My First Pluralsight Course–Introduction to UML

Last week my first Pluralsight course was published. The course is titled “Introduction to UML” and it can be found here: Introduction to UML. The course covers some of the history of UML, the basic building blocks that are used by many diagrams and coverage of 8 common UML diagrams.

I have been using Pluralsight training for a few years and I highly recommend them – and not just because I am now an author! If you haven’t tried Pluralsight yet you need to head on over to their website and sign up for a free trial (or contact me and I’ll get you set up)!

I hope you will take the time to watch my video, if you do please let me know what you think. Also, if you have ideas for other Pluralsight courses that you would like to see me create please let me know.

I’m starting work on my next course and it should be available before the end of the year.

Book Review–Running Lean by Ash Maurya

I found this book to be very thought provoking. Several years ago I worked as an independent consultant and really enjoyed it. But I always only sold my time. I think most people who do have a entrepreneurial spirit understand that to really succeed you must leverage this and sell something more.

This book focuses on how to approach the creation of a product with constraints placed on you and your team. It is pretty common to have minimal resources when starting a business. This includes money, people and the ‘right ideas’. Below are some of my thoughts about each of these limited resources and some of what I took away from my reading of the book:

1) Limited Money: The author talks about how it can be difficult to raise money to fund your startup – but follows up with this actually being an advantage. Here is a quote that I particularly liked:

"Constraints drive innovation, but more important, they force action. With less money, you are forced to build less, get it out faster, and learn faster."

Having “too” much money could actually keep you from the hard driving and tight focus that is required to actually get a product out the door.

2) Limited People: Another issue the author talks about is the limited people that are typically available to a startup. This often means that you (and others) will need to fill multiple roles on the team – often with each role being something that would be a full time job. This again helps to keep a focus on doing the most important tasks, and knowing that some things simply will not get done. Be sure that understanding your customer (#3 below) is not one of the things that you let slip!

This is where you will call up any and all learning from your past about prioritization, organization and effectiveness. You will need to decide how best to schedule your days, weeks and months to maximize the efficiency of the work you do. The author calls out that he has found scheduling customer interviews on Mondays and Fridays to less effective than doing this midweek. Also, if you are actively building the product you will want to be sure to have some blocks of time that you can get in ”the flow”. Here is another section out of the book:

"Activities that flow typically have the following attributes:

• They have a clear objective.
• The need your full concentration.
• They lack interruptions and distractions.
• They provide clear and immediate feedback on progress toward the objective
• They offer a sense of challenge."

The author has found that early mornings are often best for him to achieve this flow – I find that late nights currently work better for me.

3) The ‘Right Ideas’: The author brings out the point that it is very easy to focus only on your desires and experiences when working to create a product – but cautions against this and talks strongly about the need to work very closely with your targeted customers. Be sure that you have an understanding of the pain points of your target customers and that you are not too focused on only your experiences or your desire to implement some fancy technology! Again a few quotes from the book should help illustrate the authors thinking:

"Given the right context, customers can clearly articulate their problems, but it’s your job to come up with the solution"

"Customer Discovery is about exploring what you don’t know you don’t know"

In this section of the book the author also quotes Henry Ford “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”)

A large portion of the book really lays out a plan to be sure that you have a very open conversation with your users (or potential users) and to ensure that you learn from them what their ‘real problem’ is and validate your solution to that problem.

I really enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it if you have any thoughts of starting a company or building a product. But even beyond that, I think that it can open your mind to some new ways of thinking and delivering whatever product or service you deliver – even to your employer.

A final quote from the book that sums things up pretty well (in my opinion):

"Running Lean is a systematic process for iterating from Plan A to a plan that works, before running out of resources."

You can find the book on Amazon here:
http://amzn.to/mgerickson_RunningLean

Or find the product page for the book on the O’Reilly site here:
http://oreil.ly/mgerickson_Oreilly_RunningLean

Disclosure: I was given a copy of this book to review by theO’Reilly Blogger Review Program

VS 2010 / TFS / Source Control–Unable to Access Database

So somehow I’ve now been bitten by this issue twice in the last few months… so it’s time to post about it (if only for myself) so I can resolve the issue faster next time.

 

In both cases this has occurred after disconnecting from the network and working without connectivity to TFS. After re-establishing connectivity I attempt to open the solution again, and get the error “Source Control – Unable to Access Database”. I’ve tried several things including deleting the workspace, and all local files, recreating the workspace and getting files locally again, but nothing works.

 

So the solution: Close Visual Studio and run regedit. Navigate to:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\TeamFoundation\Instances\<server>\Collections\<name>

 

You should see a value named Offline with a value of 1.

 

Modify this to be 0.

 

Restart Visual Studio 2010 and things should run!

