In the east, you have the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. In the west, there’s the Black-Chinned Hummingbird. As with many other east/west divisions in both the animal and plant kingdoms, the two hummers sometimes overlap right here in Dallas county — for example, you can find both of them at Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center at Cedar Hill. Living in northwestern Dallas County, we did not know which to expect when we set out our feeder a few weeks ago. Thus far, it is has been entirely Black-Chinned.

Recently I have been looking at ServiceStack’s OrmLite “Micro ORM” as a light-weight alternative to Entity Framework. It is relatively easy to use and very powerful, with capability for both code-first and database-first development. After learning the basic interaction, it was time to flip back into TDD-mode.

Last weekend, faith communities across the U.S. hosted more than two-hundred events aimed at expanding awareness of the reality of climate change. This was the National Preach-In on Climate Change, sponsored by Interfaith Power & Light. As Co-Chair of Dallas Interfaith Power & Light, I was excited and honored to be able to give a presentation to my own community (Bahá‘ís of Irving) and to attend the innovative Preach-Off on Climate Change in Austin. The Bahá‘í s of Austin also afforded me an opportunity to give my presentation on Moral Imperatives for Climate Action, from a Bahá‘í Perspective, at their Sunday morning devotional program. Hopefully I was able to provide something useful to a few people; I certainly received much from my conversation and participation with people from many faith backgrounds. This will, God-willing, be the first of two blog posts reflecting on the conversations.

We got up this morning with merely grudging acceptance of the breakfast we planned on attending — an introduction to the Valley Ranch home owners association and committees, for new home owners. We left the meeting feeling excited and optimistic. We already knew that it was a good, “master planned,” neighborhood. Now we feel more confident that it has a bright future as well, one that includes serious water conservation measures, ecological aesthetics, and social opportunities.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a great tool for building client/server applications in the .Net environment. It is one of those technologies that can be challenging to dig into when services are just one of many tools needed to assemble a business application, as opposed to being an end in itself. With some of my co-workers in mind, here are some of the lessons I have learned in using WCF for internal, line-of-business, applications. These notes, which will be published in several parts, assume a basic understanding of WCF and contracts.

I have set myself the goal of learning how to develop a Windows user interface with a moderately complex workflow, one that implies a Wizard-like set of screens to guide the user through a set of steps. The demonstration project’s architecture will utilize the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, with the help of Caliburn.Micro (CM) [nice tutorial]. The solution will utilize the Application Controller pattern and CM’s Conductors.

This is a technical blog, right? Why would I mention this virtue? In Management 3.0, Jurgen Appelo suggests in Do-It-Yourself Team Values that the various Agile, Lean, XP, etc. principles are, quite simply, virtues. Teams should pick a small number and focus on them. “Kindness” is not among the 50 virtues he suggests thinking about, but it should not come as a surprise that that my rationale for “kindness” will overlap that of many other virtues, such as “helpfulness,” “mindfulness,” “tactfulness,” and “service.” Each of these single words offers a slightly different window into an ineffable world of human goodness, and I choose “kindness” for this theory. First, a minor digression.

Urban gardening and agriculture in public spaces are becoming accepted as potent means for personal transformation, small-scale economic activity, and for larger-scale climate mitigation and adaptation. This week, Dallas Interfaith Power & Light will be touring the East Dallas Promise of Peace community garden at White Rock United Methodist Church — built, of all places, on top of an unused parking lot! Based on the early feedback, we expect this will be the first of many opportunities to tour community gardens in the ambit of sacred spaces. Likewise, this will be the first of several blog posts on the subject.