FLA .Net User Group Meeting SharePoint

Hey Now Everybody!

The FLAdotNET user group SharePoint session presented by David McNamee was great. The focus was on SharePoint Designer where he showed some nice examples of controls such as a data driven Data View. Personally I enjoy working in SharePoint designer specifically since you don't need access to the server to make some nice adjustments to pages, & you can edit the page directly in a non ribbon IDE similar to Studio .

Special thanks to Beanstalk Networks for providing the facility. The people were nice to see such as Terry, Dave, Morgan & many more. I asked how to display charts similar to a control like the data view Mac stated buy a 3rd party compony. Mac's presentation included some extremely vulgar explicates it was truly rated R. He from Tampa (~5 hrs) & Mac's impersonations were really funny epically those of Russ (calling out raffles) & Joe (adjusting his glasses as only Devfish does explaining some code). Within SharePoint designer there can be adjustments to the master page content place holders that can made a site not look so SharePointy.

I ate some pizza & got a few Code Mags along with a t-shirt. When I went outside I got a delicious taco that they were handing out on Clematis street from Rocco's Taco.

All commments welcome.

That is all there is there is no more. Bye for now,

Catto

Catto won a 4 GB Zune!

Hey Now Everybody,
I won a 4 GB Zune from Microsoft for attending a webcast and filling out a survey! I couldn’t believe the email when I read it, it stated it wanted to verify my shipping address so I replied & the Microsoft rep said it would be shipped out soon.

About a week later I received it. Whoo whoo! The webcast was ‘MSDN Webcast: Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V Virtualization’ I’ve viewed many webcasts & really enjoy them. As you can see in the picture I have .NET Rocks playing. That is all there is there no more.

Bye for now!
Catto

HHH Microsoft Event Launch '08 Ft Lauderdale

Hey Now Everybody,

I attended the Microsoft Event Launch 2008 in Ft. Lauderdale HHH(Hero's Happen Here) this month & had a great time. There were some great sessions & presenters including Joe 'Dev Fish' Healy , Jonas Stawski, Max 'Put it together, Powershell guru' Trinidad, Blain Barton & Glen Gordon.
The events topics was Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 & Visual Studio 2008. I recieved a copy of all of these along with Vista ultimate, which was a very nice gift. I'm building a PC that I'm planning to install Windows Server 2008 & I'll post on soon including the 8 gigs of ram I plan to place in there.
There were quite a few people I got to see there such as Dave, Larry, Morgan along with many other people I have met & it's nice to talk technology with people at these events & .NET user groups. Check out a couple quick clips I posted.

All comments welcome!

That's all there is, there is no more.

Bye for now!

Catto

Catto's 2008 2nd 1/4 Tech todo list

Hey Now Everybody,

I'm going to list some personal technical topics I plan to focus on for this year's second quarter. I love lists, I used them often @ home & work. The reasons I feel lists work well for me are since I stay focused on what I need to accomplish by spending my time efficiently & when I get some of the items done there is a sense of accomplishment.

Catto's 2008 2nd 1/4 Personal Tech List


1. Chris Catto .com's permission based authentication
* Improve my domains authentication & authorization. I've made some big improvements recently where the public can create a user. The next step I want to make is to place some better content that an authenticated user can view.
2. .NET Code Catto Blog @ Chris Catto.com
* As many of you may have seen in the beginning of the year I had a .NET Code Catto Blog that was run on Blog Engine .NET from Codeplex. There was an adjustment made by my hosting company & now the blog doesn't display on the screen only the yellow screen of death. There is an issue with full vs. partial trust levels, therefore my goal here is to research & resolve this issue & get my blog up & running again on a subdomain as part of my domain such as http://Blog.ChrisCatto.com/NetCodeCattoBlog/.
3. MCTS 70-536 Exam Prep
* I've been thinking about studying for a certification & have decided on the MCTS Web Dev Cert. There are two exams & I've started studying for on of the exams. I'd like to continue this & prepare to pass the first exam.
4. Argotic Syndication Framework on CodePlex
* There is a new release of the Argotic Syndication Framework & I'd like to create some flix similar to the DNRTV episodes on the Framework.
5. Adjust My Commenting Frequency
* I really enjoy reading blogs & have learned a great deal from them. I also like to comment on many blogs however I feel this can take up some of my time & it's not the most productive for myself. I plan to cut back on commenting on blogs for the next three months to improve my time management & spend the time on my own domain & exam prep.
6. Blog Content
* Assuming the Blog Engine issue is resolved I plan to continue posting on my blog & place some different type of content up there. The content I'd like to have is some exam topics, browser topics & a photo tutorial. The photo tutorial is how to upload & print pix @ Wal-mart or Kodak, this is a request from my Mom & I feel others will find it useful too.

All comments welcome!

That is all there, there is no more!
Bye for now,
Catto

Argotic Syndication Framework release 2008.0.0.0 on CodePlex

Hey Now Everybody,
I’ve been loving Codeplex lately & I’ve joined a stellar project which is the Argotic Syndication Framework. The main developer on the project is Brian Kuhn and has even been DNRTV. There is a new release so be sure to check it out! I hope to make some flix someday that will be similar to the DNRTV’s but shorter. I personally think Brian's development is only the tip of the iceburg on this project.

