Rich Elswick

February 04

XML - LINQ - XSD - MVC - oh CRUD with ASP.NET
So I just started working with the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Framework and I must say I really like it.  In addition to this, I tried the Entity framework to model the SQL Server 2008 EE Database, but alas, it seems broken, so I jumped over to LINQ to try that out and it worked wonderfully!

1:02 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

June 11

New Internship Op in Detroit
If your in the market for an internship, then you HAVE to check this out and participate in it, for course it is a Media style internship.  It is very cool and something my students in the Capstone course at ITT-Tech should definitely participate in!

PerkettPR is the media Agency you would be working for.

Enjoy and good luck!
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Rich Elswick




12:39 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

June 08

So you are learning Japanese, eh? Why not play to learn it
Here is an interesting game, that can help you while learning Japanese:

http://nihongoup.com/

There is a trial version you can check out and although it will not teach you the words / symbol names, it can help focus your learning effort from those that you have already learned.  I think there are some improvements to the game that could make it much nicer, such as showing the words you missed and showing what your typing at the time, but it is pretty cool none the less.

Enjoy!

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Rich Elswick




9:12 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

May 02

Penguicon Panel – Hack Your World –> Why buy an EV1, when you can build your own.

The panel I was on with Doug Houseman about building your own Electric Vehicle was pretty cool.  We had 10 people interested and participating in the discussion. Most of them were familiar with the technology and what goes into an EV.  Most had also watched Who Killed the Electric Vehicle, so were also familiar with some of the politics. 

Overall a couple people came away from the panel where they may pursue building their own EV.  Good stuff.  Doug Houseman was a wonderful help with his knowledge of EVs, the regulatory standards you may have to overcome as well.

Anyhow, here is the presentation:

8:29 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

April 06

2009 Startup Weekend Detroit Review

My Thoughts on the Detroit Startup weekend:

Day One:

It was quite a blast to meet some amazing individuals and participate in this event.  We had probably 50-70 people show up and then the fun began.  It started off with a presentation about Bizdom U, which I showed up for a bit late, but still got to catch a bit of it.  Then the pitches begin.  Anyone could pitch their ideas and there were a lot, probably 20-30 of them.  Then everyone got a chance to vote for their own top 3 (only 3 votes).  Then out of the most popular, everyone had a chance to vote for 1 they intended to work on.  My idea was one picked to be discussed.  After that, everyone gathered together on the projects they voted for and discussed capabilities and were to determine if they were missing an ingredient that was needed to make the project happen.  As it turned out, I believe there were like 8-10 and almost all of them had enough of a team to move forward with their projects.   Coney’s were served for dinner!

Day Two:

As teams gathered the next morning, everyone got into full swing with their brainstorming, if it wasn’t completed from the day before.  By midday there were over half the teams with a solid direction and perhaps even mock-ups created.  As they day wore on, the difficulties cropped up and team’s frustration levels went up, but around dinner time, I would say there was a euphoria amongst all the team members and things were starting to coalesce.  A few teams had problems, but for the most part this could be attributed to the shortage of tech talent and artists, as the ideas were flowing and the concepts were all solid.

Day Three:

The morning kicked off with a lot of excitement as everyone knew this was it and prototypes and presentations were to be done by 4 pm.  As noon rolled by and the pressure became intense to get a prototype ready for presentation, some hard decisions about what needed done for the day was in order.  A few more tweaks and some last minute presentation prep and it was time.  Well, okay, more like 4:30 and presentations were underway.  A lot of happy people and cool discussions were laid out for the projects and several very solid foundations were in place for potential business endeavors. 

Overall I was able to meet some amazingly talented individuals over the weekend.  I was able to work with some sweet new tech (at least to me) such as the Kohana PHP framework, ORM, MySql Workbench, 960 Grid System, and Facebook Application development.

Overall it was an amazing weekend and I got to work on StatsBragger with Jamie Favreau, John Lukacs, Matt Mcanmmon, Patrick Kelleher, and Peter Richards.

Thanks of course goes out to Shannon Paul and Jeremy Tanner for running the show.  It was a fun time and I look forward to it again in the future.

side note: If you plan to attend one of these, it is best to have a computer, but it isn’t a requirement.  If your a techie, try to have already setup a LAMP stack virtual machine, if you think you may do any sort of web app development and 100% make sure you have a Subversion or some other form of version control software.  If your going to create a desktop app, then have a compiler/IDE environment ready to go.  Use what you know, don’t try to learn something too new over the weekend as it is better to have a prototype done at the end instead of trying to get it working and only have a presentation.  Perhaps bring a network hub, projector and some business supplies like type and sticky notes.

In the end, have fun, meet some new people, learn new ways to do things and git ‘er done!

8:30 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)