*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

 
http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-44-soft-skills-every-developer-needs-with-brian-prince/

According to Wikipedia the definition for Soft skills is a sociological term relating to a person’s “EQ” (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills complement hard skills (part of a person’s IQ), which are the occupational requirements of a job and many other activities. In this episode.

In this episode we sat down with Brian Prince, Developer/Architect Evangelist for Microsoft, to discuss the soft skills developers and software engineers need.  Brian has been speaking at conferences about soft skills for many years.  In true Deep Fried fashion this show is chalk full of stories.  We discuss tips for handling one’s career as well as life work balance, sales and communication.

Behind the Scenes

What was great about this show is we wound up recording over two and a half hours of audio. Yes over two hours!  Brian has been a long time friend of the show and even appeared on show #2 on Interview War Stories. We recorded the show from Brian’s hotel while he was visiting Grand Rapids, MI where Woody lives.  Woody drove over to the hotel and setup some gear.  We also setup a camera so I could see Brian and Woody from Mississippi.  Being able to see each other really helped in the dynamics of the show.  I bet if I hadn’t said anything, most would have thought we were sitting in the same room. It is a great show, we hope you enjoy it.

I committed a major faux pas as far as speakers go.  I woke up this morning and realized I had never published my slide decks for the full day Precompiler I did at Codemash 2010 on Back to The Bascis with .NET.  To correct this travesty I immediately grabbed the folder, compressed it and uploaded it to my site for the world to enjoy (or print copies of and burn, either way).  You can find all five decks along with some of the demos at the following URL:

http://keithelder.net/Presentations/BackToBasics/Codmash2010-BackToBasics.zip

Abstract: This all-day session is targeted to anyone new to .NET. You’ll start out with basic “What is .NET?” and move through building applications on in various .NET technologies. Topics covered include:

• What is .NET? Discusses the fundamentals of the .NET platform, what it is, where it can be used, and a few myths about .NET.
• How to Use Your Hammer – Visual Studio Walks you through how to use Visual Studio features like Intellisense, Source Control integration, debugging, and other critical foundational skills.
• A Programmer’s Primer Programming in C# Covers the basics of the C# language from Object Oriented Programming principles all the way to generics, collections, and LINQ. This is a programmer’s primer, which means you should already know at least one language and have some experience programming.
• Client Applications Covers standard Windows applications, Windows mobile applications and newer Windows applications based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
• Web ApplicationsCovers the variety of ways to build web-based applications in .NET. standard ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight and Web Services.

Ok, this is a total trivial post using PowerShell but it just shows some of the crazy fun things one can do with PowerShell.  Here is what this does. It uses the speech APIs in Windows to speak the number of lines of code found in a folder.

$speak = new-object -com “SAPI.SPVOICE”
$x = (dir -Include *.cs, *.aspx -Recurse | Select-String .).Count
$speak.Speak($x)

Of course if you just want the number of lines of code then just run the line in the middle.  But you have to admit, it isn’t near as fun!

NOTE: I am no PowerShell expert, please use the above code at your own risk!

Do you get those annoying messages from Exchange Server telling you your mailbox is over quota and you need to clean things up?  Me too! My problem is I run a pretty tidy mail system.  If I need something for later I archive it, otherwise I don’t keep it around. I also don’t use email for reminders of tasks (Evernote takes care of that).  But for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why I was getting these annoying alerts about my mailbox being full.  I finally had some time to research the problem during lunch today and here is what I found. 

First I opened up my “Folder Sizes” in Outlook to see who the memory hog was.  Turns out it was my calendar.  Here is how you can find out your folder sizes:

This will open the window which allows you to go through the folder sizes.  As you can see my calendar was eating up about 87MB.  When you only have a 100MB quota that doesn’t leave very much room for email.

After looking for a way to clean up the calendar data I gave up and asked one of our gurus at work and this is what he pointed me to.

In Outlook click on your calendar so it is open.  Then in the menu go to “View->Arrange By->Date”.  Then sort by the “End” column.  This will sort all of the things in your calendar by the end date.  The view will look similar to this:

Now that we’ve got the dates sorted simply go back as far as you want and highlight the older dates that have ended and then delete those records.

Tip:  Select the one at the top you want to start with.  Then scroll down to the last one you want to delete and press the shift key while you click on the row.  All the items from the first one you selected to the last one will be selected. Right click and then delete.

NOTE: If you select everything as described above then any reoccurring appointments will also be deleted.  Be careful!

As you can see much space has been recovered.  But now they are all in “Deleted Items” which must now be purged in order to reclaim the space officially. 

Now back to emailing.

No doubt you’ve heard Bing marketed as the “Decision Engine”.  I’ve watched and used Bing over the past several months and the one thing that has impressed me the most is how quickly it has been advancing.  If your perception is that Bing is only good to find answers to programming questions you couldn’t be more wrong.  It does so much more and we are only seeing the beginning. 

Cards

Right now the Winter 2010 Olympics are underway.  A lot of people are no doubt traveling to Vancouver, Canada for the event.  If you go to Bing and type in Vancouver you will see something presented on the results page that is quiet interesting.  Below the ads is a box which has a culmination of things in it like pictures, weather, attractions and so on.  Now you may think that someone at Microsoft went in and created this section on the site.  Here is what I am referring to.

(red box is mine)

This highlighted section is called a “Card” and it is completely auto generated. In other words, no one at Microsoft created that section of the page. Everything is automatic.  These cards are created entirely by the decision engine.  If you see this in the future now you know what it is.

Maps – There’s an App For That

Most people know that Bing has maps support.  But what many don’t know is Bing is doing all sorts of neat things to take online maps to a new level.  One way Bing is doing this is using Silverlight to bring a much richer experience to the online map experience.  When you visit http://bing.com/maps look for the following on the page:

When you click “Try it now” the user interface will be switched from HTML/JavaScript to Silverlight.  This opens up more possibilities for a richer online experience.  Let’s look at some of the things you may not be aware of when you turn this feature on.

Once the new version is loaded look toward the bottom of the screen on the left.  There is a “MAP APPS” link.

This is where things start to get real interesting. Like for example you are able to view maps of the recent Haiti earthquake before an after.

I’ll let you explore around on your own but one of my favorite apps is from Microsoft Research.  The app is called “Destination maps”. The app is simple, you enter an address and highlight around the area of the location.  Press go, and viola! You have a map to your party, anniversary or bar mitzvah.  For example, let’s say I was going to host a crawfish boil at my house for friends. I go to this app and enter my home address.  I then select the surrounding area to cover enough roads leading to my house.

Once satisfied press the continue button and Bing will generate your map in a variety of styles.

Once done your map will appear.  In this example I left the hand drawing version.

I have to say this is really accurate for a simple map to get someone to my house.  And it sure beats drawing it by hand.  There are other applications as well, play around and see which one you like the best.

Future Innovation

Does augmented reality sound interesting to you?  Bing is doing a lot of work in capturing data and adding even more data to put on top of that data.  The best thing to do is just show you.  Check out Blaise Aguera’s talk at TED located at http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html.  It is only about eight minutes long and you won’t be disappointed. 

Hopefully this gives you just enough reason to look into some of the other Bing features I haven’t even mentioned.  The best way is to just head on over and start playing.