Some thoughts on UTCC Spring 2012

It’s been about 2 and a half weeks since the latest Utah Code Camp and I’m finally getting around to writing down my thoughts (though I did tweet about it live during the event!). As always the organizers did a wonderful job – and there were also some great sponsors! Attendance at code camp was the highest ever – Utah Geek Events is reporting it was over 400 people! It appears that very soon the venue will need to change as the attendance is pushing the limits available to us at Neumont University. There was, in my opinion, a nice mix of platforms and technologies covered in the sessions and I very much enjoyed each session that I attended!

The organizers, sponsors and speakers are critical to the success of a major event like this, and as I mentioned above they all came through wonderfully! But to be truly successful I believe requires more than that – it requires a lot from the attendees too. It is obvious to me that the attendees have helped to publicize the code camp and encourage others to attend – the camp has gotten bigger each time. The attendees also participate in the event – interaction with speakers during sessions, networking in the halls and sharing with each other during lunch and other breaks all help to make the event better. I’ve presented sessions where, even with several people attending, there was almost no interaction with them – this is definitely not how I like to present. I thrive on the interaction with the attendees and feel that this makes a better presentation, and a better overall event.

So in the end I want to thank not just the organizers, sponsors and presenters of the code camp, but I also want to thank all who attended and participated – each and everyone helped to make the event bigger and better than ever before! And it leaves me wanting more… we’ll see you in the fall!

If you haven't taken the time to at least try out a user group or a code camp please consider it. It is a great benefit to you and to the overall community of developers! I think you'll find it worth your time!

Utah Code Camp Spring 2012

Saturday was the Spring 2012 edition of the Utah Code camp – and it was great! The camp has consistently grown with each meeting. We meet twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall. At Saturdays event there were well over 300 people in attendance. I realize that is no where near as large as some code camps, but it’s great to see the growth here. The event has been held at Neumont University, but things were pretty cramped this time… It might need to be moved to a different (larger) facility in the near future. Bat as problems go that is a pretty good one to have.

There was a very wide variety of sessions to choose from and each session that I attended was great! I hope that those who attended my sessions were also pleased. There were about 50 sessions presented. It is a lot of work to put together such an event and to prepare and deliver sessions – I want to send a big thank you out to all those involved in making it a great event!

Coming out of the event I’ve got a few things that I was to spend some time focused on:

1. Play with programming the Kinect – thanks Scott Golightly for a great intro session
2. Build some Windows 8 applications – thanks Jerry Nixon for sharing the passion
3. Dig into Server-Sent events and Web Sockets – thanks Jason Staten for a thought provoking look at the topics

As always there were far too many sessions that I would have liked to attend and not enough time. I’ll have to grab the presentations/materials from others off the web site at http://www.utahcodecamp.com/Downloads. I’ve posted materials from my sessions there, and added my talks to my SpeakerRate profile – If you attended either or both please take a minute to rate them for me at: http://bit.ly/mgericksonSpeakerRate.

Setup for ‘Build Your First Windows Azure Application’ at #utcc

I’ll be presenting a hands on session at the Spring 2012 Utah Code Camp this Saturday (March 10th). While you will be able to just watch me do the work, the intent of this sessions, and how you will get the most out of it, is to actually participate and build an application along with me. With this in mind the following should be installed on your computer before 11:30 (Mountain Time) this Saturday!

Please feel free to ping me with any questions! (mention @mgerickson on Twitter might be the best way to get me).

First you will want a subscription to Azure. This will not be totally necessary as we will likely only test our application locally in the Cloud Emulator, but you’ll want the experience of deploying and running it in the cloud. If you do not already have a subscription you can get a free 90 day subscription here: http://bit.ly/mgericksonAzureTrial

Next you’ll need some software:

1. Visual Studio 2010 (note that VS 11 will not currently work for this). Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher will work fine, or you can also get the free Microsoft Visual Studio Web Developer Express 2010 edition from here: http://bit.ly/mgericksonVSWebExpress
2. SQL Server 2008. The most straight forward way it to be sure you have the Express edition installed (http://bit.ly/mgericksonSQL2008Express) but a full (Enterprise, Standard, Developer) edition will also work.
3. IIS7 – be sure it is configured for ASP.NET and WCF HTTP Activation, Static Content, IIS Management Console and HTTP Redirection
4. IIS URL Rewrite Module 2.0 (http://bit.ly/mgericksonURLRewrite2)
5. Windows PowerShell
6. Windows Azure SDK for .NET (best way is to use Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer – launch from here: http://bit.ly/mgericksonAzureNetCenter)

You download all the bits and see instruction to manually install everything here: http://bit.ly/mgericksonAzureSDKNov2011

We only have 60 minutes to get our application built and running, so it will be an overview and will move fast, but I hope you plan to join us and have some fun in The Cloud!

Getting Ready for Utah Code Camp Spring 2012

It’s March and that means that we are getting ready for the Utah Code Camp Spring 2012 event. This year the code camp will be held this Saturday (March 10th 2012) again at Neumont University. This is a great facility and they are very kind to host many community events!

