March 2007 - Mike Taulty's Blog

One of the questions that we asked on the feedback forms that we handed out at our recent Roadshow events was; " Which topics are you more interested in hearing about at future events?" I've no idea whether I'm supposed to share this data with you or not but I was looking at this evening and thought I would (I'll probably get shot but, as far as I can see, it's aggregate data and isn't going to identify anybody). This is based on approximately 1200 attendees to the 4 venues other than the Reading venue which we only did Tuesday and haven't got the figures back for yet. Here's the graph; There's no great surprises in there and I'm pleased to say that it largely lines up with what I've always suspected which is that if you want to catch most people you'll talk about; Tools Languages & Frameworks Data Client - Web and/or Windows (and Web is more popular on there right now than Windows by quite a long way) It's not rocket science in that if you're thinking of a dev audience then everyone uses the tools, languages...

Via Mike Harsh I came across this post (from Bryant) on using ASP.NET server controls to generate XAML rather than HTML. This reminded me of something that Phil talked about a while ago in his post here (in the context of WPF rather than WPF/E and that perhaps makes more sense because ASP.NET has the controls and so does WPF whereas, right now, WPF/E doesn't have that concept). The difference between the 2 approaches is that Bryant adds new controls (e.g. "GlassButton") whereas Phil adapted the existing controls to spit out XAML. The mixture of all these technologies is only going to get more interesting.

Just a word of "warning". I'm 2 days into using my HP nc8430 and it seems like a great machine but I've struggled for 2 days to understand why the supplied second hard drive that looked like it would slot into the multi-bay on the side instead of the DVD drive doesn't slot into that bay. It's because the laptop won't take a second hard drive and it seems the "slot" is a bit redundant in that it's only designed for the DVD drive. This seems a bit odd to me but I've got it from HP that this is the case. So...if you like the look of the nc8430 but you need a lot of disk space then you might be wise to look elsewhere as this machine can only take a single 2.5" drive (capacities on those things at 7200rpm are < 160GB at the time of writing). In my defense, I didn't order it but in defense of the person who did it's taken me 2 support calls and a few emails to get an answer as to whether this drive is meant to fit into the bay or not so it's a long way from simple . Update: I've been told by HP that they don't make...

I've managed to get myself a new laptop. On our recent Roadshow, one delegate actually wrote about my session "Someone should buy this guy a new laptop" and I've never agreed more. It wouldn't be appropriate to have a go at the vendor that made my previous laptop but, without mentioning any names, I'd have to say that it's a piece of kit that I've really come to loathe over time. In the past, I've always felt a bit of nostalgia whenever I come to part with a laptop (they become like "old friends" :-)) but this time around I'd gladly fling the old machine into the nearest canal. To be fair, I think that manufacturer does make decent kit and this was a "one off" and I was just unlucky to have that particular model. Regardless...I've got new kit and this is an HP NC8430 and I've only been running it for a day but, already, I'm about 1000% happier than I've been in a long time. Specs of the kit; Core 2 Duo T7400 Processor at 2.16Ghz 4GB RAM 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 Graphics Some disk (haven't quite got that...

Guy is putting together a new, free user group in the Bristol area that he's called the .NET Developer Network ( dot-net-dev-net :-) ). I've know Guy for quite a long time and I've seen him speak at various events and he's a great speaker and he's also pops up as the author of the .NET Internationalization book and at the "4 Chaps from Blighty" website. I'm doing a talk down at the new user group on the 23rd April (evening slot). The talk will be a 2-parter on LINQ with the first part talking about the various language features that gets us to "LINQ to objects" and the second part being about where that can then go with LINQ to X (XML/SQL/DataSet/Entities) etc. Hope to see you there - click here for more details .

<rant> I came home to find my PC that was running XP when I left the house sitting there running Vista. When I left the house, the PC had a bunch of unsaved work on the screen including a particularly useful Virtual PC image. What happened is that whilst I was away, Windows Update decided that it would install some updates and then it decided that (of its own volition) it would go ahead and reboot my PC in order to apply them (presumably because I wasn't there to tell it "NOOOO! Don't ever do that!"). Vista is my default OS on that PC so when I get back, Vista has booted. When I reboot back into XP, it says "Oh, whilst you were away I've rebooted the OS to apply an update". I find this kind of thing infuriating . Where's the button that says "Don't ever, ever, ever do that on my PC no matter what - it's my PC and I'll decide when to reboot it". If there is such a button then why the heck isn't it the default setting?!?! If you're someone who builds software - never, ever, ever reboot the user's PC without...

I had a bit of a play with DreamScene following the "Content Pack" coming out . I quite like this stuff - it looks pretty cool. My only "problem" is that on my laptop playing one of these DreamScene videos takes about 25-30% of my CPU which isn't going to be acceptable. I'm not sure if this can be dropped at all when DreamScene comes out of preview but I'd guess if I lose more than (say) 5% CPU then I'm not going to use it. I liked that when I unplugged the laptop the video froze - that's reassuring :-)