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The Windows Azure Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use Windows Azure.

The December 2011 refresh of the training kit includes the following updates:

• 33 updated/new PowerPoint presentations
• [New Hands-On lab] Running a parametric sweep application with the Windows Azure HPC Scheduler
• [New Hands-On lab] Running SOA Services with the Windows Azure HPC Scheduler
• [New Hands-On lab] Running MPI Applications with the Windows Azure HPC Scheduler
• [New Demo] Node.js On Windows Azure
• [New Demo] Service Bus Relay
• [New Demo] Service Bus Queues
• [New Demo] Image Rendering Parametric Sweep Application with the Windows Azure HPC Scheduler
• [New Demo] BLAST Parametric Sweep Application with the Windows Azure HPC Scheduler
• [Renamed Lab] Connecting Applications through Windows Azure Service Bus (formerly Introduction to Service Bus Part 1)
• [Renamed Lab] Windows Azure Service Bus Advanced Configurations (formerly Introduction to Service Bus Part 2)

To coincide with the new Azure web site, Scott Guthrie’s talk is worth watching: Keynote: Getting Started with Windows Azure

Given a uniformly distributed random variable x (such as the output from a standard Random Number Generator), how do we generate some other non-uniform distribution, q(y)?

Solution: Generate x, and take y = f(x). But how do we calculate f() given q() ?

The required function is the inverse cumulative distribution function given by:

Example: Exponential distribution (to simulate the lifetimes of radioactive nuclei)

, (τ≥0,and = 0 otherwise)

So inverse is

Ref.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_distribution_function

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_transform_sampling

Note: Everything that follows is performed at your own risk.

If, like me and may others, you installed Windows 7 Service Pack 1 over Windows 7 vanilla, you probably have quite a bit of wasted space on your primary drive (around 1GB). This is obviously not desirable if you have a relatively small SSD as your primary OS drive.

Given that it is extremely unlikely that anyone would ever remove Service Pack 1 and go back to vanilla, you can quite easily reclaim this space (Note: you will no longer be able to uninstall Windows 7 Service Pack 1):

1. Open an elevated command prompt (i.e. Run as administrator).
2. Run this command:  dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperceded /hidesp

For anyone interested in mathematics/science, the Mahler lectures for 2009 and 2011 are now available as pdf’s.

They vary in complexity, but most have a wide audience such as Terence Tao’s “The Cosmic Distance Ladder”, which I attended in person when held at UWA.

A big thank you to all of the presenters at this year’s DevJam event. It is great to see so many local developers willing to give up their time to present a talk. It was a great turnout: 51 people attended last night’s event, and I counted 5 regular attendees who couldn’t make it.

It was a great line-up of topics with a nice mixture of content. Every talk received audience votes, but we have to have some winners in order to give out the prizes! The audience voted favourite talks (in order) were:

1. Mike Minutillo – Crankpad
2. Piers Williams – Kinect SDK
3. Jake Ginnivan – Real World MVVM

Thank you to all the sponsors who help make these events possible: Microsoft for the venue, pizza and refreshments, and major prize funding through UGSS, Pluralsight, Scooter Software, JetBrains, Joe Albahari, RedGate, TekPub. Special thanks to Andrew Coates and Roseanne Stamell for their invaluable support.

Thank you to everyone who attended DevJam and regular meetings throughout the year, and thank you to all the talk presenters, who make running a user group possible.

[If you are interested in running one of these events at your User Group, I put together some notes here: Running a DevJam Community Event]

Subject to any last minute changes, here is the line-up of talks for Thursday’s DevJam event :

• Doug Paice – Using Reactive Extensions and Caliburn.Micro to simplify event chaining in WPF
• Jake Ginnivan – Real World MVVM
• Michael Minutillo – Crankpad
• Alistair Waddell – Compare and Synchronize your Database with VS2010
• Piers Williams – Kinect SDK
• Adrian McGrath – Testing Async
• Ben Leane – SP2010 Client Object Model

It’s happening at our usual venue:

• DATE:    Thursday, Dec 1st, 5:30pm
• VENUE:  Enex100 Seminar Room, Level 3, 100 St Georges Terrace, Perth
• COST:    Free. All welcome

If you are attending, please sign up at EventBrite (http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2402588206) so I can get an idea of catering numbers.

If you have any questions, please send me an email.

http://perthdotnet.org/blogs/events/archive/2011/10/22/december-devjam-2011.aspx

For December’s meeting of the Perth .NET User Group (Thurs, 1st Dec), we are running another DevJam style community event, where local developers give a short talks about something .NET software development related.

• DATE:    Thursday, Dec 1st, 5:30pm
• VENUE:  Enex100 Seminar Room, Level 3, 100 St Georges Terrace, Perth
• COST:    Free. All welcome

There are still several talk slots available. For presenter entry details see here: http://perthdotnet.org/blogs/events/archive/2011/10/22/december-devjam-2011.aspx

The prize for the best audience voted talk is an Xbox 360 with Kinect. There will also be a door prize of an Xbox 360 with Kinect!

There will be pizza and refreshments provided. Please sign up at EventBrite (http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2402588206) so I can get an idea of catering numbers. If you have any questions, please send me an email.

Had enough of your data centre or web hosting company?

Join us at the Perth .NET user group, Thurs Nov 3rd 5:30pm, and find out how to move your MVC or Web Forms apps into the cloud and enjoy high availability, security and scalability – without the responsibility of OS installation, updates or security. This session will be full of practical advice and lessons learned from Joe’s own experience migrating two web sites and a licensing server into Azure, all of which now run inexpensively on a redundant pair of extra small instances.

• TOPIC:   Hosting in Azure – without the blues: Joe Albahari
• DATE:    Thurs Nov 3rd, 5:30pm – 7:00pm
• VENUE:  Enex 100 Seminar Room, Level 3, 100 St Georges Terrace, Perth
• COST:    Free. All welcome

Joe Albahari is a C# MVP and author of ‘C# 4.0 in a Nutshell’ and LINQPad. He has presented at TechEd and JAOO and is a regular speaker at the Perth .NET User Group.

More details here: http://perthdotnet.org/blogs/events/archive/2011/10/16/hosting-in-azure-without-the-blues-joe-albahari.aspx

Join us at the Perth .NET user group, Weds Oct 19th 5:30pm, where Andy Marks will introduce the philosophy and principles behind AWS and briefly describe some of the key components around storage and compute capabilities. The session will include a short hands-on activity for participants to build and deploy their own cloud-based application.

• TOPIC:   Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Action with Andy Marks
• DATE:    Wednesday, Oct 19th, 5:30pm – 7:00pm
• VENUE:  Enex 100 Seminar Room, Level 3, 100 St Georges Terrace, Perth
• COST:    Free. All welcome

Andy serves ThoughtWorks principally as the Perth and Melbourne Technical Lead in the design and implementation of enterprise applications. He also has considerable experience in coaching and mentoring development teams adopting Agile practices.

Optional Requirements: Laptop with internet connectivity (for the hands on section of the talk).

Japan is offering free flights to boost tourism.

Here’s a wild idea: Maybe they should STOP slaughtering whales and pretending it’s science (which no one believes by the way).

Imagine how much goodwill that would generate.