Requiem for a Dream

After couple of years putting the movie in aside for watching in the future, finally decided to go and see the movie. IMDB has the full film online for free (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0180093/)

The movie is shockingly direct and shoots down to the deepest fears of the drugs can do to a man and everything he holds dear: family, woman he loves, dreams and desires that are making him different from the crowd. I had read about the met addiction, but I have never been aware of the fact that it's been used in medical practice to treat excessive weight et al.

The music by Kronos Quartet and Clint Mansell is very very good.

The movie is different from Trainspotting by Danny Boyle. The latter is built on the striking contrast between the sardonic approach by the main characters and the what is actually happening with their lives (death of the infant, death of friends etc).

I wish the Requiem for a Dream can be on he screen in the high schools as the anti-drug flick, but R-rating won't probably permit it.

SoCalCodeCamp Fullerton, Jan 2009 Post Mortem

My part as a speaker in SoCalCodeCamp (www.socalcodecamp.com) is over. I did 2 talks: Application Life-Cycle Management; Why Should You Care and VSTS/TFS 2010: Things You Need To Know.

The first talk was the introduction to the APIO by Microsoft and how ALM can benefit the unified vision of development, operations and project management towards solving the business problems. The talk was very successful although I was surprised - I was expecting more resistance from the audience. The reaction was very encouraging. See the slide deck here

The second talk was more of the overview of the VSTS/TFS VPC CTP1 focused on the testing, modeling and team foundation. The slide deck was easier, bet getting the decent performance from the VPC image was very difficult. Eventually I had to cut the number and the content of the demos and resort back to the slide deck and the screen shots. Somewhat disappointing, but hopefully will fix the performance for the internal Neudesic training sessions. The slide deck is here.

First Ukekele Ascent of Mt Whitney East Face, Jan 2009

Whitney East Face Winter Climb from Albert Lin on Vimeo.

Avalanche Burial with Black Diamond AvaLung

Cloud Slam 09 Virtual Conference

Conference: April 20-24

Call for Presentations Deadline: Feb 12

http://cloudslam09.com/

The 1st Annual Virtual Conference on Cloud Computing is hosted online April 20-24, 2009.
This conference is the global cloud computing event, covering latest trends and innovations in the world of cloud computing. Conference panels, workshops, and tutorials are selected to cover a range of the hottest topics in cloud computing.

Descriptions of our conference tracks are presented below.

• Technology.
• Implementation Experiences from various industries.
• Legal Aspects: Privacy and Compliance.
• Business Models.
• Research.

Microsoft CRM Rollup 2 is available

The fixes: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=959419 

Rollup 2 includes the defect fixes and improvements that came with Rollup 1.

The downloads http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=aa671769-61e9-45c4-919f-c88199aa4241&displaylang=en

The new service pack in 2 months.

January 2009 Azure SDK and Tools CTP

 

• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio
• Windows Azure SDK

What's new in the Tools?

• Addressed top customer bugs.
  • Resolved hang and performance issues on run and debug.
  • Fixed issue with "Publish" of large projects.
  • Fixed issue with "Create Test Tables" when both the web and worker role reference the same assembly
• Added support to debug Silverlight in a Web Role.
• Better storage services integration
• Error messages when there are Service Configuration or Service Definition errors

What's new in the SDK?

• Addressed top customer issues
  • Space in user name
  • Development storage may fail with a fatal error if the user name includes a space character.
  • Concurrent GetMessages requests to the Queue service may return the same message.
  • The DevTableGen utility may fail when passed the same assembly name on the command line more than once.
  • Development storage may fail to update or delete entities that contain special characters like these: '- $ & + , : ; = @'.
• The Windows Azure SDK offers improved support for the integration of development storage with Visual Studio, including enhanced performance.
• The StorageClient sample includes the following improvements. For more information, see the StorageClient Sample topic in the Windows Azure SDK help file.
  • The StorageClient sample now offers an optional exponential backoff retry policy.
  • The StorageClient sample now supports production endpoints that include the account name.
• The ASP.Net Providers sample now supports a search syntax similar to the ASP.Net SQL-based providers. For more information, see the ASPProviders Sample topic in the Windows Azure SDK help file.

Future Topics for Azure User Group Meetings

The Dec and Jan meetings of San Diego Azure User Group included:

• Introduction to Azure Platform and Services
• Cloud Storage

The future topics will include:

• Windows Live Services - Live ID
• Microsoft .NET Services - SQL Services: SDS basics (ACE, Explorer)
• Microsoft .NET Services - Service bus
• Windows Azure - Application Model / Roles
• Windows Live Services - Mesh
• Microsoft .NET Services - SQL Services: Entities, queries & LINQ
• Microsoft .NET Services - Access control
• Windows Live Services - Sync across devices
• Microsoft .NET Services - SQL Services: Sync
• Microsoft .NET Services – Workflow
• Windows Azure - Application Health Monitoring

AzureUserGroup.Com Goes Live

The new re-designed community site is available here http://www.azureusergroup.com/It will ultimately replace the www.cloudcomputingusergroup.com and will provide much better user experience with the full set of social networking features, events planning, blogs etc.

You will need to register on the site.

The site contains the regional local groups. If you are in San Diego, please, join the San Diego Azure User Group http://www.azureusergroup.com/group/sandiegoazureusergroup

What tools do I use?

I am currently doing the small pilot on service migration and would like to provide the references to the excellent tools available to you as a developer either for free or for not so much money:

Web Service Software Factory - Modeling Edition for VS 2008
Enterprise Library 4.1 (DAAB, EHAB, LAB, Unity)
ReSharper 4.1 for VS 2008
GhostDoc

Jan, 8 San Diego Cloud Computing User Group Meeting Notes

The meeting on "Cloud Storage" went well and was attended by ~8 people. The group is still very young and it still difficult to reach the target audience. But we're learning and hope to have more people coming to the next meeting in February. I am really grateful for the support provided by Woody Pewitt (Microsoft): meeting place, driving all the way from Irvine and staying late.

The San Diego CCUG was approved by MSFT Developers Evangelist on CodeZone.com (See SDCCUG). You can send a message to the UG Leader if you want to be added to the mailing list.

The new version of  Cloud Computing User Group is currently under construction and it will have better feature to support registration and better serve the community than the existing version.

San Diego Cloud Computing User Group is registered on CodeZone.Com. We shall reuse the calendar and possible the membership features of te CodeZone. See http://www.codezone.com/UserGroupInformation.CodezoneCom?ActiveID=3498

New Framework Design Guidelines were published. See them here http://www.amazon.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines-Conventions-Development/dp/0321545613?ie=UTF8&qid=1224001412&sr=11-1

What's New in the 2nd edition?
Updated with new features from .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5
Tons of new annotations from industry experts
Extension methods
Linq, Linq, Linq!!
New Async Pattern
Serialization guidelines
Dependency Properties guidelines
Significant updates to the Exceptions section
Small things such as operator parameters, DateTimeOffset, Nullable
Nearly every page has some sort of update from small grammar fixes to wording clarifications