Have you ever had to send control/alt/delete via Windows Remote Desktop/Terminal Services? If you try it, it ends up being caught on your local client machine. I just stumbled upon a nice trick. If you send [CTRL] + [ALT] + [END], then it will have the effect of [CTRL] + [ALT] + [DEL].

Go try it out!

IndyTechFest registration is now open! This year there is a limit of 500 registrations (I believe last year’s was like 400 and it was booked up within just a couple weeks). So I strongly encourage you to register sooner rather than later!

There is a great lineup of speakers and sessions at this year’s IndyTechFest! Some of the speakers I have seen speak before include Paul Hacker, Larry Clarkin, Michael Eaton, Arie Jones, Tom Pizzato, Dan Rigsby, and Bill Steele. There are many other great speakers that I know or have heard of. This should be an excellent event and one that is worth a good long drive to get to!

Some of the sessions that I’m really looking forwards to include Test Driven Development (TDD) w/ VS 2008, Tips and Tricks for the New C#, Tips and Tricks for the New VB .NET, Duplexing WCF in the Enterprise, and Virtualization of SQL Server. There are many other sessions that I’m going to hope to get to but alas, with it being a one-day event, I doubt I’ll get to most of the ones I really want to see.

Props to the people who worked hard to make this event possible, including Brad Jones, Dave Leininger, John Magnabosco, Mark McClellan, and Bob Walker, as well as all of the support of the local user groups to help drive the event!

Just as I was wrapping this post up, I received a phone call. Apparently as of 1pm (1 hour after registration opened), nearly HALF of all available registration slots were filled! If you read this post and have not registered, go register NOW and don’t wait or you’ll be left out!

A friend and colleague of mine, Eric Willeke, has helped lead a team to create and deploy an interesting new site at www.inkubook.com where an ordinary person can take the pictures they have taken with their digital camera and make a simple and professional-looking bound photo book based on them. Erik has posted a bit more about it here. It’s a great example of a nice, clean, Silverlight 2.0 app that focuses on the end user experience and not on trying to show off the bells and whistles of the platform.

Ignoring the technology, this is a great site and idea! For as little as $14 (softback) to $25 (hardback), you can have the pictures printed and bound into a nice little book. His team has done a wonderful job and this site offers a great little product! If you’ve spent hundreds to thousands of dollars on a trip or vacation, why would you NOT want to dish out another $25 to be able to cherish it and share it with others? Also, if you forgot to buy somebody a souvenir while you were out, this would be a great thing to consider as well!

-Shane

PS. Mom, if you see this and get something like this from my trip to Vegas last weekend, it’s NOT because I forgot to get you something!!

On Tuesday (July 8, 2008) evening, Sasha Kotlyar, Dean Weber, and I made a spontaneous trip to Cincinnati to check out the CinArc group (not to be confused with this CinARC). This group is Cincinnati’s Architecture User Group and seems to be mostly .NET-based. They are a very new group as this was only their second meeting. They meet monthly on the second Tuesday of the month. Their current meeting-format is that of a fishbowl meeting. You can read more on Wikipedia about this here.

I must say, the three of us Hoosiers really enjoyed ourselves at CinArc! Despite the downpours, rush-hour construction, and construction barrels we had to dodge in the middle of the road, it was great! Oh, and I won a door prize as well! I walked out with a VS2008 Pro license (only had MSDN-based licenses before, now I have a permanent license!). The group is led by Mike Wood, who also happens to lead the Cincinnati .NET User Group. Lots of other people were also in attendance (I’m not even going to attempt to name them because I’m horrible with names and I’ll surely forget some of them but turns out I follow lots of them on Twiter). There was a total of 19 people there with 5 chairs in the middle of the fishbowl (1 moderator, 3 speakers, 1 open). It was great that they veered away from the norm where it was a very interactive discussion and almost everybody participated in it.