Check out the schedule for the code camp here: http://www.utahcodecamp.com/Schedule

I am working on finalizing my two presentations.
1) Just before the lunch break (11:30 to 12:30) I will be presenting ‘Build Your First Windows Azure Application”. This will be a hands on session – so if you are coming to it please be ready! I’ll have another post no later than tomorrow with the details of what will need to be installed to participate in the session, but you are welcome to just watch me too!
2) In the last session of the day (4:00 to 5:00) I will be presenting “Are You Certifiable?”. In this session we will be talking about the merits of developer focused certifications and laying out a plan of action to attach a new certification if you have the desire – hopefully this will be a very interactive session with people sharing their thoughts and their experiences!

Overall this is a pretty big, and full, code camp. Based on the current version of the schedule there are 9 rooms (one only has two sessions scheduled) and 6 sessions for a total of 50 sessions to choose from!
I’m sure that I will have a hard time deciding which sessions to attend, but here is a first cut of what I’m thinking:

Session 1: Windows 8 for Developers (alternate choices are: Introduction to jQuery; Advanced Team Foundation Server 2010 Programming)

Session 2: Programming for the Kinect (alternate choices: Test Driving Javascript; Agile Development Primer; Code Katas Continued: Practicing your Craft)

Session 3: No choice here, I’m presenting Build Your First Windows Azure Application (I’m sad to be missing: Building HTML5/JavaScript applications in Windows 8; It’s All Geek to Me)

Session 4: Polling is for Chumps (WebSockets & Server-Sent Events) (alternate choices: The Browser Is the Platform; Simplify Testing with Test Doubles; Identity Federation with Windows Azure Access Control Service)

Session 5: Branches and Merges are Bears, Oh My! (alternate choices: CSS Best Practices; Randori: Group Practice)

Session 6: Again, no choice here. I’m presenting Are You Certifiable? (I’m sad to be missing: Linq (From the Inside); The Future of JavaScript; Rocking WebForms with jQuery; Transforming traditional portals to social intranets; Ask a DBA) – great sessions in this last of the day slot!

Some very hard choices there, I really wish that I could see all the sessions!

Thanks to everyone involved in the code camp – it is a lot of work and it is a great event.

Hope to see lots of friends, and find new ones on Saturday!

Download mobile formats from Manning Books

I have purchased some great books from Manning Press – one of particular note is Azure In Action. One frustration I have had is that most of the eBooks have only been available as PDF at release. There have been promises of books being released in ePub and mobi formats, but until Monday I had never received information on how to get the new formats for prior purchases.
From the email I received I learned about https://account.manning.com/. Here you can login or create an account. As long as the account is associated with the email used when books were purchased you will be able to get a list of your books. Selecting a book from the list will take you to a page where you can download the available formats – including newly released mobile formats!
I have looked around the website and have not found a link to ‘my account’. So for now the only way I know to get to the login is through the link shared above.
Thanks Manning for the great improvement!
Technorati Tags: eBook

Business Travel Essentials

While I travel less now than I have in the past I’ve had a couple experiences recently that have reminded me how important it is to have the right equipment with you on a business trip. Here I outline some of the items that I find essential – please add your thoughts!

The most recent additions to my list are:

• DisplayPort to DVI adaptor
• DVI to HDMI cable

With more hotels having LCD TVs this combination of cables allows me to add a second monitor to my workstation while in my room. I’ve had some TV remotes that include an ‘input’ button and others where I had to find the button on the TV itself (check the sides). Often it is not a real high resolution, but it still provides a second monitor! On a similar note I just purchased a 7” USB monitor. I’ve not yet had it long enough to know if I’ll find it useful, or if I will decide it is worth packing with me on trips – but it seems promising right now.

Here’s a picture of me using the TV during a recent trip.

Most of the other items do not require much explanation:

• network cable
• USB mini & USB micro cables
• wireless travel router
• small power strip (I’m currently carrying one with 3 outlets and 2 USB power ports)
• small flashlight
• mini screwdrivers (flat and phillips)
• travel headset with microphone (VoIP calls)

If I’m renting a car I also include the following:

• car power port (cigarette lighter) to USB adapter
• windshield mount for phone/gps

Of course there are some items that don’t stay packed but do make it on every trip. These include my eBook reader, mp3 player (very little music, lots of audio books and podcasts) and a magazine or two to read when electronic devices are not able to be used on my flights.

I also try to purchase an extra power adaptor for my laptops – I left mine home on one trip, luckily I was working with a team and we were able to share adaptors for similar laptops.

I’m probably forgetting some items that remain buried in my backpack and pulled out infrequently. Tell me what you find to be your essentials!

