Async has arrived

Tasks are the new Thread.

Stephen Taub describes the new parallelisms in C#.

• Await Keyword
• Multiple CPUs
• Task.Run
• Chain tasks together
• Throttle
• Action Blocks
• Similar to Iterators in C#
• Buffers
• Data Flow Library
• IEnumerate thread safe collection
• Concurrent collection uses snapshot
• System.Threading.Tasks.Dataflow
• No more WaitHandle, SyncRoot or Thread
• Task - Sync Holder and Results
• Tour

TPL Dataflow Preview

PowerShell

Adam Driscoll talks PowerShell on .NET Rocks.

• Modules and Providers
• Powered by .NET
• The return of the command line
• Inline Help
• Registry and other resources at your fingertips
• StudyShell for writing extensions to PowerShell in VS
• Hooking into debugger - sample debug engine product
• API based approach as with IIS
• Nice for Unit Testing
• SCEM

JavaScript on .NET Rocks

Kent Alstad has some keen insights into Javascript on .NET Rocks.

• Field Stories - event handlers
• Understanding the DOM; Parsing the DOM
• Minification, Compression, Beautification and Obfuscation
• Tools for splitting up the Javascript code like Closure from Google
• Pre-publish bug locating
• Optimization - waiting for the DOM to load (main bottleneck in Javascript)
• HTML5 - Websockets, Canvas and Videos
• MVC paradigm for Javascript has the Viewer on the browser
• Less on server, more on client
• Tricks - if you can scroll, the DOM is ready
• jQuery - build on the shoulder of giants
• Great distribution system and language of the browser

LightSwitch

We all know what a Light Switch does, but we may need a reminder of its power.  LightSwitch is also Microsoft's newest turn key web/data development tool as Jay Schmelzer explains on .Net Rocks.  Easy of development is the focus using boiler plate code.  Read Beth Massi's article in Code Magazine.

• 5 data access stacks at your finger tips
• Visual Studio/MVC based
• Coding is required
• .NET/Silverlight

Faking It

Do you ever just fake it?

In the day, I wood fake it in Fortran.  Then I learned to fake it in Perl.  Now I fake it with PV-Wave.

Light Echoes

The March 1st eposode of Astronomy Cast looked into Light Echoes.  Just like a sound echo, a light echo reaches us from somewhere other than the direct source and can tell us much about distances and hidden objects.

March Podcast Review

The Project Management Podcast had a special Pulse review of Project Management bloggers.

PodCasts Spring Review

The Disciplined Investor's Podcast is run by Andrew Horowitzk, CFP.  I like Andrew's style and voice inflections.  His show usually begins with a run down of the week market conditions, including any recent stats like unempoyment, inflation, and the plethera of other government reports. 

My buddy Pat would consider him a "Data Dink".  He teases out the data between the lines and points out the inconsistances.  Feds funds rate spread was the big number, along with the core CPI number.  He concludes that the rise is what the Fed wants and are choosing to inflate our way out of the slow down.  Andrew tries to keep his political views close to his chest, as not to inject his leanings.  Many of Andrew's guests are people he knows from the industry. 

The interview contains friendly banter and never puts the guest on the hot seat.  Scott O'Neil was on the show this week and represents his father's company -- William O'Neil of the publication Investor's Business Daily.  I see the IBD as a very good source for company analysis both fundamentally and technically.  Andrew's team uses a propriatary system of analysis called QuantaFundaTechna. 

Scott O'Neil sees the market in a correction and is cautious about single day rallys.  He suggests not getting too much into the talking heads on the news and looking for a reason to buy or sell.  The price and price patter is an absolute must for the IBD analysis.

Good show.  I usually listen to his show on the very day it comes out, due to its transient nature.  Scott is big on the price patterns and structure.  The low volume rallies don't appear to justify an imminent turn around to the bullish sign.  He is looking for confirmation.  The confirmation is used to avoid early entry whip saws.  So, price, price, price and volume.

Scott likes CAT for the japanese rebuilding effort.  I would recommend the weekend edition of the IBD in order to get a deluge of indicators, along with all the charts and editorial  opinions.  A reasonable price for the large number of tools you have available.  Check out the trial.

Market in Spring

3/21/2011 - Recent options in MSFT, CAT, CLF, XLE and XLB have performed well, yet the market seems perilous and vulnerable.  The above call options did indeed do well over the last few days, but the rise has been on low volume.  CAT, XLE and XLB (basic materials) seem poised to do well in the current climate of energy scares and natural disaster rebuilding.  MSFT on the other hand has simply been beaten down to the point of exhaustion.  Todays bounce was nice, but it gave a good chunk back before the day's end.  And the volume was lack luster.

