Blog

October 5th 2009 • 1,003 views • no response

Technology

This blog runs on WordPress, powered by PHP and MySQL and uses my own visual theme structured with the Fluid 960 Grid System. The logo is a hand-crafted cut-n-paste job crafted from the Guardian Egyptian typeface.

Licensing

Code presented in blog posts is provided as-is, without warranty without restriction I know of and licenced under the BSD license. You should ensure the legal and technical suitability of any code you acquire before integrating it into your own code-base.

Code and programs available from the Development section of the site are subject to their own individual copyrights and licences.

Blog content is Copyright © Damien Guard. All rights are reserved. If you want to quote more than a fair-use extract just get in touch – just to avoid duplicate content on the web which hurts search ranking.

Responsible disclosure

I feel the opinions and views I express here are truly my own however it is only responsible to disclose payments or gifts in kind that could be construed to have influenced such views.

Microsoft

Since May 2008 I have been a full-time paid Software Development Engineer at Microsoft initially on the Object and Entity Frameworks Team (working on LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework and Code First) and then from April 2010 at Xbox! Live working on the marketplace. I therefore own Microsoft stock and participate in their corporate employee discount programs with other organisations I mention on this blog including Apple and AT&T.

My role does not specifically include blogging but producing content is encouraged. Microsoft is not involved with the content of this blog other than when I have personally sought technical details (LINQ to SQL changes for 4.0) or a wording review (Future of LINQ to SQL) from my team. A draft about the features I personally want in LINQ to SQL was abandoned when a team member drew my attention to the likely chance that people would construe this as future direction given my position.

VMware

I received a free copy of VMware Fusion 2.0 directly from VMware which I could just use or write a review of. I used it until version 3 where I paid for a full upgrade but now use Parallels Workstation instead. I mention both on my blog but not specifically reviewed either.

FontLab

I talked about FontLab Studio often and while I did join the affiliate program I have not earnt any payments and paid full regular price for FontLab Studio and BitFonter.

NDepends

I was offered and accepted a free copy of NDepends which I initially used to try and identify IL-level changes between my LINQ to SQL templates and the SQLMetal generated code. It was not well suited for this use and so I haven’t reviewed or used the software since.

Clarius Visual T4

Clarius Consulting offer Visual T4 which adds syntax highlighting and IntelliSense to Visual Studio for T4 template (.tt) files. Clarius offered me a free Pro licence as a thank-you for the T4 community work I have done – specifically the T4 multi-file helper and the LINQ to SQL templates – which I accepted and intend to use.

Amazon, Google AdWords, advertising

I experiment with affiliate links, AdSense and some other advertising networks from time to time. Payments to date have been < $50. If I find a model that pays the hosting bills that would be great.

Everything else

I have received a number of free gift offers which normally come with the suggestion a review would be a nice idea. In all other cases than those described above I either did not accept, did not use or did not review/recommend them.

[)amien