Smart client and VSTO deep dive

If you live in Srilanka and if you are a developer then make sure you don’t miss out on attending the smart client and VSTO deep dive sessions held at the NDB auditorium in Colombo.
Go to http://dotnetforum.lk/register/deepdive to register

I will be presenting on "DataBinding in Smart Clients" and will be focusing on .NET 2.0 data binding capabilities.
You can also check out www.dotnetforum.lk for more details

TFS is released today

The TFS is released today. For more details check
http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/03/16/553413.aspx

Object Test Bench in VS.NET 2005

I am not sure how many of you are aware of the object test bench in VS.NET 2005. This allows you to graphically create an instance from a class(object) in your class diagram and execute its methods visually.
Invoking it is as simple as creating a class diagram and dropping your classes there. Then you can right click on a class and go to create instance and invoke a constructor. This will create an instance object and place it in the object test bench. You can right click on this object and invoke instance methods.This is really useful if you need to create, invoke and test objects in isolation.

VSLaunch at Colombo University

There was a VSLaunch event held yesterday organized by the university of Colombo. I did a session on Language enhancements in .NET 2.0 introducing some new concepts in both VB.NET 8.0 and C# 2.0 for the students at the university. There was quite a good crowd and hopefully the session was useful for all who attended.

LINQ presentation at Students Champ Day

I did a presentation at the Students Champ day at the region Microsoft office last friday. It was slightly different from the one i did at the user group since i was putting more emphasis on the ORM part with DLINQ. Hope it was informative for anyone who attended the session.

February .NET User Group Meeting

We had our February .NET user group meeting yesterday and i did a presentation introducing LINQ and its counterparts. I hope anyone attended got a good idea on what to expect in the coming versions of C# and VB.NET
I am planning to do the same session with some different focus at the Students Champ day at the Microsoft regional office. 
Meanwhile here are some of the links to get more idea on LINQ
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/Future/default.aspx
Also check out the video done by Anders on LINQ
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=114680
Do post your comments and suggestions on the session

VSLaunch event in Srilanka

We had the VSLaunch event yesterday in Srilanka and it was quite a blast. Had a King Arthur theme throughout the day and there were some good presentations that got lined up as well. The high capacity crowd showed there were a lot of participants enthusiastic about the VS2005, SQL2005 and BizTalk2005 range of products.

Very funny Blonde Joke

Had to refer this. This is the best ever blonde joke. Check it out

WCF and WWF Go Live Licenses announced

WCF and WWF go live licenses are available. Check out the following URLs for more details:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/getthebeta/golive/default.aspx
http://windowscommunication.net
http://windowsworkflow.net
I can smell the RTMs getting closer.

Book: Programming WPF

Just got my copy of Programming Windows Presentation Foundation by Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths. I still didn't get to read all the chapters but a quick run through the book really impressed me.
When Avalon CTPs were released i installed it and wanted to try it out. But it was difficult getting the resources to try out some programming using XAML and WPF.
Finally i think i can use this book as a guide in trying out some sample programs with WPF and i will post more on this book and things i try out in WPF in the future.

Looking back at 2005

Thats another year gone in a wink and a dawn of a new year. Personally 2005 was a very happening year. I managed to do a lot of things this year and am pretty satisfied with it. A few being my MVP award was renewed, started doing technical writing and travelled around a lot this year.
Now with 2006 just starting out I need to work out what i want to achieve. I haven’t yet made any plans or anything as such but would be interesting to see what 2006 has in store.

New year wishes

Wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous new year. Hope 2006 makes all your dreams and wishes come true

Back in Srilanka

Finally i am back in Srilanka after spending time in Seattle and Minneapolis. It was altogether quite an experience and cherish the time spent at Microsoft with an awesome group of people.
But the journey back home was a very tiering one with 3 transits and 2 delayed flights and 2 missed baggages. I had to stay close to 18 hours at Tokyo due to flight delays and at the time of writing this entry my baggages are yet to arrive. Hence i was travelling for the past 3 days and it feels so good to be home finally.

Article on .NET collection management

My article on ".NET collection management: Using generics to manage a collection of objects" is published in Simple-Talk at the following URL
http://www.simple-talk.com/2005/12/08/net-collection-management/
This article looks into the features of the generic List class and its features on manipulating collections better. This is a follow up to the November .NET UG Session I did. As always let me know any suggestions or queries.

My Laptop: Toshiba Satellite M45-S359

I just got my hands on my very own Laptop. I purchased a Toshiba Satellite M45S359 and so far it's pretty good and i dont have any complaints. I sure hope it will survive all the heavy applications i am planning to run on this :-)

Down in USA

I am down in USA and this is my first ever visit here. I reached here on the 3rd morning Seattle time. I got my visa after i was initially refused to attend the MVP global summit. I am down here on a work assignment with Lionbridge and I will be spending the next few days at the Microsoft campus in Redmond.
I would post some pictures after a few days and i might not blog regularly since i would be busy.

Hilarious design pattern love story

I guess this is the height of obsessions with design patterns. Very hilarious http://odetocode.com/Blogs/scott/archive/2005/11/22/2499.aspx

November .NET User group meeting

The November .NET user group meeting was held today. I did a presentation titled “Generic Collections: Doing more with less code”. Generics is one of the most exciting features for me in .NET 2.0. Hope the session was informative for everyone and if you have any comments or questions, post a comment here or post a message in the .NET forum

Srilanka .NET Forum - A New look

We have migrated the Srilanka .NET forum from ASP.NET starter kit to Community Server. Had a very rough time migrating the users and posts and we are extremely sorry about the fact the old posts are truncated. We will try to see if we can push the complete posts online soon.
Hope everyone enjoys the new forum.

Looking for a Java IDE?

Java Studio Enterprise is available for free. You need to register to download it. Grab it from http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/free
I prefer using Eclipse for java development and have never tried the Java Studio. It looks good and should try it out when i get some time