Tag: evangelism

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP)

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)
Jim Wilcox – 2019-2020 Microsoft MVP – Developer Technologies

This showed up in the mail today! Despite the April 1st date, it’s not an April Fools’ gag after all! I’ve only ever seen one of these trophies in person before this one. I’ve been trying to stay chill about it…. but heck, here it is…

I’m profoundly honored and thankful to say that Microsoft has chosen to award me with this 2019-2020 “Most Valuable Professional” (MVP) award, in the category of Developer Technologies!

If you’re not familiar with this award program, check out the program’s official web site: https://mvp.microsoft.com

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Microsoft Build 2017 Recap

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)
[Edit:  I wrote this originally back in May, 2017, but realized I never published it.  Anyway, very belated, here’s a rundown on Build 2017 with some light analysis at the end.]

You know an event is “Epic” when, at its conclusion, leaves you feeling like the climax was forever in the making and then suddenly complete…  done…  over.   Even post-event celebrations feel like the long drawn out ending from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Build 2017 is an interesting twist on that for me.   I spent most of the beginning of 2017 looking forward to it.  Then it finally came, and the world was in its midst. 

The twist is that Build, for me, is not the end, but a refreshed beginning.  It’s the kickoff of new ideas, new development stories, and new opportunities, rather than an end.   Build came and went, and left me feeling like I’m alive at the best time in the history of the world to be a developer, and especially a full Microsoft stack developer.

I’ve already presented my recap a couple of times.   Here’s the slides.

[office src=”https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=90A564D76FC99F8F&resid=90A564D76FC99F8F%211274221&authkey=&em=2&wdAr=1.7777777777777776″]

The slides are not as well organized however, so I’ll run through a recap with a bit more organization.

Platform:   Azure

  • Azure IoT Edge
I liken Asure IoT Edge to the autonomic reflexive system of the cloud.
  • Cloud Shell Management
  • Azure Management Mobile App for iOS & Android
  • Appsource
  • Azure Stack

Platform:  3rd Party

  • Visual Studio for Mac

Platform:  Mixed Reality

  • AI-enabled Workplace monitoring
  • New motion controllers
  • Acer & HP MR Dev kits available

Platform:  Windows 10 client

  • Fall Creators Update
  • Remix
  • Fluent Design System
  • Project Rome & Graph
  • Legacy App Bridging
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Windows Identity & FIDO
  • Ubuntu Linux updated
  • SUSE & Fedora Linux added

Platform:   .NET

  • .NET Standard 2.0 & XAML Standard 1.0
  • Embeddinator-4000
  • Live Player for iOS & Android

Technology: Cognitive

  • Twice as many services available under Azure Cognitive Services banner

Technology:  Database

  • PostgreSQL as a service
  • MySQL as a service
  • Cosmos DB

Technology:  BOT FX

  • Adaptive Cards
Technology:  Cortana 
  • Hardware units from Harmon Kardon, HP, Intel

Concluding Observations

Microsoft has fully given up on Windows 10 Mobile as an OS, and redefined “Mobile” to mean that the computing experience roams across all devices.  This is now what they mean when they say “Mobile First / Cloud First”. This roaming experience even cuts into iOS, OS X, and Android.  The big celebration of Build 2017 is “Microsoft is no longer a monopoly” which means that they are on top of “innovation hill” again.  Expect amazing things from Microsoft, and expect them to be on their game once things like Augmented Reality to really dig in on the consumer market.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Back To Where We Belong

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Big changes for me lately, so more of a narrative personal post than a technical presentation…  and with apologies. I’ve been too wrapped up with the finer details of finishing up my project with Fidelity to get any blog posts out at all since November last year (yikes). 

I’ll get back to the regularly scheduled broadcast shortly.

About this time two years ago, I started a project with a financial firm out in Back Bay, in the John Hancock tower.  We rolled out SharePoint 2013 on-prem, and migrated it from multiple legacy farms… both of which were WSS3.0.   So between the build out and migration, I ended up on that project for a solid three months or so.  Not a bad gig, but… Boston commute (thank God for the Boston Express Bus), and no C# (not even ASP.NET).  It was really more of an IT Pro gig than development.  I was able to do some really fancy powershell stuff to manage the migration, but definitely not my first choice.

That fall, I landed a role on Fidelity’s new order management/trading desktop build-out. I have to say, that was roughly the kind of project I’ve been angling for, for years.  

