Learn how to setup the perfect multi monitoring environment for development or poker playing.

According to The Australian IT Faculty Blog Windows Vista should be available through MSDNAA by now. Unfortunately it seems like most MSDNAA systems haven't been updated yet, including MSDNAA @ Aarhus University. I'm pulling all the threads I can to get it here, I can't wait to try it out on my laptop (there's no way I'm installing a newly released OS on my primary desktop!). See "Running Vista, MSDNAA update" for on update on Vista @ MSDNAA

Do you smell that? It's empty coke cans, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of empty coke cans in the morning. I think I may have an addiction... At least I'm brushing up on my artistic side by creating larger and larger monstrosities from the remnants of my drinking. Isn't it funny, every seven years (give or take, at least in Denmark) the yoyo seems to become a hit. There can be long periods of time where nobody even knows what a yoyo is, but then suddenly, everybody's playing...

As a programmer we strive to make our everyday lives easier. The very engine behind all innovation is lazyness, after all, if it weren't for us being lazy, why would we use - and by that, have a need - for things like automobiles, computers and so forth? I often meet people who aren't aware of the many great tools that aid developers when debugging websites in Internet Explorer. I'll mention a few of the most valuable ones that I use here. If you know of any great tools that I've failed to mention, please let me know!...

On thursday night all the Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) met up and took a bus to a nearby hotel where we received some information about the new globally unified MSP program, the future and so forth. We also saw a rather funny demo of the Vista voice control system (which worked less than perfectly to be honest) as well as receiving a lot on info on Imagine Cup. Afterwards we went to the nearby laser-game place called Lasermon. Here we got some rather bad and cold Tapaz for dinner (Tapaz really...

The final session of TechEd 2006 (that is, the last session slot - there were multiple to choose from) was held by Rafal Lukawiecki. This session was marked as a level 300 session but compared to most other level 300 sessions, this was more in the ballpark of level 4-500 - which was a pleasant surprise! In generel I've been a bit disappointed by the level of the TechEd. There's a lot of great sessions but a lot of them leave a lot to be desired in regards of technicality, there's simply too much marketing and sales...

On the third slot this friday I went to see Beat Schwegler, talking about architecting applications for a service oriented world. When I saw the welcome slide I knew that the title of the session were appropriate: Abstract-Concepts. Anywho, I'm fascinated by SOA and I thought this might be an interesting session. I can't blame Beat, he did an amazing job and I gave him good feedback, but it was a tad too marketing-sales oriented than I'd imagined, it was mostly about how to connect the thoughts of business ideas and structures to the SOA thought.

A picture says more than a 10^3 words (it hang at my hotel in Barcelona during TechEd): So how would you intepret this image? Let me know...

I were in serious doubt as to what subject I should choose for the next session slot. I'm very much into webservices and SOA so "Patterns and Anti-Patterns for SOA" would be perfect. But at the same time Rob Miles held a session on XNA, the new game development framework for both PC and the XBOX. Game development really isn't my thing, but I knew Rob Miles is an excellent speaker, and at the same time I have done some 3D development earlier on and it could be quite interesting to see how the XNA is going to change ones...

The first session today started at 9AM, "Attack and Defense: Securing ASP.NET 2.0 Applications", held by Keith Brown. The first talk was about general ASP.NET 2.0 security, not really as advanced as I'd hoped for, but still a good presentation. We got around some interesting SQL injection techniques, SQL truncation vulnerabilities, IO canonicalization and the awareness of user input in general.

I've been working for some time on the online PDF viewer, iPaper. The development team was recently expanded as we contracted a new developer. Suddenly we needed a version management tool, it just didn't work out, two developers working on the same set of source files, debugging on the same IIS and so forth. We considered SourceSafe but it's simply too expensive and bulky for the rather basic needs we have. Instead I found SourceGear Vault which is a source control tool like SourceSafe. We've now used SourceGear for about three weeks and it's worked absolutely great...

The next session was held by Bob Beauchemin, a great speaker. I clearly remember hearing Beuchemin somewhere else, I just can't remember where exactly. Anyways, the session was about SQL Server error handling in T-SQL and SQLCLR. Without going into too much detail (as the amount of detail was quite overwhelming), it was about how - well, yes, crappy - the try/catch error handling is implemented in SQL Server 2005. Also we got an introduction into the various kinds of errors that may be thrown, and the results of such errors. For instance, which errors stops a batch execution,...

At the CCIB (Centre Convencions International Barcelona) where TechEd is held, there's also a trade show where a lot of the interesting 3rd party .NET development companies are showcasing their products. It's a great opportunity to get a look of the new cutting edge technologies that are being marketed either using or for the .NET framework. I recently held a demonstration at several of the Danish universities, showcasing - amongst other - the PreEmptive DotFuscator product. As PreEmptive had a stand at the trade show, I got a great opportunity to meet up with them and get...

When I looked at the next session slot I stumbled upon a new topic that I had neither seen nor even heard of before, the Microsoft .NET MicroFramework. Now what's that? Chad Hower started out by telling a joke. Companies today are being forced to hire people of all races, religions and beliefs. So this company hires three cannibals. When they were hired, the were explicitly told that they could not eat anyone from the company as that would not be accepted! Everything goes fine for the next three months. Then suddenly one of t he secretaries goes missing....

The first demonstration for the day was without doubt the most anticipated one amongst most people here. God himself, Anders Hejlsberg gave a demonstration of the latest LINQ technology. Wow, just wow, LINQ is going to revolutionize the way we think of accessing and modifying data through .NET. We no longer have to use the old bulky SQL statements that were prone to errors due to lack of type safety, runtime compilation/execution. Instead we can write SQL-like statements inside our normal code and return various collections, matching the database structure, giving us total type safety, very readable code and excellent...

I arrived at Barcelona yesterday for the 2006 Microsoft TechEd conference. Phew it's hot. While Denmark has sunk into a state of winter, Barcelona's still hot and humid, it's nice to be able to walk outside in just a shirt without getting a cold or being appointed to a mental institution. We only had a couple of hours during the day before the arrangements for the night began. As I haven't had a chance to upload my pictures yet, I'll postpone my trivial tourist blogs until a later point, after all, that's not what's interesting. In the evening...