December 30, 2008 By 61 Comments

Silverlight and the UFC

UFC - The Ultimate Fighting Championships I love the UFC.  It’s the one sporting event I never miss.  I’ve always been a fan of the Martial Arts since I was a little boy and my dad was a bronze medalist in the Chilean National Championship’s.  Now that MMA is going more mainstream, more and more people are getting exposure to the Mixed Martial Arts sports.

This weekend was the fight card of they ear for the UFC, with UFC 92, The Ultimate 2008. Frank Mir vs. Noguiera was an instant classic.  I wanted to watch the weigh ins on Friday night, but I was pretty busy with Christmas still so I missed it.

I was pleasantly surprised on Saturday when I logged onto the site, and noticed they had launched a new Silverlight version of the weigh ins that had an interactive chat window as well as a live stream and recorded stream that you could watch. 

While other videos on the www.ufc.com site are still using the Flash technology, it’s nice to see another big online video site testing the Silverlight capabilities.  Now that Silverlight 2.0 is out, I am hoping to see a lot more tracking from this technology in the months and years to come.

Filed Under: Microsoft Expression, MMA, Silverlight
December 10, 2008 By 33 Comments

I’m a PC!

Miguel Carrasco and John Bristowe - I'm a PC

My wife runs a blog, Real Tech Mom, and she came up with a great idea for “wordless Wednesdays”.  The idea is you put up a picture like the one below and don’t type very much of anything.  It’s based on the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here is my first “wordless” Wednesday post. 

John Bristowe and I were exhausted at TechDays, although I’m sure he was more than I after doing the whole cross country experience. 

Anyway, “I’m a PC”.

Filed Under: Software Development
December 10, 2008 By 34 Comments

TechDays Winnipeg 2008

Techie Crunch Microsoft put on a show this year in Winnipeg on December 4th, 2008 by bringing the TechDays Tour to Winnipeg!  It was awesome to see so many people out at the event.  When I first heard about TechDays from John Oxley, I was pumped!  An EnergizeIT conference that would hit all the major cities? Nice!

What was TechDays going to be?  A cross-country technology conference that didn’t cost thousands of dollars.  A conference that came to the developers, and didn’t require travel and hotel accommodations.  Anyway, I was freaking excited!  I was able to send a bunch of guys from our team at Anvil Digital, and it didn’t cost that much at all!  Better yet, they got a box of Techie Crunch!

What was in Techie Crunch you ask!?  Well, the ingredients included:

  • 6 Month Full TechNET Plus Subscription
  • Visual Studio 2008 Professional
  • Microsoft Expression Web 2
  • TechEd 2008 DVD Set
  • $100 Discount Coupon for Dev/SQL Teach
  • Virtualization Kit
  • Black TechDays Toque

What were attendees saying about TechDays 2008?  Pretty much everyone I talked to or heard talking at the coffee or food stands were amazed at how well the conference was put together.  Sessions were awesome, logistics were awesome, speakers rocked the house, and the simple fact that you could network with people that were working on similar problems and projects you might be working on, was wicked.

I’d like to thank Microsoft for giving me the chance to speak at TechDays 2008 (Deep Dive into ASP.net AJAX Extensions),  and more importantly I’d like to thank Microsoft for coming to Winnipeg.  It’s a known fact that Winnipeg has been passed on a couple times in the past for the big tours.  I think Winnipeg stepped up and showed up to the event in huge numbers for Winnipeg!  Also, since the buzz was so great, I would expect even more if Microsoft comes back next year!

Conferences like TechDays are a fantastic idea!  It really shows that Microsoft is committed to developer community, and making us successful!  A special thank you to John Bristowe for making TechDays awesome from the developer side of things!  TechDays 2008 was a highlight for me this year, as well as many of the guys that came out to TechDays 2008 from our company.  It’s one of those events that makes you proud to be a software developer!

John Bristowe at TechDays 2008

Pictures courtesy of Barnaby Jeans

Filed Under: Microsoft, Presentations, TechDays 2008