Sebastien (Sebby) St-Laurent's Blog

David Hayden talks about "Practical .NET2 and C#2"

2006-03-03T09:23:00.000-08:00

David Hayden, a well known website developer and .NET blogger talks about his initial comments on Practical .NET2 and C#2!

Reading Practical .NET 2 and C#2 by Patrick Smacchia
Kudos to Patrick Smacchia on his new book, Practical .NET 2 and C#2.

I have read about 150 pages of the 800+ page book and the book rocks. The chapters I have read so far ( yeah, I don't always read the chapters in order ):

Chapter 1: Assembly, module, IL language
Chapter 4: The CLR ( Common Language Runtime )
Chapter 5: Processes, threads, and synchronization
Chapter 7: Reflection, late binding, attributes
Chapter 12: Inheritance, polymorphism and abstraction
Chapter 13: Generics
Chapter 15: Collections

are excellent and full of detail. The pages are packed, too:

No big glaring gaps of white space and fluff that you get from some books that try to meet a page minimum.

Code samples get right to the point as opposed to showing a lot of extraneous code.
All code is in C# which means you don't have to deal with duplicate examples in multiple languages.

I will give a full review in a few weeks, but so far the book is a real joy to read. Check it out for yourself.

Source: David Hayden ( Florida .NET Developer )

2006-02-20T21:01:00.000-08:00

Sahil Malik posted a first review of Practical .NET2 and C#2.

----

If you knew C# 2.0 already, what C# 2.0 book would you buy?

Wait a minute, if you already knew C# 2.0, why the heck would you bother to buy another C# 2.0 book? Because learning C# is probably 0.05% of what you need to know. The rest of the 99.5% is the framework.

I have been recently poring through a pretty fantastic book - Practical .NET 2.0 and C# 2.0 by Patrick Smacchia. I have to admit, if you are hard pressed on time like I am, and don't have the patience to read through 5 different books to learn what you need to, then keep this book at an arms length. I really like how the chapters are laid out in logical topics, which make it so much easier to find the specific information I am looking for.

What makes this book great, is that this book is so much more than just C# 2.0, it's really about the framework (wasn't it always about the framework?).

EasyRegex update and EasyBarcode released.

2006-02-14T00:31:00.000-08:00

I have released a minor update to EasyRegex. Turns out a little bug in my licensing code would cause some machines to report the beta license as being expired. Before installing the update, you will need to uninstall the previous version. The updated version can be downloaded from
http://www.paradoxalpress.com/Software_EasyRegex.aspx

I have also released EasyBarcode 1.0.0 today. A quick and easy little software to generate print-ready EAN/ISBN barcodes.

Generate EAN barcodes for both ISBN and ISBN-13 numbers
Built-in ISBN validation to ensure the numbers input are valid
Generates barcodes which also include the ISBN information and the optional price UPC-5 supplement
Exports barcodes to PDF files for easy inclusion in your layouts and projects

An EasyBarcode trial can be downloaded from:
http://www.paradoxalpress.com/Software_EasyBarcode.aspx

EasyRegex, the perfect tool for the avid .NET Regex developer

2006-02-11T20:55:00.000-08:00

Download EasyRegex 1.0.0 and use it free for the beta period.

Build libraries with your regular expressions. Take advantage of the built-in expression builder to quickly and easily put together expressions.
Build a test matrix for your expression by adding various text sources and run your expressions against your test matrix to find problems and regressions.
Do performance testing of your regular expressions. Test various expressions against each other and compare the performance difference between run-time regular expressions and pre-compiled expression in the .NET framework.
Take advantage of a new feature of the 2.0 .NET framework by taking your regular expression libraries and pre-compiling them into assemblies which can be used directly in your .NET projects.

Amazon Sales Rank Watcher Version 1.1 is now out...

