Cameron Beccario

It's been a year since I left Microsoft and moved to Japan to study Japanese at Yamasa . Now that my year-long studies have completed, I have moved to Tokyo (just this past Tuesday!) for a job doing IT design. In the spirit of change, my blog has...

I can't stand seeing my friends slammed on Slashdot yet again , so I'd like to say something about the " IsNot patent " fiasco. Paul, Amanda, and Corneliu are some of the nicest people I know, and I had the pleasure to work directly with them for several...

Recently, a friend of mine introduced me to Audioscrobbler . Using an audio player plug-in, your music choices are collected and compiled into an overview of your musical taste, accessible from the Audioscrobbler website. The website also displays a list...

A little while back I bought a Japanese keyboard to use with my laptop while docked. It's a Microsoft Basic Keyboard 1.0A, with 109 keys. Not only does it have more keys than a standard US keyboard, but the layout is slightly different (such as the location...

I'm at war with the washing machine. No matter which countermeasures I take, this "home appliance" manages to stretch my clothes to extreme and unfair proportions. It is particularly brutal to t-shirts. I'm not the only one. Each apartment in my building...

It may sound strange, but odd-numbered years always bring me better fortune than even-numbered years. Sorry, I won't elucidate. I've returned to the United States for the holidays to visit family and friends. Having spent the previous 9 months living...

Meeting people and building social networks is what makes conferences like TechEd really valuable. Last week was no exception. I had the privilege of meeting and talking with quite a few nice people. Thanks to everyone on this list: [ 伊藤由起子 ] Yukiko Ito...

Finished another day here at TechEd. Saw a presentation on Visual Studio Team System . Wow. No wonder the blogosphere is ablaze with Team System discussions. Where did they find the time to build all that stuff? I was fortunate enough to be invited by...

I've finished my last session for the day here at TechEd. Right now I'm staring out over Yokohama Bay where the expansive Yokohama Bay Bridge dominates the view. I attended the VB 2005 session this afternoon to see what the audience was like and what...

This week I will be attending TechEd 2004 Yokohama . The event runs from Tuesday, Sept. 7th, but I'll be heading out on Wednesday in time to attend the VB and C# sessions. Not sure exactly what to expect since everything will be in Japanese (I still feel...

A week ago three classmates and I went to the Nagoya Sumo tournament and the experience was simply amazing. For those of you who think Sumo wrestling is a bunch of obese half-naked men pushing each other around, well... you're right. But that's about...

Had a great time in Tokyo last week. Used Freespot to find some places with free wireless access, among them Cafe la Voie and Mixing Cafe . Also went to a meeting of the Tokyo PC Users Group where I heard an enjoyable presentation on the application of...

An Abstract Specification for Visual Basic Late Binding...

After three grueling months of Japanese language study, I'm ready for a break. Thankfully, summer vacation is coming! All next week I will relax in the quiet and peaceful expanse called Tokyo. But what to do? Cool cafés, restaurants, shops... any...

When I first arrived at Microsoft to work on the Visual Basic team, I had no idea what Late Binding was. My manager at the time explained it to me: "Late Binding is all about figuring out which methods to call while the program runs . It's complicated...

(Next post will be about VB, honest! :) So far I've had 15 days of Japanese language class. I try really hard to refrain from using English when in the building, but sometimes it's necessary. There's only so far a conversation can go when the participants...

Yesterday was my last day in the Visual Basic group at Microsoft. In a couple of weeks, I'm moving to Japan where I'll be attending intensive Japanese language school for a year in Aichi prefecture. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but I know that...

This entry has nothing to do with Visual Basic, but I need an outlet for the frustrations I have endured while shopping for a notebook computer. Okay, maybe it’s somewhat related—I plan to use this notebook to develop new VB features. Does that count...

A brief description of the Operator Overloading feature....

As you may have seen on the roadmap ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/roadmap.aspx ), we've been working on several new language features for VB .NET. One of them includes unsigned types. Yes, VB is finally getting unsigned types, and this...

On Tuesday, July 29th, 2003, I'll be participating in a chat with other members of the Visual Basic .NET team. Please feel free to join in. You may notice that this chat isn't listed on the MSDN webpage, but that's just a mistake. Here's the blurb: ...

If you're converting Object expressions to structures, you can tweak your code for a drastic performance improvement. Because unboxing a Nothing reference throws an exception, a conversion from Object to a structure involves testing for a Nothing...