Build 2017

Monday, May 15, 2017

Microsoft Build is the ultimate conference for me. It’s a developer conference that focuses on Microsoft’s roadmap for the coming year. Every year after the keynote and first day of sessions I rush to a computer to try out what I’ve learned. It’s such a rush to, as everyone says, drink from the firehose. This year, however, was different. The first day was about server technologies. Normally they save that for the second day.…more

Windows CompactOverlay Mode

Thursday, March 2, 2017

The Creators Update of Windows is coming soon. One of the new features coming with it is a way to keep your UWP app on the screen above all other windows. It’s called CompactOverlay mode, but you probably know it better as Picture-in-Picture. All of the examples that I’ve found online of how to do CompactOverlay mode (all? I mean all one of them) is written in C#. In my work on a day to day basis I work in JavaScript.…more

Visual Studio Code Tips and Tricks

Friday, February 24, 2017

Visual Studio Code has quickly replaced Sublime as my editor of choice. Well, second only to Visual Studio itself that is. Code is very customizable. To the point that I have different configurations on each of my main computers. Kind of a drag. Anyway, Microsoft has put together quite the list of Tips and Tricks for using Visual Studio Code. It can be found on GitHub. This should be recommended reading for all users of Visual Studio Code.…more

Bower is Dead

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Starting from a blank piece of paper or an empty notepad can be a daunting task. Where do I start? How do I get to the productive place? Most of the help that I find on the Internet start with, “Run these 15 npm install commands and then copy this code into these files.” Sure, doing that gets you to someone’s productive place, but rarely does it get me to my productive place.…more

Microsoft Surface Touch Keyboard

Sunday, November 1, 2015

This week was a big week for Microsoft. The Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book came out. Along with them came a host of new accessories including a new Type Cover for the Surface Pro 4. This keyboard/cover is also compatible with the Surface Pro 3 and that is why I was so excited about it and got one. As I may have mentioned earlier, this keyboard is full size chicklet style and utilizes Microsoft’s vast knowledge of building keyboards.…more

Links of the Week

Sunday, November 1, 2015

The first link I have this week is Future Visions by Microsoft. It is a collection of original science fiction stories based on projects currently being researched in Microsoft Research. It isn’t available until November 17th, 2015, but it promises to be really good. I’ll be sure to add this to my reading list. The second link I have is Small Basic from Microsoft. My daughter came to me earlier this week and said she wanted to learn how to program.…more

Links of the Week

Sunday, October 25, 2015

I don’t have thousands of tabs open in my browser like some people do, but I do tend to save things I want to read for later. I then like to spend some time on Saturday going through the tabs and see what there is to learn. This week I thought I’d share the experience with you my dear readers. My first tab is a blog post titled, “Mastering the Arcane Art of JavaScript-mancy for C# Developers.…more

Surface Pro 4

Monday, October 19, 2015

Yesterday at a Microsoft Store I got to play with a Surface Pro 4 for a little bit. It is exactly what I feared, a worthy replacement for my Surface Pro 3. It is fast, and although the screen is just a little bit bigger, the resolution on it is amazing. It feels solid and is just a little bit thinner than the Surface Pro 3. All in all I’d say it is an amazing computer.…more

New Surface Computers

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Microsoft released some new Surface computers quietly this week. The new machines include a new Surface Pro 3 with 128GB storage on an Intel core i7 processor. Color me surprised when I was in a Microsoft store and saw the list of available machines include this. I personally have the 256GB core i7 model and it is a spectacular machine. Also released this week are the Surface 3’s with 4G capability.…more

Build 2015

Sunday, May 3, 2015

This year marks the 4th year that I have gone to the Microsoft //build/ conference. I had to miss last year due to some mix-up at work, but that’s in the past. Every year seems to try and outdo the previous year and this was no different. This year some announcements were made that blew many people away. I was not one of them. I did find many of the sessions were very useful and made the whole conference great.…more