Tired Booth Babe After PDC

Like most of use, Erica is beat after the three days of the PDC

Technorati Tags:
PDC08

Shhh!

Gary is at the PDC this week, isn’t it quiet here?

Out of this World Blogging Software

As many of you know I’ve recently acquired a MacBook for use when I am traveling. Of course I now have to find applications to use instead of the ones I had previously used on my PC.

The first piece of software I need for my work (and for play too) is blogging software, and for that I’ve selected MarsEdit (hence the out of this world title).

Setting up my blog couldn’t have been easier, I just pointed MarsEdit at the URL, specified the user id and password and Bob is your proverbial uncle, I’m good to go.

MarsEdit handles slugs, tags and excerpts as well as extended entries. You can easily add categories for your posts, media files and enclosures, it’ll even work out mime type and length of the enclosed file, either from the url or from a file on your file store.

There’s also a number of scripts that comes included with MarsEdit which allow you to do things like state your currently playing song in iTunes, look up Dictionary.com and create a post from the current Safari page.

In short, it’s a pretty cool piece of software and is my choice for offline blogging on the Mac.

Technorati Tags:
MarsEdit, Mac Software

Erlang! Erlang! Erlang!

Yes it’s Erlang at Scottish Developers tonight, come and join us at the Queen Mother Building, Dundee University, Dundee. See our EventBrite page for all the location details; see you there at 7:00pm!

Description

The future is coming… A utopian dream where multi-core computers can do thousands of things simultaneously.

The catch? In this concurrent world, we programmers aren’t equipped with the language tools necessary to harness this power. Locks, semaphores, and mutexes are brittle, uncompasable and prove almost impossible to implement correctly, without leading to disastrous bugs such as race conditions or deadlock.

As we face our multi-core, distributed future the need for Erlang is clear. A high level symbolic language with built in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance.

In this talk you’ll learn how Erlang discards traditional imperative assumptions, such as mutable data, liberating you to write programs that can scale to efficiently use thousands of cores concurrently!

Speaker Biography

Having been interested in computing and innovation since an early age, it’s hardly surprising Rick work’s as a Software Engineer. Always, an evangelist for free and open source software, Rick has built many systems professionally on these foundations, and occasionally finds the time to make small contributions to a variety of projects.

Rick works for a small software house in Dundee, where he develops context based communication software, distributed systems and engages in relevant contract work.

Technorati tags: Erlang, Scottish Developers, User Group, Dundee University

The Credit Crunch Brings Good News

If the current financial crisis has a silver lining, it is that it has put an end the the fantasist Salmond’s dream of an independent Scotland. As two major Scottish banks go cap in hand to the Bank of England for their share of a 37 billion GBP bail out, one wonders what would have happened if Scotland were independent now. Salmond would be trying to negotiate this bail out with the central bank of a foreign power; the country would be practically bankrupt, as Iceland is now. Salmond’s idea that the engine of Edinburgh’s financial market would drive prosperity throughout the country is now laughable in the extreme.  And so, for this reason alone, I say to those architects of the US sub prime mortgage market, and the creators of the derivatives in which such obvious bad debt was hidden, and to the regulators who were asleep at the wheel; thank you.

Technorati tags: Financial Crisis, Credit Crunch, Scottish Independence, Alex Salmond

Microblogging for October 10th 2008

Recently I said:-

@blowdart sadly I’m too busy today for any slap ‘n’ tickle with the wife 01:43 PM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit in reply to blowdart

@Blowdart @colinMackay Jeez you guys know how to spoil a good sulk 01:33 PM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit in reply to blowdart

Bugger, how’d it get to be lunch time so fast? 12:54 PM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit

@olivers I’ve never been a typing joke before. Cool! 11:43 AM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit in reply to olivers

@olivers I got an idea… use F#. <ducks /> 11:42 AM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit in reply to olivers

blog: UK MVPs & “Softies” Rock On After the Open Day – http://tinyurl.com/4ulwvf 11:03 AM October 10, 2008 from web

@Ben_Hall Thanks, but not to worry, you can’t speak at them all right? 10:09 AM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit in reply to Ben_Hall

@Ben_Hall Love the @blowdart hip comment 10:08 AM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit in reply to Ben_Hall

@blowdart LOL, well it is a loooong and expensive from Dundee, it’s okay for you guys who jump in the car and drive round the courner 09:47 AM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit in reply to blowdart

I’m not required at DDD this time, which is disappointing and not a little embarrassing, on the plus side Nov isn’t so ugly for travel now 09:34 AM October 10, 2008 from OutTwit

Come and join the conversation at http://www.twitter.com/garyshort

Technorati tags: Microblogging

UK MVPs & “Softies” Rock On After the Open Day

Technorati tags: UK MVP Open Day

Microblogging for October 7th 2008

Recently I said

Welcomes @laurelatoreilly to my mad, mad Twitter world (View)

@jdscolam well can’t give you that in 140 chars LOL, DM your email addy and I’ll post you my thoughts (View)

@alashcraft LOL, asked to attend the TweetUp, if that’s even a word (View)

@Ben_Hall Yes. Steps are: 1. Learn DLR, 2. Learn how to create computer languages 3. Do IronSmalltalk, so should be done by the week-end (View)

@scottisafool you didn’t mention it, I just guessed (View)

@alashcraft if I’m asked, yeah (View)

@ColinMackay not sure you can get one from PC world, some laptop power bricks are proprietory design (View)

@jdscolam I’m the DX evangelist for the product, what do you need to know? (View)

@scottisafool thanks I’ll take a look, plugin king LMAO (View)

@ColinMackay not really a mac related thing I think. Do you think you’d be able to get a US power cable easily from Dell for example? (View)

@scottisafool I could do I suppose, do you have a link to any good tutorials? (View)

Joanne for AppleCare rocks. UK and EU power cables on their way to me (View)

@MichelleFlynn that’s the second time they’ve emailed me rubbish like that so this time I thought I’d post it LOL (View)

@scottisafool They had their chance (View)

blog: Why Recruitment Agents Suck – http://tinyurl.com/4r7faq (View)

@davidmohara atta boy! (View)

blog: XAF RWA Use Case #1 – http://tinyurl.com/4658jf (View)

@RTPeat which plugs straight into the adaptor so I lose about 1m of cable. FAIL (View)

Why not come and join the conversation at http://www.twitter.com/garyshort

Why Recruitment Agents Suck

WTF?!!!!!

Dear Gary
I have an excellent new opportunity:
Civil Engineering Supervisor required to assist with major project in the North East. The successful candidate must have heavy Civil Engineering experience (industrial), experience in a management or supervisory role, experience of heavy concrete repair and maintenance, and be used to working with contractors.
The role will involve supervising a team of 6 people working on a project in heavy industry, and will also include producing reports and specifications.
This is a 12 months contract initially but extensions are possible. The rate is in the region of £25ph. Send your CV for immediate consideration and interview.
If this is not relevant to you, let me know and I will amend your details accordingly.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Elizabeth Bray
Progressive UK Engineering
Phone 0113 386 2777
Email e.bray@progressive.co.uk

Technorati tags: Recruitment Agents

Win an Xbox Elite Console

Running until November 28th 2008 Microsoft has a competition to win an Xbox Elite console, all you have to do is to sign up for the MSDN Flash newsletter. Click here to enter. Good luck!

Technorati tags: Win an Xbox Elite Console, MSDN Flash Newsletter