January, 2012

I have often wanted a nice, easy way to simplify the writing and maintenance of code like this:   Log.Trace(string.Format(“FooSetting.BarProperty1 = {0}”), FooSetting.BarProperty1)); Log.Trace(string.Format(“FooSetting.BarProperty2 = {0}”), FooSetting.BarProperty2)); Log.Trace(string.Format(“FooSetting.BazLongerProperty= {0}”), FooSetting.BazLongerProperty)); …for the writing and maintenance of such code is ever filled with tedious mouse clicking, copy and pasting, typo correction in duplicate...

Idea Sparked by a long wish for keeping my Visual Studio extensions and settings in sync across multiple computers, and a discussion with @kellabyte and @ackenpacken yesterday, I started to research how this could be done. With a quick Google search, I found this blog post by the Visual Studio team, describing where Visual Studio [...] Blog Post by: larsw

If you’re exclusively using the Visual Studio workflow designer to design activities, you might go for a very long time (or forever) without discovering a particular System.Activities namespace, which is System.Activities.Expressions . The first reason you might never discover them is that none of the activities here are visible in the Visual Studio workflow toolbox by default. The second reason you might not discover them is that the activities here are actually kind of hard to use from within Workflow...

This coming Monday (Jan 16th) I’m doing another online LIDNUG session .  The talk will be from 10am to 11:30am (Pacific Time).  I do these talks a few times a year and they tend to be pretty fun.  Attendees can ask any questions they want to me, and listen to me answer them live via LiveMeeting.  We usually end up having some really good discussions on a wide variety of topics.  Any topic is fair game: technical, strategy, community, college basketball, etc. You can learn...

As some of you might know, I’ve spent much of my time the last 6 months working on Windows Azure – which is Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Platform (I also continue to run the teams that build ASP.NET, core pieces of .NET and VS, and a bunch of other products too). I’m pretty excited about where we are going with Windows Azure – it is going to enable a number of great new scenarios for developers.  Over the next few months I’m going to be blogging a lot more about it – and I’ll cover both what...

Today I stumbled upon another WF4 blog with some quality content, so here is my unsolicited and personal recommendation to - if you are thinking about the how-to-host aspects of WF4 - to take a few minutes gaining some insights on how and why WorkflowServiceHost can be a good building block for your enterprise (or not so enterprise) workflow hosting needs, and what you can do to bridge the gap between hard WF4 programmer stuff, and a easy user-friendly experience for the non-programmers. http://blog...

This is the second in a series of posts I’m doing on Windows Azure – which is Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Platform. In today’s post I’m going to cover how to sign-up and get started with Windows Azure using a no-obligation 3 month free trial offer.  This free trial costs nothing and doesn’t obligate you to buy anything at the end of it.  It provides an easy way to try out and get started with Windows Azure. Windows Azure Website The http://www.windowsazure.com web-site provides everything...

I’ll be presenting at the upcoming Belgium and Dutch TechDays next month.  I’ll be doing three tech talks at each of the events: Overview of Windows Azure A look at ASP.NET MVC 4 ScottGu Unplugged I’m particularly excited about the “A look at ASP.NET MVC 4” talk as it will be the first time I’ve presented on it (and it is shaping up to a really great release – more blog posts on that soon). For more details on how to attend the event visit the Belgium Techdays and Dutch Techdays websites. ...