Infant Botulism, the nurse said. My wife and I both stood there dazed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). How could this be? She was laughing and giggling just 48 hours before. She never had a fever, a cough, sniffles, or any other sign that she was sick. She was just acting tired with a kind of weak moaning. When we called her doctors’ office we were told to just keep watching her temperature and make sure she was hydrated. In fact, if not for my wife’s insistence that “something is not right” we wouldn’t have even brought her to the emergency room.
After Ava got to the hospital she was very listless and would not open her eyes. Even after a full day of being on a food tube with both breastmilk, pedialyte and saline she was not responding.
Rather then wait anymore time the doctors decided to get to action at once. The first thing she did was a spinal tap to see if it was spinal meningitis. Ava didn’t respond at all during the actual procedure which was cause for alarm. Babies usually cry or move in some way. The doctor then brought up the idea of Infant Botulism. She told us that we were going to be admitted to CHOP right away and a helicopter would take her into Philadelphia.
A helicopter we thought?? Wow – this is a lot more serious than we thought. Unfortunately, due to bad weather they could not fly her in and so my wife road with her in the ambulance and I followed not long after in the minivan. Our four year old daughter, Lauren, was told she would get to go “on vacation” with her grandparents for a few days while Mommy and Daddy took care of her sister. Little did we know it would be over a week before we would get to see Lauren again.
So there we stood with Ava in the PICU over Fourth of July weekend. Praying, hoping, and worrying. Knowing that she was in the best place possible for her right now but feeling helpless as parents.
We soon learned more about Infant Botulism and what it does. Basically there are bacterial spores that live in the air around us all time. As adults we have antibodies in our intestines that can fight them off. But infants under a year of age do not. The spores had gotten into Ava’s intestines and were releasing a nuerotoxin that affected the ability of the nerve endings in her muscles to respond to her brain. This created a paralysis and if not stopped it would eventually affect her diaphragm and she would not be able to breath on her own. But there was good news too. Ava had gotten medical treatment at the very early onset. She was still breathing on her own and even though her eyes were closed she was still conscious and would hold our hand if we gave it to her. There was also a drug, called BabyBIG, that could slow down the nuerotoxins and neutralize the spores within her. But the drug was only available in California and would need to be flown out to Pennsylvania.
It would take almost 24 hours for it to get to us. These were the hardest hours of our life. Ava’s NIF (negative inspiratory force) tests became borderline low and if she did not get the BabyBIG within a few hours she would need to go on a respirator. The nurses had the machine next to her bed all ready to go so there was no delay.
It was 6pm on Sunday when the BabyBIG finally arrived into the room. The miracle drug from California was here! They administered it through an IV and it was fully into her system in a few hours. She fell asleep after that and slept sound for almost a day. Then the miracle happened. She opened one eye a bit and smiled at daddy. I burst into tears and immediately called out for my wife. Within 24 hours she was doing things everyone told us may take weeks to come back. She moved her little feet up to her mouth, she was rolling on her side, she was focusing on stuff all over her room (especially the balloons my team had sent me!) and she was biting down on her toys. What a wonder baby!
At this point the only thing other than the BabyBIG she was getting was my wife’s breastmilk. I am still amazed by Ava’s mom. She never once left the hospital and pumped breastmilk literally every hour to keep up with the food tube demands. The nurses were calling it “liquid gold” and it helped nurse her back faster than anyone had ever seen. Thank you so much Cheryl – I love you!
The last thing we were told that would come back was Ava’s ability to suck. But by the next day there she was breastfeeding! We could not believe it. First a little less than an ounce, then 2 oz, and then 3 oz. She was the little engine that could! She was back to her old self – smiling, laughing, playing. Our hearts were filled with Joy. Lauren was back from her grandparents and the next week I would spend bringing her to the hospital everyday to be with her sister and mom. The bond between my two girls, even at this age, is a strong one and Ava would light up every time her sister would come into the room. Lauren even took to reading her own made up stories to Ava.
After over two and half weeks in the hospital Ava is now doing great and is back home with us. We are just monitoring her weight (it has been a bit down) to make sure she is getting enough calories to be back on track. She amazed the doctors with her progress. Stays in the hospital of up to 5 weeks are not unheard of with Infant Botulism so the fact that she is home already is a small type of miracle.
