Deborah's Developer MindScape : General

Barcelona, Spain 2012

Deborah Kurata — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 07:16:50 GMT

One of my favorite hobbies is traveling. It's fun to dream about an amazing destination, plan the details of the trip, and then find yourself there. This summer, one of our destinations was Barcelona. A friend recently asked me for some recommendations for her trip there, which prompted this post.

We arrived in Barcelona on May 28th, 2012 and stayed for 3 nights. We selected the Duquesa de Cardona Hotel, which is a beautiful hotel, quiet and close to many of the tourist spots.

Room:

Rooftop terrace:

The hotel (circled below) is close to La Rambla, el Gotic, and La Barceloneta beaches.

Some of our favorite places:

La Sagrada Familia: A breath-taking church both outside and in.

Parc Guell: A large park with colorful mosaic benches and "Hansel and Gretel" cottages.
Gaudi's Casa Batllo: An interestingly designed house that is fun to tour.
La Rambla: A boulevard with fresh flowers, entertainers, shops, restaurants, and lots of people.
La Boqueria: The most colorful and tasty market I have ever seen.
Barri Gotic: The old quarter full of narrow alleys and great restaurants.
Barceloneta: Gorgeous beaches.

And don't forget the tapas!

Good travels!

My Blog on Channel 9

Deborah Kurata — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 18:33:52 GMT

It was cool to see that one of my posts was referenced on this week's Channel 9: This Week on Channel 9: September 7th

Check it out.

I Tweet Therefore I Am

Deborah Kurata — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 06:30:54 GMT

You can now follow me on twitter: @DeborahKurata

Visual Studio Live! Redmond–August 2012

Deborah Kurata — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 00:35:27 GMT

Had a GREAT time at Visual Studio Live in Redmond earlier this month.

If you are looking for the sample code from my talks, you can find it here.

Have feedback or questions from the talks? Feel free to post them in the comments below.

Enjoy!

It's Been a While

Deborah Kurata — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 21:47:47 GMT

The news about the orphaning of Silverlight hit me like a rock. I dove head first into Silverlight/MVVM a few years ago and had begun to feel like I could bend it to my will. I was disappointed, unhappy, and just sad about this news.

Pair that with a very bad case of "empty nest" syndrome (I really miss my daughters!), and I was too low to get excited about creating a blog post.

A few weeks ago, I began to feel the weight of this depression ease. After having some fun with a preview of VS 2012, a European trip with my immediate family, a week in Wisconsin with my extended family, and a long week-end at Comic-Con with my oldest daughter, I was starting to feel normal again. (See the Comic-Con pictures here.)

I'm glad to be back here, in the blog-sphere.

Tech Ed 2011: Source Code for My Talk

Deborah Kurata — Sat, 14 May 2011 19:00:27 GMT

I am presenting "Microsoft Silverlight, WCF RIA Services, and Your Business Objects" at the Tech Ed 2011 conference in Atlanta on May 18, 2011.

You can get the code for my talk from my company's Web site. Look for the Tech Ed 2011 entry.

If you are at Tech Ed, come by and say hi. I will be at the Silverlight booth on Monday night and on Wednesday afternoon.

Enjoy!

Goodbye Sarah Jane!

Deborah Kurata — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:07:49 GMT

Elisabeth Sladen died last week on April 19, 2011.

If you are a Doctor Who fan, you know Elisabeth as Sarah Jane Smith, companion to doctor's three and four, a recurring character with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant), and star of the Sarah Jane Adventures series.

I remember watching her with the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) when I was in college. It was such a treat to see her (and K-9) in the revival series with the Tenth Doctor in 2006.

I got my daughter so hooked on Doctor Who, that she watched many of the old episodes and found the Sarah Jane Adventures series online. When the Sarah Jane Adventures came to the SciFi channel, we TiVo'ed it.

Only the first series was broadcast in the US, but I understand that the second series is available on DVD. (To my family: Mother's Day is coming up … hint hint.)

Goodbye Sarah Jane …

Visual Studio Live Las Vegas: Source Code for My Talks

Deborah Kurata — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 00:05:17 GMT

In this prior post, I provided information on registering for the Visual Studio Live! conference on April 18-22 in Las Vegas and on the talks I am presenting at that conference. If you would like a "sneak peak" at the source code for my two talks, you can get it all from my company's Web site.

Enjoy!

Heading out of the Country

Deborah Kurata — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 03:11:56 GMT

I am heading to London, Paris, Bruges, and Amsterdam later this week. Anyone have any suggestions for "must see" attractions or "must eat" restaurants?

