Tap My Mind

A Blog by Scott Isaacs

Tag: Community Page 6 of 8

An Introduction to F#

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On January 31, 2006

In Uncategorized

The next WI .NET Users Group meeting is on February 21st.  I’m looking forward to the next meeting where our very own optionsScalper (OS) will be presenting “An Introduction to F#” (register here). 

Why am I so interested?  Is it because OS is such a hottie?  While one could make that case, I’d have to say, “No”.  It’s because F# has been described to me as the “math language” of .NET, and you may not know it, but I have a B.S. in Applied Mathematics.    It’s been a while since I’ve had to do any serious “math-like” development, and even longer since I’ve done anything remotely academic, but talking to OS about this has definitely piqued my interest.

If you have any interest in math, finance, a “scripted/functional/imperative/object-oriented programming language”, or just cool, new stuff in general, then you owe it to yourself to attend. Get the details and register here.

Update: More IE Stuff

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On January 30, 2006

In Uncategorized

A couple weeks ago, I posted about a ZIP of stuff for IE context menus.  I just updated the ZIP file to include a context menu item for getting a map for a highlighted address from Google Maps.

Here is the updated ZIP.  Download and use at your own risk.  See readme.txt for summary and instructions.  These will modify your registry and if you don’t know what that implies, then you probably won’t want to install them.

Windows Live Messenger Invites

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On January 28, 2006

In Uncategorized

I have a few invitations to use the new MSN Live Messenger Beta.  If I know you, and only if I know you, and you want one, let me know.  First come, first served.

I disabled comments and trackbacks on this post because I’ve seen other posts where someone announces invitations, and that’s too much.  🙂  Besides, if you know me, you’ll probably know how to contact me anyway.

Ready Launch Tour 2005

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On October 25, 2005

In Uncategorized

There is a lot going on locally in the MS community over the next couple weeks.  For starters, on November 7, Microsoft will be launching a new series of development packages: Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and Biztalk 2006.  The official launch will be happening in San Francisco, CA.

The WI .NET Users Group is having a Community Launch (aka, Ready Launch Tour 2005) on November 8.  It is a joint meeting with the WI SQL Server Users Group.  Because of the combined meeting, we will actually get started at 4:30.  You can register for either or both of the sessions (VS and SQL) on the UG site.  If you typically receive an e-mail newsletter, you can expect it today or tomorrow.

Then, just a few days later, Microsoft will be having a “local” launch in Chicago.  That will be at the McCormick Place on November 10.  Then in November in Madison and December in Milwaukee, MSDN and TechNet will be having “Best of the Launch”.  You can find links to those events on the UG site as well.

Not many of us in this area are going to be able to make it to the “official” launch in CA on November 7.  So make sure you get to at least one of these other events.  Our Community Launch will be filling up fast because we only have a limited number of seats (although we are meeting in a bigger facility than the Microsoft office where we normally meet). 

So pick one or more of these events and sign up today!!

Cropper and TinyPic

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On October 3, 2005

In Uncategorized

By now you may have heard about Cropper by Brian Scott (I’ve even mentioned it before).  It’s a nifty screen capture utility that I originally found linked from Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Tools list.  I’ve used it a few times, and it’s pretty cool.  You can optionally choose to create thumbnails of each screen capture.

Well, Patrick Altman is a self-proclaimed Cropper fan, and he has written a nice little plugin for it.  His plugin will take a standard Cropper screen capture in PNG format and upload it to TinyPic.  Then it places the URL of the image into the clipboard for easy pasting into blogs, etc.  You should try it!  (Note:  This image was added using this method.)

One important thing to note, though: Patrick’s plugin is compiled against a previous Cropper BETA.  I had to use Reflector to disassemble it and recompile it.  I didn’t have to change anything — just a recompile.  If you don’t want to go through that hassle (or don’t know how), send me a quick note and I’ll forward you my recompiled version.  I don’t want to post it here because it’s not my code to post, but until Patrick has a chance to update it, or tell me to stop, I’ll share.

I do also have a couple suggestions for Patrick (which I sent him via e-mail earlier today):

  1. Right now, if Cropper is configured to create a thumbnail image, that image does not get uploaded to TinyPic.  That would be a nice feature.
  2. Because I really love my clipboard, I have found that I might use the Cropper -> TinyPic option, and then copy some other text before I paste the TinyPic URL someplace meaningful.  So I have suggested that he consider some type of log file.

But don’t let those two things keep you from trying this out.  I know I’ll be using it for a while.

Update: Patrick Altman has e-mailed me and said that he doesn’t use this plugin anymore, and that he has no plans to update it.  He said that I should feel free to update my decompiled version and redistribute it.  Well, I don’t exactly have a lot of spare time right now myself (more on this later…), but now I feel comfortable posting my updated DLL.  So here it is.  It works with Cropper 1.6.  If anyone wants to make updates to it, knock yourself out — just let me know if you come up with something useful.  🙂

Nerd Dinner Tonight

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On September 20, 2005

In Uncategorized

Details here.

John Mitchell

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On September 9, 2005

In Uncategorized

In case you missed it, John Mitchell started blogging recently.  John is a recent transplant to WI.  He is on the Executive Committee of the WI .NET Users Group and on the core team for DotNetNuke.

It’s about time!  😉

Nerd Dinner Tuesday Night

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On August 29, 2005

In Uncategorized

The Milwaukee Nerd Dinner is happening tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 6PM at Champp’s.  Sign up and get details here.

I’ve only made it to one of these, but it was a lot of fun.  It’s not an “official” WI .NET Users Group event, but it’s a great chance to get to meet some of the UG members in a casual, relaxed, fun (albeit sometimes noisy) setting.

I’m planning to attend and am looking forward to meeting some new people.

BTW, thanks to Dan for picking this up while Matt is busy at his new job!

Code Generator 1.1

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On August 22, 2005

In Uncategorized

If you’ve read the blog for a while, you might have seen my previous posts about a code generator I wrote.

As I’ve used it for a couple months, I’ve decided that I have a lot (LOT) of changes I want to make to it.  I’m not quite a genius yet (like all of the people at the Q# launch), but I’ve learned a ton since I first started writing this.

However, as things go, I haven’t had time to really re-engineer it.  It’s hard to take time to fix something that works, even though it doesn’t work as well as it could or should.  (Can I get an “Amen”?!)  So, in the meantime, I’ve just fixed a few bugs and made a few enhancements.  Most noticably, there is a progress bar at the bottom of the window now.

So anyway, for what it’s worth, here is the updated version.  Use it at your own risk, blah blah blah.

To see a “real” code generator, check out Codus by Sean McCormack from Adapdev Technologies.  Adapdev has a few good tools that have been released to the development community.  On a (sort of) related note, Sean will be speaking to the WI .NET Users Group on September 13 about Automated Testing for .NET.  You can register at the UG site.

More on Q#

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On August 22, 2005

In Uncategorized

You know, I was re-reading my last post, and I see that I missed something important.  I meant to mention it there, but got distracted in the middle of the post and forgot when I came back.  (Typical…)

I really need to thank Kelly (“Her Royal Highness of the Order of the Geek”) for all her hard work.  All I did was clean up the yard, set up the chairs, and burn the burgers.  She took care of all of the other stuff, like cleaning the house, preparing the toppings and sides, putting all of the stuff that people brought out, doing the dishes, and pretty much everything else.  Plus, she managed to carry on conversations with the geeks and geek widows.

I just wanted to say thanks to Kelly for all her hard work to make the whole day happen.

I love you!

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