As far as how it happened, she never had honey (still exclusively breastfed) and the fact that we are not near new construction means she must have inhaled the spores somewhere. Evidently they are all over the place in southeast Pennsylvania (who knew?) and the incubation period is up to 30 days so it is almost impossible to know where she got it. The good news though is the anti-toxin they gave her (BabyBIG) will keep her immune for the next 6 months until her own body can fight it off.
It was a terrifying experience but we felt the circle of love close in around us from everyone Faith, Family, Friends – these bonds are all now stronger than ever.
I want to thank the doctors for diagnosing her so fast. The fact that she was treated early enough and never had any respiratory complications means she will most likely fully recover. But not all infants are so lucky. The bacteria spores exist everywhere and can be found in high concentrations in areas such as Califronia, Ohio and southeastern Pennsylvania. The only known method of prevention is to not give any infant under a year of age honey (of which most cases reported the infant never had honey) and to watch for early warning signs. If your child seems extremely listless, refuses to eat, and has a very weak cry take them to the emergency room immediately! Time is of the essence. I recorded a video during our stay that shows the listlessness and you can hear the weak cry. Hopefully it may help doctors in diagnosing the early warning signs as they were able to do with Ava.
To learn more how you can save a child’s life please check out the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia donation site.
Thank you, and may God bless!
- Dave
I will let the video speak for itself. Definitely worth checking out.
Looking to catch up on all things new with .NET and Visual Studio?
Want to network with your peers?
Local to the tri-state area?
Well come join us at VSLive! New York this September. Lots of topics to be covered:
I will be doing a session Tuesday morning after the Keynote on Silverlight and Expression Studio from a Developer’s point of view. Stop on by and say hello. =)
Silverlight 2 with Expression Studio - a developers point of view.
Tuesday, September 9th, 9:45-11:00am
“You’re a developer, not a designer, but the media side of Web development is getting more intense. How can you keep up? A basic understanding of Expression Blend and Encoder, which you’ll have by the end of this session, will get you farther along this path than you thought possible. Start leveraging these new design tools with your existing .NET skills to create engaging RIA experiences today.”
Early bird and group registration discounts are available today.
See you there!
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From a marketing perspective I think Microsoft does a pretty good job in the enterprise of creating awareness around our products. Most people know about Office, SharePoint, Communicator, Windows Server and what they are capable of. But, when it comes to consumer products there isn’t much info out there. Sure I have seen a couple really good X-box commercials but most of them aren’t even ours. Where are the Apple like commercials for all the Live Services out there? For Smartphone technologies? Media Center? How about bringing it all together?
When I was out in Seattle last summer at an internal Microsoft conference they showed off a consumer video that did just that. It was impressive in that it brought a lot of the consumer facing technologies together in one place for the first time. I wanted to share it with you, Check it out here in Silverlight or here in Flash. Thanks Michael (Synergist) for finding this!
When I stop to think about it, I use a lot of these products on a day to day basis:
Zune
- Yes for those that know me I have an iPod Touch. But I’m sorry Steve, I (and my family) listen to too much music to buy every song individually. DRM free subscription plans work.
- My Zune is loaded with almost every Coldplay, Dave Mathews, and U2 album created (both live and album versions) and I only paid my monthly subscription. And the stuff I did buy like Radiohead - The Bends I got cheaper and DRM free.
- I also use it when traveling to watch videos. Feel like catching up on some WPF or Silverlight? Sites like VisitMix.com offer most of the sessions going all the way back to Mix06 online and in Zune format. You can also grab shows off Channel9 and Channel 10 in Zune format.
- But what about all the movies from DVDs I own. My entire collection on the Zune without having to purchase them again? You bet! Check out this Uber coolness.
Live Maps (check out the bird’s eye view)
Windows Live
- Livewriter for this blog
- Messenger to IM
- Skydrive to host all my presentations/code – 4 gigs and ad free can’t be beat. No more worrying about a singles ad popping up when I want to share out a powerpoint with someone.
Windows Media Center
- Every photo and video I’ve taken of my girls since they were born is viewable on my big screen tv via remote. I can’t tell you how cool it is to show recent events/trips to family on the screen when we get together.
