thinking-out-loud

PowerPoint Presenter View

I recently presented a private seminar on MSF 4.0, comparing and contrasting the ‘agile’ vs. the ‘CMMI Process Improvement’ methods specified by the new version of the framework.  Unfortunately, my new Dell Inspiron 9300 didn’t like using a second monitor – acted like the ctrl-up-arrow key combination was being pressed.  Not sure why. It totally screwed up the presentation and I had to revert to another machine.
Anyway, today I got around to playing with it a little.  It seems I can circumvent the issue by extending my desktop to a second screen rather than using Fn-F8 to switch modes.  But here’s the really cool thing I discovered.  In fact, I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’d never seen it before.  But here it is…
OK.  I’ve always known, since the first time I tried extending my desktop to a second monitor or my TV, that PowerPoint can present on the second screen while your desktop remains on the primary display.  (MediaPlayer can do it too.)  But today when I selected the PowerPoint menu options Slide Show > Set Up Show, I saw a little a little check-box under the drop-down list of monitors.  The check-box is labeled, “Show Presenter View”.  Try it out.  It’s cool!
Presenter View displays a view just for the presenter on the display not being used for the audience.  So, if you present on the second monitor, the Presenter View shows on the first, and visa versa.  The Presenter View contains the slide currently showing, presenter notes, the page number, the time you’ve spent on that slide – all in the middle of the screen.  On the left is shows a scrolling list of all the slides.  And on the right you have some handy buttons like “Black Screen”, which I’ve always wanted while teaching to turn the blank the screen and encourage the audience to look at me.
So, it seems really cool and I thought others would want to know.  Maybe I’ve just been living in a cave.  But on the chance others I missing it too, there you go.  PowerPoint Presenter View.

Announcement

Gerald M. Weinberg, in his [one of many, many] great book[s], Becoming a Technical Leader, assigns the following to the reader (paraphrased):

If you want to become a technical leader, spend 5 minutes a day keeping a daily journal.

Gulp. I have started and stopped on it several times over the years. Then I get distracted/consumed/overwhelmed with what I am currently wrapped up in, and so I stop journaling. Time passes. I start again.

Blogging, of course, makes it trivial for me to journal. And when I first started this blog, I blogged a few times, and then I stopped. So I created the daily facts category as a personal, inspirational method of blogging every day. "Just blog one fact a day, Jef."

And that did the trick for a while, though not exactly how I had intended. I started blogging the [non-]facts, and I realized that I had a lot of other things that I wanted to blog a lot more. And I had a very productive journaling period for a short while.

Then I got overwhelmed.

I have been a bit dormant on the blogging lately, because I have been consumed with my 'day job,' doing some consulting, and my 'night job,' getting things ready to kick off a new business. So, I am going to try to start back with the daily facts.

Daily Fact:

My business partner, Todd Girvin, and I are pleased to annouce Improving Enterprises, LLC.

With Improving, we focus on helping organizations transform and streamline their application of technology through guided activities in the form of mentoring, formal training, and consulting. We specialize in Risk and Opportunity-focused approaches to architecture and development, in the spirit of Agile approaches to software development. Over the next few weeks, I will be migrating most of the content on this blog under the improving umbrella, though I will start to use this blog (don't worry, typepad) for more personal, hyperdimensional, and rock-n-roll related entries.

Improving's first official activity was to present a seminar on our approach to Risk and Opportunity Driven Architecture to the Microsoft's South Central District Architect's Council. We were very pleased with how well it went, and the bulk of the reason it went so well is that the members of the council were very engaged and willing to share their opinion. We really appreciate all of the insightful commentary and participation that they provided.

The event was hosted by Raj Wall, who is an MS Architecture Evangelist [though he doesn't seem to like the bible-thumpin' connotation of using the e-word - heh] for the South Central district. Raj, if you happen to be reading this, thanks a ton for hosting the council and giving us the opportunity to present. It was great fun, we look forward to the next edition, and we have a bunch of other stuff to present as well...

That brings up a nice coincidence that will result in a second daily fact:

Raj Wall introduced me to the book, Becoming a Technical Leader, which continues to inspire me to blog.

<gratuitous marketing fodder>Improving. It's what we do.</gratuitous marketing fodder>

Microsoft Application Blocks

Daily.Fact.4: Dave Ranck maintains an index of Microsoft Application Blocks. The authoratative reference is, of course, maintained by Microsoft.

Opinion: Microsoft's application blocks provide a large body of source code that you may use as a starting point to building out your application's architectural frameworks. The code is well-written and open-source. The solutions are not panaceas, and they are not the most sophisticated solutions that exist either, but they are good, and they let you spend more time focusing on your core business, regardless of the fact that framework programming is way more fun.

The Web Services Working Group

Daily.Fact.3: The W3C has a number of working groups on web services. Since January, they have published a number of working group notes and working drafts of specifications, requirements, and so discussing topics such as web services architecture, web services choreography, and Soap Message Transmission Optimization Mechanisms, with the most frequent publishing coming from the chreography working group.

WebSphere MQ, SOAP, and .NET

Daily.Fact.2: IBM provides a redbook on utilizing WebSphere MQ in a .NET environment.

Reminds me that I need to pick up Simon Guest's book on J2EE and .NET interop. Rumor has it that Graham Glass of WebMethods fame collaborated on the content.

XSD and WS-*

In an effort to spread the good news, blog more, and generate MassivePageRank! (tm), I am going to start a Daily.Fact series. The facts may appear sub-daily, and they will mostly be about development; enterprise, service, or application architecture; alien abduction; rock-n-roll; or hyper-dimensional space travel. This first entry touches .NET, XML, SOA.

Daily.Fact.1: Using XSD.exe to generate classes from the schemas defined in the WS-* family of specifications sucks.