3/24/2011 - The market has been moving up since a week ago Thursday.  The question is is this a fools rally.  Gains in CAT, CLF, XLE and XLB may travel, however the Dow Jones is showing a weak pattern.  The average hit its high on February 18th and has twice tried to rally back with each high less remarkable.  Over the last week the volume has been trailing off while the average increases.

SBUX has been all over the place with spikes, drops and more spikes.   The oil holder OIH gapped down on the 9th and has now filled that gap on decreasing volume.  Although, it looks like it might be an expensive summer for gas.  Individual oils pulled back early in the month and now are on the rally.  COP looking to recapture the highs.  CVX bounding off the 100 mark for a break to new highs.  The industrial spider XLI appears to have broken the down trend.  Gold is also on the rise, interestingly enough.    Brazil (EWZ) is trying to turn it around.

3/27/2011 - ADTN has pulled back from a tear and may have found support.  The Dow is looking strong, but the broader market isn't as powerful after the Japan earthquake.  Compare the three ETFs -- DIA strong, SPY okay and QQQ timid (renamed from QQQQ).

Pullbacks: RVBD, AMP, JDSU, and ADBE

Refactoring, In other words...

Refactoring: coding metrics, extracting methods, patterns, factory...or in other words "making my code better in small increments".

Refactoring is not a solution, rather a mindset.  While you have the hood open to check the oil, why not polish and clean up a bit.

Funky Functional Programming

Lambda Expressions

Emergence

Whether open source programming, human evolution or free markets "Emergence" is the key.  Emergency is the antithesis of top down design. 

Abstemious Development

.Net Rocks interviewed Joe O'Brien on the topic of Ruby for Windows.  Joe mentioned that many Ruby developers worked in a simple text editor, rather than an elaborate IDE.  That same sentiment was echoed by Jon Snook in regards to CSS coding.  What appears as an anachronism ends up working for some leading edge developers.  The conversation gave me a new light on our current 4GL development and incorporating high level concepts to bare bones languages. 

Back Packing

September of 2010 was our latest back packing trip.  Pat, Brad, Tony and I took to the Smokey Mountains for some bear avoidance.  The trip photos tell the story.

March PodCast Notes

DotNet Rocks

The DotNet Rocks guys interviewed Mark Miller and Seth Juarez about their recent immersion into the Kinect.  Mark Miller is always an entertaining, yet scattered, personality.  Mark and Seth are working on extending the Kinect as a software development tool.

A good update on HTML5 was provided by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp.  The interesting aspects include Widgets, Canvas, Streaming Video and more.

EconTalk

Russ Roberts has a wonderful conversation with an aging Freeman Dyson on a wide range of topics, mostly scientific, but not exclusively.

Google Code

IT Conversations had a brief talk with Chris DiBona of Google Code.  He talks about the trends of programming languages and what is hot or not.

HTML5

Ian Hickson, editor of both the W3C and WHATWG.  I can only imagine that his insanely ugly website is a parody of the fact that he is the keeper of the HTML standard.

• Widgets
• Canvas
• Webforms
• Polyfill
• XHR
• Content editable
• Drag and Drop
• Web storage (local)
• Webkit (open source)

Resources:

• Official W3C
• WHAT?
• Diff
• The doctor is in.
• Cheatsheet

Cognitive Neuroscience

• Video Intro
• Richard Ivry of Berkley

IDEs

• WebStorms

Commodities

The latest round of Mideast revolts seem to be influenced by record high food prices.  The FAO has the data on its site.

World Food Index

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/en/

Market Talk

Terminology index for the market:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/limitup.asp

ClickOnce

ClickOnce deployment solves a number of maintenance and logistics issues, while adding a few new concerns.  No longer does a warm body need to run around updating PCs.

But how do you update and track various versions?  The manifest contains information about a specific version of a ClickOnce application and the various supporting assemblies in a human readable XML format.  The "assemblyIdentity" element specifies the primary assembly for the application while the "dependency" element lists all the prerequisites assemblies.

The manifest is also accompanied by a precompiled manifest named *.CDF-MS.

Walkthrough: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xc3tc5xx(VS.80).aspx


Look into using MSBuild to publish the ClickOnce to the Web.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165431(v=vs.80).aspx

For concurrent deployments, make sure to change the assembly name and product name.

http://robindotnet.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/clickonce-installing-multiple-versions-concurrently/

Stencils

The UML Stencils for Visio: http://www.softwarestencils.com/uml/index.html