My O’Reilly Wish List

O’Reilly has a contest going on right now – so this is my entry…

The ‘contest’ is to build and post online a wish list of titles from the O’Reilly catalog worth up to $500. Then submit the link to your list to O’Reilly by Feb 22, 2011 at 11:59PM (PST). A winner will be randomly selected the following day.

I need to preface this list with a disclaimer: I have purchased many (my wife would definitely say too many) books recently. So this list does not necessarily represent my top choices as I have already purchased several of them. Watch for another post in the near future with a list of some of the titles that I have purchased over the past few months.

Title	Cost
Arduino up and Running: Building Fun and Creative Electronic Projects	29.99
Baseball Hacks	24.99
Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design	44.99
Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think	44.99
Beautiful Teams: Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders	39.99
Coding4Fun: 10 .NET Programming Projects For Wiimote, YouTube, World of Warcraft and More	39.99
EBook Contracts: Critical Terms and Lessons Learned from Both Sides of the Table	29.99
HTML5: Up and Running	29.99
Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Overclocking Your Brain	24.99
Scaling MongoDB	29.99
slide:ology: The Are and Science of Creating Great Presentations	34.99
The Art of Agile Development	39.99
The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation	39.99
The Art of Concurrency: A Thread Monkey’s Guide to Writing Parallel Applications	44.99

How about that – my choices total $499.86.

Check them out and please share any thoughts on these titles!

Book Review: The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

So far this is the most ‘dog-eared’ and marked up eBook I have read!  The author has really done his homework on this one.  There are plenty of facts to refute many of the myths that are commonly shared and believed regarding innovation.  The old saying about genius being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration is brought to life by the many examples he gives.

In the not too distant past most jobs or tasks had a production focus while today there are more and more that have a knowledge focus (or pick the term you like).  This has brought a change from trying to do the same thing better over time to a point where it often seems that we never do quite the same thing twice.  To be more successful in this new world it would be very nice to have a recipe for success, unfortunately there isn’t one.

What you will get out of this book is a reality check to counteract many of the myths that exist around the magic of innovation and progress.  While it is not be a recipe you can follow it will teach you some patterns that you can follow to better prepare yourself for the enlightening moments that may lead to great breakthroughs for you.

In what is maybe the closest thing to a map you will be able to follow chapter 11 includes a section titled “The simple plan”.  The author says “If you picked up this book because you want to not only find ideas but bring them to reality, this is for you.”  Three of the points that he identifies here are: 1) get started doing something; 2) don’t get too focused on innovation solve a problem; and 3) be happy when you make a mistake, you are learning and growing.

I have already bought extra copies of this book to give to friends, clients and co-workers.  I know several of them will really appreciate it and I’ll be looking forward to discussing it with them and working with them after they have read it!

Technology Books – Deals of the Day

I check the following sites most days for their deals of the day on technology books.  These days I’m typically in the market for eBooks, and it is almost too easy to buy them.  Even with some great deals I can find I’ve spent more than intended by the end of the week!  I also find that I have a hard time keeping up with reading the books that I’m buying.

O’Reilly – http://oreilly.com – You’ll see their deal on the home page

Microsoft Press – http://microsoftpress.oreilly.com – See the deal on the home page

Manning – http://www.manning.com – They also show their deal on the home page

APress – http://www.apress.com – Follow the link to their deal from the home page

InformIT – http://www.informit.com – They also show the deal on the home page

Even though these are listed as ‘deal-of-the-day’ not all of the publishers actually change the offer each day.

You can follow most of these sites/deals on Twitter and/or subscribe to a feed of their deals.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts I really like how O’Reilly is managing their eBook deals.  And I am much more likely to purchase a book when it is available in multiple formats – pdf for use on my laptop, ePub/mobi for use with my eReaders.

Please let me know of other sites that you watch for deals on technology books!

eBooks, Publishers and Book Sellers

In the past couple of months I’ve become quite a fan of eBooks.  I’ve always bought and used numerous technology books – sometimes I’ve read them front to back, and sometimes I’ve used them more strictly for reference and/or learning.  I have tried reading/using eBooks in the past, but found them somewhat lacking.  There have been some interesting studies I’ve read lately about reading habits when people have eReader devices, and I decided that the price of the devices had reached a point that it was time to give it a try.
I purchased a Nook (Barnes and Noble’s eReader) about 2 months ago.  Then about about a month later I found a very good deal on a new Kindle 3 (Amazon’s eReader), so I bought it as well.  I expect that soon I’ll decide which is a better fit for me and probably give the other to my daughter to use.  I’ll add a post about my thoughts on the devices later.
As in the past I have found that trying to read on a computer (desktop, laptop or netbook) is difficult for me.  I also find it difficult to use the eReader devices for accessing an eBook as reference.  While I’m not sure what I dislike about reading on the computer, the difficultly of scanning and slowness of searching on the reader make it less than ideal for looking things up and generally using it for reference.  Certainly the portability, battery life, ability to carry many books and quick power on/off of the eReader devices make them great for reading.
With these issues the question becomes, what is the right/best eBook format for me to use.  Remember that everything I’m talking about here is related to reading technical books and documents, not general novels or ‘fun’ reading.  First here are the basic options for me and my devices (see this Wikipedia article for more details):

