Author: Ben Hall

NxtGenUG Cambridge: Creating extendable applications using MEF slides and code

Tonight I gave a slightly modified version of my MEF presentation at NxtGenUG in Cambridge. Thank you to everyone who attended. Slides and code available below. I’ll be repeating the same session, or at least based on feedback, at DDD South West on Saturday.

Download code: Code.zip

The MVC Sample application which I mentioned but didn’t show was taken from http://blogs.msdn.com/hammett/archive/2009/04/23/mef-and-asp-net-mvc-sample.aspx

Alt.Net.UK London – August 2009 – Registration opens TODAY!

Over the past month Ian Cooper, Alan Dean, Sebastian Lambla, Michelle Flynn and I have been discussing the next Alt.Net.UK conference. We feel its time for another conference and this year we are doing it slightly differently.

The plan is:

Friday 31 July Evening 6pm-9pm: Alt.Net Beers: Yes we are integrating Seb’s alt.net event to warm you up with a chance to relax with like-minded individuals @ 82 Dean Street, London, W1D 3HA, United Kingdom (Tequila)

Saturday 1 August Day 9am-5pm: Open Space Coding: Alan Dean’s Open Space Coding Day event joins our weekend. the emphasis is on writing code over jawing @ 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU, United Kingdom (Conchango)

Sunday 2 August Day 9am-5pm: AltNetConf: Open Space discussion about the topics that have grabbed you today. Be prepare to be surprised @ 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU, United Kingdom (Conchango)

REGISTRATION: Opens 13:00 on Tuesday 12th May – Visit www.altnetuk.com for more information.  You don’t need to attend all three events but if you can – that is great! Simply let us know which ones you cancan’t attend so we can plan numbers accordingly.

REGISTRATION UPDATE: As you may have noticed, registration is not open 🙁  Don’t worry – instead it opens 13:00 on Friday 15th May (Tomorrow!).

A huge thank you to our hosts, sponsors and supporters who have made this possible. Times are hard but they are still willing to help which is great!! Please go check out what they do and the services they offer.

Our Hosts

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Our Sponsors

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Our Supporters

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Any questions, please let one of us know!

Dynamic Languages and .NET – Developer Day Scotland slides and code samples

This weekend I was in Glasgow presenting my ‘dynamic languages and .NET’ presentation at DeveloperDay Scotland. I demonstrated how you can take advantage of IronRuby as a language, but also how you could host the DLR within your own application to enhance your feature set. I had a great time and the conference was a great success. A massive thank you to Colin Mackay and the others for organising the event, as well as everyone who attended my session.

Slides can be found below, hosted via SlideShare. Code samples can be downloaded here. Photos can be found here.

I was also involved in the Database Testing panel. Very interesting discussion on how to test databases, thank you to everyone who attend the discussion.

One slight disappointment, Gary Short left before giving his IronSmalltalk grok talk – http://www.flickr.com/photos/colinangusmackay/3496808871/

Next up, DDD South West.

Embedding IronRuby and the DLR into Red Gate’s SQL Data Generator

Over the past few months there has been a lot of discussions online about how embedding the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) into your application opens up some amazing use cases. For example, Phil Haack recently wrote about how ASP.net MVC views can be stored in the database thanks for the DLR.  Resolver Systems have been doing with with great success.

Tonight, my latest article for Simple Talk was published. The article explains how I went about creating a new generator for SQL Data Generator which allows the user to define the data to be generated based on IronRuby code.  I think this is an amazing use case, both for SQL Data Generator and the DLRIronRuby. By taking advantage of the DLR, we have opened up some extremely useful use-cases within the application. To find out more take a look at the article on Simple Talk.

An example of the generator in action is shown in the screenshot.

IronRuby_SDG 

The article includes the source code and binaries for the SQL Data Generator example generator which you can start using within your project.

NOTE: This Plug-in generator is provided ‘as-is’ and is completely unsupported.