Technology-wise, the only thing that could have made it any better was to be Windows 10/UWP based, maybe with mobile tendencies.  Alas, building rich clients of any sort is relatively rare, so .NET 4.6 is better than… not .NET at all. 

Still… All C#/WPF, desktop client…   

A good number of my most recent technical posts and presentations were heavily influenced by this project.   Sure, Boston again… for a good portion of it… but they let me work at Fidelity’s Merrimack location for a good chunk of the latter half of the project, too.

And it was maybe the longest running single version project I’ve been on in my life.  I was on it for 18 months…  a full three times longer than a “big” six month project.

All that to say I haven’t spent a full, regular day at a desk at BlueMetal Boston’s Watertown office in just about two full years. 

In that time, I’ve seen too many great teammates move on, and about as many new teammates join us.  We were employee owned back then, and I rode out the entire Insight purchase while “living” at the clients’ site.

Still, one thing that bothered me is a pattern I don’t intend to continue repeating.  When I took my position at Jornata that became BlueMetal, I accepted the title of Senior Developer, even though it appeared to be a step down from my Systems Architect title at Edgewater. 

My reason for accepting that was primarily that I was joining Jornata as a SharePoint make/break, and I needed to get a little more SharePoint experience under my belt before I was comfortable calling myself a SharePoint Solutions Architect.   By the time the BlueMetal merger worked itself around, I realized my options had opened broadly.  I got the SharePoint experience I needed, but it became very apparent that it wasn’t the experience I wanted.  Unfortunately, I was stuck with the “Senior Developer” title even on projects where my depth of experience went much deeper. 

SharePoint is cool for using, and even integrating, and IT Pros get a lot of mileage out of it, but as for software developers… well…  let’s just say I let SharePoint fuck up my career enough that I had to re-earn my “Architect” title.  (pardon my language, there’s no better word for it.)  I always deliver a win, but I’m a Visual Studio kinda guy.  I’m still happy to develop integrations with SharePoint, and support the SharePoint community… but while there’ve been major improvements in the past few months alone, Microsoft has been muddling it’s SharePoint developer story for years, and I let myself fall victim to it.

Thankfully, the Fidelity project did the trick…  it was just the level of high-touch, real Enterprise application development that I needed to earn my self respect back, and prove out my abilities in the context of BlueMetal. 

I’ll admit, while I feel this is restoring my title, it is certainly not lost on me that “Architect” at BlueMetal is a class (or two) above “Architect” in any of my previous companies.  I always felt I was there, even if I felt discouraged and unsupported by my former teams.  I am truly honored to be among those who’ve earned this title in this company, and very appreciative of the recognition.

At BlueMetal, I’m supported and inspired by my team, and really seeing this as validation that my career vector is now fully recalibrated.

I’ve said this before: meteorologists are very well educated with lots of fancy tools to help them be more accurate, but reality is that unless you’re standing in it, you don’t really have much hope of getting it truly right.  I have no intention of becoming a weatherman architect.  Hands-on the code is where my strength (and value) is, so that’s where I’ll always shoot to be.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Data Persistence in Windows Universal (8.1) apps (Boston Code Camp 23)

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Thanks to everyone who joined me for my Boston Code Camp 23 presentation.  Shuffling data around is a core responsibility of any serious computing platform.  Windows Universal really goes above and beyond the mundane call of duty with consistency and utility. It’s part of what makes the Windows client platform a true “cloud car”, especially with its Backup, Roaming Settings / Folders, and Roaming Password Vault capabilities as native functionality… all from the Windows.Storage namespace.

Here are

For the individual who asked what encryption level the Windows Password Vault functionality uses, I looked it up, and it’s 128bit AES encryption.  Stern stuff there.

Another question came up about app backups.  As I said in the presentation, the content of the Local storage is backed up automatically to the cloud by the OS.  (Isn’t that fantastic?!)

Likewise, as mentioned, the Temporary storage is excluded from backups.

One detail I missed however… the LocalCache storage area.  LocalCache is like Local except that it is not backed up.  LocalCache differs from Temporary storage in that the OS will not wipe it as it occasionally does the Temporary storage.  Next time I do this presentation, I’ll make sure to update it to discuss LocalCache.