The project summary:
The Argotic Syndication Framework is a Microsoft .NET class library framework that enables developers to easily consume and/or generate syndicated content from within their own applications. The framework makes the reading and writing syndicated content in common formats such as RSS, Atom, OPML, APML, BlogML, and RSD very easy while still remaining extensible enough to support common/custom extensions to the syndication publishing formats. The framework includes out-of-the-box implementations of 19 of the most commonly used syndication extensions, network clients for sending and receiving peer-to-peer notification protocol messages; as well as HTTP handlers and controls that provide rich syndication functionality to ASP.NET developers.

Some new features in this release include:
a) Targeting of both the .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 platforms
b) Implementation of the APML 0.6 specification
c) Implementation of the BlogML 2.0 specification
d) Native support of the Microsoft FeedSync 1.0 syndication extension
e) Simplified programming API and better online/offline examples

All comments welcome!
That’s all there is, there is not more.
Bye for now!
Catto

Sleepless in Dallas – SharePoint Weekend Hosted by Infusion & Microsoft

Hey Now,
I just had an indescribable weekend at the SharePoint Sleepless at Dallas event . This was an event that had training all day on Saturday then there was a coding completion where we were coding all night developing SharePoint features for the CKS. It was a stellar event thanks to Infusion & Microsoft where they provided food, facilities & gifts. I also visited my brother which was really nice too went to one of the best steak houses ever called Saltgrass with a fun Texas atmosphere. The events agenda went as follows

Saturday 9am Greeting/meeting everyone & breakfast. Saturday there were sessions went on all day including SharePoint form Sheldon Fernandez & Nadeem, Matt Ordish OBA, Matt McDermott.on Master Pages & real usable tools (sweet session), Chris Koenig. on Silverlight, Tim Gade on MSOffice, Zain ‘Is This Thing On’ Naboulsi. was there too. Among many other skilled people I’ve read a couple other posts Fluckiger's regarding the events.

‘SharePoint is a game changer’ I heard from Sahil on DNR & it’s so true in my opinion especially after attending, it’s the fastest selling MS Server. I was on a teamed up with a great guy & our presentation went alright we just didn’t have a good enough quality features developed to show the judges. Our goal was to implement a feature on SharePoint to provide the user hotkeys. So when you press & hold the alt button down on the keyboard the letter of the hotkey would be underlined. I learned a ton & especially that fact that deployment in SharePoint has many more processes & more permissions are needed on the server than traditional ASP.NET. We ended up not winning & were awarded ‘Most Improved’. Good luck to the team going to Cali who was made up of some good people & very skilled. I hope you 3 win (Ricky Derek & Michael ) .

I can’t speak for everyone but I sure had a great time & really enjoyed the competition portion best. We stayed up all night coding. The flix (120 sec) below are in my opinion show how much fun we were having. I think when you view it’ll make you laugh or at least smile. All comments Welcome

Big shout to T for the support & making this weekend possible.

That’s all there is there is no more, Bye 4 now,

Catto

List & SharePoint - Sleepless the Ultimate Developer Weekend

Catto’s List 1.22.08

I love lists & use them often. They help me get things done. I feel good too when I look back and a few things are marked done. Here is a current list I have:

Infusion – SharePoint Sleepless the Ultimate Developer Weekend. I entered the sleepless in New York contest last year (received a thankyou email) & this year I’ve entered again for the roadshow contest. I got an invitation! It’s a weekend of SharePoint Training & a competition.. It’s seems to be the ultimate developer weekend. I'm going to Dallas this weekend to compete & learn.

Silverlight Slide.Show – I’m so happy I have my first Silverlight project public. Check it out. My favorite blog codinghorror author Jeff Atwood works for Vertigo which produced this open source image viewer available on codeplex. I used the code & impleneted it on my site. I really like it & think this is currently best way to view images on a web page.

BlogEngine.NET 1.3 – I have moved my web hosting & want to have my own blog engine not one from blogspot or any other public. I think if I host it then I have more control over it & I”ll have all my posts in my database for my historical records. I’m workinking on implementing BlogEngine & hope to have my blog back at my domain soon.

Code Camp 2008 South Florida – Whoo Haa! Last year I heard of code camps via the best podcast DNR (check it out #219 my email is read).. I attended the Code Camp last year it was great. I think since then I’ve learned so much & really looking forward to attending this year.

Entity Framework – I attended a recent Fla .NET user group meeting where Shawn 'The ADO Guy' Wildermuth presented the Entity Framework. It was really good, saw a couple of my friends there Dave, Jonas & Max. I learned quite a bit about the Entity Framework & Shawn signed the book I’m currently reading which he co-authored. .NET Framework 2.0 AppDev Foundation (I plan to blog more on this book this year)

Whew! Honestly sometimes I don’t get things done on my list so I hope that placing my list on my blog will help me & I hope that you enjoy seeing what I’m think and working on. All Comments Welcome

That is all, there is no more,
Bye 4 now,
Catto