Patrick Steele

Looking Forward to 2010

Yes, the first month of 2010 is almost gone and I'm just now getting around blogging about the past year and the year ahead.  I guess time management should be on my to-do list for this year? The CodeMash Website One of the coolest projects I've worked on in 2009 was the CodeMash website .  Brian Prince and Jim Holmes asked SRT if they wanted to help design a new website for CodeMash.  Brian will be the first to admit that he's an evangelist first, a developer second and a web developer third.  They gave us pretty much free reign to come up with a new idea as well as the freedom to implement the solution however we wanted. We worked with a Inner Circle Media to help plan the new look and feel of the site.  They deserve kudos for the new look.  On the back-end, I used ASP.NET MVC 1.0 along with SQL Server, Linq2SQL and Castle Windsor for my IoC container.  We also integrated with the existing Sharepoint installation for sponsor maintenance, news and session submissions.  User registration was all done in SQL. This was a great learning project.  Registering for a conference is usually a simple process (from the registrants standpoint).  On the back-end, when you're dealing with varying registration costs (based on the current date), discount codes, PayPal, and other things, it can get pretty complicated.  A large suite of unit tests helped us catch a lot of stuff in the beginning, but a few bugs slippped through.  Luckily, nothing major! I want to also thank fellow SRT developers Marina Fedner and Ben Barefield .  Marina helped me out on the user registration portion and Ben was responsible for the REST feed that we all used for our mobile CodeMash applications . Stepping Down from GANG After being involved with the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group (GANG) for many, many years (webmaster, VP and this last year as President), I did not run for re-election.  There were some other projects I was taking on and last year's vice president David Giard was willing to take the reigns of the group.  Dave did an amazing job last year as VP and is continuing to do great things with GANG in 2010 .  I'll still be around to help out from time to time, but Dave is the man in charge now! VSM's C# Corner After helming Visual Studio Magazine's C# Corner for a number of years, Bill Wagner decided he wanted to devote his time to other things.  He offered my name as a possible successor!  I talked it over with him and VSM Editor in Chief Michael Desmond.  Everything fell into place and I'm now honored to be following in Bill's footsteps as a VSM author.  My first column has been published ( Interface-Based Programming in C# ) and I've got some positive feedback so far.  My next article is in-process and I have to have the first draft done by February 1st or I'll be on someone's naughty list (and it won't be Santa's!). Microsoft C# MVP I was pleasantly surprised on January 1st to receive an email from Microsoft telling me I've received an MVP award for my C# and community work in 2009.  Thanks to Microsoft and other community members I work closely with! 2010 Plans One of the big conferences for 2010, CodeMash , has already come and gone.  It was a great conference and you CAN NOT beat the price.  The amount of content and learning available is unheard of for the price you pay.  I'm already looking forward to CodeMash 2.0.1.1. In February, I'll be attending the MVP Summit in Redmond.  A great chance to get in touch with new technologies, talk with Microsoft reps and mix it up with other MVP's. Michael Eaton is already planning this year's Ann Arbor Give Camp .  I've offered my assistance again this year and will post more on this even as it gets closer. Speaking: I'd like to do more speaking this year.  While I usually get compliments on my presentations, I'm very hard on myself.  I may be a good speaker, but I want to be a great speaker.  That will come with practice.  I've got some idea's for presentations on topics I'm passionate about (specifically, Inversion of Control and Mocking). I'm really looking forward to 2010! Technorati Tags: SRT , MVP , CodeMash , 2010

CodeMash REST Endpoints Updated

You spoke, we listened.  We've got updates to the CodeMash REST endpoints ! We've added two new pieces of information to the Sessions feed: Track and Room.  Track exposes what track a session is part of (for filtering, etc…) and Room indicates which room the session will be held in.  Note that the room information and start time have not been finalized and are subsequently empty. Also, the speaker submission form was designed during a heated battle for control of a coconut tree so we forgot to ask speakers for their twitter handle and blog URL.  We're collecting that info now and as it trickles in, we'll get our database updated and you'll see the information in the REST feeds. Technorati Tags: CodeMash , API , XML , Rest

