The weekly SyncToBlog: #5

Development related:

• Persistence ignorance in the Entity Framework discussed with reference to the EFPocoAdapter
• https://railsenvy.com/ Lots of Ruby and Rails stuff – and some good podcasts and video
• Scott Hanselman has listed his “must haves” on a machine rebuild. Always illuminating to see other techies “must have” lists
• EssWork 2.0 is a framework for software development integrated into VSTS. And its free. From Ivor Jacobson - who once cost me a lot of brandy on expenses :-)
• A video showing construction a Ruby test library from scratch. Impressive
• A look at the performance of various Ruby versions
• A “game”/approach for encouraging constructive feedback in a development team (or any team?)
• Glimmer is a new WPF tool for interactively construction jQuery.
• UK development partner AWS have been busy looking at Microsoft Surface. This video shows how you might use it with maritime charts and a second video shows version control on Surface with physical documents
• eBook of 13 short articles on .NET development from DLR to Azure (Ok – I admit it, I pulled this together)
• 3minute video with Sara Ford – a quick tour of “what is codeplex”
• Slashdot users saying nice things about the Microsoft Open Source license – the MS-PL.
• A fairly detailed look at the differences between WPF and Silverlight which demonstrate why we need both – at least for now.
• A deep dive on LINQ – Part 1

Other:

• The best PC FPS game I ever played was Planetside from Sony. This was a massively multiplayer fragfest with tanks, planes and hundreds of players in the same very large map. Planetside 2 never showed itself. I think I just found out why – the PS3 will later this year get “Massive Action Game” or MAG for short. Check out the trailer or better still, some impressive game footage which looks uncannily like Planetside footage with a way more interesting map! Almost enough to make me purchase a PS3 to go alongside the two 360s but I will resist in the hope that Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising lives up to the promises it has made.