Wow, someone has been busy. There just appeared 46 brand new AJAX Control Toolkit tutorials. They're nice and short to show specific topics and needs. Nicely done.

Grz, Kris.

I used this site already before but then it only showed just plain links to blog articles or channel 9 videos. When I just took a look it was completely restyled. The Silverlight usage for the ticker looks pretty interesting but seems to lack content at the moment of writing.

Grz, Kris.

Just found out about this little tool that seemed interesting to me: Kaxaml, a lightweight xamlpad alike tool. Apparently it's also free which is always a nice thing.

I found out about this tool by navigating around on the site of Blendables, a vendor of WPF controls. And I got to know about this particular site thanks to Gill.

Grz, Kris.

Just found out about this site about security: Hellosecureworld. Take a look at it. It's in Silverlight (always a good reason to check something out) and it has comics (another good reason). What are you waiting for: click the link!

Grz, Kris.

In case you're still unaware of it, Community day is going to be held on June 26th. This is a free day with interesting technical content provided by the combined forces of several Belgian user groups. Be sure to check out the agenda of what's provided that day.

I'm also going to be there so if you'd like to say, hi just come over and do so.

Grz, Kris.

Wow, this is a cool application. Be sure to check it out and have Silverlight installed. Funny thing for me is that I worked in a team in 2001 that was also into adding/upgrading a software tool for patient handling in hospitals. If we only had the UI possibilities of Silverlight/WPF in those days to work out everything...

Personally, I foresee much more of these kind of applications with these great technologies.

Grz, Kris.

I just noticed at home that the look & feel of live search has changed. Steve Balmer recently stated that Microsoft is updating its whole live experience and certainly search. Could this be a new step forward to a renewed platform? Recently I found myself using live search more and more instead of google.

Grz, Kris.

This morning I got up quite early to check my baggage a last time and drive to the rail station. There I met up with 2 other Belgian MVP's: Gill & Ilse. Once arrived at Schiphol, Gill and I got some bad news: our flight was completely overbooked so we had to sit down for quite some time while all the other people were already boarding the plane. Only in the last couple of minutes before the plane would take off our names were called for and we hurried to the plane (and through security). Then our long journey of about 10 hours could begin. We were actually very relieved that we could make it while we had to leave others behind in Belgium (Joris Poelmans didn't make it unfortunately). This was my first flight outside of Europe but the comfort on the plane itself was good: decent meals and several movies to see in the little screen in front of you (watched I am legend, The golden compass and National treasure 2). After arriving we checked in at the Sheraton hotel and afterwards went for the registration. After that, and some siteseeing/shopping in Seattle, we went to eat something in the Cheesecake factory: and delicious and giant hamburger. At first sight Seattle seems like a small city but I'm sure we didn't cover the whole city area yet .

First impression of Seattle while driving from the airport to the hotel:

The hotel room:

Street in Seattle:

Going to the registration:

And afterwards a burger (double pun fun hamburger) at the cheesecake factory (aka real American food). By the way it looked much better, and tasted way much better.

We actually couldn't finish it so we have to go out for desert, a delicious cheese cake, on a later date this week.

I also got to know already several MVP's from Tsuchiya, Chili, Denmark, Switzerland and I also had the pleasure to meet up with a Japanese MVP.

Grz, Kris.