My latest article for ASPAlliance.com has been posted today.  You can read it by clicking here. The article is titled Azure Basics: Say 'Hello' to the Cloud.  This article goes through the basics of using Azure.  I don't think it's my best work, but it does get to the point.  Let me know what you think.  Here's a list of all of my articles.

• CodeSnip: Taming the Page Flash Beast in ASP.NET 2.0
• CodeSnip: Changing the Color of a List Item's Text at Run-Time with Visual Basic 2005
• Using Local Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services in ASP.NET
• Handling Events within a Repeater Control Using ASP.NET 2.0
• Cross-Page Postbacks Made Easy with .NET 2.0
• Book Review: DotNetNuke Skinning Tutorial
• Azure Basics - Say 'Hello' to the Cloud

Take a look at all of them, check them out.  Personally, I think my best one is Handling Events within a Repeater Control using ASP.Net 2.0.  Mostly because it was the most complicated thing I've ever done in programming.

Well, I snagged a couple of pictures that were snapped by Rich Dudley at the code camp on Saturday.  It shows some of our preperation and the presentation. 

Matt, Nate and I preparing in the Speakers Lounge

Nate, making last minute changes... As I start the presentation.

I'm presenting and Matt is looking on.  This is happening at the same time as the last picture.

This one is Nate presenting while Matt and I are looking on.  No picture of Rich, he had the camera.

I'll put up another post up tonight or tomorrow with a link to the presentation.  This won't have any of the code, but it will be my slides.  We want to make the code pristine before we post that.

Well, Rich, Matt, Nate and I just got done with our presentation at the Pittsburgh .Net Code Camp at the University of Pittsburgh.  This was the culmination of a week of Chaos.  Topped with last minute heroics and nervous expectations, we really pulled of a decent talk.

It started with an idea, write an application that would be hosted in Windows Azure using Silverlight 2 and WCF Web Services.  This seemed simple enough to do.  Create the Azure Development Fabric, write some code and deploy to the cloud.  Well, perhaps it would have been that simple if we weren't dealing with CTP (Community Technology Preview) technologies.

The pain started with Azure Table Storage, WCF integration and finally connecting everything to Silverlight.  We spent 20+ extra hours this week in preparation for the talk, including Friday night until 2 AM (I guess that would be Saturday morning.), and getting up and getting to Pitt early to work on it again.

There will be a couple of posts coming outlining the specific difficulties that we encountered and how and if we were able to overcome them.

The funniest part was, I opened the talk with the slide show and going over some of our findings.  In the meantime Nate and Rich were out in the hallway trying to get some last second changes in.  Was it the prettiest presentation ever?  Not by a long shot.  However, it served it's purpose and we got through the whole thing.

Now, we received an invitation to submit an abstract for VS Connections in November, so we'll repackage this presentation and submit it for VS Connections.  It would be cool to be able to do this presentation for a much larger audience.

Now, I'm tired, with 15 minutes until the next presentation.  Then home to my boys.  I haven't seen them in two days, so I miss them tremendously.

With the release of ASP.Net MVC 1.0 we now have a stable, production ready alternative to Web Form development in ASP.Net!  The files needed to implement MVC into Visual Studio are available here.  Thanks to Maarten Balliauw for being on the forefront of letting everyone know that the release is official.

For the uninitiated.  ASP.Net MVC (Model View Controller) is a way of developing that trully seperates the concerns of a project.  In General terms, and greatly simplified, the Model is the data layer, the View is the user display and the controller is the glue that brings everthing together.

MVC will not kill Webforms, but it does offer an alternative. 

As I become more familiar with this framework, I'll put more posts out with information on what I'm doing.  I may also write some articles for some other websites on the framework as well.

Good Day!

ConsultUSA, the company that I work for, is now looking for 4 ASP.Net Developers at one of our clients.  This is a great opportunity to come on with ConsultUSA while it is in a definite upswing.  I was at this particular client before as well.  The client is not going any where, they are as stable as they come and will probably continue to grow, even in this down economy.

If you or anyone you know is looking for a change and the opportunity to get a position that will encourage growth and further opportunity, let me know.  Send me your resume and salary requirements and I'll get one of our recruiters to reach out to you.

Thanks,

Shaun