I already knew Jeff's a great speaker after I saw him deliver a session last year at TechEd in Barcelona. Today I had the pleasure to see him at work again at the pre conference day about ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX (server & client side) and the upcoming technology WPF/e. I also had the pleasure of talking briefly directly to Jeff during the break. Seems like a nice person to me.

The most interesting session for me was the one in the afternoon which was about the client side part, also known as the Microsoft AJAX Library. I did a presentation myself so I already experimented with the technology but didn't take a look at the Futures CTP which was also highlighted.

We also got to know that WPF/e will get a name change at MIX07 next month and that several things will be changing for the better. What it'll be we have to wait for because that's still under NDA but I'm looking forward to get my hands dirty on that new technology.

Jeff is going to give other presentations on the dev & IT pro days so if you have the chance of attending one of those sessions, do so.

Something else I really like attending those conferences is the have the chance to meet up with former collegues, people I know when I was just studying to become an engineer, former teachers, people I know from the online community but seldomly see in real life. It's nice to team up, get to know what others are doing for interesting projects etc.

Grz, Kris.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at creating Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets based upon the tutorial at MIX university. If you're interested in that and Powershell you might be interested in Powergadgets as well. I just found out about the site but hope to find some free time to explore the goods.

Grz, Kris.

Aah, pure youth sentiment. I bought a couple of weeks ago the first season, and watched it of course, of Buck Rogers in the 25th century. The graphics look pretty old to nowadays standards of course, like most of those old sci-fi series, but I still like the concept: an American astronaut that gets frozen while in deep space and awakens after 500 years and find his home planet Earth changed quite a bit after the holocaust.

Part of the success of the series was probably due to the actors, ladiesman Buck Rogers played by Gil Gerard, Wilma Deering played by Erin Gray and Princess Ardala played by Pamely Hensley.

I don't remember correctly if it was this serie or Battlestar Galactica that I could read by myself. Let me explain that a bit because some of my English speaking friends found this odd. In Belgium, where I live, foreign series/movies are only seldom dubbed to Dutch. This means that we get the chance to hear quite a lot of different languages on television while the translation is shown as subtext. I also remember that before I could read an American comedy was quite famous around here: Arnold. The star actor from that serie also played in 2 episodes of Buck Rogers. I couldn't read at that time so my dad had to read them for me. I guess the urge to learn to read certainly had something to do with understanding myself what was being said in those great series.

Some pictures:

Buck Rogers with his ambuquad Twiki:

Wilma Deering:

Princess Ardala:

Grz, Kris.

I received a VIP access for Dev Days 2007 which will start on March 27th. And thanks to my boss, I'm also able to attend it. So thanks everyone for the opportunity!

Grz, Kris.

Microsoft provides since recently a new learning center for the beginning developer. Totally dedicated to the freely available Expression editions of Visual Studio 2005 people who are interested in beginning to learn to program can take advantage of.

You can find the Learning Center here.

Another interesting piece of information are the SQL Server 2005 Express For Beginners screencasts.

Grz, Kris.

I'm just announcing the upcoming Microsoft Developer & IT pro days. This year there's also a preconference day entirely dedicated to ASP.NET AJAX and WPF/e. The other 2 days are also packed with interesting sessions so be sure to check them out.

Grz, Kris.

Joe Stagner is doing it again. After quite a lot video material on ASP.NET AJAX he just started doing one about AJAX patterns. For the moment there's only one video available but more will be coming in the next weeks/months from now on. The current video is about the Predictive Fetch Pattern.

You can learn more about AJAX patterns on the dedicated site: ajaxpatterns.org.

Grz, Kris.

Wow, the news just keeps coming today. I found out about this little tool SonicFileFinder.

SonicFileFinder is a free add-in for Visual Studio 2005 that allows a fast and convenient search for any file within every Project of the loaded Solution by entering the complete filename or just a part of it. The found file(s) can either be edited with a single keystroke or a Windows Explorer / CommandLine prompt can be opened at the file's location.

Grz, Kris.

Grz, Kris.

I like keyboard shortcuts a lot and use them wherever I can, especially while developing with Visual Studio 2005, so here are some handy shortcuts for Windows Vista:

Windows key + spacebar: Will show the Windows Vista Sidebar. I like this feature and the possibility to create your own gadgets as well. There's also some to be found on CodeProject as well.

Windows key + x: This'll launch the Windows Mobility Center. Very handy when you're using a laptop.

Grz, Kris.