Days of events

In addition to my responsibilities at RSK I also teach for developmentor, and this summer we are trying something new.  We are running days of events, so you don’t have to give up a whole week from the office to attend a training course during August we are running a day of .NET threading featuring C# 5 and Visual Studio 11.  So at the end of the day you will be up to speed on threading for .NET 4 and have a good insight to how things will be different in C#5 when it ships.

In addition to the days of threading we are running a day of design patterns, so if you still find yourself using the same techniques to solve problems, feel your OO skills are getting rusty then come along for a day, and immerse yourself in OO and design patterns.

For more details click here

Async/await mechanics

Just completed two screen casts describing the mechanics of how async and await work using Visual Studio 11 Beta, along with how you can create your own types to await on rather than always using tasks.

Developmentor has moved

In addition to working hard at RSK myself and Richard are also instructors for Developmtor.  Both of us author and teach a range of courses for them.  This year has seen Developmentor move from Hammersmith to central London, for all of you who are based in and around London they are offering an evening of tech and nibbles to show case the new location.  Details below, hopefully see some of you there.

Come and see us! On Monday 6th February 2012, 5-7pm to cement the move to our new London City location in Moorgate, we invite you to our house warming, entertainment provided by Richard Blewett and Andy Clymerwho will be revealing the magic behind the new and exciting C#5 Async and AWait keywords. To register your interest for this free event, please email us salesuk@develop.com or call 01242 525108 .

Code smarter with Design Patterns

Just finished updating the Code Smarter with Design Patterns for Developmentor. 

The course traditionally has focused on GoF design patterns, in this release I have added MVC and Repository pattern, to round off the offering.

Both these patterns build upon the GoF patterns discussed earlier in the course, and show how the basic GoF patterns are often compounded to produce elegant solutions.

Other enhancements include addition of Prototype and Builder patterns, and a general upgrade to the latest features offered by the .NET framework.

To learn more click here

Devweek 2012

RSK guys will be speaking at DevWeek this year, and as usual we will be talking about a large range of cutting edge topics, including

Our fluffy cuddly colouring in guy Dave Wheeler will be doing a huge number of sessions on Windows 8 Metro including the Keynote to get you all fired up, but don’t think they will be all soft, one session includes a COM primer for all those youngsters who didn’t take their COM apprentiship.

Rich will be covering topics from Whats New in WCF 4.5, and the ever cool Reactive Framework, and a deep dive into the GC, something all developers should have intimate knowledge of.

Andy will be covering the new async functionality of C#5, highlighting how you now write both ui and server side code to consume and enable the use of these new wonderful keywords, and doing a whole day of threading as a pre con on Monday

Kevin will be presenting a day of building MVC applications, along with a session on unit testing. 

During the breaks Dr Rock Man will also be there to try and solve your specific technical problems or just happy to hear you rant about the code base you have just inherited.

In total we will be presenting a total 19 sessions, plus pre and post conference sessions.  Hopefully see you there with what should be a fun pact week..

Customer Access Terminal V2

Rich and myself are just about to install the next version of our Customer Access Terminal solution at one of our existing customers.  So it seems a convenient time to mention we now have a web site that provides a detailed overview of all the features in V2.

Face 2 Face Asssit

CAT Terminal on film

The council that recently purchased our CAT kiosk made a short movie for their local tv station, if you are interested in seeing the CAT in action

Click here

The CAT piece is 1 minute 29 seconds into the movie.

CAT Terminal

Following up from my recent post on our CAT kiosk deployment.

Here is a link to the councils own article

Customer Access Terminal (CAT)

Yesterday was a big day for Rich and myself we successfully deployed our CAT software to our first customer in conjunction with our video conferencing partner First Connections.  The software allows members of the public to interact with their local council almost as if they are with them in person.  Allowing members of the public to access services from rural locations.

The kiosk utilises two screens, one being a touch screen.  The touch screen is used to visit specific council web sites, or to start a video call with a member from one of the council help desk team.  Once in a video call the council representative can help complete specific council forms including taking passport style photos with the built in HD camera and customers signatures using a high resolution LCD signature pad.

All built using .NET 4 and Windows Embedded.