Here’s a comparison of the storage options available to developers in the 8.1/universal platform. Note that each user on a device gets their own app-specific sandbox *and* OneDrive space for each installed app.

Type Availability Limits Settings hashtable Backed Up By OS Sync’d to all App / User / Devices by OS Encryption Wiped By OS if space is low Uri prefix Suggested use
Install Package Universal Static/ReadOnly Media from Install No No No Sandboxed No ms-appx:// Version specific static app media
Local Universal Available free storage Yes Yes No Sandboxed No ms-appdata:///local/ General
Local Cache Windows Phone Only Available free storage Yes No No Sandboxed No   Persistent cache
Temporary Universal Available free storage Yes No No Sandboxed Yes ms-appdata:///temp Semi-persistent cache
SD/Removable Universal Available free storage No No No None No   Removable/general
Roaming Universal 100k Yes (by virtue of roaming) Yes Cloud Partitioned No ms-appdata:///roaming Roaming settings
Password Vault Universal 100k (included in Roaming) Password-friendly structure (by virtue of roaming) Yes Cloud Partioned + 128bit AES No   Roaming credentials /OAuth tokens

I asked my stunt audience (the kids) later what my presentation had been about.  I was glad to know at least one of them had gotten it right. 

They were inspired, though, and that’s the important part. 

I hope you found inspiration in technology from both the day and maybe in some small part from my presentation.

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Cobbler’s Shoes

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed the holidays!
 
I took time off for the holidays… not as much as I’d have liked to, but enough to enjoy it.

What’d I do?

The cobbler finally got a chance to tend to his own shoes, at least infrastructure wise.

A few years ago, I caught that MS was giving away a license to Windows System Center Core, and I realized I had enough retired hardware to cobble together a hobby-level host. I then did a Physical->Virtual on my small network of Windows 2003 based servers that I ran the NHSPUG website from.

The setup was nice, actually… all three virtual machines ran with room to spare on what was originally an old client-class PC. With dynamic RAM turned on and all three VMs cranking, they occasionally managed to consume nearly a third of the host’s 8GB of RAM.

Having recently had opportunity to get a hold of platform MSDN licensing, I upgraded my entire home network infrastructure by two platform generations across the board.

Seriously… Windows Server 2003 ->  2012 R2 64, SQL 2005 -> 2014, SharePoint WSS3 -> SharePoint Foundation 2013.

Almost all of it was build, replace, rip… build new VMs, integrate them into the domain, migrate data & config as needed, then shut down the systems they replace. The fun one was SharePoint WSS 3.0 upgrading to Foundation 2013. I had to bounce the content databases off a spare 2010 farm I had left over from a project at work. It was nice that it was possible to do that, given that the 2010 farm was a different domain. It’s amazing how much you can get done in short order when you are a one-man IT shop… the communications overhead savings alone is unreal.

The hard part is that newer software in the 64bit range uses much more system resources, so I have extended hosting not just to my System Center, but also to two Windows 8.1 Pro systems running Hyper-V, just to spread out the necessary load and provide some critical system redundancy.

With that, only obvious thing externally is that the Granite State NH SharePoint Users Group website ( http://www.granitestatesharepoint.org ) is now SharePoint 2013 based.

Internally, things generally seem a touch faster, smoother… maybe that’s just psychological, but I notice the difference, even if my wife & kids think it just functions as always, as expected.

I guess the irony in this is that my hobby infrastructure backlog is knocked down a few more notches than I thought I would ever get to… (yes, I took time off from work, and, to chill, I did some of what I do at work.) now my hobby development backlog has new possibilities and subsequently grown substantially.

One of the first things I’ve got to take care of is the few services the SharePoint upgrade has caused… the NHSPUG site still has some cosmetic issues I want to sort out. My Windows Phone apps that integrated with the WSS3 site are now broken, and I have some jiggering to do with my dev environment before I can even diagnose them. That doesn’t even cover some of the things I want to do with the NHWPAD group and my hobby/portfolio projects (e.g. Jimmy Sudoku).

