.NET Rocker

The much anticipated release of Silverlight has finally arrived.  I know there has been rumors and speculations, but it ship as promised “by the end of the year”.  I am rather excited about this release, even outside of the new version of PivotViewer.  It comes packed with a ton of new features and addresses most of the issues that developers have come across in previous versions.

You can find the official release announcement on over on the Silverlight Team’s Blog.  I’m sure the Twitterverse and Blogosphere will be packed with announcements as well.  So what are you waiting for, run out and get the new download on the Silverlight Download page.

Also go take a look at Pete Brown’s blog for a fairly detailed list of features.

What, still here?  Good.

Since it’s Christmas time and we got a new Silverlight release, I decided to do a 12 Days of Silverlight series to showcase some of the new SL5 features.  Should be fun, so make sure you stop back by to check those out.  My PivotViewer Basics series might have to wait till after the 12 days, but we will see how energetic I am.

I just wanted to finish up by congratulating the Silverlight team on doing an amazing job.  As a MVP, it’s been an incredible experience being able to watch the release mature and to see what the team was able to accomplish in such a short period of time. So great job on the release everyone!

So it’s the Monday after our first Houston GiveCamp and I must say, I’m still exhausted.

I have to admit, the other organizers and myself were a touch worried about how the weekend would turn out.  Part of us thought that we would be sitting down attempting to handle all of the projects ourselves.

Turns out, we had nothing to worry about.  We had an incredible group of developers and volunteers show up and hit the ground running.  After two nights of very little sleep, this group created some amazing work and had a little fun in the process.

We also had 8 great charities this year :

• LifeSupport
• Chrysalis
• Guardian Pit Rescue
• Habitat for Humanity
• Knights of Columbus
• Watch Over Me
• Real Life Angels
• The Friendship Center

Once we get all of the sites launch and in production I will do another post so you can check out how awesome the Houston team did!

I want to thank all of the people that helped make the weekend possible.  I had a great time and it was a lot of fun getting to meet everyone.

I might even sign up for another year….

Well, I’m about 6 months into the blog and decided to migrate to WordPress.  I’ve been looking into this for a while and decided it was better to do it sooner rather than later.

Boy was I glad that I decided that.  I’m in the middle of cleaning up the posts that didn’t convert properly and I couldn’t image having more to clean up.

So what does this mean for this blog?  Well there will be a period of cleanup, and then I have a list of new items coming.  In addition, I have a few new projects that will be surfacing soon and am looking forward to receiving some feedback on those.

Thanks for the patience during the migration.

Well we have been talking about it for a while, but there will finally be a GiveCamp event in Houston.  The event will be held between Nov 5 - 7th in the Galleria area.

Now if you have never heard of the GiveCamp events, you are missing out.  You can check out the main GiveCamp website at http://givecamp.org.  The event lasts for 2 days.  That’s right, 48 hours straight thru.  You have teams competing against each other consisting of 4 to 5 developers, designers, and dba’s.  Each team is assigned a charity who is in need of either a new website or enhancements to their current solution.  At the end of the 48 hours, each team will present their solutions to the group for judging.

Sounds simple right?  If so, then make sure you sign up and get involved in your local event.  It’s a great way to give back and have some fun in the process.  We promise to have plenty of caffeine to get you thru the weekend.

I’ll post more information on the Houston event once it becomes available.  I’m in charge for finding sponsors for the event, so make sure you contact me if you are interested.

Join us this Thursday for an evening with Claudio Lassala as he discusses Command design patterns, Lambda Expressions, Extension Methods, fluent interfaces, refactoring, test-driven development, writing elegant code, and more. This session will cover a little bit of many things learned from projects he has worked on. We expect every attendee to learn a few tricks that can be applied immediately, and also to feel encouraged to go out and research more on whatever area appeals the most.

Also, we will have pizza, conversation, and plenty of door prizes. check our site at http://nhdnug.org for details.

If you haven?t been to a presentation by Claudio, then you can?t miss this one.  You can check out his blog here : http://claudiolassala.spaces.live.com/

Hope to see you there.