The Geek Talk

Who is Pete Brown?

I’m a father of two, woodworker, railfan, author, Commodore C64 fan, and a Community Program Manager at Microsoft. In my role at Microsoft, I work on Scott Hanselman’s team with a focus on the WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Windows, and other “code on the client” developer communities. I try to make it easy for folks to be successful with our developer products by producing articles, blog posts, training videos, sample applications and more. I also work directly with the product teams to represent the community in feature and planning discussions. I joined Microsoft in October 2009 after spending two years as a Silverlight and WPF MVP, and completely falling in love with the two technologies. I live outside near Annapolis, MD, and am luckily to be a part of one of the very few remote teams at Microsoft corporate.

What does your typical day look like?

Lately, my day has been a bit crazy between the Manning Silverlight 4 book I’m wrapping up, and the launches of Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4. I’m not a morning person, so my day usually involves me getting up a bit later than most folks, then making the long commute to my office in the basement. Luckily, most of the team I work with is on the west coast, so no one is pinging me at 8:00am. I have different tasks I do on each day of the week, but I’ll usually start with email and twitter. Once that is done, I’ll go upstairs and shower then come back and do the real work. Work for that day may involve writing articles, recording a video, working on a sample application or something else. I usually wrap up for supper at 5:30 then come back after my kids are asleep around 9:30/10:00. Lately with my book, I’ve been writing from that 10:00 spot until around 3:00am.

What do you do in your free time?

I like to work in my woodshop, spend time with my wife and kids, and sometimes catch an episode of Dr. Who on the BBC. I always love to play around with coding different things, but now that can be counted as part of my work :)

Current favorite apps?

That’s a tough one. I like to work in Visual Studio, of course. That and Windows LiveWriter have to be the two applications I’m in more than anything else (not counting email and twitter). I use LiveWriter for all the posts to my blog, and have a few essential add-ins to handle pasting in code and other bits. I also do a fair bit in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, but I would count then as “essential” but not “favorite” apps. Premiere, in particular, has some stability problems that I hope get resolved in CS5 when released later this year.

What OS do you prefer?

I’ve been working in Windows 7 since the first betas, before I joined Microsoft. I’ve been really happy with it, and continue to recommend it to friends and family. I even picked up a tablet PC with 4 point touch screen just to show off what Windows 7 + multi-touch can do. Speaking of which, I’m also really excited about the Windows Phone 7 OS. I love the Metro UI and the metaphors in use. Of course, there’s always the C64 operating system (CBM BASIC + CBM DOS) that I turn to from time to time. You can see my Commodore 128 in the right of the office picture.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Favorite: Color, Font, Language, JS Framework?

My favorite color was always the Crayola “Midnight Blue” as it existed back in the 70s and 80s, roughly hex #191970 if you have a properly calibrated display. I know the colors changed a bit over the years, so I’m not sure what it would be called now, or if it’s even still included in the huge box of crayons. For applications, I’ve grown to really like #222222 which is a nice dark charcoal gray color. It’s black to most folks, without seeming unnaturally so. Fonts are a different story. I have a bunch of fonts I like, but they vary based on the medium (print, online), technology (browser, desktop, mobile, presentation), the size, use (heading or body), and even the colors in-use when on-screen. I also have some fonts I’ve liked for code editors. Language is C# by far. When I tried the first alphas of .NET near 2000, I switched from VB to C# and never looked back. I’m not much of a JavaScript programmer, but jQuery has shown me the light there. I find that jQuery, and the patterns which most people use to code in jQuery, make JavaScript much more enjoyable.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

My 4-year-old son Benjamin has suddenly hit a point in his development where he has learned to draw people, letters … everything. He went from zero ability to “wow” overnight. It was pretty amazing to watch. This really inspired me on some potential projects for online learning and kids games. Now I just need to get to them.

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work of full-time employment?

Full-time work for sure. I much prefer to focus on the technical aspects and writing about things developers care about. If you’re freelance, you have to spend a fair bit of your time dealing with overhead like finding business, and messing with accounting (or an accountant). Truthfully, I just couldn’t be bothered with that. Oh, and Microsoft’s health insurance would be really hard for me to give up :)

What are your personal projects and goals for 2010?

I want to finish my Silverlight 4 book (this month, I hope). Beyond that, I need to get back to the renovation projects I started on this house. I built half the cabinets for my kitchen, but then left my wife with temporary countertops for far longer than I should have. She’s been a saint for living with it for this long, so now I need to go finish it. It still looks much like this, but with temporary counter tops and drawers. http://10rem.net/blog/2007/08/14/kitchen-renovation-update . Once that’s done, I have a few substantial projects, like putting some built-ins in my living room, and building a new home office in a different part of my basement – the side with windows!