Because Josh Holmes made me

Give Camp FTW!

Dave Redding — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:39:22 GMT

I spent this last weekend at GiveCamp - Ann Arbor helping out charities. If you've never heard of Givecamp, you should dentally check out the link.

A Give Camp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend.

Givecamp was a huge success it's first year in Ann Arbor. I've never seen so many dedicated developers so sleep deprived working on a volunteer basis.

I was assigned to the Charity "Arab American Community Center" based out of Ypsilanti. We managed to work in a fancy set of features such as Localized languages. Our web app was built on top of a framework that I've never used before called, "SiteFinity". So look forward to some posts on both those topics in the near future.

I wish I had more for you guys, but I'm ramping back up to get into my regular blog swing-of-things.

My traveling talk begins with CODODN!

Dave Redding — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:23:36 GMT

The C# variety Show began on Thursday with my trip to GLUG.net in Lansing, (this is a great group of guys and gals, and if your free, I highly recommend you to attend, they even have a user group in Flint now!) and didn't stop until yesterday when I got home from CODODN.

At about 6:30 on Friday, Mr. McWherter shows up at my house and the road trip begins. After about 4.5 hours, stopping only for necessities we arrive in Wilmington Ohio around. After checking in at the hotel adjoined to the conference center we started twittering to find out if anyone else had made it down yet, and got no love. Now...for those of you who have never visited Wilmington, this picture should illustrate what it's like...

Right...almost the middle of nowhere...However the Roberts Conference Center is conveniently located between the 3 major user groups in the area: Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to visit any of the sessions because I had to polish up the demos for my presentation. I did however get to hang with some of the best speakers around in the speakers lounge. It was great to be surrounded by folk who knew what they were doing and were able to throw this newbie speaker some great hints (Like, write your demos before you show up to the conference). Also, with three user groups involved I was able to meet A lot of great folks. All in all, the venue was a perfect fit for the conference.

I had just finished up my Demos when it was my turn to present. At first, there were only a handful of people in the room, but within a span of just a few minutes, there were people standing in the back. I was nervous as hell, but managed to get through the presentation, even with my funky new presentation mouse constantly wanting to zoom in on everything (Kudos to Mr. Prince for the presenter mouse). I had a lot of good questions throughout the presentation and most of the folk seemed to respond well to the "bite-sized-pieces-of-information" format. I even managed to get a few laughs out of my crude since of humor. One of the best pieces of feedback I received was that my talk was "..Like the man show meets the Nerd show"...so maybe "Girls on trampolines" isn't to racy for my talk after all :)

After my presentation, I had the chance to hang out with Josh Holmes and Joe O'Brian where we talked about presentation styles and they regaled presenting war stories (I especially like how Joe was trying to make a point and almost fell of the stage...priceless!). After the final presentations let out, we all ventured into the main ballroom for the swag give away. Some folks walked away with great gear, including licenses to Infragistics controls, Refactor and a host of other fantastic developer tools.

Once the conference was declared closed, most of us headed over to Max and Erma's, which was attached to the hotel/conference center. Due to a mis-communication, the restaurant had no idea that we were coming. Eventually we wound up with a party of 30, which the Hostess' and wait staff handled very elegantly. The service was top notch, however, most of us never received our appetizers (those of us back in the restaurant..there were quite a few of us still in the bar). So dinner went GREAT and the food was fantastic (Loved my heartattack-on-a-bun-pulling-over-in-Toledo-on-the-way- back-to-blow-up-a-restroom burger...thanks Mr. Hawley and Mr. Prince).

After things quieted down at the dinner table, about half (if not more) of us ventured up the Mr. Blankenburgs room for a little poker party. things got off to a great start, at my table was Dave Smith, Sarah Dutkiewicz, Matt Casto, James Bender, Monish (Mo) Nagisetty, Phil (Can't remember your last name chief) and Dan Rigsby. I had never had a chance to sit and hang out with most of these guys so it was great, drinking Sam Adams (even though Blankenburg got Miller and Coors just to f with me) and talking a combination of smack and tech.

