Brownie Points: Fun Stuff

You Like Me...You Really Like Me!

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:07:49 GMT

Today I got a special package in the mail. It was pretty heavy. At first I wondered what it could be. Then I remembered receiving an email a few weeks back from Microsoft asking me to make sure my connect profile was complete for a special gift.

What a nice note! Here's the text:

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 are joining the ranks of the best releases we have ever shipped. I am incredibly proud to be a part of the team that is truly advancing the state of developer tools. We could not have done this alone and I wish to thank you for the valuable feedback you provided.
The importance of the community and early adopters in providing feedback as we built Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 cannot be understated. You made the product better, working closely with us through the product development phase by submitting bugs, providing feedback on what features deliver value, and making sure we are building the right products for our customers. It is always our goal to enable you to be outstanding developers by bringing you the best quality product with the features you need. Community contribution is invaluable in helping us to achieve that goal and deliver these great products.
To show our appreciation, please accept our thank you gift. Thank you again for helping us deliver an amazing Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5
All the best,
S. Somasegar
Corporate Vice President,
Microsoft Developer Division

The cube is one of those Laser Etched paperweights with the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework Branding and a quick "Thank you for the lasting contribution you made to Microsoft Visual Studio" S. Somasegar. All of that for submitting a few bug reports. No, Soma, thank you, for making a geek feel important.

Brownies and Cookies

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:53:35 GMT

Dr. WPF suggested in a WPF forum thread that I hand out Brownies as awards. I haven't made a badge for the recipients to display on their Web sites yet, but I think these awards are overdue. So here comes the first batch of Brownies for those individuals (sorry no companies) who have made significant contributions or discoveries within the WPF community (or in some cases did something that just make you go Wow!). They are in no particular order.

Dr. WPF as of right now he is the lead answerer in the WPF Forum over the past 30 days with 116 answers. This also makes him one of the top 10 answerers in ALL of the MSDN forums. This is even more significant when you consider he is the ONLY person in the top 10 who is not a moderator (moderators can mark their replies to a question as an answer). So there you've got a Brownie, hope you're happy now.
Casey Chesnut for WPF Augmented Reality...that just rocks on so many levels.
Josh Smith for writing about 5000 WPF articles on Codeproject.com
Jeremiah Morrill for taking WPF/Win32 interop to a HOLE NUVA LEVEL!

That's it for right now. Don't feel slighted because I didn't get you this time around. There are others that I want to name but I don't want to make the list too long. On another note, I mentioned that in addition to Brownies, I would be handing out cookies for people who could be nicknamed captain obvious.

The first recipient of this dubious honor is none other than me. I made a big deal about the Delegating Command when a similar solution had already been blogged and talked about extensively. This will be the first and last Cookie handed out by me.

Congratulations to the first batch of Brownies, I will get your badges to you in short order.

12th Most Important Mike Brown

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:28:13 GMT

So, I finally committed the ultimate act of vanity and googled myself. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my blog is ranked number 12 (just missing the first page of Mike Browns). Here's the kicker...this is the only post in my blog that has the words Mike Brown in it. Lot's of Brownies, no Mike Brown. I got to number 12 (actually higher there are some dups ahead of me) on nothing but the strength of incoming links.

While that's cool and all, what sucks is that if I leave spaces like I intended to, I have to start all over. Oh by the way if you're looking for info on WPF from a guy named Mike Brown, google says I'm number 1 (even above Chad Brown who mentions Mike Swanson in his blog. Take that Mike Brown Solutions dot com! By the way I'm way ahead of Mike Brown dot com and Mike Brown dot us. Even ahead of Mike Brown sucks dot com (boy did that get tiring when I lived in Cincinnati).

Considering that the former head of FEMA was one of the biggest pieces of news not too long ago and the others have the advantage of having ... I don't know their name on their pages (or in their domain name). And the sheer number of Mike Browns in the world...I'm happy with being #12.

Where do you end up when you google yourself?

Surface

Wed, 30 May 2007 15:07:12 GMT

Have you seen Surface? No...I'm not talking about the doomed TV show about (possibly alien) sea monsters. I'm talking about Microsoft's new table top user interface that takes all those cool demos we've all seen floating around and brings them out of geek fantasy into reality.

The product site is showing it as a solution for retailers and the like. I think this could be the next best brainstorming tool since the whiteboard...especially if you were able to---hmmmm...I'll keep that one to myself.

Technorati tags: Microsoft Surface, Gadgets, Surface Computing.

More Cross Platform Goodness

Thu, 24 May 2007 13:05:37 GMT

Michael Hunter recently hinted that he is working on tools to do cross-platform test automation targeting a Mac. I guessed that it had to do with WPF/E 1.1 (or Silverlight 1.1 *blech* for those who know it by it's public name) which brings elements of the .Net framework to the Mac. I was relatively surprised when he said that's not it.

So, knowing that Michael is (was?) a tester for the Sparkle Team (now Expression Blend), could this be the first hint of Expression for the Mac? Remember you read it here first if it is.

WPF Logo in XAML

Tue, 22 May 2007 23:32:35 GMT

So a kind donor going by the name of Boris, sent me the XAML for the WPF shield. And I share it with you here so that you may use it if you need. I'll show you why I wanted it later... Here is the link...right click and save as... if you want to download. Thanks Boris!

Cancel or Allow?

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 05:22:56 GMT

So I finally saw a Mac vs. PC commercial that I couldn't help but laugh at. This one makes fun of the Windows Vista UAC. It does get a bit overzealous in its actions. But for the most part I go days without seeing it. And I don't mind getting a confirmation prompt when I perform an elevated action.

True story, I am a the guy who gets asked by friends, family, and acquaintances about all things computers. I shunned anti-virus programs as exploiting the fears of the average computer users and used to pride myself on never having had a computer virus before. That was until last December (2005) when the WMF exploit caught me. I didn't click anything, open an executable, or perform any action that would normally deliver a viral payload. The only thing I did was visit a hacked web site that contained a WMF file that because of a bug in IE allowed a Trojan to be installed in my computer. Fortunately, the Trojan was quite obvious that it was there, replacing my desktop background and all. I would like to believe that had I had the UAC it would have intervened in this situation, informing me that I was performing an elevated action which would have alerted me that something was foul. Instead I had to disconnect from the net, backup my documents, and install windows fresh.

So before you go disabling the UAC all you power users out there...think about what the next WMF exploit could do.

Diversionary Tactics

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:49:06 GMT

Okay...had I known Justin Timberlake would have been as funny as he was, I would have made sure to watch SNL this past Saturday. Don't believe me? Check this out.

Also, I don't know what it is about this one...but it is very addictive. For all you game studios out there, please realize that while graphics are nice and everything, gameplay is still king!