August 2007 Blog Posts

Duck Typing nugget

Last night I gave a nugget on Duck Typing. The presentation deck is available, the library I talked about is from http://www.deftflux.net/blog/page/Duck-Typing-Project.aspx. What’s a nugget you say? Well at nxtgenug we encourage our members to stand up and talk, if only to allow them to escape hearing Chris, Dave, Rich, myself or any of the other organisers for months on end. The topics can be what you like, the length can be between 5 and 15 minutes. It’s a gentle introduction to speaking. Want to try? Then let us know, we’ll give you as much help as you want or need ...  Technorati...

posted @ Wednesday, August 22, 2007 10:54 PM | Feedback (0)

Swag comes to Cambridge; nxtgen expands further afield.

Over the weekend Rich and Dave announced the opening of a brand new NxtGenUG region - this time in Cambridge.  So now developers can make their way over the fens and boards of East Anglia can gather together to learn, chat, eat Pizza and get prizes thrown at them in copious quantities. The region will be run by Chris Hay and Allister Frost who live and work in the area.  Chris and Allister have put in a great deal of effort to get the region off of the ground including securing a fantastic venue, courtesy of non-other than Microsoft Research...

posted @ Monday, August 20, 2007 9:44 AM | Feedback (0)

VBUG Conference 2007: Another CardSpace appearance

Another conference outing for my CardSpace presentation, this time at the VBUG Conference in October. What:VBUG Conference 2007When:Wednesday, October 17, 2007 9:00 AM to Thursday, October 18, 2007 5:00 PMWhere:Microsoft UK CampusThames Valley ParkReading, West Berkshire RG6 1WG I see my stalking colleague Gary is also appearing (ever since he started he’s been talking at the same conference I have .... hmmm .....) This time we don’t clash either so I can finally attend one of his presentations! Technorati tags: Cardspace, VBUG

posted @ Wednesday, August 15, 2007 4:11 PM | Feedback (0)

nxtgenug: Win a ticket to TechEd update.

So I’ve been neglecting the technical blogging for a while (whilst I try to compete some demo code of a full working Information Card Identity Provider, you know how it is, you write code, then realise that it’s probably not clear enough, and keep looping around). However the nxtgenug TechEd competition has also been sucking my time. Part of the benefit of being a branch organiser is that, well, I get a few more goes that normal, not that I can win of course. So, I went rather mad, with the aim of wiping out entire countries (and a continent);...

posted @ Thursday, August 09, 2007 1:16 PM | Feedback (0)

Because sometimes you have to give into the memes.

I had to. Just this once (and not just because a certain someone keeps demanding more kittens in my presentations and blog posts). I now hate myself. Technorati tags: meme, lolcat, quantum, Schrödinger’s cat

posted @ Tuesday, August 07, 2007 9:05 PM | Feedback (0)

The BBC iPlayer sucks.

Well I tried, I really did, but after struggling for 4 hours the BBC iPlayer was uninstalled (which took 30 minutes minimum). My thoughts then (without screen shots obviously) The iPlayer uses the same Kontiki P2P system that Sky Everywhere and 4 On Demand uses. The same components that everyone complains about as there’s no way to throttle bandwidth.Nor can I see anywhere the BBC warns you about this (Sky eventually started to). So if you’re on a limited ISP connection (of which there are many in the UK) you may quickly run out of your bandwidth allowance because...

posted @ Monday, August 06, 2007 9:57 AM | Feedback (22)

The DDD5 feedback is in

Just to tease Gary, who posted his DDD feedback scores I can’t let that past, especially as it looks like he’s trying to overtake my role as main speaker and work (Gary, there’s only room for one overfed ego my boy!) Overall Knowledge Presentation Content 4.3 4.8 4.4 4 To those who fed back my thanks; but there is a point to this rather than teasing Gary, the detailed feedback is useful. Three people filled in comments section; Well presented, useful, filled in some gaps in my knowledge. Good style, good level of detail. I have...

posted @ Sunday, August 05, 2007 9:48 PM | Feedback (2)

Craig Murphy takes my (podcasting) virginity.

Last Thursday Craig Murphy was down in London (in a tie!) and we met up in the White Hart pub in Dury Lane and out came his recorder and we meandered through social networking (FaceBook, Twitter and so on), identity, security, CardSpace, trust in managed card providers and other security topics that popped into my head as I brain dumped. This was my first full podcast (Dave & Rich from nxtgen have mugged me for slots before of course) I believe at 38:04 minutes it’s the longest podcast Craig has ever recorded (the beep censoring my language included but I was...

posted @ Saturday, August 04, 2007 6:35 AM | Feedback (0)

Profanity in open source

Phil just twittered pointing to the koders search functionality, or more accurately searching for "fuck". Of course being childish I’m amused; but I was even more amused when I limited the language to C#; int idx1,idx2; Array.Copy(camkey,0,localkey,0,8); //memcpy (localkey, camkey, 8) ; not implemented in C# (fuck ms) for (idx1=0;idx1<8;idx1++ ){ Language: C#LOC: 84BerliOS : Mobil Object Identification (project search) : .../mobicar/mobicar/syncitbaby/cardserver/CardSimples.cs swearing because memcpy isn’t available? I don’t think someone gets the idea of managed code ... Technorati tags: koders, Phil Haack, It’s not big or clever

posted @ Thursday, August 02, 2007 11:49 AM | Feedback (1)

nxtgenug takes swag to the next step; Win a ticket to TechEd

It’s not just socks, t-shirts and software you know; NxtGenUG is offering one lucky winner a ticket to Microsoft’s premier European developer conference : TechEd Developers in Barcelona : November 5th – 9th 2007. To be in with a chance to win the ticket register on the NxtGenUG site and enter the TechEd ticket treasure hunt. [Terms and conditions apply]. Visit the NxtGenUG TechEd home page for more details... I doubt organisers can enter though; otherwise I would view it as a swag gathering tip, errrrr, useful technical conference. Technorati tags: nxtgenug, competition, TechEd

posted @ Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:40 AM | Feedback (0)