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

An Alternative Profile, in C#

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

The folks at BlueMetal keep profiles of each team member on the web site.  They asked all of the recently added teammates to draft up a profile. The hard part for me was that it felt like I needed to model and express myself in terms of… C#, of course.  🙂   I wrote this with enough supporting scaffolding to get it to compile…

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using BlueMetal;
using Microsoft;
using Database.SQL;
using Web;
using Mobile;
using Services;
using Cloud;
using Experience;
namespace Profile
{
    public class Jim_Wilcox : SeniorApplicationDeveloper
   {
      private Jim_Wilcox()
       : base()
     {
        Blog = “http://granitestatehacker.kataire.com”;
       CommunityLeader =
         Community.NH_SharePoint_UsersGroup |
         Community.NH_WindowsPlatformApplicationDevelopers_UsersGroup;
       EventCoOrganizer = Community.SharePointSaturday_NH;
       YearsOfExperience = Qualifications.Decades;
       Vision = Qualifications.EnterpriseLevel;
       LearningMode =
            Qualifications.Continuous | Qualifications.EarlyBinding;
       Skills =
            Skill.NET | Skill.MVC | Skill.SharePoint | Skill.TFS |
           Skill.Azure | Skill.SQL | Skill.Many_More;
       Industries =
           new System.Collections.Generic.List<Industry>() {
             Industry.Military, Industry.Telecommunications ,
             Industry.Retail, Industry.Financial ,
             Industry.Healthcare, Industry.Hospitality ,
             Industry.Concierge, Industry.Construction ,
             Industry.Many_More};
     }
      public static async Task EngageAsync(StatementOfWork context)
     {
        await BlueMetal.Project.Execute(context).UsingDeveloper(Individual);
     }

     public static Jim_Wilcox Individual{ get { _unique = _unique ?? new Jim_Wilcox(); return _unique; } }

     }
}

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Aggregating Windows Phone Store Apps into RSS

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

Naturally, there’s an app for the Granite State NH Windows Phone Users Group.   🙂

I recently added the ability to aggregate listings from the Windows Phone app store to create a list of apps published by our members.  RSS seemed the natural way to present the info, since it was consumed easily by an App Studio app.

I showed it off a bit at the users group, and got a few requests for some of the code.

Once published, you should be able to go to http://{yourserver}/{optional}/GSWPUGServices.svc/GetData to load the RSS feed.

It’s currently published at http://www.kataire.com/GSWPUG/GSWPUGServices.svc/GetData

Here’s the project.

http://sdrv.ms/1cNYO9T

Tech in the 603, The Granite State Hacker

Alaska, Undiscovered Country

Jim Wilcox (The Granite State Hacker)

There’s been a note of surprise in the money news of late about Alaska. 

It’s become a bit of a surprise that the most sparsely populated state in the US has suddenly become the hottest opportunity for corporate growth.  Alaska is a place where consumers have been largely ignored and fully under served…  yet suddenly logistics technology caught up with economists.  The change in tide has come about so suddenly that there’s actually a race to get established there before the market gets saturated by competition.  (For Example)

What’s a tech blogger doing, pointing out an economics topic?  Well… here’s where the post turns into a geek post…  🙂

I can’t help but notice a parallel between the Alaskan boom and the Windows Phone boom that’s also under way.  Corporations in saturated markets (IOS and Android) meet the growing, underserved market, and the realization that both past investments and new technologies can be leveraged…  and suddenly there’s a whole new customer base waiting to be conquered in terms of apps and customer attention and loyalty in the company’s native space.

Unlike Alaska, the Windows Phone market is global.  It’ll likely literally take something earth shattering to make Alaska a bigger part of the US market than one of fifty states.  Windows Phone Store is already serving over 100 markets world wide.

Unlike Alaska, the Windows Phone market growth opportunity is virtually unlimited.  A company that conquers an Alaskan market will see growth, but it will not likely ever exceed the established markets in the lower 48.   In the Windows Phone market, a company could make it’s big break there in the relative scarcity of competition, and even as the Windows Phone platform market share grows, could end up seismically shifting the landscape in their market.

Unlike Alaska, there’s no logistics challenge.  Many companies already have all the elements required to make the jump to Windows Phone…  the talent pool, the code base, the infrastructure, very likely existing network services and even binaries.

Microsoft and Nokia have already taken the Windows Phone platform to the many Alaska’s of the world, and the platform’s already beating out the likes of both IOS and Android in many of them.   The US market is critical, but Microsoft (and Nokia) know that these the Alaska’s they’re winning in will eventually unite, and overwhelm from the edges as the incumbent platforms fade past their maturity.  Those with vision beyond this quarter’s numbers would be wise to jump on board before their competition saturates their market.