A couple of hours later, we combined tables where it was Me (I made it woot!), Dave, Phil, Jeff Blankenburg, Jeff McWherter Kevin (blanking on your last name to bud) Cory Haines, and I think Darrell Hawley (I had a bit of whisky in me by this point so I'm a little fuzzy on the details). I ended up going out on the second hand where I called Kevin, thought he was bluffing...but he ended up having a flush and taking me out. Was a great game and I walked away with "Extreme programming adventures in c#" as a consolation prize. I do remember that at one point, Amanda Laucher Took all my chips while I was ordering Pizza and made them all pink...I immediately grabbed one of Dave Smiths chip racks and exchanged it for the pink one. The night continued on in due form with lots of great tech talk and a whole lot of drunk humor. Mad props go out to Blankenburg and the rest of the MS guys that made this happen. It was a great way to end a fantastic conference.

The Next morning, those of us who had survived the night of poker ventured down to Max and Ermas once again for a fantastic breakfast. Shortly thereafter, we all headed back home.

This was my first overnight stay for a conference and I enjoyed every last minute of it. A perfect way to bring many people who are passionate about what they do together. I had the opportunity to meet and talk with a fantastic group of professionals who are dedicated to the community. I can't wait till the Western Michigan day of .net where we can all meet up again. After that, who knows, maybe the Cleveland Day of .net? or even the upcoming Lansing Day of .net!

On the road again...

Dave Redding — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:12:23 GMT

Hey everybody (Hi Dr. Dave). I'm confirmed for two speaking engagements this month! Woot! Apparently my XNA talk grew legs and is ready to walk. Next week (Nov. 20th) I'll be out at the West Michigan .Net user group and then I'll be heading down to Detroit for the IDGA user group (a indy, game developer user group...very cool!)

I'll be giving talks similar to the one I gave at DoDN, but this time, i've prepared a special demo. this demo works kinda like the web game Collapse, except it takes advantage of the GHII controller. It's a simple game in principal, and still relies on all the basic XNA stuff (Spritebatches, controller input etc etc) And it should be a little more interesting than the Pong demo. Not that beer pong is un-cool by any stretch of the imagination.

One month to the day...

Dave Redding — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:33:00 GMT

And I have'nt made a post? In all honesty, the trip to Japan really knocked the wind out of me. So now it's pressing deadlines and fenagling conference calls. I'm also in the process of learning some Japanese. Its an interesting language, and as a developer, I thik it is constructed in a logical way thats easy to break down. Easier in some ways than English, and harder in others.

I'm looking at doing another tech in 5 min soon, but i want to get your feeback first. I'm kicking around these ideas for the next one, let me know which you guys would prefer.

1.Reflection
2.Workflow Foundation (An Overview)
3.Multithreading
4.WPF (An Overview)

How many of your guys are all geared up for the Nextel Cup season? Anyone watch the Daytona 500? it was an AMAZING race, so expect my next tech in 5 min to relate ;)

I've also got some great news about Day of Dot Net. We've got the gears turning on the conference and it'll be comming very soon. We are getting some great speakers lined up, including several Ineta guys, some excellent local talent and perhaps a special guest speaker or two. In addition, we will be giving away tons of swag. Recently i just read that last year we gave away around $40,000 worth of the stuff and this year were looking to top that!

So there you have it. Alot of fantastic stuff comming up in the near future, and an excellent way to kick off spring.

Don't forget to drop a comment to let me know what you'd like to see in the next Tech in 5 min.

Dave.

Lmao!!!

Dave Redding — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:55:00 GMT

This has got to be one of the most halirous posts i've read lately: All in RE to software development..

This excrept alone...

in business
we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the
following:

Buying a stronger whip.
Changing riders.
Say things like, "This is the way we have always ridden this horse."

Just halirous, how many times have your bosses said something similar!?

All is quiet on the Redding front...

Dave Redding — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:43:00 GMT

So it's been an eventful few weeks. But finally things have calmed down enough that I can enjoy pawning my thoughts off on you, oh gentle reader.

I've gotten some excellent feedback concerning my tech in 5 min. articles. Especially the one on Yield Return, so I'll definitely be writing more as inspiration hits me. What do you guys want to see articles on? I'm planning another patterns and practices one for my next post, but I could be persuaded.

My good buddy Josh Holmes (who has an excellent philosophical post on applying defaults to your life Here) hooked me up with a silver ticket to MSDN a month or more ago and I finally received the software in the mail the other day. I have to say it's GREAT!! my vista score is only a 2.9 and i have some issues with the display drivers, but no show stoppers yet. I'm really digging the bling on the desktop too:) Shiny objects and all that you know? And did you know that MS feels you need like, a HUGE stack of software written for just about any language? I don't think that I'll be getting to the traditional Chinese anytime soon :S.

