Stop getting stale, stop being lazy... there's a lot of beautiful new development stuff out there that is actually useful. Check out this series of blog posts on ASP.NET Data Services: http://lostintangent.com/2007/12/12/adonet-data-services-part-1-services/ <-- start with that one of course :)
Also, I've finally added a different "Poll of the Day" on Eels: http://www.singingeels.com/ <-- click that. I'd like your opinion if you don't mind... it takes like 15 seconds.
Thanks,
-Timothy Khouri
It's finally starting to cool off a bit at work (dispite a recent promotion to management), so my focus can be put back on Eels! A lot has changed over the past few months, and the site redesign and update is definately long overdue.
JC Money on the Rise
For those of you who don't already know, a good friend of mine (Jonathan Carter) is now a softy (meaning, he works for Microsoft). His new roll is very exciting; coming from being a developer and architect to his new job of Technical Evangelist, I know he's going to bring some great things to the table (and possibly hook a brother up with some insider trading tips and a free XBox!)... we'll see how that last part goes.
.NET 3.5 is Beautiful
If you haven't already heard, the .NET framework version 3.5 is fully released (since November 16th actually). So if you haven't already done so, you really need to click that link, install the new framework, download Visual Studio 2008 (which comes with the 3.5 framework, so skip my previous step), and start doing some great 3.5, C# 3, VB 9, LINQ goodness!
I have to say that while I have a few issues with LINQ to SQL not translating 100%, LINQ in general is amazing, as well as Visual Studio 2008's beatiful new features (JavaScript debugging and intellisense, ASP.NET AJAX integration and a lot more).
By the way, I never spout fluff about MS products, nor will I list featuers that I've seen other people blogging about just to be cool... VS 2008, LINQ, C# 3.0, ASP.NET AJAX... those are truely awesome tools.
Microsoft and the Open Source Community
Something that many of you probably don't know (as my longest lasting "Poll of the Day" has shown) is that Microsoft is HUGELY in love with the open source community. They are not only embracing it full heartedly (one such way is to hire some big names in the open-source community to have them keep doing their greatness), but they are also learning from it.
LINQ is beautiful, and segways into the Entity Framework beautifuly... but EF is "new" only to Microsoft... there have been other similar and great products (cue N-Hibernate) that MS is learning from. I'm not a guru on either product, but I can tell you that the future is bright. Which brings me to my next rant.
The Future - Astoria!
I'm also very impressed with some of the NEW products that Microsoft is coming up with. Astoria is a new way of getting to your data that embraces WCF, AJAX, and clean design. I hope to get into it more in the near future.
All in all, I hope to have an updated design of Eels out soon enough, and some new content on the way. This site has been a very successful test run of how I want to embrace the community, and I hope to really get to my goals in the soon.