Swinging with Java and Unix

After a quite a long time got to work again on Java and Unix. The last time i worked on Unix was around 3 years back on a SCO Unix platform when we implemented banking systems along with a company in India. This time my work is mainly on the development area on java swing user interfaces but my work involves using Solaris and Linux platforms. I am a bit behind on my commands in Unix and using the VI editor effectively but catching up very fast.
But my preferred platform and development tools would be the Microsoft platform and the .NET development tools in the coming years, though i wouldnt mind having a taste of the other technologies as well.

Down in California

I am down in california these days on some work assignments and probably will be here for a month or so. After some time i am working on some none MS technologies these days and that helps me in knowing which areas MS is far ahead and which areas MS is yet to catch on. But uptill now i think the former is a lot than the latter.

Hi .NET 3.0 ... Bye WinFx

The WinFx is renamed to .NET Framework 3.0. You can find more details on Somasegar’s blog. So according to this i think Orcas is not going to be .NET 3.0 at least the way i see it, and i guess based on this, .NET 3.0 will be using  the .NET 2.0 compilers and the new compilers will probably ship in with Orcas(.NET ?.?)
And with that you have the new community sites for WCF, WPF, WF and WCS are available at http://www.netfx3.com/

Vista lab in Singapore

I was down in Singapore the past week on Vista lab sessions held by Microsoft. It's an exciting time with the launch of Vista beta 2 and Office beta 2. I am still not sure on what i can blog on it so i guess i will have to wait. It was fun and got to interact with a lot of fellow MVPs from India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philipines and a few other countries. We also had a dinner outing one of the days and a couple of pics during that:

Too busy to blog :-(

Past few weeks a lot of things have been happening around with some changes in my career and along with that some good and some not so good decisions. So it was kind of a roller coaster ride and was too occupied to do any postings on my blog. So things are kinda getting settled now so thats a good sign and allows me to catch up on my blogging too.

Smart client and VSTO deep dive: Review

We had a great Smart client and VSTO deep dive event with a good number of participants considering it was the elections the day before that.One thing that was disappointing was a lot of people who registered didnt make it and they blocked out others possibly attending the event.
Dr.Nitin's presentation was awesome and the highlight of the day and i learnt quite a lot from it. It was very inspirational as well and thoroughly enjoyed it.
My presentation on "DataBinding in Smart clients" went okay and anyone interested can download the presentation here and the demos here.

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.