- How about a free program for importing all those images and videos that works a lot better than iPhoto ever will. Kudos to Google for gobbling them up. Check out Picasa here. Easy enough to use even my wife can load pictures on it - lol.
- My entire movie collection is now digital! I have every Disney DVD I own instantly available for viewing and safe from being destroyed by my 4 year old. Not only that all those annoying previews, menus, and nag screens are all gone it starts instantly when I select it. I used Slysoft’s AnyDVD and CloneDVD software to back them up – real easy to use check them out here.
- I also watch Blu-Ray movies on it. Got the HDDVD/Blu-Ray drive here and the player here.
Blackjack 2 Smartphone
Amazing User Interface in Windows?
- I always get a chuckle when people talk about the UI of an Operating System being set in stone. An OS to me is about a kernel, frameworks, io, threading, task scheduling, software development experience, and what applications I can run on it. The way it looks should be easily changed and modified to how the user wants. For anyone who has seen me present they know my machines don’t look like your normal window boxes. =)
- This is how I did that:
-Dave
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You will need to do get three updates. The plugin itself, Expression Studio 2.5 June release, and the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio. You can grab all of that here. The updated release of the Silverlight Tools now works with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta so you have my official blessing to go ahead and install that too.
In a nutshell, beta 2 has added:
· UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance. This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.
· Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more. Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.
· Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).
· Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.
· Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2.
ScottGu has a post about the new features you can check out here. Tim Sneath points us to an addicting new Beta 2 game (anyone remember Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentacle?)
A lot of the changes you will notice are to keep the Silverlight API in line with WPF. Things have also been simplified a bit. One consistent gotcha I have seen people run into in Beta 1 was when they were calling a Web Service. The need to change their website config file to support basicHttpBinding instead of the default wsHttpBinding (Silverlight only supports basic currently) was often forgotten. There is now a new Silverlight WCF Template that gets installed with the Beta 2 tools that will take care of this for you. Tim Heuer has more info about updated web service changes here.
For a full list of changes you will need to make to update your application from beta 1 to beta 2 check out this post on the Silverlight SDK site (downloadable word document here).
Have fun!
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I will post more detailed information once it is available for download. But for now you can watch the Bill Gates keynote announcement here, as well as all the TechEd 2008 content here.
Great stuff in this release including easier custom skinning of controls (via the Visual State Manager - more “wpf like”), better control over your state (like JavaScript onMouseOver Events) and other goodness.
While information about the next version of windows has been tight lipped, a few details have been made public. One of them is the built in multi-touch functionality. Check out the video of a recent demo here. This is awesome!
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Beta 1 of SP1 for Visual Studio and .Net Framework is now available for download. This is a huge update with a lot of new features and performance enhancements. Not to mention pixel shaders in WPF!
I have always wanted to tap natively into my Nvidia's shader engine without having to learn DirectX and now I can. Geek Joy!
It is important to note however, that SP1 Beta is not compatible with the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Tools for Visual Studio. I recommend if you are doing any Silverlight 2 development at this time that you hold off on installing SP1 beta. Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be out very soon and there will be an updated version of the Visual Studio Tools that works with SP1.
Kudos to Silverlight Surfer for putting this video together. Definitely worth checking out - if you do not understand what a GPU and Pixel Shaders can do for you as a .Net Developer then this video will give you an idea.
Martin Grayson and team have created an amazing healthcare demo using Silverlight 2. Check it out here today!
Maybe it is marketing. Maybe it is the fact that it looks like a photo editing tool. But, some of the developers I speak too still haven't checked out Expression Studio yet. The simple fact is, as developers it is not we wanted to code what a button looks like. We just didn't have a choice! Microsoft is even guilt of this. I see numerous examples out on the web today that show how to program Silverlight by manually typing in XAML into the Visual Studio code window. "Stop the Insanity!"
Those days are now over thanks to XAML and the seamless integration that exists between Expression Studio and Visual Studio. The session I gave at the Health and Life Sciences Developers and Solutions Conference tackled Expression Studio from a developers point a view and how you can leverage it in your projects today.
The good news is you you can now grab the powerpoint presentation as well as all the source code here.