Concurrent Data Structures screen cast

Must be screen cast Thursday, another screen cast posted to RSK on Concurrent Data Structures in .NET 4

RSK screen casts

async and await screencast

Just uploaded a new screencast on async and await keywords due to be introduced in C# 5.

Rock Solid Knowledge Screencasts

TPL Dataflow

One parallel pattern that required some work with base .NET 4 was parallel pipe lines.  The CTP release of the Parallel Dataflow extensions, makes this trivial now.  I’m intending to do a screencast really soon to show this action, but in the mean time try it out for yourself you can download it from here

Coding Challenge,an alternative to regular class room training

 

What do most engineers want to do, “Build Things”. Regular training classes are good at introducing new technology, but what if you want to take it further; to stretch and motivate your senior developers. This was the requirement that our major investment bank client presented to Rock Solid Knowledge the co-developed solution was to produce a Coding Challenge…

The Training Day One

The first day was spent with a deep dive into Silverlight; all teams had prior knowledge of WPF. The focus of the day was to effectively demonstrate the differences and similarities of the two technologies, giving the teams the ability to deliver a high quality Silverlight solution to match the code challenge requirements document.

The Challenge Day Two

The three person teams, of senior developers, spent the next 24 hours straight building a working product to the supplied specification. Not only did this test their ability to apply the new technology but demonstrated who ships and who doesn’t. Failing to organise is clearly highlighted when you only have a short period of time to deliver.

The Assessment Day Three

After working nearly flat out for 24 hours the teams submitted their solutions to be assessed by Rock Solid Knowledge. Initial marks were given, with each team then given a technical grilling on their solution to provide feedback on what was good and bad.

The Winner

The winning team all received iPads, a satisfactory reward for all their hard efforts and our client introduced a new technology in a vibrant and compelling way.

If this has wetted your appetite a more detailed write up can be downloaded from here or if you would just simply like to know how we could bring this experience to your company contact us by clicking here

No more free Reflector

Red Gate have announced that from the next release in March no more free versions of Reflector.

http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflector/announcement

Devweek 2011

Just in case you are not aware Dev Week 2011 is fast approaching, this is without doubt the best independent .NET technical  conference in the UK.  I’m delighted to say that Rock Solid Knowledge will be attending again this year delivering a variety of sessions from Parallel programming to Workflow to fluffy UI.  A full list of our sessions can be found here

In addition to the traditional lecture sessions we will be running our drop in clinic where our consultants will help you solve your design and development issues.  The whole team will be there so whether its WPF, Silverlight, .NET 4.0, WCF , Design Patterns, Multithreading, Web Development or anything else, we’ll be on hand to lend a sympathetic ear and hopefully solve your problems.

Software Architecture 2010

Myself and other Rock Solid Knowledge guys have had various talks accepted for Software Architecture conference this October in London.

Rich and myself will be spending a day talking about how to use various bits of .NET 4 technology to build a MVC, WF and  Entity Framework based application.  The aim to build the app live, so you really get to see how this tech actually ticks.

Through out the week I’ll be doing stuff on Patterns, and Parallel programming.

Finishing the week with another day with Rich talking about parallel programming, all using the latest bits of .NET 4.

Hopefully see you there…

Devweek 2011

Just heard that Dev Week in London is going to run 14th to 18th March 2011.   Rock Solid Knowledge will be submitting a variety of talks…If you have some ideas let us know and we will do our best to accommodate.

And yep I’m sure Dr Rock Man will be back for the drop in consultations.

Demos from DevWeek 2010

Thanks to everyone who attended any of the Rock Solid Knowledge sessions at DevWeek we now have all our demos available for download

DevWeek 2010

Had a great time again at DevWeek 2010.

All my demos are uploaded to our conference page.

It was the first year we ran our “Ask the Doctor” booth for all those that dropped in I hope you found the advice useful…we certainly had a great time digging into interesting issues, from unit testing, Entity Framework, WCF and general architecture issues..

EF4 And Repository Pattern

Just released a screencast on one possible way to implement the repository pattern using EF4. I’ve been very down on EF over the past year or so, but its nice at last to see it actually starting to be usable.

You can listen to this screencast or other RSK screencasts here