The LINQ videos seem to be rolling out lately. 

• Wes Dyer interviews Charlie Calvert - download.
• Anders Hejlsberg on LINQ and Functional Programming

Boooooooooooooo! :)  I'd really like to get a new release that includes everything LINQ related that we saw in the May 2006 CTP so I can start updating all my code samples and use all the new wizz bang features that I'm sure they've added.

Update: I think I misread the post above.  The next Orcas CTP isn't being pushed to March, it's just a bunch of LINQ to SQL stuff that isn't making it into February that will show it's face in March.

John Rusk left a comment on my Developers ditching Microsoft for Rails post and brought to light the fact that developers might not be leaving because of what Rails is doing right, but instead because of what .NET is doing wrong.  I definitely agree that many of the reasons people leave the .NET world for technologies like Rails is because working in .NET isn't as smooth as it should be.  One of the things that makes Rails so successful is its focus, and the embracing of constraints.  Rather then trying to be everything to everybody, Rails is focused on a specific vision.  As I've said in the past, Rails is opinionated software.

For those looking for Rails-ish frameworks in the .NET world you might want to checkout SubSonic and Castle's ActiveRecord and MonoRail projects.  I just had De-ja-vu.

I've been reading a lot of stories lately about developers leaving the friendly confines of .NET Land for Rails and other non-Microsoft technologies.  Perhaps the most notable being Mike Gunderloy of  The Daily Grind fame.  You can read more about Mike's journey over on his A Fresh Cup - Notes from a recovering Microsoft addict blog.  Also of interest is the Forums on the softiesonrails.com site. 

I actually thought about switching my blog engine over to Mephisto to get a little taste of Rails, however, since I'm hosting this on a Windows box the thought was short lived.

I can't wait for the next CTP of Orcas to drop since it supposed to have feature parity with the ancient May 2006 LINQ Preview I'm still using.

• Mike has a nice post where he looks to Deconstruct LINQ.  I often find posts like Mike's, where the author is letting what they've learned flow out in a post, the most beneficial.
• Alex is considering a couple implementations of IQueryable, which he is calling LINQ to Web, that sound very useful.  I've been thinking about writing an implementation of LINQ to Google or LINQ to Live Search myself.  I have a feeling that a bunch of what Alex is after in LINQ to DOM could be handled with a couple extensions on top of LINQ to XML.
• There is a new video on Channel 9 with Anders Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, Brian Beckman that is bound to be full of interesting topics.  I've been having some iPod video troubles lately and can't seem to find a good WMV to iPod Video Converter that runs on a Mac.  I should probably just do the video conversion in Parallels...ok started...can't wait to check it out.
  

I've decided to start fresh with a new blog engine over here on iqueryable.com.  I've been having some problems with my hosting provider that has prevented me from doing some updates to my blog at steve.emxsoftware.com, so rather than continue to mess with that I've decided to start things anew here.

We'll see how things go! :)