CodeMash 2.0.1.0 REST Interfaces

This year's CodeMash website has two URI's that expose CodeMash Information: http://www.codemash.org/rest/sessions – All Session Information http://www.codemash.org/rest/speakers – All Speaker Information The main news feed is already exposed via RSS ( http://www.codemash.org/rss ) but we may add a REST interface for that as well. Session Information Here's an example XML response for a single session (note that the <Abstract> content has been removed for brevity): < Sessions xmlns:xsi ="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd ="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" > < Session > < URI > /rest/sessions/The-case-for-Griffon-developing-desktop-applications-for-fun-and-profit </ URI > < Title > The case for Griffon: developing desktop applications for fun and profit </ Title > < Abstract > ... </ Abstract > < Start > 0001-01-01T00:00:00 </ Start > < Difficulty > Beginner </ Difficulty > < SpeakerName > Andres Almiray </ SpeakerName > < SpeakerURI > /rest/speakers/Andres-Almiray </ SpeakerURI > </ Session > </ Sessions > The <URI> node contains a URI that will return a single session.  The <Start> node is not set yet since the sessions have not been scheduled.  Once scheduling is complete, it will be available from this feed. Speaker Information Here's an example XML response for a single speaker (again, the <Biography> content has been removed for brevity): < Speakers xmlns:xsi ="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd ="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" > < Speaker > < Name > Chris Adamson </ Name > < Biography > ... </ Biography > < Sessions > < SessionURI > /rest/sessions/Oh-Crap-I-Forgot-or-Never-Learned-C </ SessionURI > < SessionURI > /rest/sessions/How-Do-You-Do-That-on-iPhone </ SessionURI > </ Sessions > < TwitterHandle /> < BlogURL /> </ Speaker > </ Speakers > Most speakers only have one session, but some have multiple.  You'll notice that the TwitterHandle and BlogURL for most of the speakers is empty.  That's because we forgot to ask for that information during the speaker submission process (oops!).  We're in the process of collecting the information and as we get it, we'll update our database and the information will be exposed to you. Supported Formats Right now, we support XML (default) and JSON formats.  If you don't add any extension to the REST URI's (or use ".xml") you'll get XML-formatted data (like above).  Use ".json" to return a JSON result.  We could support HTML – perhaps a simple <table> that dumps the information?  Let me know if you think that would be useful. Technorati Tags: .NET , CodeMash , REST Is There An App For That? Do you plan on using these API's to make some cool CodeMash apps?  Keep us updated on your progress by leaving a comment here, blogging about it or via Twitter using the hashtag #CodeMash .  We're looking forward to seeing what you build!

New CodeMash Website

As you've probably heard ( via Twitter ), there's a new look to the CodeMash website.  SRT Solutions and inner circle media have been working on the website for a while now getting things organized.  Much of the praise for the new look goes to inner circle media – Catherine Hayes and Alaine Karoleff have put a lot of thought and design into the new site and it shows! As Brian pointed out in his tweet , this is just the beginning – there's more to come as CodeMash get closer and closer.  And check out the news – CodeMash 2011 already has a date!  Start your planning now!  I'm thinking that an 18-month notice is more than enough time for your employer to give you the time off. Technorati Tags: SRT , CodeMash

CodeMash 2009

I know it's been over a week since it ended, but I'm finally taking time to get my review up. Awesome! I've been going to CodeMash since it started 3 years ago and it keeps getting better!  Last year I focused more on .NET stuff because that was my area of interest and my comfort level.  This year, however, I decided to plunge into some Ruby classes.  I already blogged about the fun time I had in the Ruby 101 during the precompiler and Michael Letterle's IronRuby presentation was a good one too.  Venkat Subramaniam's keynote was awesome – he's a great speaker and very funny!  Lots of other good sessions and meeting tons of people – a very good time (except for the ride home in the snowstorm).  Thanks to Jim Holmes and all of his crew for another phenomenal conference! I snapped a few pictures during the week and captured a bit of video – including SRT jamming during the Rock Band competition.  It's all up on my flickr site . Technorati Tags: CodeMash

CodeMash: Ruby 101

At today's CodeMash Precompiler I decided to check out "Ruby 101" with Jim Weirich and Joe O'Brien .  I've caught a few glimpses of Ruby code over the years but have never sat down to actually do anything with it.  Since CodeMash is all about stepping out of your comfort zone and learning new things, I thought this would be a good session to attend. The format for this session was pretty neat.  Jim and Joe created a set of unit tests and distributed them to all of us.  The unit tests were not complete – they didn't work.  What we students did was work our way through tests and "fix" them so they'd pass.  The tests were designed to be followed in a specific order and you'd gradually build on your knowledge of Ruby as you got the tests working. Pretty much everybody liked the format of the class.  When Jim and Joe first explained what they were doing, I though it was an awesome idea.  In practice (at least for me), there were a few places where my lack of knowledge of some of the Ruby syntax hampered my progress.  They weren't insurmountable challenges,  but it was frustrating knowing what needs to be done to make the test pass (from a logical standpoint), but not knowing how to express that in Ruby. Still, I really enjoyed the class.  The unit tests had a very logical progression and built on each other.  At the end, I was writing a proxy class which would intercept and forward calls to any object and would expose information like what calls were made to the object and how many times each call was made.  Not bad for my first day of Ruby! Technorati Tags: CodeMash , Ruby

Come see "Paint Wars" at CodeMash!

Fellow SRT employee Chris Marinos will be showing off his wii-mote controlled " Paint Wars " game built on the XNA framework at our booth at CodeMash this week. Chris has taken what started out as his senior project and used it during SRT's learning time to convert it to F#.  His blog post has a few screen shots.  It looks cool and I can't wait to play around with it. Hope to see you all at CodeMash this week! Technorati Tags: XNA , CodeMash