The agenda for the meeting was different than what I’ve been used to for user group meetings, and I really liked it! I’m used to food before hand, kicking things off with announcements, then going into the discussion for the rest of the night, and door prizes at the end. What they did, instead, was kick things off with the discussion, about an hour into it take a break for food, kick the second half off with announcements, go back into the discussion after the nice little break, and then door prizes at the end. The trick to accomplishing this is timing on the food and if it can be pulled off, I may actually try to assimilate this style into the ALT.NET meetings! However, one important part of the ALT.NET meetings, I feel, is the social time spent before the meeting. Perhaps we can have snacks and drinks available then and real food available at “Halftime”.

One other thing that was really neat was that the meeting attendees were able to choose the topics to discuss. Ideas were put up on a whiteboard as recommended by the people there, and then everybody voted on the ones that they were most interested in participating in discussion with. There were 3 topics that seemed to be the most popular, and it turned out that we had time to discuss 3 topics. So it worked out perfectly!

As I said before, I had a great time at CinArc and I highly recommend it to anybody who is in the area and is interested in best architecture practices and bouncing ideas off of one another! There were some extremely intelligent guys at this group and it’s great that they are trying to expand knowledge in the community and help one another! I can already see this is going to be a very popular user group in the future! I hope some of those guys come visit some of our Indy events, and I just may try and pick up some Reds tickets some second Tuesday of the month afternoon so I have a good excuse to be in town again for another CinArc meeting!

-Shane

I don’t know about you but I’ve got a pretty busy schedule! In about a 1-week period, I will have gone to an IndyNDA meeting, an ITEC conference, an IndyPASS meeting, and an Indy ALT.NET meeting. Trying to get all of these meetings and dates straight is kind of a PITA! Because of that, I just (over the past 5 hours or so) put up www.IndyTechEvents.com as a single site to hopefully consolidate all of the local tech events being put on.

The site is pretty simple and has a forum section and a calendar section. I don’t know how heavy the forums will be used but hopefully the calendar (the main part of it in my little dream world) will be kept up-to-date by the various location user groups and other communities. I plan on giving moderator access to the leaders of the location user groups (and perhaps a representative) so they can be in full control of their events and even any forums focused on their user groups or the technology that their user group focuses on.

I’ve gone ahead and posted all of the June events that I’m aware of but I’m sure I’ve missed some, so if you know of any, please let us know so we can fix it! And if you’re somebody who should have moderator access, let me know and I’ll make it so!

Check it out: http://www.IndyTechEvents.com

-Shane

PS. If I left out your user group, sorry! It’s now 2am and I’m sure I’m sleepier than I should be releasing a new site.

I’m not sure how much customer data has been compromised or even how it was compromised (could have been an employee who manually stole some of the data) but it has been somehow compromised.

I have a relatively fail-proof and completely trackable email spam system. When I create an account online or give out my email address in some other manner, pretty much everybody I give the address to receives a unique email address. Prior to giving it out, I will create a brand new alias at my domain and have that email forwarded to my real account. So for example, if I create an account at Yahoo.com then I might create the address yahoo _at_ jaxidian.org and have it forwarded to my account.

One such account that I have created is with Donato’s to order pizza online. When I created this account, I gave them donatos _at_ jaxidian.org as my email address. Just today I began receiving spam at this email address. This means that somehow an email address that I have confidentially given to Donato’s has made its way into some spammer’s hands. This could have been an extremely isolated case where an employee stole just my address and gave it/sold it to a spammer. This could have been an attack on Donato’s systems where not just email addresses but perhaps also credit card information has been lost. I really have no clue. But alas, because Donato’s is the only company/person I have given this email address to EVER, this most likely means that Donato’s customer data has been compromised.

Perhaps I should stop paying with credit cards when I buy pizza?

-Shane

I’m frequently trying to figure this out but never remembering the exact syntax, so here it is! A quick/easy way to truncate logs on a database via script!

* NOTE: I don’t recommend this for production databases unless you tweak it to be good. This is more for dev environments where you don’t really care about transaction logs!


USE [{DatabaseName}]
GO
DBCC SHRINKFILE({TransactionLogLogicalName}, 1)
BACKUP LOG [{DatabaseName}] WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
DBCC SHRINKFILE({TransactionLogLogicalName}, 1)


Happy truncations!

