Mini-Microsoft and Achieving Senior Level 63

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Talking of good blogs to read, I quite like Mini-Microsoft. This is an anonymous manager at Microsoft giving a take on the way that the company is going. It is also sprinkled with detail about life inside Microsoft, and how to get on in the corporate environment.

Mini (if I can use that name) has just posted a good post on how to get to Senior Level 63 (apparently some exalted management level in Microsoft). I've no particular desire to scale those lofty heights, but the post is interesting because I reckon if you follow the advice in it you will do well in whatever field you are in.

Microsoft, like everwhere else I suppose, is mainly interested in promoting useful, effective people and this post gives you an insight into how to be more useful and effective.

Hard Code on the Web

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I've mentioned I.M. Wrights "Hard Code" book before on this blog. It is actually written by a bloke called Eric Brechner, who adopts the I.M. Wright persona to write hard hitting, controversial, articles about software development best practice. When I mentioned the book before I said that I thought was worth a look. Having finished reading it I've changed my mind.

You must read this book. It is excellent. The even better news is that I.M. Wright also has a blog that is an equally good read. You can find it here.

EMB207 Putting Your Big Ideas onto Tiny Devices with .NET

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Plenty of toys....

Well, the presentation has been and gone. Thanks so much to everyone who turned up and gave me such a good audience. And a special call-out for the tech support guys who let me set up my toys last night and leave them in the room, still working.

I've put all the sample code here, so if you really do want to make a set of Christmas tree lights that flash red when you make a blog post (and who doesn't) then you can download my code and get started.

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Ready to go. Note Fairy lights....

I promised some links during the presentation:

You can download the Micro Framework here.

You can find out more about the framework here.

The Dare to Dream Different contest is here.

You can find out abut the Spark program here.

It Lives!

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Thanks to Ian, and his breadboarding skills, we now have a working prototype.

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With this, we can rule the world....

Everything went very smoothly really. In fact it worked first time - which always makes me nervous. Sure enough, later on it started to behave stupidly, which we tracked to a floating output enable signal. Now I just have to get it to Barcelona without breaking it.

Although I will be bringing it into the department on Tuesday to demonstrate as well.

Little Big Planet vs. .NET Micro Framework

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Today I bought a copy of Little Big Planet for the PS3. It is supposed to be wonderful. It lets you create fantastic contraptions in a virtual world. It is still in the bag, unopened.

Because I've been playing with the .NET Micro Framework. It lets you create fantastic contraptions in the real world.

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Circuit design. Actually produced in a pub.

I'm making up a hardware/software system for TechEd 2008 in Barcelona next week, where I'm presenting a session called "Putting your Big Ideas onto Tiny Devices with .NET". I can't tell you what it is yet for two reasons:

  1. It is totally top secret.
  2. I might not be able to get it to work

Suffice it to say that the above circuit is crucial to successful completion of the project. I'm having a whale of a time bashing out the code in Visual Studio and deploying it to the target device.

Tomorrow we build the hardware...

.NET Micro Framework 3.0 is Now Out

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While we are talking about Version 3.0 of stuff we find that the third version of the .NET Micro Framework is also available. This one is very interesting, because it with it the mouthwatering prospect of being able to develop for the embedded platform using the Express versions of Visual Studio. It runs in Visual Studio 2008, including the free ones. This is wonderful news for hobbyists, as it means that you just need to get some hardware and you are away writing C# code for your tiny device. Go and get it (again for free) here.

And don't forget to enter the DareToDreamDifferent contest.

Bond Fire Night

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Went out to see "Quantum of Solace", the new Bond film.  Didn't really fancy watching anything outdoors, what with the truly horrible weather. So it was off to Vue in the middle of Hull for fireworks of the indoor kind.

We drove through what seemed to be a "Festival of Bad Driving" to get to the theatre, what with death wish cyclists, deranged lane changers and someone who seemed to want to race me round the car park, our nerves were pretty shredded before the film started....

I wasn't sure what to expect. Some of the critics have been a bit "ho hum" about this one, but I think is because the novelty of a new Bond is starting to wear off as Daniel Craig beds into the part. They may have a point about the plot, which seems to have reverted back to standard Bond faire, with sinister world domination types coming back to the fore.

Having said that, the whole thing was done with conviction and style and everybody played their role very well. It was definitely a bit bleak though, if you are looking for smug type endings with Bond and babe under a fur rug somewhere in the sun you are going to be disappointed. But if you are looking for another good action thriller, you won't be.

Running Windows 7 for Fun and Profit

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At the PDC last week we all got given "The Goods", in the form of a hard disk full of software and a bunch of dvds with Windows 7 on them. They are heavily marked "For testing purposes only" since we are some way from a Beta release of Windows 7 and you really aren't supposed to use the system for real work.

I thought I'd give it a go anyway. So tonight at 7:00 pm I started an upgrade install on my main Vista machine. I didn't go for a clean install, life's too short for re-installing all those applications. At 10:30 the upgrade had just about finished and I was able to get my first flavour of Microsoft's new system.

It works. It works fine. I'm using my MacBook (which might make for interesting times if I ever try to boot back into OS X) and all my hardware has been detected with no problems. Since the current test release is based on Vista I wasn't expecting driver trouble and so far I've not had any. Setting up the monitors was a bit fiddly, but I soon managed to get them arranged how I like. And after a slight kerfuffle with the login for Outlook I've now got a very good place to work that does all the things it used to.

The whole machine seems a lot more zippy, with applications opening much more quickly and running very well. I've not really had much chance to play with any of the new features, but I don't think I'm going to have a problem living with this test release. If you were at PDC and are thinking about putting Windows 7 on your machine I'd say go for it.

Best Practices from 'Hard Code'

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I picked up a book while I was at PDC. it is a best practice book for software developers. And it is excellent. I really like Steve McConnell and the stuff that he writes but "Hard Code" from Eric Brechner (writing as the deliberately provocative "I M Wright") is just as solid on technique, and has a really good line in snappy titles and no-nonsense talk. (one of the early articles is called "Development schedules, flying pigs, and other fantasies")

The content is based on articles written by Eric for in-house magazines at Microsoft. The intention was to spark debate about what you should be doing when you try to construct systems out of software, and the best ways to make sure you do it right.

If you write code for a living, or are a student learning how to write code for a living, or just want to find out what makes developers go tick (and probably cuckoo as well) then this is a great book to get. Strongly recommended.