My oldest daughter has been doing her college semester abroad in London. She has the full month of April off for her spring break, so I'm visiting for a week. Later in April my youngest daughter is going out to visit her for a week.

It will be great to take some time off!

Visual Studio Live! Conference in Las Vegas

Deborah Kurata — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:56:43 GMT

There is so much to know these days with all of the new technologies, techniques, and tools in Visual Studio and the .NET framework. How do you even decide which technologies deserve your attention and which you can "give a miss"?

One of the benefits of a technical conference like Visual Studio Live! is to figure out which new things are a "must know", which are a "fun to know", which are a "wait to know", and which are a "never need to know".

My presentations are on "Best Kept Secrets in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0" and "Silverlight, WCF RIA Services, and Your Business Objects".

The first talk covers may of the tips, tricks, and lesser known features of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. Most of these items should be on your "must know" or "fun to know" list.

The Silverlight talk covers how to communicate between Silverlight and your own business objects or plain old CLR objects (POCOs).

Click here to sign up. Use the promotional code VLSPK15 by February 16th and you'll receive:

The all-access Best Value Conference Package for just $1,495, a savings of $400.00 off the standard price of $1,895.

You must use the priority code VLSPK15 to receive the discount and this is for new reservations only.

Visual Studio Live Las Vegas

Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada

April 18-22, 2011

Event web site: http://vslive.com/lv

Visual Studio Live is five days of practical, Microsoft-supported training for developers to help solve your tough .NET development challenges. You'll find how-to advice and the tips and tricks that you'll be ready to implement as soon as you get back to the office. Our expert faculty - including many Microsoft instructors - makes each session interactive so you can discuss your particular development roadblocks and come away with actionable solutions.

Visual Studio Live Las Vegas offers in-depth training in:

Silverlight / WPF
Programming Practices
Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Cloud Computing
Data Management
Web / HTML 5
Simplification Tools
Mobile Development

Visual Studio Live Las Vegas – Expert Solutions for .NET Developers

Hope to see you there!

Microsoft MVP Forum Award Recipient

Deborah Kurata — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 02:30:30 GMT

I was very honored to hear last week that I won one of the Microsoft MVP Forum awards for top answerers.

With 2879 posts last year (2010), I was able to provide 1174 answers in the MSDN forums: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories.

I really enjoy working with the developers in the forums. It is fun to see what people are working on and I always learn many new tips and tricks.

My MVP status began in 1994 or 5 (my first certificates don't have a date), but I lost the distinction when I started to focus on books and speaking instead of forum activities. When the requirements for the MVP program changed around 2004, I was very happy to receive the award again and have been an MVP ever since.

So far this year, my attention has been on the Silverlight series I am posting to my blog, but hope to be back in the forums soon.

Enjoy!

VSLive! Orlando: Source Code for My Talks

Deborah Kurata — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 22:47:40 GMT

The VSLive! conference in Orlando is coming up on November 14-17. If you would like a "sneak peak" at the source code for the two talks I am giving at that conference, you can get it all from my company's Web site.

Enjoy!

Silicon Valley Code Camp 2010: Source Code for My Talks

Deborah Kurata — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 22:25:58 GMT

In this prior post, I provided information on registering for the Silicon Valley Code Camp on October 9 and 10, 2010 and on the talks I am presenting at that code camp. If you would like the source code for my two talks, you can get it all from my company's Web site.

Enjoy!

Silicon Valley Code Camp 2010

Deborah Kurata — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:31:10 GMT

The Silicon Valley Code Camp is coming up again on October 9th and 10th. There are over 190 sessions and over 1500 people registered so far for this FREE code camp.

Topics cover:

.NET
Silverlight
Visual Studio LightSwitch
Agile development technologies
Cloud computing
HTML 5
SharePoint
Web Services
Windows Phone 7

My talks are on Visual Studio/.NET and on Silverlight.

http://siliconvalley-codecamp.com/

See you there!

VSLive! Redmond: Source Code For My Talks

Deborah Kurata — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:08:44 GMT

In this prior post, I provided information on registering for the VSLive! conference on August 2-6 in Redmond Washington and on the talks I am presenting at that conference. If you would like a "sneak peak" at the source code for my two talks, you can get it all from my company's Web site.

Enjoy!

Bay.NET Event: .NET 4.0 and VS 2010

Deborah Kurata — Sat, 15 May 2010 00:52:28 GMT

We are lucky to have two of Redmond's finest down here in Silicon Valley for a full day .NET 4.0 and VS 2010 event on May 15, 2010. Click here for more information or to register.

