Mosaic Art by Siofra is a simple website built with ASP.NET that incorporates some interesting features, such as web service communications, an RSS feed, and quite a few AJAX tricks. Here are a few of the technologies that allowed me to create the site...

I've been having fun recently using my own dreadful handwriting as a font, which I captured using the My Font Tool PowerToy for the Tablet PC . It gives a "hand-sketched" look to Powerpoint slides and WPF apps. Robert Ingebretsen has taken pencil-sketchiness...

Wow - thanks to everyone who attended my Atlas presentation at ApacheCon Europe today. I was overwhelmed by the full house and the warm reception. And it was kinda cool to be the Microsoft guy running Apache and PHP on his laptop :) Here are my slides...

I'm at ApacheCon Europe today, which is taking place here in Dublin. This morning's keynote was presented by the eloquent Mark Shuttleworth , founder of the Ubuntu Foundation . Mark spoke on the challenges facing the Free Software world. What am I...

Have you seen CodePlex ? It's like "Team Foundation Server in the Sky." I would love to have an online TFS database service like that for all my development projects. CodePlex is home to some very interesting shared source development projects, including...

If I'm not finished my WPF webcast by 4:00 today, I have a feeling my audience is going to be dramatically reduced...! Join us at 3:00 GMT (4:00 in Europe) and I'll show you shiny cool graphics stuff and try to get you out in time for the match :)...

The webcast series continued this afternoon with me demonstrating the coolest bit of WinFX -- Robert Burke: Raising the Stakes with "Avalon," the Windows Presentation Foundation June 27th, 3:00pm-4:30pm GMT Session description: Why should you care...

The MSDN Documentation: It's immense, it's thorough, it eats over a gig of my disk (and is worth it)... but it's never updated quickly enough. And more egregious, it's doesn't include the wisdom that comes from years of community development! I...

The Webcast Series continued (Thursday) afternoon with Team Foundation Server expert Martin Woodward -- Martin Woodward: Source Control with Team Foundation Server June 22nd, 3:00pm-4:30pm GMT Session description: In this session, Martin explains...

We've had a lot of interest in our Ireland Web Developer competition from a number of schools and universities, but they have asked us to extend the competition until after the summer to allow for their students to enter. We would definitely like to...

The webcast series began today with ASP.NET MVP Kieran Lynam -- Kieran Lynam: A Lap around Atlas June 20th, 3:00pm - 4:30pm GMT Session description: ASP.NET "Atlas" is a framework for building next generation, cross-platform, browsing experiences...

There's a series of four afternoon webcasts coming up about new developer technologies, and you're very welcome to attend. 20 Jun: Irish MVP Kieran Lynam on ASP.NET Atlas , 22 Jun: TFS expert Martin Woodward on Team Foundation Server , 27...

MTUG Cork Presents : SQL Server 2005 - What's New in the Database Storage Engine When: Monday, 19th June, 7pm. Reception to follow. Where: Imperial Hotel, Whitechurch Suite , South Mall, Cork Speaker: Niall Flanagan, AIB Distributed Database Group...

I've updated my " Resources for learning Windows Presentation Foundation" article to contain links to Beta 2-compatible material. There's a new WPF Community Site online, which is part of a bigger community site for all the .NET 3.0 / WinFX technologies...

SQL Server 2005's Express Edition is free, it supports database sizes up to 4GB, it allows seamless upgrades to other SQL Server editions, and it's deeply integrated into Visual Studio. What more could you possibly ask for? Well, sometimes SQL Express...

Along with my PADI diving certification this weekend , it turns out I picked up a nasty ear infection. I had been woozy all day while preparing for my WPF presentation , but it wasn't til I was really dizzy on the train to Galway that I rang my diving...

I completed my first four open-water scuba dives over the weekend near Sandycove, just south of Dublin. Those 4 were the training dives for the PADI Open-Water scuba diving course. So now I'm a qualified diver (of sorts!). The scenery close to shore...

"You can think of WinFX like .NET 3.0," I often said, while trying to explain how these new technologies fit into the .NET picture. Well, now, WinFX is called .NET 3.0 . It's just a change in branding. WinFX will still run against the 2.0 version of...

Irish mosaics are the next big thing ! p.s. This was part of my Atlas demo for it @ Cork p.p.s. The Síofra in " Mosaic Art by Síofra " is my missus :-)

I had a great time at last night's geek dinner here in Cork. Compliments to Damien Mulley for organizing a fun night out on the eve of today's conference with the controversial name . I met a ton of great people and had some great chats, including...

ITAG Presents : Raising the Stakes with "Avalon," the Windows Presentation Foundation When: Monday, 12th June, 7pm. Reception to follow. Where: Marriott Courtyard Hotel, Headford Road, Galway Speaker: Me ! :) Overview: This is going to be a variation...

The ArchTalk SIG presents: Applied Software Factories, Experiencing Industrial-Strength Service-Oriented Design and Development on the .NET Platform [Update: This talk has been cancelled .] When: Monday, June 12th, 7pm. Reception to follow. Where:...