This post contains links and references to subjects discussed in my MonkeySpace 2013 talk.

Naturally, the talk was grounded in Xamarin Studio.

Xamarin's Field Service App is a reference implementation for cross-platform MVVM.

The Xamarin DCI example source code can be found here.

Essential books on software-architectural patterns:

• Design Patterns …

Scala has several nice language features, including the elegant use of val for immutable variables and var for mutable, but the feature that I miss the most on a day-to-day basis is "traits."

Traits allow you to implement one or more methods of an interface. The canonical use is to …

According to Evans Data, the worldwide developer community will reach 29M by 2019. The largest growth is expected to come from China and, to a lesser extent, other developing economies.

I tend to be very skeptical about quantitative analysis of the developer community, and more-so when it comes to global …

Giles Thomas makes the case that the Python programming community numbers in the low millions. This seems right to me: that's a large community, but it's not quite at the level of the most popular programming languages. That size is supported by this chart, which has impressed me as "feeling …

Yes, it's worth it.

It's a pity that the phrase "…in their natural habitat," is so boring. The difference between this:

and this:

is the difference between a pixel and the Sistine Chapel.

Deciding to spend the money on this trip was the hardest part of our Alaska trip. My …

The other day I'm doing the bills and I get one of those healthcare "This is not a bill. It describes services." things. You know, the sort of things that 90% of the world throws out without reviewing. But I look at it and check with my wife if she …

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very well written. First-person account of a psychopath or maybe a sociopath living deep inside a metaphor in Scotland. Very unsettling, with a narrator who's clearly unreliable, so one is always wondering if incidents or even entire characters …

Easily:

< ![CDATA[
[Activity (Label = "HelloBarometer", MainLauncher = true)]
public class Activity1 : Activity, ISensorEventListener
{
    TextView mainLabel;  

    protected override void OnCreate(Bundle bundle)
    {
        base.OnCreate(bundle);
        // Set our view from the "main" layout resource
        SetContentView(Resource.Layout.Main);
        //Detect the barometer
        var sm = (SensorManager) this.GetSystemService(Context.SensorService);
        var barry = sm.GetDefaultSensor(SensorType …

How to enable developer settings on Android 4.2 | Android Central.

I just got myself a Nexus 4 for cross-platform development, but it didn't initially appear as a device in Xamarin Studio. Initial Googling and SO'ing indicated a non-existent "Settings->Application->Developer" route to enable debugging on the phone.

Instead …

The Justified finale had a scene that summed up one of it's greatest strengths: Raylan, the putative hero, and Boyd, the putative villain, demonstrate how parallel they are to each other: Raylan points to Boyd's career and sneers at the thought that Boyd imagines himself anything other than "the bad …