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SourceGear have released Vault 3.5 with some nice improvements and a few fixes.

I am really looking forward to the release of this new book: Windows Developer Power Tools, published by O’Reilly (due Nov 2006) and written by James Avery and Jim Holmes.
The book is designed to be a reference encyclopedia on many of the productivity and quality improvement tools available to Windows developers. There is coverage of 150 tools spanning 1000 pages so it’s definitely going to be a huge book! Rather than try to be a complete reference for each tool, this book describes each tool, what it is used for, what situations it is best suited to, and then a quick introduction on how to get started with the tool. The book covers automated builds, testing, code generation, metrics, source control, deployment, lifecycle, debugging to name just a few areas.

You can download it from Rough Cuts right now. “If you want to check the book out you can read through the table of contents and download a couple of sample chapters over on a small site Jim has set up.” Jim is accepting feedback on the sample chapters published.

A blog article by James Avery led me to Robert Scoble’s blog and his post on Microsoft Research. Here he talks about the long term value of of research and makes comparisons between the research programs at Microsoft and Google. He gives the link to Microsoft Research, where there are literally stacks of very interesting research papers available for viewing. The sheer number of papers is mind boggling.

Just had lunch with a colleague and he mentioned this:
Microsoft Acquires Winternals and Sysinternals and Mark and Bryce are on their way to Microsoft!

Better download those tools quick!!! 😉

Since I’m on the subject of books…

I’m also a huge Iain M. Banks fan: his work is outstanding. I used to read volumes of Sci-Fi when I was in my teens but later went off it, finding it a bit childish and sometimes too out of touch with today’s science let alone that of tomorrow. So discovering Iain M. Banks was something of a revelation. His last book ‘The Algebraist” shows just what an exquisite imagination coupled with an understanding of the possibilities science can create. Simply wonderful. Another of his that really stands out is ‘Feersum Enjun’.

I’ve just finished reading “The Best Software Writing Vol. I”, a collection of essays and commentary, selected and edited by Joel Spolsky. Joel makes the point that “…communicating is one of the most overlooked skills in software development.” Another pithy one-liner is “Show, Don’t tell.” This pretty much sums up what any software development book or training course should do to be successful. That means fewer slides in those PowerPoint presentations and more coding demos! This book won’t tell you how to implement the MVP (model-view-presenter) pattern using TDD (although this MSDN article Model View Presenter by Jean-Paul Boodhoo will!), but it is brimming with anecdotes that encourage you to think outside your locked in terms of reference. This book is worth reading by developers and non-developers alike.

Anyone that knows me well, would know that I read alot of books! Not just technical or non-fiction ones, but a heap of fiction as well. One of the genres I love is high quality crime fiction, typified by Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, Peter Robinson and to a lesser extent James Lee Burke. Michael Connelly’s portrayal of detective Harry Bosch is nothing short of brilliant.

I’ve read every Michael Connelly book so far; the last was ‘The Lincoln Lawyer” (not a Bosch novel, but the next is!) I haven’t read anything in the genre that can compare from the point of view of the story content and the quality of the writing.

It would be fair to say I’m very much a Michael Connelly fan. So it was a Huge disappointment to read ‘Crime Beat: True Stories of Cops and Killers’. Michael Connelly started out his career as a Police Reporter for the Los Angeles Times and this book is a collection of stories that inspired many of the plots (or sub-plots) in his work. The introduction is great; it has that special quality that all of Michael Connely’s books have. But the rest! It just seems to be re-prints of newspaper stories written long before Connelly honed and perfected his art. I was barely able to finish most of the ‘stories’. This seems to be a shameless attempt by the publisher to profit on Michael Connelly’s writing reputation by way of rehashing old, poorly-edited material.

I’ve no doubt some of you are too young to have been introduced to the low level details of implementing Windows via Charles Petzold’s seminal work “Programming Windows 3.1” (I really missed those message pumps in VB!). I was browsing through Don Box’s blog and decided that Charles must surely qualify for Uber-Geek status: Charles Petzold has a Windows logo tattoo! I wonder where he put the blue screen tattoo?

The PDC05 webcasts are no longer available for download (although you can buy the 3 DVD set for US499.00!), but the good news is the Tech-Ed 2006 webcasts are available for download and there is some great content (you will need a MS Passport login to access these webcasts). In addition, some of the Tech-Ed 05 presentations that were also given at PDC05 are also available at that link.

If you haven’t heard about Microsoft’s e-learning resources, now is the time to go and check them out before the free ones expire. There are 9 SQL Server 2005 courses available free from Microsoft e-learning until later this year. You can download them and view them offline using the offline course viewer, available as separate download. Here is the link: SQL Server 2005 e-Learning courses (You will need a MS passport to download for offline viewing). These are the courses currently offered for free:

Database Admin
Course 2936: Installing and Securing Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005
Course 2937: Administering and Monitoring Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005
Course 2938: Data Availability Features in Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005

Database Developer
Course 2939: Programming Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005
Course 2940: Building Services and Notifications Using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005
Course 2941: Creating the Data Access Tier Using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005

Business Intelligence
Course 2942: New Features of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Analysis Services
Course 2943: Updating Your Data ETL Skills to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Integration Services
Course 2944: Updating Your Reporting Skills to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services

Free training resources are always a boon and these free ones from Microsoft are no exception. I used them extensively whilst studying for the SQL Server 2005 Beta exams. There are also some free Visual Studio 2005 and TFS courses available.

I’ve just noticed that Greg Low has blogged about Microsoft making Virtual PC free! This is great news! As Greg notes, virtualisation has many benefits for developers.

The download link for Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1 is here.