Yesterday's sessions I attented were rather disapointing. I went to many WinFS sessions, and I realize that except for ADO.NET integration, the product didn't change much. It's still the same data store, with data types, schemes, relations, and a searching APIs, or browsing APIs should I say, as I learned it wasn't mere searching… yeah, right.

I guess this year's PDC is less about listening to Microsoft, and more about installing the bits as soon as possible and play with them. Even though the bits are related to the same products as two years ago, they are more stable, and the interface has less chances to change until release.

I'm already shopping for a new machine to install Vista on. I was thinking about a laptop, as I don't have one. What do you think? Should I stick to a desktop machine?

Tags: PDC05

Yesterday, I went to the Mono meeting. Miguel and his crew were not prepared at all. The room was too small (that's a good sign though), the projector didn't work with two of the laptops, and Miguel ended up doing Q&A for two hours, only showing glimpses of the applications he wanted to demonstrate. I left before the end. I wanted to talk with Miguel, but I guess I'll use the email channel.

I've always been curious about Mono, because I would feel great proud seeing the software I conceived and developed being run on more and more computers. It's not because I'm a Linux advocate. I'm a "liberty-of-choice" advocate. I used to be a Windows developer (WIN32, COM). I'm now a .NET developer, whatever the platform. Why would I complain on seeing Xceed Zip for .NET work on Linux?

Tags: PDC05

The keynote is now over, I just finished a speedy lunch (burp), and I'm sitting in Halls C&D for the "Lap around the Windows Communication Foundation". I'm eager to learn more about the latest state of the "Indigo" part of WinFX.

I'm left with a bitter taste about the earlier keynote. The presentation wasn't that much dynamic (except for Don Box, Anders Hejlsberg, Chris Anderson and Scott Guthrie), and the chance to get a i-mate JASJAR for only 149$, which ended up on a very sad note: 5 minutes after getting out of the keynote, there were none left… all sold out. That means you had to leave the keynote in the middle to get one, even though Jim Allchin told us there were no need to rush out. You can have an outstanding presentation, if the conclusion is disappointment, it ends up useless. This promotion was a bad idea. Someone should have told Jim!

Speaking of Jim Allchin, I thought he wasn't in a good day. He often hesitated and was searching his text a lot. Too bad because I respect him a lot.

Avalon and Indigo, I'm sorry, Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation are too close from releasing to be exciting announcements this year. I feel the concepts I saw two years ago at PDC 2003 didn't change a lot since then. At most, the interfaces have changed a little bit, Visual Studio .NET has improved to expose those functionalities better, but the rest tastes like reheated contents.

I hope to get more new stuff during sessions.

Tags: PDC05

I'm currently in the plane en route for the PDC. I just spent 15 minutes trying to write my first PDC blog entry using Ink Recognition on Xceed's TabletPC. I must admit I'm not ready for this. I made many mistakes while writing, and trying to fix those errors made me only more bitter about the technology. On the other side, I'm currently writing with very little room for my arms since the guy in front of me decided to lay down and moved his seat back. Planes are not for laptops nor tablet PCs. Sure, I would have more room in first class, but I can't afford it.

I would have used my Pocket PC for blogging, has it not been out of power because I forgot the battery charger at work. A colleague travelling with me brought it, but I did not have time to recharge it yet. I'm getting pretty fast in writing with it, though I use the keyboard mode, not the handwriting.

I don't know what to expect of this PDC yet. I didn't have time to prepare my schedule. I just hope to see a lot of WinFS content. I'll probably go to the Mono meeting Tuesday, as the agenda Miguel has put forth is really promising. I can't hide that I will want to talk about Xceed Zip for .NET to the other attendees. Too bad Xceed FTP for .NET only works on the Windows platform. I tried it a few weeks ago on Linux, and it fails, as expected, because the SSL support requires some Crypt32 calls. Even if you don't need SSL, some initialization code is messing up. I'll add to my agenda to look at how to overcome such limitations without having to provide separate assemblies to Windows and non-Windows customers. I may just find my answer at the Mono meeting.

The main reason why I'm a little late on my preparation isn't my last two weeks of vacation. Actually, it should have gave me some spare time. Instead, I was busy reinstalling my home computer. Just before leaving for vacation, the hard drive crashed. 9 months old, and it died on me. Actually, it started dying, as the drive was fully seekable, but read errors were present all over the disks. I could not read it from Windows anymore. None of my data was accessible. And guess what? Yup, you're right, I didn't have a decent backup. The only backup I had was 9 months old, when I upgraded my machine. I could live without my latest emails. I could live without my Word and Excel documents, so could my wife. I could live without my recently ripped music library, as I had an exact and full quality copy on my Dell DJ. No, the bummer wasn't all that. The bummer was all my digital pictures. I had no backup. None. Well, only a few printed photos. Yikes!

I first tried SpinRite, to try to recover lost sectors, but the task was mostly vain, and it took three days to scan 3% of my 160 gigs hard drive (yawn). Then I searched for a software that could try to locate files and folders on readable sectors. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. I had to try one, so I went for Restorer 2000. I could try it with files smaller than 64kb, and it would list all found contents. I could see all my digital gallery, so I bought it and tried to recover the most I could. Turns out most bad sectors ended up on system files or my music library. I could recover everything else, except my Money database and backup. Restorer 2000 proved a life saver. The good thing about it is that you can configure how many times it will try to read a bad sector. Since I knew there were a lot and SpinRite could not even recover them, I set this option to 1, to save me time. In an afternoon, I had everything important recovered, except for the Outlook database I forgot to locate. Now that I returned the defective hard drive to Dell, it's too late.

The hard drive was a Maxtor, and I hear a lot of bad things about them. I'm glad Dell replaced it with a Seagate. And now, I've learned my lesson the hard way: back-up, and back-up often. I'll probably buy myself a second hard drive, do regular drive to drive backups, and occasional DVD backups.

It's been a long time since I blogged. I'm currently in vacation, that's mainly why. But I'm also preparing myself for the PDC 05. Like many other bloggers that will attend the PDC, I plan to blog every day about my experience.

Until then, back to my last days of vacation!

I just upgraded our blog engine to dasBlog 1.8. You can learn more here.

Tell me if you see anything strange.

Thank you Scott, Omar, and the rest of the project members.

Found this via Scott Hanselman. Too cool! Please add your location. Simply zoom and move to your location, double-click, then complete your information.

Bob: So, did you have time to check Windows Vista Beta 1?

Max: Yeah, cool!

Bob: Great. What's new?

Max: They changed Notepad's icon!

Bob: Oh... Wow...