Mathoms

I've moved!

2008-09-17T00:51:00Z

I've moved my blog from this location to geekswithblogs.net . Although using the Magenic blog server is convenient and served well for me, I wanted more going forward....(read more)

Code Camp 10 - Call for Speakers

2008-08-22T15:55:00Z

Code Camp 10 in Boston is around 4 weeks away and there's still room if you want to attend or if you want to speak. Check out Chris Bowen's blog for complete details or just head over to the web site to register. I have several sessions already planned. See you there!...(read more)

Microsoft Forums Client

2008-08-13T14:03:26Z

I like reading the Microsoft Forums, I even really like responding on the Forums, however the forums are not very convenient form of communication for me. It requires an internet connection, and the expirience varies based on what browser you happen to be using, and I switch fairly regularly between Internet Explorer and FireFox. And navigating around is rather painful. I like rich client applications for things that I do frequently, like reading blogs. I have SharpReader set up to gather all the...(read more)

Tech-Ed 2008 Orlando

2008-06-12T15:57:00Z

I was luck enough to be presented with the opportunity to attend Tech-Ed again this year. This was my third Tech-Ed ( 1997, 2006 ). I spent a lot of time on the Expo floor talking with various product groups and meeting old friends. This year was the first year that MS split the conference into Tech-Ed Developers and Tech-Ed IT. I can't say I though it was a success. About half the sessions I attended weren't worth it and the other half were a no brainer ( Rocky Lotkha, Ted Neward ). There...(read more)

Presented @ Tech-Tuesday

2008-05-15T18:44:00Z

A few days ago I did a short presentation on XNA Development for a group of technologests at an event called Tech Tuesday, It's held every month and this month Microsoft was sponsoring the event and invited me to talk about XNA. It was a great event, I got to meet a lot of new people and ran into a few familiar ones. You can read about the event ( and I got a mention as well ) here: http://danbricklin.com/log/2008_03_06.htm#ttuemay13 An interesting note, during the event I was talking to two...(read more)

XNA 3.0 CTP

2008-05-07T16:23:00Z

The ZMan just posted about the availability of the first CTP for XNA 3.0. \o/ We can now start writing Games for the Zune! I'm downloading it now but be sure to check back later as I fill in some details. See the Zman's post for more details : http://www.thezbuffer.com/articles/535.aspx...(read more)

Magenic Technology Summit

2008-05-06T20:47:00Z

I will be speaking at the first ever Magenic Technology Summit that is being held on Friday June 20 in Chicago. This is a full day of Magenic-provided training, available by invitation only to customers and potential customers of Magenic. We have lined up an impressive array of speakers and topics in two tracks, .NET development and Microsoft servers. There are even two keynotes: Our first keynote speaker is Jay Schmelzer, who is the Group Program Manager for RAD tools. This basically means he runs...(read more)

Microsoft.Scripting.Util has some cool things

2008-03-21T14:10:52Z

As you can tell from the last couple of posts, I'm looking at IronPython. Not for Python, I can barely spell Python let along develop in it, but that is changing slowly. My interest in IronPython is actually the Microsoft.Scripting assembly, better known as the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). I'm doing some research for a talk I'm doing at Code Camp 9 on extending your applications using the DLR. Anyway, back on topic, I've found that the IronPython sources are a great source of new ideas and great...(read more)

InternalsVisibleToAttribute

2008-03-21T13:45:31Z

Here's something I came across in the IronPython sources that I really hadn't noticed in the .Net Framework before. [assembly: InternalsVisibleTo( "IronPython.Modules" )] This is from the MSDN documention on the Attribute: .NET Framework Class Library InternalsVisibleToAttribute Class Specifies that types that are ordinarily visible only within the current assembly are visible to another assembly. Namespace: System.Runtime.CompilerServices Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll) This...(read more)

How do you draw a line in XNA?

2008-03-13T20:28:00Z

I was at my local IGDA users group meeting last night and announced the Boston XNA Developers group. After the presentation, I was talking to some folks interested in the XNA group. One of them asked me this question; "How do I draw a line in XNA?". I was a bit baffled at first, thinking, why would you want to do that? But then it struck me that it really wasn't an easy thing to do. In DirectX there was an API to draw primitives like lines and circles. That doesn't exist in XNA....(read more)

SharePoint Site Import/Export

2008-02-22T15:53:00Z

There are a couple of things I've found that just don't work when Importing and Exporting sites. The newest on is with workflows. If you have an approval workflow on a list, and you restore it to a new location, it's possible that the task notification emails will no longer be sent. One fix so far is to toggle the Send Email switch on the Tasks list off then back on again to get the emails to start sending....(read more)

XNA Announcements @ GDC

2008-02-22T15:40:00Z

A couple of very cool things were announced this week by Microsoft that pertain to XNA: Xbox LIVE Community Games announced Xbox LIVE Community Games is a newly announced offering which pioneers upon the industry leading Xbox LIVE service to provide gamers an opportunity to share, peer review, download and play games created by the community, for the community. Starting with the beta launch of the service later this spring, members with an XNA Creators Club subscription will be able to submit their...(read more)

New Boston Area Users Group

2008-02-06T16:38:49Z

I'd like to announce the formation of a new XNA developer users group in the Boston area. The official name of the group is Boston XNA Developers Group. There is a web site up for it, which will be updated with meeting dates and times as well as anything else of interest. The first meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 27th from 6:00pm-8:00pm. The location of the meeting will be at the Microsoft Offices on Jones Road in Waltham, MA . The topic for the inaugural meeting has not been decided...(read more)

The Singleton<> and .Net Compact Edition

2007-11-15T18:32:00Z

I was looking at doing some Smartphone development so I downloaded the Mobile 6 SDK and started plugging away. I have some code that uses the Singleton<> implementation I blogged about before . Everything compiles fine, but when I try to run the application, it fails with a runtime exception : System.NotSupportedException was unhandled at System.RuntimeType.InvokeMember() at System.Type.InvokeMember() at SingletonFactory..cctor() at Axiom.Core.Singleton`1.get_Instance() at Axiom.Core.Root..ctor()...(read more)

Filenames, do they really matter?

2007-10-24T17:01:00Z

I have been working with SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) for quite some time now. Lately, most of the work has been around branding. Some things to note when you are creating your features and solutions to deploy your new branding files: The name of the feature XML file in your feature folder must be Feature.xml (case sensitive) in the Solution Manifest. If you are deploying themes using a FeatureEventHandler , make sure you update the version of the assembly otherwise the new assembly will not get deployed...(read more)