I just checked the Las Vegas forecast for the next week as I head out for MIX tomorrow.. But I know mostly I have to dress for indoors and a/c.

Wally is wondering which of the two possible covers might work for an upcoming book.

I thought I'd help him out by make the decision a little harder.

Mike Taulty has been doing short screen casts about LINQ to SQL. I love his approach as I know from experience how difficult it is to try to give a decent presentation of LINQ to SQL in a single 90 minute session when you have to start from scratch.

There are 9 so far and more coming. Here is a link to the latest (that includes links to the first 8 as well). Stay tuned for more.

From the ADO.NET Team blog:

Late last week, after bits had been finalized, we found a bug in the ADO.NET Entity Data Model Wizard that shipped with Visual Studio “Orcas” beta 1. The problem has now been corrected.

Please download and install the patch available at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f69e9eb8-0ebd-4fba-a4cc-2050297ba75b&displaylang=en to fix the problem.

Panel on Open Source in the Microsoft Community at DevTeach

www.devteach.com

I have been futzing with WPF/E today trying to get the concepts down and when I looked up, I saw a post from Mike Taulty that said telerik has Silverlight radControls!

The "blimey" comes from MIke, because the relative American exlamation is R-rated!

www.telerik.com/silverlight

Very cool demos.

It took me a while to figure out how to get the WPF/E project template into Visual Studio 2005. Read more...

[A New DevLife Post]

In their Q1 release, telerik is including the first release of telerik Reporting. With my well-documented, love/hate relationship with Crystal Reports, I was definitely eager to see telerik's implementation. Telerik is all about simplicity (of use) and design. So this first pass at Reporting has some really great mechanisms for formatting reports in a CSS-like manner, which I really like. Another big win for me over Crystal is that while Crystal has evolved into a .NET tool, telerik's was designed in .NET. So you can interact with all of the controls in the report in the same manner as any other control in .NET.

Another benefit is the ease of using the reports in a winform or a webform. The only thing I know that is different is that the webforms don't support multi-column reports.

While there are definitely some more complex things I can achieve in Crystal (and I have the scars to prove it) that I can't yet do in this first version of telerik Reporting, I expect great things to come of this tool as we see it growing over future releases.

On top of all of this, I'm happy that I can actually copy and paste more than one control at a time.

There's a lot more to see in there. Check out the download. You can also download the extensive help files.

I watched a short interview with Scott Guthrie and learned some interesting things about ASP.NET (such as it is the technology behind MySpace's 4 BILLION page views a day)... read more...

[A New DevLife Post]

While there are still a few patches of snow on the ground, we have had a spate of warm summer like weather for the past few days. Last time I looked this morning the thermometer said it was 77 degrees! Where I live we aren't supposed to do our planting before Memorial Day (sees and hardy plants are okay, but not things like tomatoes, many types of herbs and other annuals) - that's how long we can expect frost for. Yet here it is April 23rd and it was 65 at 7am and now nearly 80 degrees. Crazy weather. Beautiful weather. I'm looking at my garden (which was covered with snow only 4 days ago) and feeling as though I am way behind the 8 ball already in getting it ready!

I have had my new Lenovo ThinkPad X60 for over a month now and the Touch Screen is my favorite. Read more (and also a bonus tale (confession?) about me absentmindedly leaving my laptop behind (open and running) at the Sofia, Bulgaria airport - oops)

[A New DevLife Post]

Ascension Technology

Very high tech medical firm. They make things like the little microscopic cameras that surgeons use to look inside or bods. Cool cool.

"Ascension makes 3D tracking devices for medical guidance, minimally invasive surgery, real-time visualization, and target acquisition. Our position and orientation tracking devices navigate, localize, and guide medical instruments for image-guided procedures. They also digitize real-world objects, track pilot’s helmets, and capture human motions for interaction with 3D graphical worlds. The world’s most advanced magnetic and optical trackers, 3D Guidance and phasorBIRD, are at home here."

Two jobs listed HERE on their website.

Microcosm Books (publishes Marine aquarium books ... cool) in Charlotte.

Permanent Part Time job: Book production and web publishing.

Not on their website, but it is here in 7Days (print edition) Classifieds.

Or just email the owner - contact info on website.

Cool Company... MBF BioScience: "Products for Stereology, Neuron Tracing, Brain Mapping"

(Does Eternal Sunshine come to mind? )

Three Jobs Listed on their Careers Page:

Programmer-Entry Level

Senior Software Engineer

Software Quality Assurance Specialist

Okay, not quite Vermont, but right on the state border!

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

I see 16 jobs ranging from PC Installer to Programmer/Analyst to Unix SysAdmin to Manager of Computer Security. I see mention of MUMPS and PeopleSoft among them.

Start here and then filter on Information Systems/IT.

Sr. Marketing Manager – Internet

Primary Purpose

This position is responsible for the management, development, and day-to-day maintenance of the corporation’s websites. Additionally, this position is responsible for working with clients to develop and implement online marketing strategies. The position will report to the Creative Manager.

More info here at ChittendenCorp.com.

New England Federal Credit Union

SysAdmin ("Computer Operations Specialist) is in Seven Days here.

Information Security Program Manager is on NEFCU job page.

Although I haven't gotten my Beta1 bits quite yet , I'm keeping an eye on the ADO.NET Orcas forums and saw that apparently something broke in the Wizard that creates an the schema files from a db. Lance Olson from the ADO.NET team posted that they are aware of the boo-boo and there will be a fix/workaround posted in the next day or two.

Once I got writing, I guess I couldn't stop.

First there was the just published INKED! in aspnetPRO earlier this month.

Now I have the latest CoDe Focus Mobile PC Development (special focus issue published by CoDe Magazine) where along with a lot of cool articles on WPF and Ink (thanks Billy, it was my first foray into WPF-finally), Ink Analysis and more, is my article on Inking in ASP.NET 2.0, AJAX and IE7.

There's one more coming for MSDN Online on the Mobile Dev Center. It's just in final edits right now.

Bipin's website (well, that's one of them)

Bin's latest book: