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.
Monday, Dec 22, 2003, 9:28 AM
Mr. Blyth Goes To Town (Redmond, specifically...)
Here.
In his recent visit to Microsoft's main campus in Redmond, WA, he describes what I expected to find myself:
Out of the waiting room, we stepped into an airlock. I thought the airlock was a little over the top, but figured that Microsoft knew best, so I just went along with it.
The door behind us clanked shut, and my ears popped as the air pressure in the room changed. Some vents in the ceiling opened, and I heard a faint hissing noise.
Looking up, I saw a red mist swirling below the ceiling, corkscrewing, and drooping in little wisps. I felt confused, but figured that it was only because one hemisphere of my brain had been removed in order to accommodate the borg unit.
A few seconds later, I caught a sweet smell in the olfactory glands and a tingly sensation on my tongue. It smacked of tropical punch, with perhaps just a little too much sugar.
The taste was familiar. It reminded me of some far off childhood - summers on a tire-swing, baseball at the park, and other simple pleasures. There was a common thread woven through all these events, and it had to do with this taste. This sweet, sugary, tropical-punchity flavor... It tasted like.. like...
Eureka!
So, I thought to myself, Microsoft has finally figured out how to create an airborne Kool-Aid. This is an unexpected turn of events. I wonder what else these engineers of mayhem have in store for me. What, indeed..."
Disappointingly, while the culture is very different from any other company I've ever encountered, Microsoft is mostly normal (mostly... : ).
Monday, Dec 22, 2003, 9:01 AM in .NET
Microsoft "Longhorn" Help Highlights
Here. Matthew Ellison, from WinWriters.com, discusses his highlights of the new help system in Longhorn.
Friday, Dec 19, 2003, 9:15 AM in .NET
Chris Anderson & Don Box sing Longhorn Xmas Carols
Here. And plus they talk about XAML... Have a Merry and a Happy!
Friday, Dec 19, 2003, 9:09 AM in .NET
Visual Studio Magazine: Get a Grip on Longhorn
Here. Roger Jennings provides a nice overview of the major bits of Longhorn for folks that haven't seen them yet.
Wednesday, Dec 17, 2003, 2:14 PM
Joel on Biculturalism
I've been completely unconnected for four days, so I'm sure that Joel's essay on the differences in culture between Unix and Windows programmers has been blogged to death, like most of Joel's essays. However, I was a Unix programmer for 4 years before becoming a Windows programmer, so this one really spoke to me. I especially like his description of how programs act under Unix so that they can communicate with other programs (success produces no output) vs. how they act under Windows so that they can communicate with people (success produces output). I don't know what I'm going to do with these new insights, but I'm enjoying them nevertheless.
Friday, Dec 12, 2003, 9:48 PM
Whidbey GC helps manage non-memory resources
Here. Brad Abrams describes how the Whidbey .NET Framework adds support for tracking unmanaged memory and limited resources of a non-memory nature. The former is handled by informing the GC of added "pressure" associated with unmanaged memory and the latter by exposing the private HandleCollector class that .NET 1.x has used for a while now. It's not reference counting, but it'll do for a start... : )
Friday, Dec 12, 2003, 1:39 PM in .NET
WinFS Overview on MSDN TV
Here.
Apparently it's Longhorn day for MS videos:
"Quentin Clark provides an overview of WinFS, including what benefits it produces, what it is, and how it's put together. This episode introduces WinFS as a basis for more detailed presentations."
Friday, Dec 12, 2003, 11:30 AM in .NET
New .NET Show: Longhorn @ the PDC
Here. "In this episode of the .NET Show we focus on how 'Longhorn' was presented, and received, at the PDC. In our first segment we talk with key players in the Longhorn project, Brad Abrams, Chris Anderson, Quentin Clark, and Pablo Fernicola about the main messages that they are hoping developers at the PDC understand about Longhorn. We then switch the tables and talk with Richard Hale Shaw, Simon Stewart, and Robb McLarty, a diverse set of attendees of the PDC and hear straight from them what they think about Longhorn, and how it might affect their development efforts moving forward."
Friday, Dec 12, 2003, 10:00 AM in .NET
Avalon Resource Variety Sample
Here.
And than Nathan posts another sample showing off the various kinds of resources to be defined in Avalon and how to define them on top of one another. I'm loving this guy!
BTW, this is post 1000 on this feed. I can't keep up with Scoble, of course, but I had no idea I was *that* wordy. : )
Friday, Dec 12, 2003, 9:48 AM in .NET
Avalon Video Clipping Sample
Here. Nathan Dunlap kicks off his new Avalon design blog with a sample on how to clip video to arbitrary shapes. I don't know for what I'd use this, but it's nice to know it's there. : )
Friday, Dec 12, 2003, 9:38 AM in .NET
Avalon Blog: Design Eye for the Dev Guy
And from heaven, the thing that budding Longhorn programmers most need falls to earth. Nathan Dunlap, a designer on the Avalon team, has taken up blogging. He's covering design tips as someone that understands Avalon *and* design inside and out. Welcome, Nathan! Subscribed.
Thursday, Dec 11, 2003, 1:36 PM in .NET
Xamlon samples look interesting
If you haven't seen it, Xamlon is a .NET 1.1 implementation of Longhorn's XAML. And while I was under the impression that it was just XAML, i.e. a language for declaring and defining objects, it looks like Xamlon is an attempt to implement Avalon, too. I haven't downloaded it, but looking at the Xamlon samples and code online, it looks like a subset of Avalon. Interesting...
Thursday, Dec 11, 2003, 10:46 AM
MS Producer is growing on me
Here.
OK, so Producer isn't perfect. For one thing, at least in the Longhorn PDC Presentations on which I've been catching up, there's no fast forward or rewind, which is kind of annoying. Also, I've fallen in love with the Speed setting in WMP, so I miss that.
However, I had to reboot my machine to get VPN working today in the middle of a session, and when I starting the Producer session for CLI300: Avalon: Building Applications with Controls and Dialogs up again, it remembered where I was down to the second! That's pretty damn cool.
Of course, I've wasted all the time savings telling you people about it, but still... : )
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003, 2:47 PM
Brush With Fame: Alexey Pajitnov, Tetris Inventor
When I heard that Alexey Pajitnov, the inventor of Tetris, worked at MS, I *had* to show him Wahoo!. He said that I was violating copyright. Shhh... Nobody tell... : )
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003, 1:34 PM
The Microsoft Partner Proposal Tool
Ever since coming to Microsoft, I've been doing my best to be as available as I was before hand. However, what that means is that sometimes I get requests for help in areas that are way out of my purview. One such thing is when people send me ideas for products that can only be done by Microsoft, implying some kind of partnership with the originator of the idea. I know how that works -- I've pitched my share of ideas at MS looking for funding, too. However, unless it's funding for developer-related content (of which I have a tiny amount), I can't help anyone fund their sure-fire startup. However, since MS gets so many such requests, they've set up a web site to take them all in. If you've got yourself the next killer app idea, save yourself the time and go directly to the Microsoft Partner Proposal Tool. I'm guessing the success rate is small, but it's certainly better than sending me email. : )