• PDF: no explanation needed supported by the computer, Nook and Kindle
• ePub: an open/official standard of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) supported by various eReaders including the Nook
• mobi: another open standard also supported by various eReaders including the Kindle

If I only have the choice of one format, I first decide how I expect to use the book – if it is a general knowledge book that I expect to read (like Being Geek or Cloud Application Architectures) then I will choose an eReader format (ePub or mobi).  If instead it is a book that I feel will be useful for reference (like Programming Windows Azure) then I will tend to choose the PDF format, even if I expect to read the book cover-to-cover as well.
The experience of reading an eReader format on one of the devices is very good.  I have really enjoyed using both the Nook and the Kindle and found that I am definitely reading more now that I have an eReader device.
For me PDF is ‘the’ format for use on the computer (even though it is possible to access both ePub and mobi as well).  It is easily scrolled on screen and it has good/quick search capabilities even for very large documents.  I can also use it on either the Nook or the Kindle, but it is lacking on both devices.  The Nook with ‘reflow’ the PDF giving the option to change the font size and generally treating it as a ‘native’ format.  But every PDF document I’ve read on it has had some issues.  These range from the inability to enlarge images to very poor handling of some document formats, especially ordered lists.  The Kindle does not ‘reflow’ the PDF, instead it displays the PDF just as you would see it on the computer.  In the normal view this makes the document barely readable for me (it may just be my aging eyes…).  It is possible to enlarge the document, but in that case you are only able to view a part of the page at a time, requiring ‘page turns’ to see the top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right portions of the page.  This makes it very difficult to read.  The other option, the one that I have found to work best for me, is to rotate the screen on the Kindle to be sideways.  Doing this makes the image larger and I am able to easily read it.  This breaks each ‘page’ of the PDF into 3 sections for viewing, and each page turn walks you through the document as you would expect.
I have also tried to use various tools to convert PDF documents to both ePub and mobi formats, but I have not yet found a tools that does this very well.  If you have any suggestions please let me know!
Next let’s talk about where to get technical eBooks.  I have found that both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have many of the same books available, each formatted for their own devices.  So far I have only purchased 1 or 2 technical eBooks directly from Amazon and non from Barnes and Noble.  There are 3 reasons that I have not purchased more books from the makers of my devices:

1. I have bought some books that I knew I would want as reference books, therefore I wanted them in PDF format
2. I have found that buying directly from the publisher will sometimes have some extra perks (for instance the choice of multiple formats, discounts for purchases of physical and eBook combinations and free updates)
3. I have found some discount codes (by searching the web) that I’ve been able to use directly with the publisher, but that have not been available at the ‘book’ stores

One quick gripe about Barnes and Noble – As a paying member of their Membership program I often receive coupons for discounts on books as well as having the standard discounts to use everyday, unfortunately non of these discounts apply to the purchase of eBooks, I personally feel this is a failure, and I am certain I would have bought at least 1 book from them by now if I had been able to use the same discounts I could use to by the physical book.
So far I have purchased eBooks directly from the following publishers:

• O’Reilly: So far, hands down, the best overall experience I’ve had purchasing eBooks!  O’Reilly provides their eBooks in multiple formats – I usually download the PDF, ePub and mobi formats when I buy, and that covers all my reading options!  They have discounts to purchase pBook/eBook bundles and also offer discounts on eBooks for which you already own the physical book , or discounts on physical books if you own the eBook – FTW!  Finally my eBook library is always available to download, just incase I need access to one of my books, but I don’t have a copy of it with me at the time!  Great job guys!
• Manning: They also offer discounts on pBook/eBook bundles.  So far of the books I’ve purchased they only offer them in PDF, but they are beginning to add ePub and mobi formats – and they have indicated that if they make these formats available for any eBooks you have purchased you will be able to download the new formats.  One think I do not care for is that when you purchase an eBook you are sent a link from which you can download, but it is only good for 5 days.
• WROX Press: I have been a fan of WROX books for several years – I’ve even done technical reviews of several of their books in the past and written some supplemental content for a couple of books.  I do feel that some of their titles over the past few years have not lived up to the same quality as their initial books so I am more selective about which books I buy.  They indicate that they have both PDF and ePub formats, but so far I have only received/used PDFs.
• APress: Overall the buying experience from APress worked well.  As far as I know they only provide PDF format at this time. For the books I've purchased from them this has been no problem as I intended them largely to be used for reference.