Word 2007 – Mouse doesn’t work – can’t highlight text

Not being able to use your mouse when writing a document in word makes life shall we say – difficult. Tonight, I had this happen. My keyboard worked fine, however the mouse simply wasn’t playing. I could select the menu items but if I tried to select anything within the document, it would simply ignore me. This made was not good!

After uninstalling a recent Windows Update (did nothing). I tried running the Office 2007 Diagnostic which reported everything as fine (it really wasn’t). I turned to a repair of the installation which also did nothing.

After a bit of searching, turns out you can start Word in safe mode my holding down control when you start the application. At this point I could use my mouse again. After a bit more searching, I came across this article – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541. This suggests deleting the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData.

After doing this, Word recreated the key and everything was working again. I can now continue…

DDD Belfast: Creating extensible application using MEF

This weekend I was lucky enough to present ‘Creating extensible application using MEF’ at the DDD Belfast conference in, well, Belfast.  The conference itself we really well and I was happy with my session. Slides can be found on Slideshare any embedded below.

Feel free to download the Finished Demos from the presentation. 

Photos can be found on Barry’s blog, who I have to say did a great job of organising the conference, as did Craig and Phil.

UK Conferences – March, April, May

The conference season is upon us and we have some amazing events coming up over the next few months. All of these conferences are free and organised by the community. They are a great opportunity to learn a wealth of information and meet new people at the same time.

SQL Bits

28th March 2009
Geoffrey Manton Building
Oxford Road
Manchester
M15 6BH

Website: http://sqlbits.com/

Agenda:  http://sqlbits.com/information/NewAgenda.aspx

Registration: http://sqlbits.com/information/Registration.aspx

I will be presenting on NHibernate

DDD Belfast

Saturday, 4th April 2009
Belfast Metropolitan College
Gerald Moag Campus
Millfield
Belfast
BT1 1HS

Website: http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/

Agenda: http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/Schedule.aspx

Registration: http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/Register.aspx

I will be presenting Creating extendable applications using MEF

WebDD

Saturday, 18th April 2009
Microsoft Campus,
Reading,
England.

Website: http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/webdd09/ViewNews.aspx

Sadly I won’t be speaking at this one.

Alt.Net North

Saturday, 18th April 2009

Velocity,
Angel Way, Listerhills
Bradford, West Yorkshire BD7 1BX
United Kingdom

Website: http://www.altdotnetuknorth.info

DDD Scotland

Saturday 2nd May 2009
The Continuing Professional Development Centre,
Glasgow Caledonian University,
Cowcaddens Road,
Glasgow
G4 0BA

Website: http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Default.aspx

Agenda: http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Agenda/tabid/84/Default.aspx

Registration: http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Registration/tabid/82/Default.aspx

I will be presenting Embracing a new world – dynamic languages and .Net

DDD South West

Saturday 23rd May 2009
Queen’s College
Trull Road,
Taunton,
Somerset
TA1  4QS

Website: http://www.dddsouthwest.com/

Agenda: http://www.dddsouthwest.com/Agenda/tabid/55/Default.aspx

Registration: http://www.dddsouthwest.com/EventRegistration/tabid/64/ctl/Login/Default.aspx?returnurl=%2fEventRegistration%2ftabid%2f64%2fDefault.aspx

I will be presenting Creating extendable applications using MEF and Embracing a new world – dynamic languages and .Net

 

I look forward to meeting everyone. Keep an eye on twitter as well as I’m sure various comments will be made…

Alt.Net ‘In the North’ Conference – Registration opens at Noon!

Last week Richard Fennell sent through details about an Alt.Net Open Space Conference he has helped organise in Bradford on 17th/18th April 2009.

The event will be hosted by Black Marble at their office in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and there will be space for 50 attendees. The format will be the same as previous UK Alt.net conferences.

  • A planning session on Friday the 17th April from 7pm to 8:30pm, followed by a trip to a bar to socialise
  • The open spaces sessions from 9am to 4:30pm on Saturday 18th April.

Registration opens at noon today so if this is something you are interested in find out more at http://www.altdotnetuknorth.info