My technological playground...

Well, it has been a long time since my last published post...in fact, I got several post waiting to be finalized...about application architecture, conception and communication.

Waiting for these post to be published, I would like to blog on the last evolution of my "technological playground".

My technological playground
For a little more than 5 years, I have done technological survey through web review, beta software test, community frameworks discovery...and I always consider this activity as a necessity to leverage my competencies.

For 2 years, I also maintain my own personal web site, using last Microsoft technology. It is a good way to dig some technologies (even if sometimes my wife complains of instability of our site...).

And now, for 1 year, I got a MSDN licence with Visual Studio Team Developer. With it, I can make tests environment. Now, I plan to build several virtual tests environments.

So today my technological playground is made of:

• A computer with several virtual test environment (see below for details)
  
• A Google Reader account to follow RSS and share great technological news grab here and there (shared items RSS)
  
• A Delicious account to organize my bookmarks
• Some Alt.Net meetings in Paris or starting DDD Paris user group
• And...this blog to try to make synthesis of my thoughts on IT
  

I am not on Twitter yet...but wondering, I see Google Buzz coming out or just Comment Sharing on Google Reader.

My virtual tests environments
I used to have a robust computer but a little undersized to be used as an efficient playground...but it was enough for the minimum. Now I reach a point where I need a little more powerful environment.

So I buy a new laptop, briefly Asus UL80vt boosted with an Intel Postville SSD drive, using hard drive in an external USB box for VMs as well as two hot USB keys (16Go Corsair Flash Voyager GT). Work well, great autonomy and powerfull...just a deception : I haven't an eSATA port, I have to rely only on USB...what a shame. But it is just what I need to support my plans.

So with this configuration, I can run several virtual machines given the 4Go RAM and 64bits host OS. For now, I am using VMWare Player as virtual hosting environment (mainly because Virtual PC does not support 64bits guests).

VMs allow me to separate tests. For now, for instance, I got the following VMs:

• Windows Server 2008 with TFS2010 Beta2 (I need to upgrade to just released RC I know...)
• Windows 7 with VS2010 Beta2
• Windows 7 with VS2008

To build these VMs, I always keep a clean copy of each OS VM with base software I am used to. It is a little bit as if I do snapshot with VMWare Workstation.
Moreover, I track what I installed on each VMs (software version) in an Excel sheet.

My Google Reader & Delicious accounts
I use it to track RSS feeds on the web. There are mainly of three types:

• Community lists/forums (NHibernate, DDD, DDD Paris, TDD, Alt.net, Alt.net Paris…)
• Individual blogs (ScottGu, Udi Dahan, Martin Fowler, Ayende Rahien…)
• Blog community (CodeBetter, Los Techies, devlicious...)
• Feed agregators & news site (DotNetGuru.org, Dotnetshoutout, InfoQ...)
  

I use my Share Items to share news. I prefer Delicious to bookmark and share my favorite web pages. On Delicious, I can better and simpler organize bookmarks through tags.

Participating in community
That the part I discovered last year with Alt.Net Paris community starting. It is the best place to learn and share with maximum interactivity. You learn a lot from others experiences, you meet some great people with rich experience.
Definitively a great experience!! Come to join us.

And finally this blog
I started this blog one year ago, and I experience difficulty to post regularly...I try my best and hope I will improve.