Tim Leung's Blog

On Saturday, I attended the DDD7 developer conference in Reading where Andy Westgarth and myself helped out with room monitoring.

The first session that I went to was Phil Pursgrove's (VBUG coordinator for Cambridge) session on ASP.Net scalability. One of the interesting topics covered was caching in ASP.NET using the SqlCacheDependency class. Another item mentioned was JSMin, a tool that reduces the size of JavaScript files by removing comments and whitespace.

The second session that I went to was Toby Henderson's talk on developing .Net applications using Linux and Mono. Since directory separators are different in Linux, an excellent tip given was to use the .Net Path.Combine and Path.DirectorySeparatorChar methods/fields to build file paths. Also mentioned was IKVM.Net which allows you to call Java classes from .Net code.

In order to identify issues when porting .Net code to Mono, the MoMA tool can be used.

A tool recommended by a member of the audience was Wubi. This allows you to duel boot into Linux without having to create a partition.

The final session that I went to was Helen Emerson's talk on the web which featured an excellent overview of the new features in HTML5 and CSS3.0. An interesting feature is the addition of forms in HTML 5. The HTML inputs element can have types specified such as datetime. This will then display a datetime picker automatically in a supported browser. A canvas element is also introduced that allows you to draw shapes and here are some examples.

http://www.abrahamjoffe.com.au/ben/canvascape/

http://blobsallad.se/

Also very interesting was a demonstration of locating yourself on a Google map using geo-location features. The ajaxian blog site is also recommended by Helen.

Overall, the DDD committee did a great job of organising this event and I look forward to the next one in 2009. There will be a DDD South West in Exeter during quarter 2 of 2009 and the next SQLBits will be held in Manchester on 28th March 2009.

On Friday, I attended a 'Community Leaders Day' at Microsoft and here are some random notes from the day.

Here are some upcoming events in 2009:

Microsoft UK Challenge - 10-14 June 2009
http://www.ukchallenge.co.uk/

Microsoft Mix 2009 - 18-19 March 2009
http://2009.visitmix.com/

DDD Scotland - 2nd May 2009
http://developerdayscotland.com/

During the morning, Nathan Winters did a session on user group collaboration highlighting the need for developer groups to provide developer assistance for IT pro groups.

http://www.ukusergroups.co.uk/

Afterwards, Colin Mackay did a session on managing events with EventBrite and here some links that came about during discussions:

http://www.eventbrite.com/

http://www.timesnapper.com/

http://www.surveymonkey.com/

http://www.feedbackserver.com

Also mentioned was the popularity of office sharing through 'co-working' in Brighton and possibilities of finding venues in the evenings through such schemes. In terms of funding, the possibility of Government Regeneration Schemes was mentioned. Registering a 'Limited Company by Guarantee' and the advantages of 'charity' status was also discussed.  

Afterwards, Andrew Fryer delivered a session on PDC highlights that included cloud computing, Office 14 and illustrations of successful projects including the RNLI project for monitoring man-over-board scenarios and Bluehoo.

Finally, Graham Watson spoke about Microsoft Usergroup Services and the organisational structure including Ineta and Culminus.

During the VBUG meeting in Bracknell yesterday evening, Colin MacKay gave a great talk on LINQ to XML. Colin is actively involved in organising Scottish DDD and the next one takes place on the 2nd May 2009.

The first part of the session contained a demo of constructing XML using the System.Xml.Linq.XElement object and the various methods associated with this class. This object allows you to add an event handler to the 'changed' event that fires whenever the value of an xml element is modified. An interesting part of this is that setting the value on an XElement object removes and adds the new value rather than just setting the new value. As a result, any child elements will be removed. Also of interest is the ability to be able to add and retrieve annotations to the XML. These annotations can be any object. During the second part, Colin gave a comprehensive demonstration of querying the data using LINQ including calculations and aggregations.

During the evening, David Parker also mentioned the System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer class containing methods to convert text to speech. There was also some discussion about speech recognition and the latest version of Dragon Naturally Speaking. At the end of the evening, we raffled away a copy of Nevron Chart for .NET.

Thanks once again to Colin for presenting and putting on a great show!

Here's a quick reminder about the next meeting in Bracknell on Thursday 20th November at 19:00. During the evening, Colin Mackay will be doing a session on XML to LINQ and here is an outline of his talk:

Colin Angus Mackay will be giving an introduction to the new XML classes in .NET 3.5, how they work and what can be done with them. He'll then show how the new XML classes can be used in LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) in order to get data out in the way that you want. Colin Angus Mackay is a Microsoft MVP (C#), Code Project MVP, and Member of the British Computer Society, Member of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers. He first got started with software development when he was 9 years old with a ZX Spectrum.

During the evening, we will also be giving away a license for Nevron Chart for .Net worth $299.

http://www.nevron.com/

If you wish to attend, please register through the following link.

http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/November-2008/VBUG-Bracknell-LINQ-to-XML--Everything-but-the-Kitchen-SINQ.aspx

This afternoon, myself and Prasanya Sahadevan from the British Computer Society gave a talk for HND and BSc students at Thames Valley University.

During the presentation, we spoke about how we started in IT industry, the projects that we've worked on and general careers advice.

It was interesting to see the students prospective on IT and how they view the industry during the current economic climate. Interesting questions that we had included career paths for those that are not 'programming inclined', how to find work without commercial experience and advice on IT internships.