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“Canada’s Next Top Model View Controller” Presentation at Metro Toronto .NET User Group Next Thursday

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Canada's Next Top Model (moose) View (Lake Louise) Controller (beaver)

If you’re going to be in the area of downtown Toronto next Thursday, May 28th, you might want to check out my presentation, Canada’s Next Top Model View Controller at the next Metro Toronto .NET User Group meeting. I’ll be talking about the ASP.NET MVC Framework, Microsoft’s answer to MVC frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, CakePHP and Catalyst. As is my stock in trade with presentations, this will be informative, enlightening, entertaining and just might feature a rock and roll accordion performance.

The presentation takes place Thursday, May 28th at 6:00 p.m. at the Manulife Financial Building (200 Bloor Street East, Toronto, between Church and Jarvis – use the entrance on St. Paul Square). Admission for the presentation is free, but you have to register, and as of this writing, only 24 tickets remain.

For more details about the presentation, visit the Metro Toronto .NET user group site.

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Muscle March: Weirdest Videogame of 2009

I think we’ve got an early contender for the title of “Weirdest Videogame of 2009”: Muscle March for the Nintendo Wii. As if the game weren’t weird enough, the trailer below ramps up the weirdness by presenting it in that oh-so-Japanese style with epilepsy-inducing jump-cuts and a hyper-enthusiastic Japanese TV announcer:

[Found via Waxy.org.]

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Toronto Coffee and Code: Returning May 29th

This article also appears in the Coffee and Code blog.

Coffee machine embedded in "tower" computer enclosure: "Toronto Coffee and Code Returns Friday May 29th!"

I’m a bit swamped with work and other things, so the Toronto Coffee and Code events are taking a hiatus for a couple of weeks. Worry not, it’s a temporary thing, and in a couple of Fridays – May 29th, to be precise, Coffee and Code will make a triumphant return, all phoenix-like, to the Dark Horse Cafe at 215 Spadina on Friday, May 29th from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m..

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Videos from the 2009 RSA Conference

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

rsa_conference

The 2009 edition of the RSA Conference, the biggest and best-known cryptography and information security conference, took place last month in San Francisco. Each year, the conference has a theme based on or relevant to crypto or infosec, and this year’s theme was Edgar Allen Poe (previous themes include the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, the secrets of the Mayans, Mary Queen of Scots and Alan Turing).

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman at their keynote at the 2009 RSA Conference

The people behind the conference were kind enough to post video of the keynotes, which I found thanks to a pointer from TechNet’s Jeff Jones, author of the Jeff Jones Security Blog. You can click on the links below to watch the videos. Jeff strongly recommends that you do not miss the opening ceremony segment of the “Day 1 Keynotes” video, and I don’t have to tell you that you should catch the closing keynote, featuring Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of the popular nerd television series Mythbusters:

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The Story Behind “Keyboard Cat”

Another internet meme made the big time today – today’s edition of CNN’s “American Morning” ended with anchor Kiran Chetry announcing that they would be “played out” by “Keyboard Cat”. In case you haven’t yet seen them, Keyboard Cat videos all follow the same formula:

  • They all have the name “Play Him/Her Out, Keyboard Cat”
  • They begin with a segment in which someone humiliates or hurts himself or herself
  • They cut to a strange video featuring a cat playing a tune on a cheesy home keyboard

This is my favourite Keyboard Cat video, in which a guy learns an important lesson in nunchuk safety:

This one, featuring a guy whose parents are trying to convince him that it’s bad idea to broadcast his meltdown online, is a close second:

And now, we can find out about the origin of Keyboard Cat and how he turned into an internet meme, thanks to this story in the Los Angeles Times.

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PHP on Windows: The Undiscovered Country

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

I’m doing a lot of running around today. First, I’m off to the University of Waterloo to talk to students about PHP on Windows and the PHP FTW! contest. Then, it’s back to Toronto, where I’m headed downtown to catch up with Garrett Serack from Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab to talk about The Empire, Open Source (which includes PHP, of course) and how they fit together. If this sounds like a conversation you’d be interested in joining, drop me a line!

To give you a taste of what Microsoft is doing with PHP, I present the slides from Garrett’s talk, PHP on Windows: The Undiscovered Country, which he gave last year. Things have advanced since then, but I thought it would give you an idea of what The Empire is thinking and where we’re going with PHP on the Windows platform:

PHP on Windows – The Undiscovered Country
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Got Time Tuesday After Work?

PHP logo

If…

  • you’re a PHP developer or curious about what Microsoft is doing in the world of open source
  • you’re in the downtown Toronto area tomorrow (Tuesday, May 12th) after work
  • you like free food and drink

…then drop me a line. I’m helping out at an event that you might be interested in.