Monthly Updates

Definitely, I had no time to write blog posts last month (and a half). I was preoccupied with so many things that I almost (poor me) forgot about my hobby. I tried to twitter about my status as much I could, but still my blog deserves a good and relatively long post. Here it is:

First, I am done with the finals for the semester, and luckily, back at home for the hoildays. It seems that final exams are getting harder every semester, despite the efforts and sleepless nights I spend.

I am happy enough to say that I got admitted as a visiting student at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany. The university offers an outstanding Computer Science curriculum, and I will be able to take courses, such as Advanced Databases Models, Systems Engineering and Advanced Data Analysis - ones that I would never be able to take at AUBG. I hope that it will be quite an experience, and I will FINALLY start using my German abilities. The semester starts on March 30, which will give me some time to concentrate on some of my projects and eventually find a short internship/training program. People are usually skeptical about internships during the winter months, but I am taking it as a challenge. One never knows about potential opportunities.

Last semester was a period of lost expectations as well. Despite the hard work, tons of coffee, and few hours of sleep, the Trinity project did not manage to win the start-up competition, that our team participated at. This is the time and place to explain what Trinity is. Trinity is a software as a service business solution that will allow small and mid-sized companies in Bulgaria and the region to optimizie their business operations at the cost of a monthly subscription. Despite the 3-rd place we got on the final, I am still eager to continue with the project and realize it at full scale. What struck me most, which was our teams' main concern towards our potential clients, was that the jury, partly consisting of Bulgarian business representatives, did not get it clear what we offer. Despite recent development, Bulgarian business still has a long way to go to get out of the "Paper Age". Luckily, I see this as an opportunity rather than a problem.

In general, last semester was one of hard work, lots of projects (equally related to Business Administration and Computer Science), lots of ideas waiting to be realized (starting NOW), and lots of coding (I really mean it). My first book will probably be called "Dreaming in C# with C++ nightmares".

I guess that my blog will be happy now. I gave it a brand new (pretty long, too) blog post. Now that I have more time, i will give my best to write more frequently.

Attended the AUBG Microsoft Day

The AUBG Microsoft Day is an initiative by Microsoft Bulgaria, which is organized every year for the students of the American University in Bulgaria. This time, instead of the usual emphasis on purely Computer Science topics, two seminars were given particularly for Business Administration students. The seminars dealt primarily with the implementations of CRM and ERP software in the business process, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Dynamcs NAV were shown as examples. A Microsoft Bulgaria initiative was announced that would allow AUBG students (at least, those that are particularly interested in Business) to have an access to licensed versions of Dynamics NAV and CRM, and (probably) obtain a copy for academic purposes.

I expected to see some implementations of Microsoft's on-demand business tools, but alas, they are still sold exclusively in the States.

Luckily, I managed to win a Silverlight 2.0 book at the seminar. I stil haven't got a chance to take a look at it, though.

Attended DevReach 2008

Last night, I came back from Sofia where I had spent the day participating in one of the largest developer conferences on the Balkans - DevReach 2008. Unfortunately, university issues made me stay only a few hours, and the leave for Blagoevgrad again. The sessions I attended were good, though. I got introduced to the functionality of the Windows Workflow Foundation (or WF). At the beginning, the idea seemed to me quite inapplicable to the daily routines of anything but a large company, yet an idea just popped into my mind that might prove this wrong.

The Workflow concept is intended to allow people with business logic and developers to collaborate in a way that each one does what he/she is best at. The process analyst constructs a business process using a diagramatic tool included in Visual Studio 2008. Despite presented visually in front of the eyes of the analyst, every diagram is actually XAML code. Every step in the process presents a hook where XAML code binds with the core C# or VB code written by the developer.

Anyaway, the most interesting lecture I attended was preseneted by Lino Tadros, CEO of Falafel Software, Inc. He talked about many of the misconceptions about using AJAX in ASP.NET applications, and how if improperly done, an application using AJAX might actually run slower than one that uses pure ASP.NET. Mr. Tadros showed many examples of proper uses of AJAX and numerous times emphasized on the phrase "proper optimization". A truly amazing lecture.

A good Flex tutorial to start with

Even though I am hevily concentrated in using Flex as a development platform , I am still relatively new to all the opportunities that Flex could provide to a developer, or as in my case a lazy information architect. Moreover, I am always willing to share a good beginner's tutorial, and thus attract the attention of more enthusiasts That's why, I was curious when I approached a presentation done by the Michigan Flex User's Group, called unambiguosly "Your first Flex Application". The tutorial, even though targeted at Flex 2, describes nothing that you cannot do in Flex 3. Basically, I might say that it gives an example of the 20% of Flex related stuff, that a developer will deal with 80% of the time (the 80-20 rule), namely:

1. Flex Builder (perfect for project management/ has integrated code completion/ based on Eclipse)

2. MXML

3. including ActionScript 3 code into MXML

4. Data-binding in MXML

4. using MXML and ActionScript 3 to connect to a remote web service (Cold Fusion in this case), and extracting data based on specific requests.

5. using data-driven Flex components such as Tree and GridView to display the extracted data in an understandable format.

Linux Newbie Tip: Starting GUI apps from the command line

Under the Linux command line shell, I want to be able to start GUI applications, without keeping the console window dependent on the application. If I simply type the application name, and press Enter, the application will run, but the console window will be unusable until I close the app. Moreover, if I close the console window, the GUI app dies with it.

The solution is to start the application as a background process. This is simply done by putting an ampersand ("&") after the command name like that:

nautilus &

emacs &

xmms &

Welcome back...

That's it. This is officially my new home. After trying different blogging systems, I came to the conclusion that Blogger is the best place to store my rambling thoughts. So, here I am, ready to write about anything that deserves to be written about. After I quit writing in my old blog, I fell in love with Adobe Flex and .NET, so in this one I am mostly planning to explain development topics in an easier to grasp (lame, if you like) way. Of course, I will not confine my rambling thoughts only about Flex, .NET, or even about software development, in general. What I will not do in this blog is fill it with photos, quotes, or links that out of nothing happen to be interesting to me. For that purpose, I have my Tumblr log ( http://preslav.tumblr.com ), and everything that is not worth writing a whole post about will be put there. So, check it out, too.