Here is a breakdown of what you will find in the zip file:
Expression Encoder
- This demo showed how easy it is to work with video using Expression Encoder. No longer is video a blackbox for the developer. You can add events to the actual video stream itself and start capturing them in code! A great example of this was the Silvlerlight version of the old arcade game Dragon's Lair that Vertigo did. Check it out here.
- We also showed how integrated the free Silverlight Streaming service is inside Encoder and published up our example to the streaming service (over my BlackJack 2 windows mobile phone's Internet connection I might add) In fact, you can still watch it right now here.
Expression Design - DevCon Logo
- This is the .design file from when I walked us through how to work with images using Expression Design. We saw how easy it was to add effects as well as importing/exporting to XAML/PDF/PSD and Illustrator files.
Expression Blend - Silverlight Button and Reflection
- This was the main Silverlight demo using Expression Blend 2.5. We went over how to switch back and forth between Blend and VS2008, changes to Silverlight in 2.0, specific Blend features, transforms, animations, and how to do some reflection of images.
DeepZoom Poster
- This is the project we created inside DeepZoom Composer. It consisted of a Silverlight 2 API Reference poster image and a picture of my kids. =) For a step by step guide on how to reproduce this, check out the Devs4Devs video I did on Channel 9 here.
ASP.NET Integration
- With the release of the Silverlight 2.0 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 it has never been easier to add Silverlight content to your existing ASP.NET Webforms. In this demo I showed how you can utilize the new AJAX enabled Web Controls to place Silverlight content on your page.
- This demo is great in that it ties a lot of the previous pieces together. It also shows how you can easily do stuff within Blend itself without needing to write any animation specific code (although we could have easily controlled it from code behind as well like we did in the Button and Reflection demo). In fact we took the existing image we created previously in Expression Design and added some animation to it like so:
<Image Width="253.035" Height="140.02" Canvas.Left="346.965" Canvas.Top="35.98"
Source="HLSDevCon.png" Stretch="Fill" x:Name="image" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5">
<Image.RenderTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<ScaleTransform ScaleX="1" ScaleY="1"/>
<SkewTransform AngleX="0" AngleY="0"/>
<RotateTransform Angle="0"/>
<TranslateTransform X="0" Y="0"/>
</TransformGroup>
</Image.RenderTransform>
</Image>
We then created a new ASP.NET application in VS2008. Please note we created an actual ASP.NET project and NOT a Silverlight project with an ASP.NET test harness. The the purpose of this demo was to show how you can add Silverlight content to your existing sites today.
And lastly we edited one of the existing Expression Encoder skins and added our new animation to both the OnLoad Event of the player and when someone hits the play/pause button like so:
<DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="image"
Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)">
<SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00" Value="0"/>
<SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00.5000000" Value="1"/>
<SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:01.5000000" Value="1"/>
<SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:02" Value="0"/>
</DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
<DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="image"
Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.RenderTransform).(TransformGroup.Children)[2].(RotateTransform.Angle)">
<SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00.5000000" Value="0"/>
<SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:01.5000000" Value="359.417"/>
</DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
For some really great, in depth articles on using ASP.NET and Silverlight be sure to stop by Brad Abrams blog as well.
Silverlight 2 Controls/Silverlight Airlines
- Nothing custom about these two. They are existing projects you can download today off Silverlight.Net. A couple of people requested to have them included so I put them in the zipfile.
As always, any links and demos I mention in my sessions can be found on the CoolStuffWith.Net site. Check it out!
Not to be outdone by the great turnout at the Financial Services DevCon in March, the Health and Life Sciences Devcon last week had 400 of us invade the Jersey Shore. Who says you can't have an industry specific conference and still be technical? Thank you for making these events what they are today guys you deserve a round of applause.
In fact, here take the Miss America Crown and Scepter for a walk down the runway...
(I took this shot in the lobby of the Sheraton. Special request from my daughters)
Besides giving a talk on day 3 I also got to co-host the Guitar Hero 3 tournament. We had some amazing competition, you guys are G-O-O-D. Grats to the winners.
There was also some great networking going on throughout the day both in the 1on1 meetings with the Surface Team as well as the industry specific sidebars. Thank you for letting me be part of it.
Great sessions, fun location, and some cool press coverage by E-Week left fellow colleague (and evil mastermind behind most of the conference content this year) AllanDCP beaming with pride...
