The application I made is called "MediaOwl" and is a search engine for movies and music. If you want to try it, click here. As it is a Silverlight application using the Framework Caliburn Micro, the source code is free. You can take a look at the code on CodePlex.

If you have any suggestions, improvements or questions, just email me.

Last but not least I want to give props to Rob Eisenberg for this great framework. Walk on like this!

I have to point out that it is a sample application, not a real-world-application. That means you can look at this app and its code and get smart, and not that it is for reliable use. But anyway, you can try the app on this site!

As I published MediaOwl under MIT-license, you can even download the source code on Codeplex. If you find any errors, please leave me a message (e-mail, comment on Codeplex, letter... I appreciate everything!).

That's it for now! Ra

Afterwards I fulfilled a dream, I visited U2 live in Munich Olympic Stadium, 80,000 spectators. It was... magnificent. I made some pictures you can find on the Galleries-Site.

What am I gonna do the next time? Well, I noticed Caliburn Micro improved, I'll definitely dive into this. I did some work with CM, moreless something like a variation of a sample app of Rob Eisenberg. You can find my "Cryptos" here.

Farewell for now! R

Many of us may remember Caliburn V1, which had some (doubtless) ingenious implementations of hardly understandable patterns. In my opinion and for my purpose, it was easier to use as PRISM (aka CAG). And though there were docs and tuts, it was quite hard to keep the overview. After a while .NET 4 was released with some interesting features, and Rob Eisenberg (father of Caliburn) decided to improve Caliburn and work on a second version of his framework. And after his incredible contribution at MIX10, he decided to build a small (2000 LOC!) framework with great features, targetting WPF, Silverlight and WP7, and if that's not enough, it should also be easy to understand.

Caliburn Micro has key features like Action Message, Action Conventions, Binding Convention, Screens and Conductors, Event Aggregator, Coroutines and much more. If you don't know what these features mean, read Rob's introduction.

Currently, a documentation with basic samples is in progress, and the discussion-board on codeplex is quite active. I really love to work with CM, due to its Conventions, Screenmanagement and Action- and Couroutinehandling. That's simply great work of Rob Eisenberg, because it means no work for the developer.

Everyone, who searches for a helping hand developing clean applications in WPF/SL/SP7, should consider using Caliburn Micro. That's basically what I wanted to say!

Many people have downloaded it since its release, and now, as a great peak, the "I like Blend"-Theme is mentioned in Soma Segar's MSDN-Blog in an article about VS2010 Productivity Improvements.

Well, needless to say, I'm kinda proud. Thanks to Soma Segar and Polita Paulus (who asked me for permission)!

Additionally, below is a screencap how the theme looks like. I use a slightly modified version of John Papa's "Dark Theme" as editor color style.

You can download it here! (It's an XML-File, so better right-click and save-as than left-click!)

I can only recommend .toolbox to any developer, who wants to learn some principles about design. Those courses are helpful especially to design neat small web-apps! Beside couses .toolbox offers some tutorials, especially on Expression Blend 4, as well.

Wohoo, not nearly half of us "intermediate developers" have used (or even discovered) half of the features of Cinch V1, now the second version is released. For those who don't know what I'm writing: Cinch is one of many supporting MVVM-Frameworks for WPF or/and Silverlight. Yes, there are many, and one is the best. Which one? Damn, we don't know yet, but thank god, so many days to come.

Thanks to Sacha Barber (who, on his behalf, gives many props to Marlon Grech), we now have a MVVM-Framework that makes extensive use of MEF. And every part-time-dev knows, MEF is great, it's soooo great, hardly anyone knows the possibilities.

Is there anything more to say? Hell no. Not me. But Sacha has started a series of articles describing the new features of Cinch V2. And, as he writes, it ain't be wrong to read his first series about Cinch V1.

I'm investigating Cinch V2 in every free minute the next weeks, hopefully I can write another entry, that says something more interesting than this one!

Now that's what I call a surprise! My favourite CMS TYPOlight gets a new name! The TYPOlight-devTeam decided to rename their CMS to "Contao Open Source CMS". You can read the announcement here. The renaming-process finishes with version 2.9 (2.9.RC1), which is scheduled for the beginning of June 2010.

There are many disadvantages of renaming a finished and already known product. But, as I read in the announcement, the TYPOlight/Contao-Team was both unsatisfied by the word "TYPO" (huh, what a unique name in the CMS-world) and "light" (yeah, I don't like Coke Light either).

As far as the quality of Contao stays on such a high level as the former TYPOlight, I don't mind that change. So good luck to the devTeam of TYPOlight Contao!

After I realised, that there were FOUR sketches finished, I wondered, if I have to draw a fifth, or I have to go on until I have EIGHT drawings. Or if I can never make more than 108? But after the fifth drawing, I was able to stop, no problem. What a coincidence, isn't it?

The themes I drew were portraits of the most significant characters of LOST. Benjamin Linus, James "Sawyer" Ford, Richard Alpert, John Locke and Desmond Hume. Yeah, there were Jack, Kate and Hurley as well, but then there would be EIGHT drawings again!

You can examine my drawings HERE in the "Portraits"-Area!

See you in another life, brother!

And now it's over. Six seasons of jungle and hatches, destiny and coincidence, flashbacks, flashforwards and flashsideways(?), immortal men, black-smoke-thing and the Others, have now reached an end.

What have we learned? Maybe if you are in a difficult situation and you don't know what to do, do the next thing that comes to your mind and pretend that you are supposed to do that. Or that Jacob told you. Or dead people.

To show my extraordinary grief, I decided to honor this excellent piece of TV history with a series of artwork. I am starting with portraits of my favourite characters. Well, let's see how long it will take.

You may ask why I'm doing that.

I know I should do that, I'm supposed to!

The bottom line is usually "It depends..." and "Everyone on his own...". Well, to deliver my comment to this global discussion, I have to admit that I like the visual style of Expression Blend. So I decided to make my VS look like Blend.

Looks like this:

You need the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor to apply a theme to VS.

Download my theme here!

There are several things i renewed (like the design) and several that are absolutely new, like the language, that has changed from sweet mother tongue guttural German to that language I do not need to designate if you can read that.

As I'm not that perfect in speaking (and writing) foreign languages, I apologize for any mistakes in advance and appreciate those, who'd like to correct some. Additionally, I've been to the USA and Britain, so I mix up these AE and BE terms and phrases quite a lot!

Especially in my blog I intend to collect some of the most useful articles, hints, tutorials... on the net about webdesign, softwaredevelopment, art and other funny and interesting things!

Have fun and a nice spring!