Steve Maine of Brain.Save() has done a really good job on the description of a set of duplex contracts in Indigo, i.e. those contracts where callbacks are specified, using the design of a multi-player game of blackjack. Steve shows the service contract interfaces, a bunch of the messaging code and even what’s on the wire. Recommended.

It took a coupla days more than we wanted ’cuz I was fighting with some internal tools, but the March 2005 Avalon/Indigo CTP is available for public download.

Make sure you follow the instructions on the download page and only use it with the February CTP release of Visual Studio 2005, i.e. don’t use it against the Whidbey beta 2 that’ll “coming soon*” to a theater near you.

* for some definition of “coming soon…”

Are you unhappy with how MSDN arranges content on our site? Would you like to host the content you’ve written on your own site in your own chrome? You can’t do it with everything, but for the content with which it works, Duncan Mackenzie has posted code that pulls content out of MSDN’s current content management system* and hosts in in your own chrome. For those of you that don’t like how MSDN arranges its content, you now have the technical means to arrange it to suit your own tastes.

* DISCLAIMER: Microsoft’s copyright still applies. The internal details of our content management system are going to change without notice. Use at your risk. No warranties extended. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. blah, blah, blah…

Chris Anderson has updated XamlPad for the March 2005 CTP of Avalon and renamed it AvPad. As a tool for learning and experimenting with XAML/Avalon, it can’t be beat. Enjoy!

I always love reading about people that love their jobs. In this case, a Toronto coder gave up half his salary to get out of cubeland and onto the back of a bike as a courier. His descriptions, especially the diary entries at the end, make me pine for the part of my childhood when I’d spend hours on the back of the bike simply because it was the most fun thing I could think of to do. Recommended.

Between ”dogging″ and ”toothing″ (who comes up with these names?) it’s a wonder the Brits have found the time to push the Euro up against the dollar…

OK, the first TechEd video from Scott & Rory (”A love story“) was chuckle funny, but the #2 video (”Revenge of the Sith“) was laugh out loud funny all the way through. Recommended.

Robert points out a hilarious video of what happens in an XBOX Live session of Halo 2 when the other players find out you’ve fallen asleep. But, even more interesting than that is the ability for that kind of real-world fidelity to make it into a virtual world so that guys from across the country can all haze the guy in his sleep. I want that for my PC!

[via Scoble]