Category: Events

MIX09 Announcements

There are lots of cool videos of demos and discussions over at Mix09 today. If you haven’t been there you should definitely head on over.

http://live.visitmix.com/

There are lots of cool announcements for new features for the next version of various Microsoft products. Too many for me to even enumerate in a single blog post actually but what’s really exciting is that I finally get to tell everyone what I have been working on these last couple on the job at Microsoft.

I have been working with a small team of developers, here in Minneapolis, who are responsible for the Photoshop Import feature of expression studio. It’s been a very interesting an exciting project so far and it seems like something that developers and designers are both very happy about. Here is a screen shot from the Mix demo site.

ExpressionBlend3PhotoshopImportFeature_web[1]

We’re able to read the layer information from a Photoshop file and import them as separate controls into Blend. Once there a developer can make those generated layers into real interactive controls like anything else in Blend. There is also a re-import feature to ease to workflow from designer to developer. This exact incarnation of the importer is available in the build of Blend 3 Preview, so download that and give it a shot! Feel free to send me feedback if you do try it out.

Expression Studio and MIX09

Tomorrow is Day 1 of MIX09, if you’re not aware of this then you must be living on mars should amble on over and check out what’s in store this year. There’s a lot I can’t tell you but I can say there are tons of cool new features being announced for the first time tomorrow, including the one that I have been working on here in Minneapolis. Also, there are some features that will be demoed during the keynote that will not be apart of the public CTP released at the same time so you should definitely check that out to get a complete idea of the sweetness of the real release.

If you have any questions about features feel free to ask me sometime tomorrow after the keynote 😉 Until then it’s all hush hush.

Groovy Meta Programming at the TCLangUG

Head over to the Twin Cities Languages User Groupmeeting tomorrow night for a meta programming event. Here is a description of the event:

GROOVY METAPROGRAMMING (MARCH 12TH, 2009)

Ruby’s monkeypatching brought the idea of metaprogramming to the masses, or at least to those that weren’t exposed to it in Lisp or C. At its best, metaprogramming can greatly improve productivity, as is the case with Grails, but at its worst it can destroy expectations and induce versioning confusion. This talk introduces the myriad metaprogramming techniques Groovy and dynamic typing allows, shows how some of them are used in real life, and compares them to what’s available in other languages. Oh yeah, all code will be written live.

D-Day 2008 at Surly Brewery

This Saturday I headed out to the Surly Brewery in Brooklyn Center for D-Day. D-Day is the one day a year that you can buy bottles of Surly Darkness. Darkness is one of the best beers I’ve ever had and waiting a whole year just to get to taste it again certainly makes it extra special.

We arrived at 8am and waited in line, freezing our butts off, for 4 hours before the gates opened to let us in. The first 700 people were guaranteed to get their maximum of 6 bottles of darkness for $17 for one, or $100 for 6. Here are some pictures.
12 Bottles of Darkness
Darkness Label up Close

Double Wax Dipped Tops

Darkness and tulips on my keggerator