RJ Dudley

In my spare time, I've been working on an open source project management tool called Scrumr.  Scrumr is a lightweight app for managing sprints per Scrum methodology.  You can find out more about the project at http://codeplex.com/scrumr/. 

In the meantime, we need your help.  Please go to http://communitycodingcontest.org/ and vote for Scrumr.  We need the tools to make better software.

Thanks!

I'm headed to DevTeach Montreal!  It was DevTeach or PDC, and I liked the sessions at DevTeach better.  If you're attending also, drop a line.

Not sure how this one slid by me, but the MSDN Developer Freedom Roadshow is coming to Pittsburgh on September 19, 2008.  Since it’s being held at the MS offices, registration is limited to capacity (roughly 4 dozen or so).  The program looks to be very interesting, especially the morning half:

The Fundamentals of Liberty: Web Development Basics

Want to take advantage of the cool stuff that you can do with ASP.NET, but not sure where to start? Whether you’re a Windows programmer who hasn’t ventured into the web world yet, or coming from classic ASP or similar scripting languages, this session is for you. In this session, we’ll provide an overview of the .NET framework’s powerful web development features, from ASP.NET and its Web Forms programming model, to basic web services, to give you a foundation you can use to jump-start your web development efforts.

The Framer’s Intentions: What’s New in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Web Developers and ASP.NET MVC

In the first part of the session we will look into new features for web development that are introduced in the .NET framework 3.5 SP1 -- ADO.NET Entity Framework , ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and ADO.NET Data Services. In the second part, we will introduce the ASP.NET MVC framework, which enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display. A key benefit of ASP.NET MVC applications it that they provide clean URIs that can also be accessed in a RESTful manner.

More information and sign up at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032388335

My buddy Shaun has an immediate need for four midlevel .NET developers in Pittsburgh.  You can contact him at shaun [dot] eutsey [at] consultusa [dot] com if you're interested in hearing more.

<edit: email fixed />

December 11, 2-4 pm, or 5-7 pm (two sessions). 

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 (EST) - Visual Studio 2008 Community Launch Party

location: Microsoft Offices

Join us for the Visual Studio 2008 community launch party at Microsoft! We're having 2 sessions: 2-4 pm and 5-7 pm, with lots of giveaways, including 125 full Visual Studio 2008 licenses!

Join the Pittsburgh .NET User's Group on Tuesday, December 11th for
our Visual Studio 2008 Launch Event.  Danilo "Dani" Diaz, Microsoft
Developer Evangelist for Microsoft's Mid-Atlantic Region will be our
featured speaker.  Dani will be demonstrating the new features of
Visual Studio 2008 along with the new features of the .NET Framework
3.5.  Bring your laptop as we'll be providing trial editions of VS2008
for you to install and try out new features as Dani discusses them.
We'll also have a coding competition to see who can utilize the new
VS2008 features the best in creating a killer app; winners of the
local coding competition will be entered into a regional competition
where the stakes (and prizes) definitely increase!  All attendees (up
to a max of 125) will receive, via email, a free license to Visual
Studio 2008 Professional.
 
Due to the expected turnout for the event, we will be having two
sessions for our launch event.  Both will be held at Microsoft's
offices on the North Shore.  The sessions will be held from 2-4 PM and
from 5-7 PM on Tuesday, December 11th.  We'll also have lots of
give-aways at both events.  So come to the December .NET User's Group
on Tuesday, December 11th, and kick your holidays off to a good start.

 
Full info and RSVP link at http://pghdotnet.org/Events/430.aspx.

It took me a while to find this tip, so here's how to get Google Desktop to index XML files:

I think by default GDS has XML file indexing TURNED OFF in the registry - it won't index them at all. This key is in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Desktop\file_extensions_to_skip.  You'll have to remove "xml" from that list (I think)

(source: http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop_past-discussions/browse_thread/thread/6059c564cf1bf007/4cb1bf32429413bb)

The 'xml' extension was in this list, and I removed it.  Now I wait until the reindex is complete and try some queries.  Update to follow.

<update 2006-12-29>

The reindex has taken place, and there are plenty of XML files in the index now.  I can find them by simply searching for *.xml, but I still can't search the contents of an XML file in Google Desktop Search.  Not such a surprise, since Google Desktop Search's help indicates it does not support XML files (http://desktop.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=12634&topic=201).

Before I get too far into what I'm trying next, let me explain my need.  We use XML to send and receive shipment details with a business partner.  From time to time, I need to be able to quickly locate a specific shipment in the hundreds of XML files stored in the archive.  I'm positive I'm not the only person in this situation.

I found a plug-in at http://www.trivex.net/ which will have GDS treat XML as plain text, and that should hopefully improve the search.  Apparently Copernic can be set to do this from its control panel, and that's the next stop.  A plain text search is good enough, but ideally, either GDS or Copernic would support an XQuery for a specific element or attribute value.

So I've installed Larry's Any Text plug in (http://www.trivex.net/).  That was darn easy.  I had to add the XML extension to the config file furing installation, and the plug-in has triggered a reindex.  I'll let you know how this one works out.

<update 2006-12-29>

The index updated over lunch, and Larry's plug-in did the trick.  I can pull up the XML files I need simply by order number or some other identifier.  It's great.  Too bad it's not an XQuery or something similar, but it'll work.  Keep in mind that GDS does not support wildcards, so you have to enter the entire string you're looking for, not a partial order number.  Fortunately, element and attribute values are percieved as whole words.

The next meeting for the Pittsburgh .NET User Group (Pgh.NET) will be on Wednesday, November 8, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and is presented in partnership with the International .NET Association (INETA). Jason Beres from the INETA speakers bureau will be our presenter.

Deep Dive into Atlas Controls and Toolkit -- Building Applications
This session dives into the control details in the Atlas toolkit.  At the end of this session, attendees will have a full understanding of the data binding in Atlas, the Atlas Update Panel and other controls, such as the AutoComplete Extender.  In addition, the presentation will look at how all of the controls can be used to create business applications and "mash ups" using XML Web Services.

About Our Presenter
Jason Beres is the author of Teach Yourself Visual Studio .NET 2003 in 21 Days; the co-author of the Visual Basic .NET Bible and the C# Bible; and a contributor to SQL Server 2000: The Complete Reference and ASP.NET @ Work: 10 Enterprise Applications. Jason has been a featured speaker at Microsoft Dev Days, the largest regional developer-centric conference that Microsoft has each year.

Dinner and networking will run from 5:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m., with the presentation beginning at 6:00 p.m. The meeting will take place at Microsoft, 30 Isabella Street, North Shore.

Please RSVP to Council Events or 412.918.4229, so that we have an accurate count for dinner.

Thank you,

Jared Roberts
Director, Member Programs
Pittsburgh Technology Council
412.918.4243

It’s back to The Waterfront this time.  That means PF Chang’s take-out for wifey’s dinner!

Three cool topics—VS for Database Professionals, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Expression Web Designer.  Full event information at http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032306677

The October BADNUG meeting will be held October 26, 2006 at Communifax HQ in Cranberry Township, PA.  Our speaker will be Regional Director Mike Snell, discussing testing with Visual Studio Team Testm.  Mike’s book “Visual Studio 2005: Unleashed” was recently published, and this will be a great chance to interact with an expert in Visual Studio 2005.

Topic: Automated Testing using Visual Studio Team Test and Team Foundation Server

Description:
Automated testing has finally been added to the Visual Studio lineup! In this session we will cover these new tools from front-to-back. This includes demonstrations on creating and executing unit, web, performance, load, manual, and ordered tests. We will also cover the Test Manager interface. Finally, we will look at reporting test results using Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

This will be our last meeting for the season—we’ll resume again in January.

The September BADNUG meeting will be this Thursday (Sep 28),  from 6-8 pm at Communifax HQ.  Eric Kepes will discuss WiX.  The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code.  It's also one of the first (if not the first) open source tool from Microsoft hosted on SourceForge (project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/).

If you need to deploy desktop applications to your user base or clients, WiX is one good option for customizing the installation process.

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code.  It's also one of the first (if not the first) open source tool from Microsoft hosted on SourceForge (project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/).

Join as as Eric Kepes talks about WiX and how it can be used to create customized deployment packages.  The meeting will run from 6–8 pm on September 28, pizza and refreshments provided.  Directions to Communifax HQ at http://www.communifax.com.

The August BADNUG meeting will be from 6–8pm on Aug 31 at Communifax HQ in Cranberry Township, PA.  Our presentation will be an overview of Community Server, from installation to administration to some free stuff to pimp out your site a little.  The presentation will be based in large part on the links below.

Whether you’re building an online community for marketing purposes or a corporate knowledge portal, one tool to consider is Community Server.  Community Server is essentially the spawn of a menage-a-trois of DotNetForums (I think that’s what they were called), nGallery and .Text.  Since its inception, more features have been added, but not to the detriment of its core functionality.

Sample Sites

Direct2Dell

MSNBC Cosmic Log

Offline Blogging Tools (one of many)

Windows Live Writer

Configuring WLW for CS

Photo Galleries

Lightbox Module

Batch Import Photos

Chiwi Photo Gallery Manager

Cross-posting from Flickr

Skinning

Create a New CS Skin in 5 minutes

Change the title image of your blog without access to the CSS file

Spam Control

angrypets reverse dos (not Community Server specific)

Why no CAPTCHA

Inside the Spam Blocker

Alabaster – Akismet Spam Rule Utility (what is Akismet?)

Developing Modules

Code Browser

Community Server 2.1 SDK

Community Server Developer Wiki (ICSModule entry)

Spreading the Word

ShareIt module in Scott Water’s CS Modules

Google Sitemap Add-on