Another reason that I’ve bought books from both O’Reilly and Manning is based on their ‘eBook Deal of the Day (DotD)’ programs.  I also know that APress has a similar offer, but I have not purchased any DotD books from them yet.  You can get updates on their daily deals in various ways – I am following both O’Reilly and Manning on Twitter.
Please leave some comments to let me know your thoughts on technical eBooks and any experiences that you have had the may differ from mine!

Book Review: Being Geek

I recently read Being Geek by Michael Lopp (O’Reilly 2010).  I’ve been holding off publishing my review of this book waiting for my wife to offer her opinion of what the author has to say to spouses/partners to help them understand us ‘geeks’ – unfortunately with her schedule and school she hasn’t had time, and I didn’t want to wait any longer!  So maybe later I’ll update or post again with what she thought about the description of geeks and how to live with them (See Chapter 23 – The Nerd Handbook).

The Good: The book was really a pretty quick read.  It has lots of ‘gems’ of information – many of which you will find to be self-evident and well-know once you read them, but may be things that you never fully comprehended before. Some examples of this include:

The Itch (chapter 3) - overall as tech professionals are a pretty mobile bunch, I don’t know the exact stats, but I know I have averaged about 3 years per job, and I know many others who have similar resumes.  This chapter describes some signs of an impending itch to change jobs, and gives advice to support analyzing and understanding the cause of the itch – helping you to make better choices;

The Culture Chart (chapter 8) - In any job it is necessary to know the organization chart – you must be aware of who wields the power and can make or break your position in the company.  But equally important (maybe more important) is to gain an understanding of the un-official leaders, movers and shakers in the company.  There are many people who do not show up prominently on the official org chart, but they make things happen and drive many of the initiatives in the company;

The Impossible (chapter 13) – It seems like so much of what we are asked to do is impossible, but there are times when ‘management’ doesn’t even seem to try to mask it.  These can be very stressful and/or exciting times.  You will need to analyze the situation and determine if the the impossible request is a sign of insanity or an amazing opportunity in the making.  I remember seeing a poster with Walt Disney saying something like – it’s kind of fun to do the impossible.  And there is really nothing quite like it!

These are just a few of the insights that are presented in the book – I expect that you will find snippets of wisdom in nearly every chapter!

The Bad: The only caution I would suggest about this book is the unnecessary (in my opinion) use of foul language.  I am certainly used to hearing plenty of ‘colorful’ discussion at work (and in other environments), but I would prefer a little more effort on the part of the author and editor to present the content in a cleaner manner.  I offer this in the review just as a word of caution to readers who may be offended.  For me the content trumps this unfortunate flaw, but be warned…

Summary: This book is a quick easy read that really delivers on giving the reader many insights into living and working as a geek (or nerd if you prefer the term).  Many of the chapters will help the young and less experienced professionals chart a course for success in their career.  But there are also many chapters that provide some pretty deep views into the life of a manager.  These chapters should be of value to both practitioners and managers alike.

Windows Azure Storage Presentation–Utah Code Camp Fall 2010

I presented a session yesterday on Windows Azure Storage at the Utah Code Camp Fall 2010.  It was a great code camp – thanks to all the organizers, sponsors, presenters and attendees!  I’m looking forward to the next one in the spring!

If you are interested in seeing my presentation or the simple Azure Queue sample that we looked at you can get them from my SkyDrive.

Hope you enjoy, and let me know if you have any thoughts or questions.

Book Review: Cooking for Geeks

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, and a holiday weekend to boot!  I decided that today would be a good day to give some of the recipes from Cooking for Geeks a try (written by Jeff Potter, O’Reilly 2010).  While I haven’t read the entire book, and this is the type of book that I don’t expect to read cover to cover, I have found it very interesting to browse through the recipes and have several that I want to try in the future.

I have really found it interesting to review several of the recipes and read some of the text around these recipes.  This isn’t a ‘normal’ cookbook – it is very interesting to learn the ‘science of cooking’ instead of simply having a prescribed set of inputs and tasks.  The back cover of the book states that it “inspires you to be inventive in the kitchen and piques your curiosity about food”.  While I have chosen to not be adventurous in my first outing with this book I already have some ideas about what modifications I’d like to try with some of the recipes!  I do believe that I will find the book to be “Tan excellent and intriguing resource if you want to experiment with cooking”.

So what’s coming for dinner tonight? ‘Slow-Cooked Short Ribs’ (page 191) and ‘Mac ’n Cheese’ (page 117).  I am going to go ahead and try to steam some fresh green beans (straight from my dad’s garden) using the microwave as described in ‘Quick Steamed Asparagus’ (page 196).

I’ll add some pictures once dinner is ready – next time maybe I’ll make enough to invite you over!

We just finished dinner – here are some thoughts and photos…

We doubled the recipe for the Mac ‘n Cheese, it was great, but a little too runny, until it set up some.  We did not add the bread crumbs on top either.  Next time we’ll do some extra pasta as well.  I also let it go a little too long in the oven – but everyone liked it!  It was also quite a bit simpler/more straight forward than some other made from scratch Mac and Cheese recipes that I have made in the past.

