You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Tuesday, Sep 7, 2004, 4:53 PM in Conference
New XML Dev.Conf. Talk: XML in .NET 2.0
Here. Neetu Rajpal, a PM on the SQL Server team, has agreed to give us an overview of what's new in XML for .NET 2.0 and in design-time support for Visual Studio 2005 at the Applied XML Developer's Conference, October 20-21 at the Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington. While I was away enjoying America's version of a nude beach, we've surged to 80% full, so register soon.
Monday, Sep 6, 2004, 10:41 AM in The Spout
The Week Before Burning Man
Here. The one where I list the activites in which I was involved the week before Burning Man.
Monday, Sep 6, 2004, 12:00 AM in The Spout
The Week Before Burning Man
I was just listing my activities for the week before Burning Man and amazed even myself:
Shopping for and celebrating my wife's 36th birthday
Helping to prepare for and then watching Sells brother #1 test for his Jr. Brown belt in karate (he was amazing)
Hosting my aunt and grandmother on a very rare 4-day trip
A day-trip to the beach
Celebrating the birthday of Sells brother #2
Coordinating the update, from my house and at the last possible moment, of more than 100 pages on microsoft.com to reflect the recent announcement of WinFX being made available on down-level versions of Windows (this included 3 all-nighters)
Preparing for and running a 2-day garage sale of the stuff I pulled out of my house over the last 8 months in my own personal episode of Clean Sweep
Packing for 5 days in the desert (I worried about survival and my wife worried about having enough costumes...)
Of course, after that I spent a week at Burning Man, and today we're cleaning the playa out of everything, preparing the boys for school, hanging out with the relatives for Labor Day and celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary. Starting tomorrow, I have to figure out what to do with the Longhorn Developer Center now that WinFX will be available on down-level windows, co-author two Avalon books and one Windows Forms book and run the Applied XML Developer's Conference 5. Should be fun. : )
Monday, Aug 30, 2004, 11:21 AM in .NET
Scoble Takes the Pulse of the Developer Community
Robert Scoble has done a great job reporting the pulse of the Windows developer community on Friday's news. Recommended.
Monday, Aug 30, 2004, 11:19 AM in .NET
Jim Allchin, Group VP for Windows, on Channel9 Vid
Channel9 has the latest Windows/WinFX/Longhorn/WinFS/Avalon/Indigo skinny right from the horse's mouth: Jim Allchin the Group VP in charge of Windows.
Monday, Aug 30, 2004, 10:56 AM
1/2 Price Devscovery Ticket for 8/31-9/2
Rich has one half-price ticket to the Redmond Devscovery running 8/31-9/2.
Monday, Aug 30, 2004, 10:37 AM in Fun
The One With The Man That Burns
I'm in-the-middle-desert unavailable this week @ Burning Man. Wish this open-minded but sheltered Midwestern boy luck. : )
Sunday, Aug 29, 2004, 9:19 PM in .NET
Jeremy Mazern on What Happened To Longhorn & WinFS
Jeremy contributes to the news about Longhorn and WinFS. Most interesting is Jeremy's discussion of the usability studies we did on WinFS and how we're using that information to improve the API. Check it out.
Friday, Aug 27, 2004, 4:06 PM in .NET
WinFX To Be Available On Down-Level Windows
Lots of interesting news about the plan to make WinFX available on Windows XP and Windows 2003:
- Press release: Microsoft Announces 2006 Target Date for Broad Availability Of Windows "Longhorn" Client Operating System
- Note from David Treadwell, the Grand Poobah of WinFX
- Longhorn Developer Center Editor's Note from yours truly
- New Longhorn Developer FAQ section: WinFX on Down-Level Windows
- New WinFS page on the MSDN Data Developer Center
Enjoy.
Wednesday, Aug 25, 2004, 12:12 PM in Fun
Enjoyed Listening to Charles Petzold on .NET Rocks
I really enjoyed listening to Charles Petzold on the most recent episode of .NET Rocks. It was wonderful to hear about an entire part of Windows history when I didn't even know that it existed (I never heard of Windows 'til version 3.1). I was also surprised and honored to hear that Charles was familiar with my book (or the sales numbers at least : ).
BTW, I'm a huge Richard the Toy Boy fan. He's got such a radio voice and entertaining manner that he should do the radio thing professionally (hopefully I'm not embarrassing myself because he's already a professional and I don't know it : ).
Tuesday, Aug 24, 2004, 4:41 PM in Fun
Here's A Side Of The Olympic I Hadn't Heard Before
"At the Albertville winter Olympics, condom machines in the athletes' village had to be refilled every two hours. And in Sydney the organisers' original order of 70,000 condoms went so fast that they had to order 20,000 more. Even with the replenishment, the supply was exhausted three days before the end of the competition schedule. (For the record, athletes who were in Sydney report that the Cuban delegation was the first to use up its allocation.) Salt Lake City in 2002 went even bigger: 250,000 condoms were handed out, despite the objections of the city's Mormon leadership."
"There's a lot of sex going on. You get a lot of people who are in shape, and, you know, testosterone's up and everybody's attracted to everybody," says Breaux Greer, a shaggy-blond Californian who competed in the javelin at the Sydney Games."
It sounds like a PDC, except that we don't have anyone in shape, anyone attractive or any the sex... (or maybe I'm just going to the wrong parties : ).
Sunday, Aug 22, 2004, 9:37 AM in .NET
Tim Sneath On Building a Longhorn Sidebar
Tim Sneath shares his experiences building a Longhorn Sidebar, including some tips on how to do the work w/o making your shell unusable (always a plus : ).
Sunday, Aug 22, 2004, 9:28 AM in .NET
Why Joe Likes XAML
Here.
Joe Marini is working with Longhorn, Avalon and XAML on a Microsoft product team and finds that he really loves XAML. This, in and off itself, is not surprising (I mean, that's what we're paying him for : ), but it's interesting to hear the specifics.
One thing that Joe seems to love (and I can hardly blame him) is that data binding in Avalon is used to build the UI, not just show external data. He expounds on this in his wonderful Data Bound User Interfaces in XAML article.
Another thing that Joe loves is that a Avalon designer's work is in the same format as what the designer needs and can be dropped right into an app w/o converting from bitmap mock-ups (Peter Stern and I are doing this).
You can read about the work that Joe has done with XAML and download his code samples on his web site's tutorial section. Joe is definitely one to watch in the Longhorn/Avalon space.
Sunday, Aug 22, 2004, 8:22 AM in Interview
Standing Out When Submitting Your Resume
After seeing all of those pictures in Wired of the wacky letters that people send, I love the idea of Michael Swanson opening the floodgates by sending his resume along with a life-size cardboard figure. What's next?
Saturday, Aug 21, 2004, 11:00 PM in Fun
"You will have gold pieces by the bushel."
That's quite a nice fortune. My lucky numbers were 7, 12, 15, 36, 39 and 21. With the "gold pieces by the bushel," I don't really need the lucky numbers, do I? : )