-Shane

When we were discussing the Indy ALT.NET group’s goals with others, we were asked, “How are you going to distinguish Indy ALT.NET from the Indy .NET User Group?” This was a GREAT question!

In coming up with that answer, I’ve mulled around and tried to come up with a definition for ALT.NET. There are plenty of posts out there that have attempted to do this but the reality of the situation is that there is not yet a single, concrete, agreed-upon answer to this. So as such, I’ll add my thoughts to that cloud of what some people think ALT.NET is.

In trying to define this, I am going to outline the process I went through in coming up with this definition. I think going through the process helps you understand what it is just a little bit better. Here was my first attempt:

The concept of ALT.NET means that you try to use all tools and techniques available in an appropriate way to do your job in the best and most efficient way possible.

The problem with this definition is that it leaves you just as confused as you were before. From this definition you would believe that ALT.NET is the same as being a good software engineer. I believe this definition is a 100% accurate definition but unfortunately, it is 90% useless. So let’s try it again and fill in not just what ALT.NET means but also what it stresses.

The concept of ALT.NET means that you try to use all tools (whether mainstream in your specific industry or not) and techniques available (whether mainstream in your industry or not) in an appropriate way (without overkill) to do your job in the best (as defined in almost any possible way) and most efficient way possible.

With these stresses, this definition starts to make a little more sense, but it’s still not all that useful. Let’s try it again and this time add a lot more to it.

The concept of ALT.NET means that you try to use all tools and techniques available in an appropriate way to do your job in the best and most efficient way possible.

The tools may come from any source whether it’s your industry or not. For example, there may be some tools that Java developers take for granted that are just completely unknown about in the .NET industry. Or perhaps there is a tool used by accountants to ensure calculations are done correctly and that tool would be an awesome yet non-obvious solution for implementing a suite of unit tests for your code.

Like the tools, the techniques may also come from any source whether it’s your industry or not. Perhaps you’re running into some architectural problems of how to lay things out and a VLSI engineer has a technique for laying out blocks of functionally-related items on their boards that an architect could use in laying out their classes.

In addition to these examples, the concept of ALT.NET even takes it one step further. Not only should one look to other industries for a tool or technique, one should also consider developing new tools or techniques to as part of the greater evolution of things. While they’re not ALT.NET-created concepts, “alternative” methodologies such as Domain Driven Design (DDD), Behavior Driven Design (BDD), and Agile Development have not always been around but had to have been dreamed up at some point. I believe ALT.NET encourages the evolution of our industry by encouraging such new “outside the box” concepts to be considered.

Now, one thing to be careful about is overusing these tools and techniques. Just as an architect needs to ensure he/she does not over-architect the system, you must also ensure you do not go overboard with these tools and techniques. They need to be used appropriately and not just for the sake of using them. In fact, often times the KISS methodology applies! When determining what tool or technique to use, you need to ensure you make such a decision to ensure you create the “best” thing you can. Best is a very vague word here that can be defined MANY different ways and that’s for you to decide. Perhaps it means the quickest solution to code. Maybe it means the fastest solution to execute (from a performance perspective). Perhaps it means the cheapest third-party tool that fits the bill. Or maybe it means the easiest for a user to interact with. The “maybes it means” list can go on forever.

Whew! I think that just might be it! I think that just might be a pretty good explanation of what ALT.NET is!

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Now, while I believe that is a good definition for it, I think it’s important to discuss one more thing that has been a popular topic of debate. Is ALT.NET divisive? I am going to change the question a little bit and not answer whether it is or not but rather it should be (to me the difference in the questions are due to the rude and perhaps elitist behavior of some individuals and not the fundamental concept of the ALT.NET movement).

So, should ALT.NET be divisive? My answer is a simple “no.”

Let’s go back to my very first definition of what ALT.NET is:

The concept of ALT.NET means that you try to use all tools and techniques available in an appropriate way to do your job in the best and most efficient way possible.