2006-02-09T06:36:00.000-08:00

Managed to find some time to do some more work on my Amazon Sales Rank Watcher software. I want to thank everyone who tried the initial release and sent me some great feedback. The work on this version focused mostly on adressing bugs, implementing suggestions and solidifying the application. Here is the "what's new" for this version.

This version fixes most of the bugs which were reported with the first version. Such as the occational exception with the display of the rank graph.
Added a "Check for Updates" button
Added filtering capabilities on the Amazon search to restrict the search to a specific type of product.
Application now minimizes into the try and can display a pop-up when new ranking information is downloaded
Improved the overall graph display.

The latest version of Amazon Sales Rank Watcher can be downloaded from the Paradoxal Press website.

"Practical .NET2 and C#2" featured on The Code Project

2006-02-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

A new post is up on "The Code Project" in regards to "Practical .NET2 and C#2" containing general book information as well as various content extracts from the book... Check it out!
http://www.codeproject.com/books/understand_csharp_event.asp

2006-02-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

We have recieved our copies of "Practical .NET2 and C#2" last week and all orders on ParadoxalPress.com are now shipping!

In addition, to celebrate, all books on Paradoxal Press are now on sale at 10% off Amazon's price for the month of Feburary. This means $33.99 for "Practical .NET2 and C#2" and "The COMPLETE Effect and HLSL Guide" for $23.75.

We are also offering a complete Paradoxal Press bundle which includes "Practical .NET2 and C#2", "The COMPLETE Effect and HLSL Guide" and "The COMPLETE HLSL Reference" for only $51.50, which is 50% over the retail price.

And all orders to the continental USA ship for free.

That's it for my plug ;)

Flight Simulator 10 : 2.0, 3.0 Shader Hardware, do I need to upgrade?

2006-02-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

By now, i'm sure you have seen some of the latest screen shots for Flight Sim 10. If not, take a look at FS Insider. This has brought forth alot of questions in regards to hardware support and what type of shader hardware is required to take advantage of the new visual features. Of course, keep in mind that we are still working on the product and things may change but here is my current point of view.

Architecturally, our rendering architecture was designed to be flexible and take advantage of the current hardware setup. Our main shaders are essentially components (such as lighting, bumpmap,...) which are pieced together and pushed to the hardware. The features used and put together generally depend on the detail settings and the underlying hardware on the machine.
Functionally, 2.0 and 3.0 shaders are mostly the same. One of the main difference being from a performance point of view and also in terms of the maximum number of instructions that a shader may use.

Under most circumstances, our shaders fit well under 2.0 shaders but there are a few cases where we can exceed the maximal number of instructions and turn features off. These cases would benefit from 3.0 shader hardware, but they are rare.

Now, from a performance point of view, 3.0 hardware is generally more performant and will of course yield better graphical performance. But a consideration that is probably more important is that Flight Simulator is a memory hungry application. This is even more true now that we are increasing the texture resolution in the game. Even on a 256MB card, with the settings cranked up, we run out of memory on the video card. No worries, we are smart about it and implement level-of-detail schemes to ensure the optimal use of the video card memory.

In fact, our performance on video cards is generally more bound to bandwidth usage (to transfer textures and geometry) more than shader bound. This means that you may have a better performance benefit in Flight Sim from going to a video card with more video memory rather than a card which can do faster shader operations. This is a consideration to keep in mind if you prefer to texture detail over various visual effects.

Practical .NET2 and C#2 has arrived!

2006-01-25T22:34:00.000-08:00

Finally recieved my copies of Practical .NET2 and C#2 on Monday. Been busy shipping pre-orders and review copies.

The book still is shown as pre-order on most online retail sites. Our distributor has recieved the copies but the actual books have to percolate through the distribution channels.

In the meantime, orders made on ParadoxalPress.com will generally ship within 24 hours.