I am happy to be providing one of the talks at the event. I am giving the "What's New in VB 10" talk. VB and C# continue to get closer together in terms of feature set, so that means more feature parity.

With parity in mind, VB 10 has the following new features:

Auto-implemented properties
Collection initializers
Statement lambdas
Multi-line lambdas

My talk covers these items and plenty more. If you want the sample code for the talk, you can find it here.

Enjoy!

Get up out of that Chair!

Deborah Kurata — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:26:26 GMT

If you are a designer, architect, or developer, you may spend many, many hours in your chair writing design documents, modeling systems, developing code, building unit tests, and so on. It is easy to sit down at 8 AM and realize at 1 PM that you have not yet left your chair.

GET UP, NOW!

I am a (relatively) young, healthy person. But I just spent a week in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism. Not fun.

I understand that this condition is often caused by too much sitting. So this is my public service announcement:

GET UP, NOW!

Get out of your chair every few hours. Walk around the block or around your building. You will be glad you did.

For more information on blood clots and sitting, see these links:

http://ndri.com/article/sitting_for_long_periods_at_work_have_risk_of_developing_blood_clotsdeep_vein_thrombosis_dvt-261.html

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2003/02/57580

Enjoy your walk!

EF and MEF at our User Group

Deborah Kurata — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:57:37 GMT

We have the top experts on Entity Framework (EF) and the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) coming to the San Francisco EastBay.NET User Group on March 3, 2010!

Both Julie Lerman and Kathleen Dollard will be here.

During the FUNdamentals portion of the meeting, Julie introduces EF in Visual Studio 2010:

Introduction to EF designer in VS 2010
The Entity Framework designer gained a slew of new features in Visual Studio 2010. In this short session, we'll create a model using the designer and take a look at some of these improvements such as entity name pluralization, complex type support, improved stored procedure support and more.

Then the main meeting is a double-header:

First look at POCO Support in Entity Framework 4 (Julie)
One of the most important additions to Entity Framework in VS2010 is its support for POCO (Plain Old CLR Object) classes. In this session you'll see how EF is able to support POCOs, how to create POCOs that EF can work with and the difference between super simple POCOs and those which use dynamic proxies at run time to emulate EntityObject behavior such as change notification. We'll also take a quick look at the critical change to EF code generation that allows us to generate and customize POCOs.
With POCO capabilities in hand, you will be able to build persistent ignorant, flexible and testable code using entities while still benefiting from the features of Entity Framework.

The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) (Kathleen)
Composable applications are made of building blocks - like Legos.
Composability is an extension of many ideas that have fueled architecture evolution in the last twenty years, including isolation, the creation of tiers, and testable applications. Silverlight and .NET now contain the Managed Extensibility Framework or MEF to provide composability. MEF is available in .NET 3.5 and Silverlight 3.0 via downloads and in the box for .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0.

MEF is as simple as Import, Export, Compose! You'll learn how do each of these steps with the attributed model to define and retrieve parts in your application. I'll also cover what composability is and the three broad categories - extensions, fully composed applications, and architecturally composed applications. You'll leave understanding when MEF might be a good fit for your applications today and insight into how profoundly MEF is likely to change architectures in the relatively near future.

Come and check out these great talks by these great .NET experts!

For more information and to register using this link.

Enjoy!

Vacation in New York

Deborah Kurata — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:21:08 GMT

Don't know what I was thinking to vacation in New York in January! Burrrr!

Had a great time though.

Stayed at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square and could see the New Year's Eve ball from our window:

Skated at Rockefeller Center:

(That's me in the back with the black coat.)

Saw the dinosaurs:

And Wicked:

And the ball from the World Trade Center:

The Statue of Liberty:

And some Van Gogh's:

Did I mention it was cold?

Hope you had a great holiday!

Outlook: Sending to the Wrong Email Address

Deborah Kurata — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:31:31 GMT

One of my friends sends an email message to me telling me about their great new job and letting me know that they have a new email address. I dutifully update my Outlook Address book and fix the address.

Five unanswered emails later, I realize that I have been sending email to the WRONG email address. Even though I fixed my Outlook Address book, the Outlook Most Recently Used (MRU) list still has the OLD email address. What's to be done?

Then Beth Massi shared with me an Outlook tip that I want to pass along: You can delete items from the MRU in Outlook!

Say I am typing in John's name:

If I am not watching closely, I will send it to the wrong address again (nowhere.com).

To prevent this mistake:

Highlight the incorrect address.
Press the Del key.

The unwanted MRU entry is then deleted.

Enjoy!