April, 2010

The “tl;dr” Version (or: “The Executive Summary”) High-ranking officers in the U.S. military say that PowerPoint makes them dumb. I say that their reliance on technology for technology’s sake makes them dumb. I make use of an episode of The Office to illustrate my point and the Milliennium Challenge war games exercise as evidence. I then wrap up the article with some suggestions on how best to use...

Say “Uncle”! This week on the Ignite Your Coding live webcast, we have a very special guest: Robert C. "Uncle Bob" Martin! His business card may say “Robert C. Martin”, founder and CEO of the Object Mentor consulting firm, but we know and love him as “Uncle Bob”. He’s been coding since the Beatles broke up, and in that four-decade span, he literally wrote the books on agile and extreme programming...

Hi Everyone, In an update to my original post for TechDays 2010 we now have confirmed prices and venues. As well, the web sites is making great progress and we are on track for the launch date as registration goes live on the 10th May. The session tracks have almost been confirmed and that means we’ll soon be on to building the sessions. Damir is leading the ongoing efforts with the team and many...

Got a project and can’t decide on a typeface? This chart is by no means complete, but it might help steer you in the right direction. Click it to see it at full size. [ This article also appears in Global Nerdy . ]

The 5th annual Toronto Code Camp takes place next Saturday, May 1st, in the SEQ building on Seneca College’s York Campus ( Seneca@York ). If you’re a developer who builds or is thinking of building on the .NET platform, you want to catch this free event! Last year’s event had over 350 attendees who caught 25 sessions, including the infamous “Data Bondage with Silverlight”, which opened with the equally...

Hi Everyone, As we get close to opening registration for this year I wanted to take some time to update you on TechDays 2010 , introduce the team and give you the opportunity to get connected. Before I get to the update I want to take a moment to thank everyone so much for your emails, tweets and calls. I’m really excited about the buzz and interest building in TechDays….. especially on increasing...

EnergizeIT is in “extended” mode this week with sessions taking place outside of “the usual suspect” cities we normally visit. Time and resources unfortunately constrain where we go and who we connect with – but this time we managed to top off at 21 cities across Canada. Team east visited  Shawinigan yesterday in order to talk with students at CEGEP de Shawinigan about how to succeed in their...

What do Spanish Conquistadors , the original 128K Macintosh, keys we take for granted and no copy and paste on Windows Phone 7 have in common? I’ve written a “thinking out loud” piece in my personal tech blog, Global Nerdy titled Apple, Windows Phone 7 and Burning the Boats that ties them all together.

In case you are in the neighbourhood of the EnergizeIT Event this evening at École national d’administration public (dans L’amphithéatre) in Quebec City – Christian and I are having an impromptu Coffee and Code this afternoon.  We found a coffee shop next door and we’re all set up. We’re already here and “live” at 585 boulevard Charest EST at a coffee shop called “City” on the top floor. Free...

Our guest on Ignite Your Coding this week, Jeff Atwood , has certainly made his mark in the programming world with the Coding Horror blog as well as his project with Joel Spolsky , the online developer forum Stack Overflow (which in turn gave rise to the Server Fault and SuperUser forums). Join me and John Bristowe this Thursday as we chat with Jeff about Coding Horror , Stack Overflow , software development...

subtitle: Monster of all shapes and sizes. Wrapping up this road trip from Ottawa to Quebec City involves a mix of strange companions: Nudist Camps, Monster Trucks, Dinosaurs and a little weather control. I have to mention the Nudist camps along the route – just because there are at least three of them between Ottawa and Quebec city.  Why such a concentration is anyone’s guess. I can’t help but...

  subtitle: Donuts and coffee secrets   What’s a road trip without coffee and donuts? it’s unheard of. While on the road out east – we tried to share the secret of keeping your coffee in your cup instead of being spilt on your lap while trying to drink it in a moving car. Since the roads in Montreal / highway 20 were in the state they were in – I figured it was time for a second attempt....

subtitle: Childhood memories of Roadtrips Do you do roadtrips now with family / kids / friends? I remember a number of trips that I took as a kid in my parents yellow volvo station wagon. It’s funny how visual images bring back memories so clearly. I feel like I am going back in time when I drive on the 20 around Montreal.  That and the damn confusing road signs… The vehicles have changed, but...

