Here is an update about the upcoming Mono Presentation for the Plano .NET User Group that will take place here on Wednesday March 2, 2005. Erik Dasque, the Program Manager for Mono has now confirmed his attendance to the meeting!

Speaking of presentations I, never did put out the video for the January meeting of the Fort Worth .NET User Group. The reason for this omission is because my attempt to record the session resulted in a video production that is a mix of elements from Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Blair Witch Project and America's Funniest Home Videos. I think that the meeting went so well that my video would only taint folks' memory of the event.

My final note on the subject of Mono Evangelism is related to the first Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) sponsored web cast: Mono: Running .NET Applications on Linux (Level 200) presented by Joe Hummel, PhD.

Let me congratulate Dr. Hummel for his work on yesterday's presentation and thank Microsoft for opening their forum to show our implementation of .NET. Sure, he could have used a more modern Linux distro (how about Linux SuSe 9.2 or VPC friendlier SuSe 9.1), he SHOULD have used Mono 1.1.3 and our Managed Windows Forms. If you asked me though, I tip my hat to the guy because he pulled it off! Good Job!

CD and Mono Win32 Articles Coming Soon

I have decided to finally setup a mod_mono hosted page that will accept request for the Mono/Gtk# and Cygwin build toolkit that I have mentioned in the past. I will wait until we put out Mono 1.1.4. Some of my close friends have had access to early snapshots of this collection of works -- I have also redistribute the CD to both Ximian and at events were I have been asked to present.. For those of you that have expressed interest and that have given me your mailing address already I say: coming soon.

As I write this entry, Kevin Shockey and I have been preparing the beginning of a series of How To articles that will focus on doing Mono from Win32 but aimed at targeting Linux and Mac OS X. O'Reilly publications has manifested interest in publishing that content on their ONDotnet section. Ironically, it would seem that Paco is all about Win32, yet believe me when I tell you that I wish I could live almost solely in Linux - probably Ubuntu with an incredible close second being NLD. However, I took it upon myself to try to not complain about the status of Mono in Win32 and rather do whatever I could to make this a better Mono world even for Microsoft OS. After all, Windows users are also entitled access to the future champion in the Managed Framework arena.

It is my sincere hope that Kevin and I will do a good enough job at spawning the next Mono Win32 packager extraordinaire that will free me from this lonely and at times hard work. Don't anybody worry. I am not calling it quits. I will be here until I can truly put a banner over my home that reads: "Mission Accomplished". And then you know how that may not be the end either :)

I have some projects of my own that have been in the making for some time and some of my earlier experiments became projects that require maintenance and care.