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Last year I had the privilege of working on a project for Johns Hopkins University. It was a suite of web applications that provides hospitals with tools for performing predictive analysis in a variety of disaster scenarios. The project was grant funded and as such was very limited in the time and resources available. It was an exciting project with a real sense of purpose, and I was very proud of what we were able to achieve in a short amount of time. My contact at the client emailed me recently to let me know that the response to the applications … Continue reading Nice to get noticed sometimes

Time marches, the seasons change, and so do our lives.  And so, once again, my life is changing.  Today is my final day with Lotic Factor, Inc.  I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with the team at LFI: they are intelligent, dedicated, and a whole lot of fun, both on and off the job.  Unfortunate financial realities may have brought our partnership to an end, but the friendships will certainly endure.  I wish them all the best, they deserve it. As for my next chapter, on Monday I begin working as a consultant at Sogeti (pronounced “sew-JET-ee”), an international consulting firm.  Sogeti … Continue reading The Wheel in the Sky Keeps Turning

On a recent This Week inWindows broadcast, Leo and Mary Jo Foley discussed some of the issues introduced by Microsoft’s abandonment of the Metro brand.  The problem is a serious annoyance to developers and especially technical teachers, bloggers, presenters, and authors. It’s also the source of some not-always-so-good-natured ribbing from the technical community. I’m a big fan of using proper terminology, so when Microsoft declared that Metro was verboten I dutifully tried to expunge it from my vocabulary, but I find it increasingly difficult. Metro was used to refer to the new design language, but it also referred to the new Windows 8 … Continue reading Metro is dead, long live FIRST

I used to blog extensively at http://developingfor.net, primarily about .NET topics but occasionally others.  Strangely enough, I hardly ever blogged about Microsoft Expression Blend (the topic I’m best known for), mostly because I had other outlets for that information.  I essentially quit blogging when I began writing my book, Expression Blend in Action: a developer’s guide.  Anyone who’s written a book will tell you it eats up a significant portion of your free time, so I’m sure it is no surprise that I had precious little time for blogging. As the book neared completion, Microsoft threw us all for a … Continue reading A fresh start