And of course, how could i make this post without mentioning the last AADND meeting? It was a complete smash! We had Matt Winkler come out and talk on Windows Workflow. I had no idea what it was before, but I'm looking at was of integrating it with my future solutions. If you missed the meeting (slacker) you can pick up the slide deck here .

We had an excellent turnout. We ordered, I think, around 20 pizzas? Darrell Hawley can correct me but i think thats a pretty close estimate. But we had absolutely no pies left, not even a slice, it was gone! I think our count came up to about 40 people, without including the board members or speaker! So thank you all for showing your support. We also went to the Ann Arbor Brewery afterward for some suds, and the conversations that arose can only be described as "Geeky alcohol chatter".

Make sure you come next month when we are having an excellent presentation on WPF (Which is one bad ass meeting). Once Darrell gets me the abstracts I'll post more information, but at this point it's going to be Drew Robbins of MS and Jennifer Marsman presenting. It promises to be full of graphical goodness.

I'm still stoked about my trip to Japan. I never realized, but Japan is apparently well known for their Toilet Technology. At the same time I've heard that most toilets are "Squat and push". :S I'm not sure what concerns me more, having to "Figure out" how to use the can, or having to squat over one while I'm loaded with Saki.

I'm not dead yet!

Dave Redding — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 14:35:00 GMT

Like Bill Wagner "If your not blogging, your dead, or atleast thats what people think" And i'm here to tell you all...you don't get off that easy.

We've got alot of great things comming up for out next AADND meeting:

First off, were starting a book exchange. The exchange system works on points, and each book will have a specific value. It's real simple. Any book after '00 when donated is worth yy in points, when taking books out, they are valued at yy*2.

You earn points by brining in books, attending the meetings, bringing friends, blogging about the meetings, asking some questions pretty much for anything you do with the UG. It's all about the free (or nearly Free) swag, and we'll have them listed on the site once we get em' catalogued.

I've been waiting to blog about this next part. We need a logo, and none of us are artistically inclined. So I propse this. Create a logo that the board approves and I will get it tattooed on my left arm. So your artwork will be permenatally embedded under my skin. I'll blog a little more about this later, but get us your submissions. The catch is you have to deliver it by hand at a meeting, and you have to be avialble at the meeting to win. We'll probally hold a party once we choose a logo so everyone can watch me make an ass of myself.

Sharp Rally

Dave Redding — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 02:56:00 GMT

Hey everyone.

The holidays seem to have caught me in a hiatius of blogging. So as a quick update, here are a few projects i'm playing with.

Robo Rally (tm) is a game orriginally published by Wizards of the Coast. I had a chance to play with a few friends of mine a little while back and I was absolutly hooked!! So i'm creating a clone in C#. I'll throw some source code up here in the near future. Whats the best is I'm thinking of doing the UI stuff with WPF. That has yet to see any fruation.

The blog is an obvious hot spot for me right now. I'm constantally diliberating on what to write for the next tech in 5 minutes. If anyone has any suggestions, please comment them. I'm up for a challenge.

I'm also working on some leads to get the A2 .net User group up to speed. So far we've had some great meetings, and we have a TON of stuff comming up, so keep your eyes peeled.

Untell next time.

Dave.

Why blog?

David Redding — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 14:25:00 GMT

Ok. So I’m sitting at the bar waiting for my buddy Josh to show up. Sipping my scotch etc... When he does show up, he whips out his new toy (stop snickering). What I saw was some gadget hooked up to an iPod. Then he stuffs a mic in my face and demands that I talk like he's Castro during the Bay of Pigs. (You can listen here) So I manage to stammer out something short of bizarre about the Command Pattern. All goes well till he starts to ask about my blog, and/or website.

What are you thinking?!

I don't blog, hell I’m lucky to make it to work in the morning let alone blog. If I have something to say, chances are there’s someone out there who's already posted at length about what I’ve said. Anyway, he convinced (forced) me to start blogging, and here I am. Hopefully you'll find the things I have to say interesting enough to give it a passing glance. If anything else you can revel in my attempts to admit an inadequacy in some area (stop snickering!) and the humor I try to use to cover it up.

As per his request. I will try to blog on a regular basis. If you've read my posts on the user group website (http://www.AADND.org) (Ann Arbor .Net Developers) You'll see some duplication. This is an intentional effort to on my part to plagiarize my own words.

Expect something more for the command pattern too. I have to explain myself somehow, especially if you've already listened to interview.