Alan Dean

CTO, Developer, Agile Practitioner

Photograph of Alan Dean

Monday, March 9, 2009

Turning 40

This evening I am off to Coventry to give my “Separating REST Facts from Fallacies” talk at the Coventry NxtGenUG, after which I will head up to Yorkshire as it is my 40th tomorrow. I don’t have anything in particular planned as I’m not big on birthdays, although I have treated myself to a new car (nothing fancy – just a Honda Jazz).

It’s odd, the prospect of turning 40, in that I really don’t feel like I am. Having never married nor had children, perhaps I haven’t been through the life events that make someone feel 40. It’s my working conjecture to explain it. In any event, I’ll only been sporadically connected in the next couple of days.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Environment Preparation for Book

Personally, I am a big fan of using Virtual PC for development as it makes changing between software versions so easy and allows easy switching between host machines. So, naturally, an important task in preparation for my book is to set up an image for the development. Here is my recipe:

  1. Windows Server 2008 (I could use Vista but I prefer to develop on a Server OS)
  2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team System, including SQL Express 2005
  3. Ancillary Software
  4. ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Release Candidate
  5. Microsoft Azure
    • Developer SDKs
      • Windows Azure Software Development Kit (January 2009 CTP)
      • Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio January 2009 CTP
      • Microsoft .NET Services SDK (Dec 2008 CTP)
      • SQL Data Services (SDS) SDK (CTP)
    • Training Kit