New Murals of John Pugh

Entity Framework

A brief, but to-the-point, review of Microsoft's Entity Framework from SD Times Magazine @ http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35808&page=1.

Definitely worth reading.

This is not a replacement for LINQ; LINQ is excellent (through custom LINQ providers) for accessing unstructured data (non-relational data for which SQL statements could not be written).

Sic Transit Mundi

IT Salary Survey

IT Salary Survey from the Redmonde Magazine @ http://redmondmag.com/salarysurveys/

Particle Swarm Optimization

Particle swarm optimization is an (AI) technique that can be used to find approximate solutions to numeric maximization and minimization problems. A version of it is described in this article

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh335067.aspx

and code sample

http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/mag201108PSO/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=569


You only need the free edition of Visual Studio 2010 (the Express Edition) to compile and run this code.

Dumbing Down Embedded Design

Look at:

http://www.eetimes.com/discussion/-include/4218261/Dumbing-down-embedded-design?Ecosystem=embedded

and "Android—Google’s Mobile Platform and its Capabilities for Embedded"

In a nutshell? Learn (embedded) Linux and Java.

LDRA Software Tools

LDRA is a provider of software tools in the areas of testing, requirements, and security. Check out their tools @ http://www.ldra.com/index.asp

Photoshopped Animal Kingdom

Wild Shoes

Designed by Kobi Levi - Israeli shoe designer

Free eBook on Chaos

Free book on Classical and Quantum Chaos:

http://chaosbook.org/

Free Embedded Computing Magazines

http://opensystemsmedia.com/subscriptions/new/domestic

GPS for Wines

Satellites help French winemakers pick a perfect harvest: see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8673485/Satellites-help-French-winemakers-pick-a-perfect-harvest.html

How Algorithms Shape Our World

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. Find it @
http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html

Visual Display of Quantitative Data

US Debt (excludes the 80 trillion dollars or so of un-secured financial instruments such as derivatives.)

http://www.wtfnoway.com/

Review of Introduction to Computational Sciences

My review of the book "Introduction to Computational Sciences" may be found @ http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computational-Science-Modeling-Simulation/dp/0691125651/ref=cm_cr-mr-title