See you again there next year!
Grab all the Session content off our team blog here.
Check out more detailed coverage of the conference for each day here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.
Virtual desktop in the cloud? All you media across all your devices?
I'm a big fan of Skydrive - 5 gigs of free space you get and no annoying ads. I put most of the presentations I do up there as well as most of the images I use on this blog. The problem though has been accessing all the stuff I put in there easily from anywhere and also keeping my devices in sync. Enter Mesh.
Check out mesh today - spots are filling up fast so if you don't get in to this round of test accounts, sign up for the waiting list. Mac support coming soon too.
LiveSide.Net has a some a first impression writeup as well as more screenshots of the interface. Check it out here.
Update 4/28/2008 - Check out the interview with Ray Ozzie as he discusses Live Mesh - here on Channel 9!
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Looking to do some charting of your data in Silverlight 2.0?
Well, Check out Visifire's free open source Silverlight 2 charting controls. You can also play with the controls online here as well. Really well done, and worth checking out.
Curious about what controls are included out of the box in Silverlight 2 beta1?
Check it out with the Silverlight 2 Controls Demo Project. You will find both a a live sample as well as the source code you can download.
How about some 3D?
Check out Declan Bennan's Polyhedron project in the latest issue of MSDN magazine and then download the code here or check it out online here. Declan does an awesome job of taking a 2d space and folding it into 3 dimensions. Very much like the art of Origami. He has some managed classes he includes too that wrap some DirectX functionality you may find useful.
Chance are you are already doing it. Unfortunately, the S+S message has been a bit garbled in the mainstream media. The press really does like to create a "MS vs. Google vs. Everybody" style theme. I guess who doesn't love a good fight right? But the idea of S+S has been around for a while and is nothing new. It is not Microsoft's answer to "fight Google" and it is not Windows Live. So what is it? Let's start by defining two of the most often confused terms with S+S first, SaaS and SoA.
SaaS = Software as a Service. Runs in "the cloud", there is no local desktop client to access it's interface out of web browsers. Usually provides an API that you the developer can access via Web Services or Plain Old XML (POX). SaaS describes the way your users will be accessing your application.
SoA = Service Orientated Architecture. This is how you build your application on the backend to enable your services. The basic idea is to create loosely coupled systems out of many tightly coupled ones. This interoperability is most commonly done via such technologies as Web Services and often involves different platforms entirely (Mainframe connecting with Java connecting with .NET.) SoA describes the way you have built your architecture.
S+S = is about choice in how you access your service and choice in how you host your service. You can still access the services via a browser (just like SaaS) you just have the added benefit of accessing your services in more ways. Typically, this is software running on your desktop or on your mobile device but not limited to. Another idea behind how Microsoft is doing S+S is choice of how you will host these services. You can host them on a server in your local infrastructure, via a third party vendor, or even via Microsoft's new data centers. Again, you are probably already doing this. Microsoft Exchange via Outlook is a good example of this. You can run Outlook on a windows desktop, in a mobile browser, and in a web browser. All connecting to the same backend e-mail service. You company's e-mail system is probably hosted in an onsite datacenter, via a third party or through Microsoft. You have probably seen in the news many traditional SaaS companies now offering "desktop clients." Regardless of the technology to enable this desktop client (some of them use web technologies to bring it to the desktop outside a typical browser) and as much as they probably do not want to admit it - this is S+S. S+S is hard to ignore. The demand is there, users want choice in how they access your system. Companies want choice in how they host that system. Microsoft's S+S platform enables that. S+S describes the way your users will be accessing your application.
Check out Dan Kasun's blog for more thoughts on this here and here as well as some more funny cartoons.
Microsoft Surface will be launching in AT&T retail stores in two weeks.
"Customers will be able to learn about a device (Samsung BlackJack II, pictured) by simply placing it atop the Surface. They'll also have the ability to explore interactive coverage maps. Later, users will be able to drag ringtones, graphics and video and drop it into the phones."
Check out the article on Engadget for more screens and info here. I use a Blackjack II myself, this is way cool.
Not an AT&T customer? Local to Atlantic City, NJ? The come on down to the annual Health and Life Sciences Developers Conference April 22-24th! You will be able to check out a Microsoft Surface in person.
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