Amazon Sales Rank Watcher Bug

2006-01-25T22:29:00.000-08:00

For those of you who may have downloaded my Amazon Sales Rank Watcher. There is a bug which can cause an error to happen (and a big red X to show on the graph) when adding new titles. The bug is minor and is due to the way the first sales rank is added to the graph. I plan on releasing a new version within the next 1-2 weeks adding a few new features on the product.

Fixing graph bugs
Improve graph update performance
Add more intelligent filtering to the list of titles from amazon to only include book titles
Allow for the App to be resized (allowing for a bigger graph)
Allowing the app to be minimized into the icon tray so it can be left to gather sales rank info in the background

Thanks to everyone who has sent me some feedback, bug reports and comments!

Farewell Steve Lacey and good luck!

2006-01-25T22:27:00.000-08:00

Steve Lacey, my boss, mentor and the man at the core of Flight Simulator graphics is leaving the team to attempt his own long-due venture. Here is his post:

Well, the time has finally come for me to say adios to Microsoft and hit the startup road. This has nothing to do with Microsoft or the Flight Simulator team/product and everything to do with my insane desire to try something new.

In fact, this was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make - Microsoft and in particular the Flight Simulator team is a wonderful and stimulating place to work and it is hard to walk away from eleven years of history.

What have I worked on in that time? Well in summary, back in January 1995 I joined some friends at a small 3D graphics startup in London, UK. One month later we were acquired by Microsoft and shortly joined the fledgling DirectX (then Games SDK) team. Our product, Reality Lab, became the basis for Direct3D and shipped in June 1996 as the key feature for DirectX 2. After that I worked on DirectX 3, VRML, IE4, DirectX 5 in Windows Multimedia and then moved onto Chrome (who remembers that?) and DirectX 6.

In 1997 we relocated to Redmond.

In 1998 it was time for something different, and I led feature teams on Flight Simulator 2000, Combat Flight Simulator 2, Flight Simulator 2004 and FSX, found time along the way to run the development team at a new studio, work on a bunch of Xbox stuff, build a game engine and scriping engine/language completely from scratch and general get my fingers into a lot of incredibly interesting pies.

And now it’s time for something completely different.
For the Flight Simulator fans in the audience, let me tell you that the product is in a great place. It’ll ship on time and look astounding - I’ve made sure of that!

Anyhow, stay subscribed - my blogging will continue (does it ever stop?) and in fact I will continue to post about Flight Simulator as long as my value-add is still relevant (and the team puts up with me :-)
Although I can claim to be the first Flight Simulator Team blogger, I’m really happy that Mike, Jason, Adrian, Hal, Susan and others are now on board, and delivering a really compelling and insightful look into the world under the hood of Flight Simulator. The conversation rocks. Long may it continue.

That being said, no worries as most of the major graphical featuers for FSX are already in place and we have been preparing for his departure. By the way, I do promise to start posting more often on the graphical features of FSX.

Amazon Sales Rank Watcher (Take 2)

2006-01-16T05:41:00.000-08:00

For those who had difficulties installing the app, there was a dependancy problem I had not noticed and was addressed. More details and screenshots can be found at: http://www.paradoxalpress.com/Software.aspx

The cat is out of the box (or the plane is our of the hanger)

2006-01-14T09:45:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late with the news but at CES, the next version of Microsoft Flight Simulator was announced.This is good news for everyone and as a developer on the project, this means that the "gag order" has been somewhat lifted.
I am a graphics engineer on the project under Steve Lacey and I take care of various graphical improvements on the project. For now, I will leave you dangling but I plan over the next few weeks to take a deeper look into some of the new features I have helped develop.

Author/Self-Pub Amazon Sales Rank Tool

2006-01-14T09:39:00.000-08:00

I have written a little took to track and chart the sales rank of various products on Amazon.com. It is kind of handy to keep track and chart the sales oaf your titles or your competing titles. More details and screenshots can be found at: http://www.paradoxalpress.com/Software.aspx

"Practical .NET2 and C#2" is out to the presses.

