Url: http://www.infusion.com/sleepless

Url: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx...

Url: http://www.thinqlinq.com

We are happy to announce that we have winners for the caption contest.  The winning caption is: 

Due to trouble contacting all the winners of the contest, we've decided to delay the announcement of the winners until Thursday, January 10th.  Thanks you for patience.

Url: http://wildermuth.com/2008/01/01/Win_a_Seat_to_...

Url: http://silverlight.r2musings.com/weatherwidget/...

I am giving away a free seat to the Silverlight Tour stop in Atlanta on January 15th - 17th, 2008. This includes free admission to the workshop and all the materials associated with the class. If you are not in the Atlanta area, you are responsible for all travel expenses for the workshop.

Url: http://xkcd.com/361/

I just arrived back from teaching Silverlight in Toronto and was thinking about what I was doing this time last year.  A year ago I had just finished spending a couple of months with WPF/E (the name before it was Silvelright) and had given a two day class in Seattle to some internal groups on WPF/E. In addition, I was just finishing up the first draft of the WPF/E (previous name of Silverlight) appendix for Chris Sells/Ian Griffith's WPF Book. I've spent most of this year working on Silverlight (both articles, the courseware and actually teaching the Silverlight Tour). Its been a great year.

Url: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jldavid/sets/72157...

Growing up in Miami made me a Dolphin fan from an early age.  Dan Marino was the larger than life figure in that city as I entered puberty.  There wasn't much to root for this year and everyone seemed to be sure that they'd go winless this year.  On the same day that Dan's all-time yardage record was broken by Favre (way to go Brett!), Miami managed to win a game over the Ravens.  I can now go back and continue to make fun of Tampa Bay's 0-14 season...whew!

I am not sure exactly how the pilot actually landed today, but he did it.  I made to Toronto for the Silverlight Workshop on Monday.  Here are some pictures of the snow (sorry for the lousy pics, my cell phone camera kinda sucks):

Jean-Luc David (of Microsoft) has been kind enough to setup a Geek Dinner for me to attend on Tuesday night (December 18th) in Toronto, or more specifically in Mississauga near Square One.  The name of the place is Jack Astor's and we will be getting started between 6 and 7pm.  If you're in town and want come, just show up!

Url: http://www.geekdinners.com

While playing with Astoria and Silverlight today, I found a problem with the WebRequest Headers.  Luckily, Pablo Castro in the ADO.NET Team at Microsoft was there to set me straight.  I wanted to warn everyone of this bug in case it bites you:

Url: http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/Using%20ADO.NET%2...

Url: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/...

Url: http://www.newyyz.com/NtgSite/?Category=Microso...

Rik pointed out to me that there is a new "Web Site" template for Silverilght (I don't use Web Sites but almost always use "Web Applications" so I never noticed it). So I fired up Visual Studio 2008 to take a look and this template is kinda wierd to me. It seems like a step backwards from other templates (and there still isn't a 'good' Silverlight 1.0 template in my mind).  This template differs from others by doing two things:

Over the past week there have been a flurry of new projects coming out of Microsoft, mostly in the form of CTP's.  I've been downloading like crazy and will likely be discussing my experience with them in the coming week.  In case you missed any of them:

Url: http://www.community-credit.com

Url: http://wildermuthconsulting.com/contact.aspx