April Podcast Review

The Microsoft podcast sites are currently all about LightSwitch.

• .NET Rocks with Jay Schmelzer
• Codecast with Beth Massi

And other non-podcast outlets like Code Magazine.

LightSwitch is touted as the lightweight developer's tool for rapid CRUD design.  It fits in between the free Visual Studio Express and the workhorse Visual Studio Pro.

The future - one of the must interesting talks this month was the discussion on EconTalk with Gavin Andresen on BitCoin.  The virtual replacement for our troubled currency.

The history - Robert Martins is odd, yet interesting on IT Conversations.  He tells the story of coding and computers.

The Neuro Oriented podcasts have been very "Conscious" of how the brain works.  Joseph Ledoux is both a neuroscientist and a rocker who talks to Natasha Mitchell on "All in the Mind".

Book 'Em Dano

1. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman
2. Numerical Recipes by Saul A. Teukolsky,William T. Vetterling and Brian P. Flannery
3. The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth

Showers Market

4/7/2011 - Markets moving up.

4/12/2011 - Markets correcting downward.  JDSU and MSFT down, while NFLX looks to be done pulling back.  NVLS has been smacked back a few times, but still has upward quarterly MA.  The stock at 34 is 18% off the recent high.  SYK at 60, CAM at 53, and GLW at 19 look oversold.

While CTRP at 44 may be overbought.  EXPE filled the drop gap and may be done rising for a while.

4/13/2011 - Stocks which may hedge against a toppy market - ARM at 19.5, MWW near 17, RSH filling the gap at 17.

4/ 15/2011 - What is going up in a down market?  EIX, FE, PPL (Electric Utilities), CMA (Banks), VMW (System Software), COH (Apparel)

4/23/2011 - Between Good Friday (which was) and Easter Sunday it is time to reevaluate the market direction.  On a quarterly basis, the overall market is on an uptrend with the QQQQ, DIA, IWM, IWB, and SPY.  The QQQQ is a bit weak with the index falling below its quarterly moving average and the average looking to roll over.  Only in the last week has that trend broken.  The DIA is the only index breaking new highs, so far.

BDX and JNJ are nice PUTs for downside protection.

4/25/2011 Silver is up huge.  Perhaps ready for a break.  Watch SLV.

4/28/2011 Ben speaks, precious metals move up.  Humm.  NTAP, PCG, MHS, and WMT look set to pullback.  On the other side NE, ROK, ABX, NFLX, and CMG could bounce.

Runnin' on MT

I spent a little time searching for some good running songs to round out and extend my Playlist.  Most of the stuff I found was either Techno or Rappish, so I failed on the Google front.  And you know what that means, I had to delve into my own kluttered mind to pull out songs like "Born to Run" by Bruce, "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits and one of my favorite songs "True Believer" by Ronnie Milsap.

For running outside I'm less picky, however this rainy weather forces me inside to the boring basement machine.  I definately need inpiring 164 BPM tunes.  My current playlist includes:

• Big Shot	Billy Joel
  You May Be Right	Billy Joel
  We Didn't Start The Fire	Billy Joel
  Enid	Barenaked Ladies
  Crazy	Barenaked Ladies
  Red Lips, Red Eyes, Red Stockings	The Red Elvises
  Jumping Cat Boogie	The Red Elvises
  Walk Of Life	Dire Straits
  Love Her Madly	The Doors
  Riders On The Storm	The Doors
  You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)	Meat Loaf
  Baby Likes To Rock It	The Tractors
  True Believer	Ronnie Milsap
  All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down	The Mavericks
  All Revved Up With No Place To Go	Meat Loaf
  Ring Of Fire	Johnny Cash
  Somethin' Else	Little Richard & Tanya Tucker
  Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard	Simon & Garfunkel
  Late In The Evening	Simon & Garfunkel
  Kodachrome/Maybellene	Simon & Garfunkel
  Ketchup song original and full	(have you  ever heard this one)
  I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)	The Proclaimers
  Under the Bridge	Red Hot Chili Peppers
  Thunder Road	Bruce Springsteen
  Born to Run	Bruce Springsteen

Little Green Men

Robert Martin can sound like a Martian at times, but his words and insight are quite interesting and relevant.

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