As I stated before, this definition essentially means that you are simply trying to be the best software engineer that you can be! Again, I believe this is a 100% accurate definition. And by this definition, there should be absolutely no division created within our industry because of ALT.NET. This is what all of our peers should be doing. ALT.NET focuses on some non-mainstream things and in some scenarios such things are the “best” way of doing things but there are certainly times when they’re not the “best” way of doing things. The only question that remains is what exacly that “best” word means to you. Let’s use some examples.

Consider that you’re a consultant working on a small application for a non-profit company where the code will later be maintained by college students on a somewhat casual basis. In this case would it make sense to invest in a potentially complex way of architecting the system so that it follows a generic, standard philosophy? Perhaps but probably not if it is going to be too complex for the college students to easily (and safely) maintain.

Now consider that you’re a software development shop that regularly works on custom projects for clients. In this scenario, your business model could be built around efficiently pumping out successful projects in a repeatable fashion. In this case would it make sense to invest in a potentially complex way of architecting the system so that it follows a generic, standard philosophy? Probably so once you have nailed such a thing down you can repeat it regularly to increase productivity in the future.

One more example. Consider that you’re the said software development shop above and you are working on a very critical project with a tight deadline and you have not yet mastered this new architecture. In this case would it make sense to invest in a potentially complex way of architecting the system so that it follows a generic, standard philosophy? I would say probably not. Any significant fundamental change to your current process can introduce some very significant risks. With that being said, many of the topics that ALT.NET covers can introduce significant risks if they’re used in inappropriate situations or are not done well (which can very well happen since they’re not very widely understood in the industry and not many people have much experience with a lot of these things). So you must consider that doing such a thing can be a big risk.

In the last example, I hit on one very big thing and that is that many of the ALT.NET-focused topics bring a lot of risk with them because they are not yet really all that proven to be successful. There are many companies and situations where this is unacceptable and in those cases, the mainstream tools and techniques should probably be considered. This is not to say that the ALT.NET-focused topics are “too difficult” for certain people. It has nothing to do with that at all! It has everything to do with that “best” word. But I think people who determine that the ALT.NET topics aren’t currently “best” for them may still want to consider following the ALT.NET topics for their personal professional development. Increasing your awareness of various things is a good thing, afterall!

Now I want to end this post with a last closing thought. Personally to me, my interest in this ALT.NET movement has two motivations to it:

1. I want to learn about some of these neat new things that I’ve never heard about before!
2. I want our Indianapolis development community as a whole to learn about some of these neat new things too!

-Shane

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EDIT: 4/30/2008 4:13pm EST
I have been asked for some links on various community sites by some people who are just now being introduced to the ALT.NET movement. Here are a few links to get you started. Over the next day or two I’ll see if I can get a “History of ALT.NET” post up.

David Laribee’s coining the term ALT.NET
AltNetPedia.com
MSDN Magazine article on ALT.NET
ASP.NET Podcast Show #103 - ALT.NET with David Laribee

Indy Code Camp is in its last session now. It was quite fun!

Personally, I really wish Indianapolis would have more events like this! This city is really starved for community software development events, at least applicable to .NET developers. Despite the slumping economy world-wide, the market in Indy is really good for .NET developers, which means we’ve been having a lot of new people moving into the area. The community here is growing quite fast, but we still don’t have many events. Currently we have the monthly .NET User Group meeting, a yearly Indy Tech Fest, and then random events similar to this. I know there is also Microsoft’s DevCares, I believe Crowe Chizek sponsors something, and there will soon be some Indy ALT.NET presentations. We really need more events to satisfy our hunger and the growing number of people in town, though!

But back to topic, I enjoyed Indy Code Camp! We had some really good presenters!

-Shane

I was complaining on Twitter about the long time it takes to compile a Compact Framework application and Steve Schoon informed me of a hack you can do to DRASTICALLY speed up the time it takes to compile! You can get the details here.

Read the entire thing so you are aware of what you’re disabling by performing this hack but unless you are constantly flipping back and forth to various different target platforms with your mobile development, you shouldn’t need this feature very often at all! It dropped our compile times down from about 3 minutes to about 10 seconds. It was amazing!

-Shane