2005-12-20T19:21:00.000-08:00

After a few months of crazy work, "Practical .NET2 and C#2" was finally sent to the printer yesterday. Meaning that the book should start appearing on store shelves in the first weeks of 2006 :)

Paradoxal Press announces “Practical .NET2 and C#2” (ISBN 0-9766132-2-0), a complete manual to taking advantage of C#2 and the Microsoft .NET2 Framewo

2005-12-17T13:38:00.000-08:00

REDMOND, WA – Paradoxal Press (http://www.paradoxalpress.com/) is proud to announce the first title of its 2006 lineup. “Practical .NET2 and C#2” (ISBN 0-9766132-2-0) is a complete manual to the new features offered by the Microsoft .NET 2 Framework. This book was conceived from real world experience. The author takes the point of view of the developer that needs to be productive. Concepts are illustrated with a multitude of relevant and directly usable examples. When appropriate, features of Visual Studio 2005 and other .NET development tools are explained.

With numerous references to standard programming principles, students as well as beginners will feel at ease. Seasoned developers will be glad to know that advanced features will also be discussed such as CLR internals, closures, transactional programming and .NET design patterns. The reader experienced with .NET 1 will take advantage of more than 400 pages solely dedicated to the new features of .NET2.

The author of “Practical .NET2 and C#2”, Patrick Smacchia, is a .NET MVP involved in software development for over 15 years. After graduating in mathematics and computer science from the ENSEEIHT school, he has worked on software in a variety of fields including stock exchange at Société Générale, airline ticket reservation system at Amadeus as well as a satellite base station at Alcatel. He's currently a software consultant and trainer on .NET technologies as well as the author of the freeware NDepend which provides numerous metrics and caveats on any compiled .NET application. Patrick Smacchia is also the author of the French bestselling titles “Pratique de .NET et C#” and “Pratique de .NET 2.0 et de C# 2.0”.

“Practical .NET2 and C#2” (ISBN 0-9766132-2-0) is a 896-page perfect bound book with a suggested retail price of $59.95 USD. It will be released on January 15th 2006 and will be on sale online at most online retailers and directly from www.ParadoxalPress.com.

For more information about “Practical .NET2 and C#2”, to see sample chapters and to download code samples from the book, please visit http://www.PracticalDOT.net

For more information about Paradoxal Press, please visit http://www.paradoxalpress.com/

Gmail's Take on spam!

2005-12-10T16:52:00.000-08:00

Hmm. Delicacy or annoying emails? Looks like Gmail can't really tell the difference. Ginger Spam Salad? Who would have thought!

WWFSMD?

2005-11-18T20:29:00.000-08:00

What Would the Flying Spaghetti monster do? Have you yet been touched? Somewhat of a spoof, somewhat of an alternative to "intelligent design". You judge for yourself... WWFSMD

Free "The COMPLETE HLSL Reference" Link...

2005-11-16T06:22:00.000-08:00

Oops. Forgot to post a link in the previous post... Here it is.. http://www.paradoxalpress.com/books_hlslref.aspx

Free PDF Version of "The COMPLETE HLSL Reference" is up for grabs!

2005-11-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Paradoxal Press has just released a free PDF version of their "The COMPLETE HLSL Reference". The spiral hardbound copy can still be purchased but you can now also print your own copy for free :) Here are some details...

The COMPLETE HLSL Reference is a small format (3”x6”) spiral-bound booklet intended to be a complete quick reference for assembly and HLSL shader developers. The reference includes a complete overview of all vertex and pixel shader assembly instructions, up to shader model 3.0, complete with parameter description and performance considerations. In addition, the booklet also includes a complete overview of all the HLSL intrinsic functions complete with a description of their functionality, parameter information and performance considerations.

Practical .NET2 and C#2

2005-11-06T18:42:00.000-08:00

Finally the time has come. Paradoxal Press is anouncing it's new title, "Practical .NET2 and C#2". This one, I did not author but translated it from french in collaboration with the author, Pratick Smacchia. Current scheduled release date is mid-Janurary...

