neural network classification to predict the output of previously unseen data.

Table of Contents

k-Means Clustering

Categorical Data Clustering

Logistic Regression Classification

Naïve Bayes Classification

Neural Network Classification

Neural Networks Using C# Succinctly

Neural networks are an exciting field of software development used to calculate outputs from input data. While the idea seems simple enough, the implications of such networks are staggering—think optical character recognition, speech recognition, and regression analysis. With Neural Networks Using C# Succinctly by James McCaffrey, you'll learn how to create your own neural network to solve classification problems, or problems where the outcomes can only be one of several values. Learn about encoding and normalizing data, activation functions and how to choose the right one, and ultimately how to train a neural network to find weights and bias values that provide accurate predictions. Download the book today!

Table of Contents

Neural Networks

Perceptrons

Feed-Forward

Back-Propagation

Training