Silverlight Assault Course: Dublin, Cork, Upavon

Big thanks once more to everyone attended.  As promised I would provide a link to my samples, enjoy.

http://cid-f6bb92b5df4cfec0.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Speaking/SilverlightAssaultCourse.zip

Silverlight Essentials in Upavon

So after an intense weekend in Dublin and Cork, myself and Rich do it all again, this time in Upavon, Wiltshire.

If you’re going to be there, see you tomorrow, it should be a lot of fun.

For details of the event, see the following link:

http://www.richplum.co.uk/meetings/20090124.pdf

Silverlight Assault Course Ireland: Thanks

Just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone attended the Assault Course in Dublin and Cork.

Also a big thanks to Microsoft Ireland + MTUG Ireland (especially Martha and Joe) for organizing everything.

We will try and get the links up for the samples, soon.

For a great overview of the weekend, check out Johns Blog

January is the month of Design in NxtGenUG

Have we all forgotten we are developers at NxtGenUG, the majority of our sessions across all our user groups for January are to do with design.

To be honest, they all look great as well :)

For a different view on the world

Southampton

Tricky + Dr Neill

http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=184

Coventry

The Designer / Developer story, Simon Sturgess and Timothy Hustler

http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=176

Birmingham

Tricky again

http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=173

Cambridge and Oxford are the only ones not going all designy.

Dr Neil and Tricky in Southampton

Both Tricky and Dr Neil are in Southampton this Thursday Evening

I really wish I could make this event, looks a cracker.

Sign up here:

http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=184

DDD7: Thanks for the great feedback

I just got my feedback for my “Introduction to Windows Azure” session (or as it was titled “Welcome to the Cloud”.

Looking at the scores and comments, the feedback was incredibly high.

Big thanks to everyone who attended my session and gave me such great scores, it really is appreciated.

Even bigger thanks to everyone who was involved in the organization of DDD7, it was just a superb day, well done guys.

Silverlight Assault Course: Ireland

It looks like we might be sold out for the Dublin & Cork legs of the Silverlight Assault Course :)

I’m really looking forward to coming across to Ireland and doing the assault course with Richard Costall, John McLoughlin, John Price and Martha Rotter.

On Saturday we are at Microsoft in Sandyford and on the Sunday we are in Cork.

I’m really looking forward to this as I lived in Dun Laoghaire for about a year (about 12 years ago)

Anyways, can’t wait to be back across, see you in Ireland.

17th Dublin - Details to Follow - see Martha's Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/martharotter/

18th Cork - http://www.cork.mtug.ie/Events/EventInfo.aspx?ID=a607584a-2fa2-475b-ba8e-4ba9786d9814

Azure: Replication delay updating blobs in storage

I blogged about this about a week back, and I was thoroughly confused and thought I was imagining things.  I now know I wasn't dreaming and can now reproduce it.

If you update (overwrite or (delete + add)) an existing blob in Azure Storage Services there is a chance you will be served up stale data, if you are working on multiple servers (note single server is ok)

My Test Environment

To prove I wasn't mad, I ran my Azure Blob Browser application on 2 different machines (my local machine + on a remove desktop machine).

All I did was Add / Delete / Update blobs in a container in my storage account.

Adding + Deleting a blob

So if I added a blob or deleted a blob, the change was reflected instantaneously (or at least as quick as my mouse) on both machines.

Updating a blob (replication delays)

If however if I updated a blob (either by overwriting the blob or by deleting and adding a new blob), the blob had not replicated to the storage account server that the remote machine connected to.

The blob was still correct in my blob browser on my local machine, however on my remote machine it was still displaying (etag + last modified) and downloading stale data.

Conclusion

Although you can assume that once you add or delete a blob in azure blob storage services that all instances of your application will have access to the data, at the moment you cannot make the same assumption for an update (unless you are a single instance service).

I'm not sure if this is intentional or is a bug (after all this a CTP release).

As I said on my previous post, I do need to dig into things a little more and get more details on the replication mechanism used.

Silverlight Assault Course in Cork (free)

So if you want a day's worth of Silverlight presentations for free, you live near Cork, and are free on Sunday the 18th of January then you better come along to the Silverlight Assault Course.

Places are limited to 20 folks (sign up here)

For more details on the cork event see Martha Rotter's blog

For a full breakdown of the agenda see the NxtGenUG website

And I'll see you there :)

Generating a new guid in powershell

This one is for me, so I don't need to keep trawling for this.

If you need to create a new guid in powershell, the following command will do it.

[System.Guid]::NewGuid().ToString()

Silverlight: I've been made MVP

Wow, I've just got the best new year news.

I've just been awarded MVP status (in Client App Dev) :)

I'm just blown away to be given this.  Thanks to everyone :)

Happy New Year