The short ribs were a big hit as well.  I cut them in half so that they fit a little better in the slow cooker.  We let them cook for about 5 1/2 hours.

And here is the final product – all ready to eat!

We’re looking forward to trying some more of the recipes – and do some some experiments with them!

VS 2010 Tip: Do not automatically save projects

I believe this feature has been around for a while – I enabled it a couple of months ago after hearing about it when viewing a presentation from TechEd North America 2010 (DEV315: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Tips and Tricks)PDC09 talk (or maybe it was a MiX talk, I don’t remember right now – I’ll update the post later with the details).

I found a problem with this tonight – so I thought I’d post it.

First to configure VS 2010 to not automatically save projects when created, and thus not fill your drive with junk projects do the following:

Go to Tools Options…

Select “Projects and Solutions” in the left portion of the dialog and uncheck the option “Save new projects when created” on the right side (shown here):

It’s just that simple!

Now for the problem I found tonight. I’m playing around with the Azure Management API and created a simple project to do some testing. I needed to set a reference to some of the Windows Azure libraries, so I went to Solution Explorer, right clicked on ‘References’, selected ‘Add Reference…’ and got the following:

It didn’t take too much to figure out that I just needed to save the project – but it would have been nice to be able to add references without needing to save, or to at least be prompted to save the project so that I could add a reference. I’ll know next time!

Book Review: Programming Windows Azure

I recently read Programming Windows Azure by Sriram Krishnan (O’Reilly 2010).  The author works on the Windows Azure Program Management team and has great insight into Windows Azure.

The Good: The book starts with some interesting and important information about the Windows Azure infrastructure and operations.  While none of this information is too deep (technically), it is very useful for understanding the environment.  I believe this will be beneficial as the reader begins the architecture and creation of cloud applications.  The information is very easy to read, and while there is much more to learn and know, it will be a great help to get you started with Azure development.

After the environment discussion the author moves on to focus on the application configuration.  This feels like a very natural flow to setting up the configuration of your own applications.  There is also discussion about the local development environment (Development Fabric and Development Storage) which provides information about how to do cloud development without needing to deploy to the cloud and incur the related costs.  There are ample warnings, which really must be taken seriously, to not have this local development be the end all but to be sure that you actually deploy to the staging environment in the cloud for further testing and validation.

Next comes the meat of the book – the actual details on writing Windows Azure code!  There are samples of the creation of Web and Worker roles.  The purpose and typically usage scenarios for each of these is covered.  There is brief coverage of developing non managed applications (i.e. native and non .NET code).

The book includes a chapter with some details on the Management API – I wish that more was included here, but it is a pretty good introduction to the management capabilities.

A good portion of the book is focused on Windows Azure storage, with 5 chapters dedicated to the topic.  In this part of the book you will learn plenty about Table, Queue and Blob storage.

The final chapter gives a brief introduction to SQL Azure.  Not too much here and there is plenty more to learn and experiment with.

The Bad: There really is not much bad in this book (at least in my opinion)!  But there is one chapter I would have presented differently:

Chapter 12 – Building a Secure Backup System: I believe this chapter was intended to show some ‘real world’ work with Azure.  I found this to be an interesting chapter, but felt that it did not flow well with the rest of the book.  The first “issue” I have with it is that while it has a lot of code samples, the code samples are in Python.  It is very interesting to see an actual Azure application implemented in a non .NET language – but I doubt that the majority of the readers of this book will find that as useful as sticking to a managed language.  For myself, not being very familiar with Python, I found this much harder to read than the rest of the book.  I would have rather seen a the chapter written using C# (or VB.NET) and then included an appendix with other language implementations.  This would have been very interesting.  The second “issue” I have with the chapter is that it really takes the focus off of “the cloud”/Azure and instead the main theme is cryptography/security.  I find this a very interesting topic – and I have played around/implemented several of the concepts that are covered here.  I understand the authors desire to ensure that we don’t forget how important this is – but I feel it would have been better to list resources for further study on the subject and stay focused on the ‘nuts and bolts’ of Azure development.

Summary: Overall I was very happy with this book and highly recommend it.  It feels fairly ‘introductory’ to me, but I have been playing/working with Azure since it was initially announced at PDC in 2008, so I may not be the best to judge this.  I think it is a great place for someone wanting to get started with Windows Azure to spend some time.  Even with the time I have spent working with Azure I found several gems of information in the book and found it well worth my time to read it!

Book Review: Cloud Application Architectures

Cloud Application Architectures by George Reese (O’Reilly 2009) was the first book that I read on my new Nook – I had read a few hundred pages of PDFs prior to purchasing and reading this book and I was looking for a good technical book in ePub format to try.  This seemed like it would be an interesting book, and the price was right (I was able to purchase it directly from O’Reilly for $11.99 USD using a coupon code).

