What the heck? I just got an error message telling me that I am unable to install the 64 bit version of Office 2010 b/c I have a 32 bit Office product installed. The odd thing is that I have a 64 bit version of Office 2010 installed already! I’m trying to install Microsoft Project 2010! This must be an order of operations issue.
Logan Gray (@intensetech) of Intense Tech Inc (www.intensetech.com) gave the first of three presentations tonight. Focusing on Windows Home Server, Logan tried really hard to convince everyone that this is the next technology purchase they need to make. Find an example ready-built HP EX487 hardware chassis for under $500 on Amazon.com. The entire point is to backup and protect your important data files, photographs, and music.
Abbey Gwayambadde (@ophedian) talked about home automation and about how much things have changed since the X10 home automation presentations we saw a few years ago. Common targets for automation include lighting, audio and video distribution, HVAC, irrigation, security, and even automobiles! Companies such as Insteon and Zigbee have begun producing reliable and high quality components. Check out the components and software from mControl at http://www.embeddedautomation.com/ for a complete picture of how cool this can be.
Jim Wooley (@LinqKinq) from http://www.thinqlinq.com/ was the third batter in the lineup, presenting about the scalability considerations of Linq. Revealing coding techniques such as proper ordering of a simple Linq query to improve performance by orders of magnitude. For example:
Dim Ordered1 = (from num in randnums
order by num
where num <10).ToList
Total time: > 6,000,000 ticks
Dim Ordered1 = (from num in randnums
where num <10
order by num).ToList
Total time: > 188,000 ticks
Additional scalability and performance considerations include multi-threaded and even multi-cluster server processing centric programming with AsParallel and DryadLinq.