Pete Brown's Blog (POKE 53280,0)
Pete Brown writes on a variety of topics from XAML with the Windows Runtime (WinRT), .NET programming using C#, WPF, Microcontroller programming with .NET Microframework, .NET Gadgeteer, Windows on Devices, and even plain old C, to raising two children in the suburbs of Maryland, woodworking, CNC and generally "making physical stuff". Oh, and Pete loves retro technology, especially Commodore (C64 and C128). If the content interests you, please subscribe using the subscription link to the right of every page.
Archive for tag:
Microsoft
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It's that time of year at Microsoft: everyone's reviews are
underway to be completed and sent up the chain by the end of the
month. One part of the review process, one given even greater
emphasis this year, is peer feedback/review. While I'm specifically
talking to the 90k Microsoft employees here, I think these comments
apply to any organization that incorporates peer feedback into the
...
Published
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 |
Tagged:
Microsoft |
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It's hard to believe, but I'm 6 days away from having been at
Microsoft a full year. Time flies!
I had a great first year at Microsoft, thanks in no small part
to the mentoring and guidance from great folks like Scott Hanselman
and Cyra Richardson. Check out the first half of this podcast to meet Cyra (and
Scott, of course)
As is the nature of things at Microsoft, we started off thi...
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Now that my friend Frank La Vigne (@tableteer
on twitter) is leaving AIS, I can tell the
"Awkward Interview Story" I've had to keep secret. This story takes
place just a day after my wife and I returned from the hospital
from the delivery of our second child, Abby. But we need a little
more back story first.
History
Over the holidays in 2007 and into January 2008, I was contacted
...
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It's hard to believe, but today marks six months of working for
Microsoft. It was a long process - one that lasted almost two years
from the first contact to the start date, but it was worth it.
I started on Monday October 12, 2009. On that first day, I got
all my orientation and badge work done by 3:00pm, and then went and
found Scott so I could shadow him for a bit. I even made a few...
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Over the past 13 1/2 years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some really talented developers, architects and designers in what I and many others consider to be one of the very best .NET consulting companies on the east coast: Applied Information Sciences (AIS).AIS hired me right out of college and moved me down to Maryland from New England back in 1996. During my interview, due to t...
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Our world-famous DE, Andrew Duthie, (aka the .NET DEvHammer, twitter @devhammer) just pointed out to me that we have a great set of roadshows coming to the area next week (Reston and Richmond). If you want to get the skinny on developing for Windows 7 and IE8, these are can’t-miss sessions. I’m always impressed with the amount of free, quality training coming out of the local Microsoft field o...
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What's up with the new spinning ASCII art in Microsoft installers? (from http://www.asciimation.co.nz/ all of Star Wars as animated ASCII art) Ok, well, not quite as bad as that <g>, but you've seen it: | / - \ | / - \ | When it cycles like that, it looks like a rotating line, straight out of DOS or our old VT100/220 terminal days. I think the problem they're trying to solve is...
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My primary Silverlight project for the past couple months has been the Facebook application I’ve been writing for the Microsoft East Coast Developer, Partner and Architect Evangelists: MSDN East Coast News. For those of you curious about building Facebook applications with Silverlight, I have at least two sessions coming up: MSDN geekSpeak on building facebook applications wit...
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Sometimes I hear about something for the first time and figure I must live under a rock. I make a point of keeping up on a number of new things, but it's hard to keep track of all the cool services and technologies available to you these days. Tim Heuer just today turned me on to Yahoo Pipes when I asked about proxying some services to provide feed content to a Silverlight FaceBook app I'm dev...
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On Wednesday April 30 at 2:00PM Eastern time, Marc Schweigert from Microsoft will present a webcast on the ASP.NET 3.5 extensions preview. I've known Marc for a long time, and have presented with him on a number of occasions both online and in-person. He's a great speaker and always has jam-packed demos (he slings more code in an hour than just about anyone else I've seen). This webcast will...
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This is absolutely awe-inspiring.When I was little, my favorite show was Carl Sagan's COSMOS on PBS (WGBH Channel 2, Boston). I even remember one day when I was sick, my mum brought a small TV into my room so I could still watch COSMOS that evening. Back then, I used to go to sleep and dream about the stars and nebula and everything else they used to show on that show.One of the most compe...
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I hope you're as excited about Silverlight 2 as I am! If you haven't checked it out yet, Scott Guthrie just posted a great article and a huge multi-part tutorial for building a Silverlight 2 application to pull Digg results back via REST. He shows off tons of features, and you can infer even more from the screenshots. I think it's great that Scott has been able to finally provide some real de...
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During the Q&A in Reston, Marc and I mentioned a few places of interest. The Silverlight Deployment Document. The Silverlight Showcase on Silverlight.net Tim Sneath's blog on Silverlight 2.0 Scott Guthrie's blog with some details on Silverlight 2.0 My essay on Silverlight 2.0, WPF and Development in the future For those of you who couldn't make it tonight, I hope to see yo...
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I'm honored and pleased that three of us from Applied Information Sciences (Vishwas Lele, Frank La Vigne and me) have been chosen by Dr Z from Microsoft to be members of the inaugural group of Mid-Atlantic Influential Architects.There are a lot of impressive minds in that group, many of which I've run into before or have worked with directly - proving once again that despite its populat...