Photo by Rick Macwilliam, The Edmonton Journal . The Kodu game building system got some coverage in today’s Edmonton Journal . In a piece titled Kudos for Kodu, the Language of Kids , they cover the story of how St. Mary Catholic Elementary School is using Kodu to teach not just programming, but parts of the science curriculum as well. The kids are building a Kodu world that simulates a wetland ecosystem...

subtitle: What to do for lunch while on the road. With EnergizeIT – we’ve visited 20 different cities and traveled by car, plane, bus and train. One thing that always comes up is “where should we eat?”. Sometimes it can take a while to settle on a place that isn’t your branded takeout food – some of the guys are more picky then others. Christian and I always try to “go local” and find something that...

Note: This blog is cross posted from the Canadian IT Pro Connection . Quick update – we’re on the road and living large en route to Québec City from Ottawa. Christian managed to get his summer tires on his car in time for the roadtrip. I thought we’d put up some updates along the way as we’re driving. I’m using the Bell wireless internet stick sitting in the front seat with a power inverter driving...

This week, EnergizeIT heads out to New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Quebec. This Week in New Brunswick Creative Commons photo by Stu Pendousmat. Click here for the original. On Tuesday, Damir and I fly to Moncton for EnergizeIT , where we’ll be doing the EnergizeIT Community Connection presentation. It’s a non-stop no-slides-till-the-very-end demo in which we build the applications and IT infrastructure...

Ah, student life. While waiting to do a presentation at Fanshawe College in London , I had a quick student lunch, pictured below: Damir and I have been touring all over the country over the past couple of weeks for EnergizeIT . Two weeks ago, we were in Kelowna and Victoria, last week we were in London and Kitchener/Waterloo and this week, we’ll be in Fredericton and Moncton. We’re “Team Rover”, one...

My tech show for kids, Developer Junior , premieres today on Butterscotch.com! In this episode, Junior (the puppet) and I (the human) take a look at the Kodu game builder system and go through a quick tutorial: Developer Junior is a show on Butterscotch.com aimed at the younger set and is all about helping kids make the most out of the technology in their everyday lives. It’s about writing programs...

This week’s guest on the Ignite Your Coding live webcast needs no introduction: it’s Scott Hanselman , Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, whose job is to talk about software development and how to do it right, primarily using The Empire’s tools and technologies. He’s a household name in the minds of .NET developers worldwide, and even when I was deep in the world of open source software, I’d heard...

Victoria, Day 1 The day after Damir and I did our EnergizeIT presentation in Kelowna , it was time to go to our next destination, Victoria , by way of Vancouver. The Vancouver-to-Victoria flight is so short that you spend almost as much time taxiing as you do in the air. The actual flying time is 15 minutes, while the gate-to-gate time is just under half an hour (if you’ve ever done flown from Washington...

Webcast, video cast, white papers, resource links, there are plenty of all of these scattered throughout the web.  Finding them and having them available when and where you need them can be a challenge.  Searching, missing plugins, and a requirement to be online all pose challenges to access the information we want when we want it.  There is help via a beta tool called the Microsoft...

On Tuesday, Damir and I flew into Kelowna to do an EnergizeIT presentation for their software developers and IT Pro types. I must say that the Okanagan Valley , where Kelowna is situated, looks gorgeous from the air: We landed, checked into our hotel, took a quick peek at the conference room where we’d be doing the presentation and then headed downtown for lunch. We ended up at a barbecue place called...

(Note: this article was originally posted on the Canadian IT Pro Connection ) People I chat with wonder what it is we do when we’re on the road with a series of activities that encompass a number of events like EnergizeIT. I’ve been peckin’ away at this post while were were on the road a week or so ago and finally made all the pieces fit and reordered in a chronological order (Yeah – I’m a little late...

The view from my seat. Today’s going to be a bit of a whirlwind, starting with a flight to Kelowna by way of Vancouver, with Damir and me doing an EnergizeIT presentation tonight running from 9:00 p.m. to midnight, at least as far as our “body clocks” are concerned. Break out the Jolt Cola! Here’s Damir getting a little work done while we were hanging out in the Air Canada lounge at Vancouver airport...