Jun 17 2011
Kinect SDK
Microsoft recently release the Kinect SDK which allows you to implement a Natural User Interface and program against it! There is a lot of interest around including claims on how Robotics will change to how you can integrate a light sensor.
You can use Visual Studio (C++, C# and VB.NET supported) and get quite interesting results.
Here are a series of links below which will help you get started.
- Download and install the Kinect SDK
- Download and install Quickstart Samples and Slides (zip file)
- Understanding the Kinect hardware
- Setting up your Dev Environment
- Understanding the basics of skeletal tracking using the Kinect sensor
- Understanding camera fundamentals
- Understanding the audio fundamentals
- Playing with the Coding4Fun Kinect toolkit and seeing how one can build cool apps such as:
- Kinect Paint (which uses skeleton tracking)
- Kinect Mouse which uses your hands as the mouse cursor
Keep and eye out on the Coding4Fun Kinect blog.
Jun 14 2011
Debugger Canvas–Quick Tour
Debugger Canvas is a new user experience for the debugger in Visual Studio Ultimate. It pulls together the code you’re exploring onto a single pan-and-zoom display. As you hit breakpoints or step into code, Debugger Canvas shows just the methods that you’re debugging, with call lines and local variables, to help you see the bigger picture.
Check out the quick demo below to see what it is capable of and read up on the guide on how to use it.
May 27 2011
Using cached domain (active directory) credentials or not?
If you are ever in a situation where you want to find out if you logged into using cached domain credentials (AD) or authenticated against the domain controller then the easiest way is to open Event Viewer and look for the entry where the source is NETLOGON and Event ID 5719.
The description would be something like:
Log Name: System
Source: NETLOGON
Date: 27/05/2011 08:53:17
Event ID: 5719
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: YOUR-Full-Qualified-Computer-Name
Description:
This computer was not able to set up a secure session with a domain controller in domain YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME due to the following:
There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request.
This may lead to authentication problems. Make sure that this computer is connected to the network. If the problem persists, please contact your domain administrator.
ADDITIONAL INFO
If this computer is a domain controller for the specified domain, it sets up the secure session to the primary domain controller emulator in the specified domain. Otherwise, this computer sets up the secure session to any domain controller in the specified domain.
Here is a screenshot (on Win 7) showing a (filtered) view of the same event.
May 26 2011
Troubleshooting WCF Performance – Part 1
More related details on Dustin’s post - WCF scales up slowly with bursts of work.
May 26 2011
How to create a Mini Dump?
If you ever want to get a Mini Dump of a process (of course for debugging purposes) the easiest way to do so is to use Task Manager (or use Sys Explorer). Just find the process you are interested in, right click and select “Create Dump File” and voila.
One thing to be careful – make sure you are using the same version of the Task Manager (or Sys Explorer) as the process. For example if your process is x32 (and you are running on a x64 system), then make sure you are using x32 version of Task Manager and not the x64 as that will cause issues.
Mar 02 2011
Upgrading through every version of Windows
Upgrading through *all* versions of Windows from v1 thru to Win7.
Feb 07 2011
BizTalk 2010
I was wondering what new features of BizTalk 2010 do you like the most? Also are they any must have tools now? I am interested in the following:
- Automated deployment (of interfaces)
- Automated testing (regression and functional where possible)
- Automated configuration management (across various environments – development, various testing, pre-prod and of course prod).
- Coordination with AppFabric?
Apr 08 2010
Free (technical) Microsoft Courses
Channel 9 has a number of free technical courses on a number of emerging MS technologies covering a wide range such as Azure, Win7, Identity, SQL Server 2008 R2, Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4, MOSS 2010, Office 2010, etc.
These cover a number of the features and essentially have everything to get a developer quite comfortable with the stack. In some areas they go a little deep as well. I think its an excellent way to come up to speed.
Here is a quick example of the topics covered in some of the tracks:
- Win7 – how to use the Taskbar, Multitouch, Ribbon, Sensors and Location, Session 0 Isolation, etc.
- Azure – Azure Overview, Azure Storage, Deployment, SQL Azure, etc.
- VS 2010 and .NET 4 – F#, ASP.NET 4, Parallel Computing, ALM, etc.
Feb 14 2010
Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video, stars
Bing Maps adding Flickr images, live video and stars – very cool.
Update: The official TED video below is quite cool and in addition to the one above, also adds more interesting features such as video – check it out.
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