Here are some details...

The author has placed himself from the point of view of the developerwhich must both be quickly productive and anticipate changes withouthaving to question their acquired skills. More than half this book isdedicated to the new features introduced by version 2.0 of .NET.

• The .NET platform: CLR, CIL language, Common Type System, assembly,metadata, JIT compilation, GC, AppDomain, MSBuild, deployment(ClickOnce, MSI), localization, process, thread, synchronization,asynchronous call, security, CAS, attribute, reflection,interoperability with P/Invoke and COM.

• The C#2 language (and a detailed comparison with C++): Typing,class, structure, object, interface, inheritance, polymorphism,abstraction, genericity, pointers and unsafe code, delegate, events,exception, nullable type, anonymous method, iterator.

• The .NET Framework: Collection, trace, debugging, I/O, socket, file,Windows Forms 2, GDI+, ADO.NET 2, transaction, XML, .NET Remoting,ASP.NET 2, web services.

With several reminders to fundamental notiontions, students as well asbeginners will feel at ease. The experienced developer will easily beable to take advantage of the subtle features offered by .NET 2.0 suchas generics, unified transactional model, masgénéricité, le modèleunifié transactionnel, master pages or ClickOnce deployment.Download the 647 code examples at www.PracticalDOT.Net.

You can also get more details from the Paradoal Press website.

What's Up?

2005-10-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

So what is going on in my world?

Well first of all, sorry for all the "deals/coupons" posts. With lack of other content, I thought it would be interesting but I definetly went a little overboard. Hehe...

In the book world, things have been going well. "The COMPLETE Effect and HLSL Guide" is still selling decently. Hopefuly sales will keep picking up as the word spreads out. Also, I have just recieved the proof for ShaderX4 which I will go over this weekend. Seems like the projet is about 2 weeks behind schedule but the book should be out before Christmas.

I am also working on a new book project, will not go into details just yet. But it is a second edition of a french programming title which I am transalating. This book covers .NET 2.0 and should almost 1000 pages. The release is planned for January and I should be able to post more details in the next few weeks.

Also, with all this "deal" posting and my dealing with www.RewardLadder.com, I thought of a cool little project to work on. Quite often, I am looking for deals and have to search several sites. Although you can use a RSS aggregator to improve on this, I though a specialized tool would be in order. DealPlucker, which I decided to name it, essentially will aggregate deals from several sources while gathering additional deal information from the vendor site and offering special features such as searches and price compare. It is still in the works, and am about 50% to a workable version. So I will hopefuly have something in the next month or so.

As for things at home, my wife is still somewhat playing "doctor hot potato". We did managed to get an appt with a good bariatric doctor. He is doing some tests and in his oppinion, the Botox procedure done earlier was done in the wrong area to start with and wants to retry this procedure. Obviously, we would prefer a "final" solution. But if she can at least get some relief for a few months, possibly while they do more tests. At least things are moving again now.

Misc Deals/Coupons

2005-10-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

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Best Buy Deals

2005-10-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Save up to $330 on PC packages after rebates Save up to $330 on PC packages after rebates Save up to $150 on Toshiba notebooks after rebate Save up to $150 on Toshiba notebooks after rebate 10% off digital camcorders, plus free shipping 10% off digital camcorders, plus free shipping 10% off digital cameras, plus free shipping 10% off digital cameras, plus free shipping2 free DVDs w/DVD recorder or portable DVD player 2 free DVDs w/DVD recorder or portable DVD player BestBuy.com has a great selection of Apple iPods BestBuy.com has a great selection of Apple iPods

Toshiba Deals

2005-10-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

Get a Toshiba M30X-S191ST notebook PC for only $729 after $100 mail-in rebate and $50 instant rebate. Offer available 10.01.05 to 12.31.05.

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