The Good: This was a very quick and easy book to read.  It brings out many good points that are important to consider as you architect and build applications for ‘the cloud’.  The book does not only focus on technical issues, but also reminds readers to consider licensing, legal and business issues as well.  The book has a very strong focus on the Amazon cloud and only briefly mentions other providers (with the exception of 2 appendixes; 1 focused on GoGrid, another talking about Rackspace).  Even with the focus on the Amazon, overall the information and recommendations in the book are important to keep in mind no matter what platform you are architecting a system for.

The Bad: While a quick review of the table of contents for the book lets you know that it has a strong focus on the Amazon cloud offering, I do not believe that it was explicitly stated in the description.  With a general title like ‘Cloud Application Architectures’ I did expect to have a little more well rounded discussion with more information related to other vendors cloud offerings.

Overall I would recommend this book largely for the following reasons: 1) It is a good source to create a checklist of items to to help validate your cloud architecture and to help evaluate possible providers; 2) It provides an introduction to the Amazon cloud offerings (especially S3 and EC2)

Continuous Learning

About a week ago I purchased a Nook from Barnes and Noble and it got me reflecting some on how I learn – which prompted this post!

I am a big fan of learning – I have always enjoyed reading and ‘playing’ with new tools and technologies.  As I have matured (read gotten older) there have been many more areas of focus in my life that have made it difficult to devote as much time and energy to learning new technical skills.  I try to leverage the time that I have in the best ways possible.  I constantly try to watch for tools and techniques that will help me leverage my time better.

Several years ago I bought my first iPod.  Unlike many people my intent was not to have a device to carry more music with me, but rather to use it for listening to audio books.  I signed up for an account at Audible (www.audible.com) with the purchase of my first iPod and have maintained an account there since that time.  It was a few years later that I learned about Podcasts and have since subscribed to several of those as well.

Two years ago I changed jobs.  I left a position in which I traveled full time and took a new position which had me contracted to a local company.  This changed my listening habits quite a bit.  When I was traveling I would turn on my iPod as soon as electronic devices were allowed on my flights and listen until we had to shut them off (I did not always do this, but quite often).  In my last 7 months in my old position I earned about 170,000 frequent flier miles – that was a lot of time to listen!

With the change of jobs I went from flying several hours each week to driving about 35-40 minutes daily each way to my new local client.  I found that about 2/3 of the time I would listen to my Podcasts and/or audio books, but I was not listening as much as when I traveled full time.  In December of last year I began working from my home office, now my commute is just the time it takes to walk a flight of stairs and my listening time has dropped to near zero.  I still like to listen and find it a great way to follow trends in technology and to learn soft skills and business skills (through audio books) but I don’t like to use my headphones when I’m with my family – so I needed something new.

One note about the use of the iPod – I decided on the iPod and have stayed with it largely because of it’s ability to play audio books/Podcasts back at a faster speed.  If anyone knows of other devices that have similar capabilities, and that do this well, please let me know!

I’ve been watching the eBook reader market closely for the past 8-10 months.  I’ve not done too much deep research, but I’ve watched new devices get released and tried to see the merits of the various options.  I came to the conclusion that the real players in the eBook reader market right now are the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes and Nobel Nook and the Apple iPad.  I did not want to drop the money for an iPad, and at this time did not feel that the reading experience was as good as the eInk screens of the Kindle and Nook.  I also did not feel the need for the ‘extras’ that would come with the iPad.  This left me looking at the Kindle and the Nook.  I settled on the Nook largely for two reasons: 1) the ability to lend books (although I’m not sure how much I might do this); 2) I felt that it supported more book/content formats than the Kindle.

I fully admit that I am in a ‘honeymoon’ period with my new Nook right now, but so far I am very happy with my purchase.  In the week that I have had it I have read two books (both technical/career focused) and about 400 pages of PDF documents – quite a bit more reading than I have done in a week in quite some time!

I have found it very easy to carry the Nook with me, and to have several choices of reading material when I have a couple of minutes to grab it an read.  I have not yet purchased a book from BN for the Nook, but I have purchased some ePub formatted books from O’Reilly and found them to work quite well.  As for the PDFs, there are more issues with formatting, but so far nothing too bad.  I also like the easy with which I can copy content onto the Nook from my computer.

I have found it to be more acceptable to me to read from my Nook when I’m around the family (depending on what is going on) than putting the earphones in and listening to my audio programs.  I expect that there might be more opportunities to do this as the kids get back into school later this month.  I expect that I can read while they are doing homework and feel less detached and more available to help them if I’m reading instead of ‘tuned in to’ some audio program.

I’ll plan on posting some thoughts about the books I’ve read, and those that I hope to soon read in the near future!

What tools do you use to help you ‘continuously learn’?  Let me know what you think and give me some ideas for other tools to try!