March, 2006

Futher to my post Ruby.NET under development downunder at QUT, I got an email today from the team. Looks like they need a new name for the project.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Kelly
Sent: Friday, 31 March 2006 11:42 AM
To: Frank Arrigo
Subject: Ruby.NET

Dear frank,

Thanks for registering your interest in the Ruby.NET project. We will keep 
you informed of future developments.

At this stage we would like to ask your help in finding a better name for 
the project. It seems Ruby.NET has been used by similar projects. We would 
prefer something unique, so that a Google search should find only pages 
related to our project. Only restriction is that it still needs to have 
Ruby somewhere in the title.

Please post your suggestions on our WIKI at:

http://www.plas.fit.qut.edu.au/Wiki/Projects/Ruby/Public/ProjectName.html

You can also post general comments and questions at:

http://www.plas.fit.qut.edu.au/Wiki/Projects/Ruby/Public/CommentsAndQuestions.html

We look forward to hearing from you & 

(Please contact me if you wish to be removed from this email list).

Cheers, Wayne.

So put your thinking caps on and help them out !

[ Currently Playing : The Car Song - Cat Empire, The - Triple J Hottest 100 - Volume 13 - Disc 1 (04:19) ]

You may have noticed my blogging frequency is down at the moment. There's a good reason for that.

I have recently had some new people join my little team, taking my direct reports up to 12 (and one open head, but more about that later). We had a person leave the team, which enabled us to rearrange the structure and voila!

So, I am now responsible for all the Technical Evangelism within our group - Anna recently posted that she was joining the team

My team now looks like this:

So, why so busy?

Well, at this time of the year, Microsoft goes through a process called the Mid Year Career Development Discussion, where we checkpoint on progress for the year, and then we spend a bit of time looking at an individual's career development plan. For me, it's been a time to get to know my team better (especially the newer members), what their goals and aspirations are, and then  put in place some development plans to help them get there.

To do this properly takes time. Hence, a reduction in my blogging frequency. But, I'll be back!

[ Currently Playing : Fig Jam - Butterfingers - Triple J Hottest 100 Volume 13 (03:34) ]

A few emails have crossed my inbox for local companies looking for good developers.

SYDNEY
We are looking to expand our little team of developers and are finding it hard to come across some reasonably good people whom have .net, SharePoint and/or BizTalk, do you know of any people whom are looking around.

MELBOURNE
Someone with excellent Windows Mobile smartphone development skills. Knowledge of telephony, SIP and IMS would also be handy.

If you are interested, drop me an email and I will hook you in touch with these companies.

[ Currently Playing : Everyday I Love You Less and Less - Kaiser Chiefs - Triple J Hottest 100 - Volume 13 - Disc 1 (03:37) ]

Our team has a new intern for the year.

Let's play a game.

Some clues.

• was a former student ambassador
• recently moved to sydney
• regular blogger

Any ideas? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Prize to the 1st correct entry -  a tablet pc guy, so leave me a way to contact you.

[ Currently Playing : Phoenix - Butterfly Effect, The - Triple J Hottest 100 - Volume 13 - Disc 1 (04:03) ]

It's been a month since we launched TechTalkBlogs

Let's review the stats from the systems:

Hmmm, new registrations have slowed down. Feeds are flowing, and we're getting a few more votes.

I looked at the top posters a while back, now let me call out the top vote catchers:

• Frank Arrigo / Frankarr
• jamtronix
• The Holistic Web
• Cameron Reilly
• Ben Barren
• Dugie's Pensieve
• The Sydney Hacker
• Rocky Heckman
• Karls Blog · just powered
• Mitch Denny

And the top posts which have scored 7 votes or more are:

• Content Management is a lie
• Zookoda - blogger's best friend
• Taxonomy vs Folksonomy
• Techtalk Highlights 2006-03-04
• .NET AJAX Library
• TechTalk Blogs ... almost 3 weeks
• Very Very Cool : Made in Express Content - Win $10,000 (usd)
• Did you know TTB has it's own Blog?
• What Makes A Good Data Entry App
• Techtalkblogs.com

Now, someone asked me how the ranking system worked.

It's pretty simple.

A post gets a set of points at the start (Let's call this I), then points are added per vote (let's call this V) and finally points are deducted each hour from initial posting (let call this H).

The formula looks something like this : Rank Score = (I + NumberOf Votes * V) - (HourSincePost * H).

The list is then sorted by this Rank Score

I have been playing with the different values of the weekend, tweaking the values to see how the order of the stories change. Can anyone guess the current values of I, V and H??

[ Currently Playing : Sunnyroad - Emiliana Torrini - Triple J Hottest 100 - Volume 13 - Disc 1 (03:03) ]

Local Canberra based MVP Geoff Appleby has way too much time on his hands.

First he posted photos of his little friends - Meet the Twins (or: Oh yeah? Well mine does acrobatics and likes MSDN and reading!) , My Night Out at the Launch Party, Another Mascot , Another New Addition to the Appleby Family

Now he's made a video, which he called Enter the WebCast

Dude - aren't they keeping you busy at work?

Nice video by the way !

[ Currently Playing : In Love Again - Rogue Traders - Here Come The Drums (05:14) ]

Deeps just sent me a note about a new release of SSCLI which is ready for download. Go on - you know you want to.....

Overview

The Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is the ECMA standard that describes the core of the .NET Framework world. The Shared Source CLI is a compressed archive of the source code to a working implementation of the ECMA CLI and the ECMA C# language specification.

The current release builds and runs on Windows XP only. It is released under a Shared Source initiative. It is released under a shared source initiative. Please see the accompanying license.

The Shared Source CLI goes beyond the printed specification of the ECMA standards, providing a working implementation for CLI developers to explore and understand. It will be of interest to academics and researchers wishing to teach and explore modern programming language concepts, and to .NET developers interested in how the technology works.

Features
The Shared Source CLI archive contains the following technologies in source code form:

• An implementation of the runtime for the Common Language Infrastructure (ECMA-335).
• Compilers that work with the Shared Source CLI for C# (ECMA-334) and JScript.
• Development tools for working with the Shared Source CLI such as assembler/disassemblers (ilasm, ildasm), a debugger (cordbg), metadata introspection (metainfo), and other utilities.
• The Platform Adaptation Layer (PAL) used to port the Shared Source CLI from Windows XP to other platforms.
• Build environment tools (nmake, build, and others).
• Test suites used to verify the implementation.
• A rich set of sample code and tools for working with the Shared Source CLI.

New in this Release

• Full support for Generics.
• New C# 2.0 features like Anonymous Methods, Anonymous Delegates and Generics
• BCL additions.
• Lightweight Code Generation (LCG).
• Stub-based dispatch.
• Numerous bug fixes.

What can I do with the Shared Source CLI?
There is a wealth of programming language technology in the Shared Source CLI. It is likely to be of interest to a wide audience, including:

• Developers interested in the internal workings of the .NET Framework can explore this implementation of the CLI to see how garbage collection works, JIT compilation and verification is handled, security protocols implemented, and the organization of frameworks and virtual object systems.
• Teachers and researchers doing work with advanced compiler technology. Research projects into language extensions, JIT optimizations, and modern garbage collection all have a basis in the Shared Source CLI. Modern compiler courses can be based on the C# or JScript languages implemented on the CLI.
• People developing their own CLI implementations will find the Shared Source CLI an indispensable guide and adjunct to the ECMA standards.

[ Currently Playing : Way To Go! - Rogue Traders - Here Come The Drums (03:16) ]