A Session on XNA

As of today, I have 3 WP7 apps in the marketplace. And 3 are coming... I have been developing the apps using Silverlight only, and keeping my fingers away from XNA. I haven't had much time pondering on XNA, so I have been procrastinating on it.

Next Tuesday, 21st that is, Chris Gomez is coming to Harrisburg PA, for presenting a session on XNA for WP7, for our user group. He has promised me to start with XNA basics, and then go into game development. I have talked to Chris on various occasions, and found him very passionate about XNA. This would be fun, for sure. If it sucks me in, I would consider developing some apps using XNA too :) Who knows... :)

So, if you are interested and would like to know what XNA is all about, you could visit our next user group meeting on 21st evening. You wouldn't be disappointed for sure! For details, please visit http://www.central-penn.net.

Code Camp and VS.NET 2008 Express

By being a speaker liason for our .NET User Group, I made lot of good friends. Friends whom I could ask any technical question and would get an answer almost immediately.

Code Camp Details - Thanks a million to the speakers
The most interesting and informative presentation was Kevin Goff's Business Intelligence with SSIS, SQL Server 2005, Excel 2007 and PeformancePoint Server 2007.

We had Rachel Appel, Steve Andrews and Andrew Schwam for the first time for our Code Camp and they were great!

John Baird, Dan Clark, Lance Wulfers and Paul Kawaller did a great job too.

VS.NET 2008 - My first stint.
When I downloaded VS.NET 2008 for the first time, it was depressing. The template window was almost empty, when I tried to create a web app. That was depressing indeed. I googled for 2 days and got it fixed. I had installed Expression Designer CTP a long time ago, which had to be unistalled at first (who knew?).

So, with great expectation, I started my journey. This time, I did not want to start with the "Hello World" application. I wanted to do something diifferent. I had a very old project that I did for myself, when I was learning ASP.NET 1.0. So I am picking that up for conversion.

I will be updating this blog with my experiences in upgrading a Visual Studio 2003 (this could be applied to 1.1 too) web application to Visual Studio 2008.

Update:
I am having some hiccups with VS.NET 2008 Web Express. It seems I have to wait for my local InstallFest to get the whole Studion IDE set up for this. Till then I will be posting my experiences with Web Express 2008. Keep visiting!

Code Camp 2007 Update

Another successful milestone for Central Penn .NET User Group -MSDN Code Camp 2007!

I would be posting the details soon on the same subject ASAP.

I have been lazy in posting .NET content in this blog, but I would be doing so quite often from now onwards with more VS.NET 2008 related topics. So tune in time to time to get some cool ideas on VS.NET 2008.

Till then, enjoy the holidays!!

User Group Activities - 2nd Q

Brian Myers could not make it to our UG Meeting last meeting, but we had a wonderul hands-on session. Come July 17, we are honored to have KEVIN GOFF again with a crash course on WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). And this makes it our first .NET 3.0 presentation!

Looking forward to meeting Kevin and his WCF slides :-)

So, if you are in Harrisburg area and are willing to attend the meeting, log in to http://www.central-penn.net/ and register yourselves for the event.

User Group Activities

I have been busy lately with my day job, my side projects (some hobby and some real ones) and the user group activities. I haven't blogged much about the user group I attend and in which I am the Speaker Chairman. This title was coined by Judy Calla, our president. It is my responsibility to arrange speakers and discuss (and suggest) topics of interest to them. What could be more fun, eh?

This year began with a bang with John Baird from Philadelphia convincing us about the Test Driven Development. It was great watching him present the topic with such a passion. John Baird had been a regular speaker at our code camps and he is indeed a great speaker.

In February, I decided to take the members for a ride on Generics. There were only 10 members who attended the session due to the bad weather (ice, wind, snow et al). But it was fun for me learning the fundamentals of Generics. Kevin Goff had done an excellent speech in applying Generics in Remoting in our Code Camp 2006. But most of the attendees (including me) had no idea on Remoting and did not appreciate it very well. And I had conveyed this to Kevin also which he took very positively.

Starting March, we have great speakers and titles lined up:

On March, we have Rachel Appel, venturing into the Data Source Controls in ASP.NET 2.0

Robert Green, INETA speaker, is flying to Harrisburg in April, with a much awaited presentation on VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office).

May is bringing Scott Allen again to Harrisburg, but for the first time to our user group meeting with ASP.NET AJAX.

June is local boy Brian Myer's. For the first time, we would have a 3.0 topic. Yes, Brian would be entertaining us with WWF and a lab.

Kevin Goff would be presenting on another 3.0 sizzler, WCF (Windows Communication Foundation).

Sahil Malik, another INETA speaker would be coming to us in August with ADO.NET 2.0.

Being Speaker Chairman for the group is an honor indeed. According to Judy, I have taken a huge burden of her, but let me say, I am indebted for giving me this opportunity.

I would be updating this blog on more coming events of our user group. Also, please dive into our web site (http://www.central-penn.net/) for more details.

September Talk moved to October

I was called unexpectedly and had to fly to India for a short span of 10 days. My father was diagnosed advanced Liver Cirrhosis and had to see him.

Judy Calla was very much helpful in switching my presentation with Mehul Mody's talk on Ajax.NET.

So fans (:-)), get geared for October!

September Talk

I am going to talk on Membership features in ASP.NET 2.0. If time permits, I would be touching briefly on Role Providers too. If you would like to listen to these topics, you are most welcome to the September session of the Central Penn .NET User Group (http://www.central-penn.net.)

A Great Evening with Themes

It was a great evening yesterday as everyone loved it, it seems... :-)

This was my third speaking event for our user group.

My last talk was about Delegates and I know most of them did not get anything from what I talked. And I was really disappointed. May be the examples I gave was not enough or it did not make the point that I wanted to convey.

But this time, it was different. Although I stumbled for few minutes, I made that up after some time, thanks to the audience.

March is Mine!

I am going to speak about Themes and Skins in ASP.NET 2.0 in our local .NET user's group (http://www.central-penn.net/) on the third Tuesday of March (21st of March, that is). I have been looking forward to this for a long time. With my busy schedule recently, I have not had enough time to dig deeply into VS2005 and ASP.NET 2.0. And this would give me an excuse to do so.

.NET DAD MEETS .NET DUDE

Oh Yeah!

It was Miguel Castro at our local user group meeting (www.central-penn.net), speaking about building
Web Controls.

It was indeed an interesting session, with Miguel. He was really prepared and was really active. Most of the members in our group are either beginners or are getting into .NET.

As Miguel told (or complained) that building web controls are an area which most developers (or the powers-to-be, for that matter) do not like to swim in. I get complains from fellow developers around of how the DataGrid or LisBox do not give them what they need. Well, if they could see them as just templates rather than a fully blown product for them to use, they could really take the advantage of extending the functionality. My favourite quote - "No one can make the whole world happy. Not even Microsoft." But it does make our life easier. With passion and courage, Miguel showed us that extending the functionality of the existing controls or building a new one from the scratch is not that hard and cumbersome as we think it is.

The most important (and confusing) area is State Management. I got lost in that area and got my doubts cleared with Miguel after the session.

We are really proud for having Miguel with us.

Three Cheers to Miguel.
Three Cheers to Judy.