Microblogging for March 10 2009

Recently I said

@JMBucknall Does he now? How exciting; I need to get me one of those! (View)

@JMBucknall Yeah, I heard a rumour you’d okay’d it too. (View)

@fkerrigan "Lawful reason or reasonable excuse" is all your need. I need a usb drive for work m’lud (View)

@fkerrigan you know you want one (View)

RT Tweet something true that you like about @DevExpress, tag it #DXUSBKnife and get a chance to win this cool USB Knife: http://is.gd/mKSw (View)

IronSmalltalk rumour: @JMBucknall is going to give @garyshort one day off per week just to work on IronSmalltalk. How cool is that?!! (View)

@olivers enough with the IronSmalltalk thing already!! (View)

@hhariri there won’t be software to go with the manual either lol (View)

@omonien Did I mention I wasn’t writing a book? (View)

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

DDD South West Registration is Open!

Go! Quickly! Stop reading this and register now! Registration for DDD South West is now open. Be able to tell your grandchildren that you were there at the very beginning. Remember, there can be only one first time.

DDD South West is a free one day technical event on Saturday 23rd May 2009 at Queens College, Taunton with 13 top speakers providing 19 technical presentations.

Technorati tags: Developer Day, DDD South West, Community

New NxtGenUG Branch!

The NxtGenUG guys have opened another branch, here are the details

"NxtGenUG are well chuffed to announce the start of the sixth UK region this time in Hereford. The group is being run by local developers Ryan O’Neill and Richard Wilde.  The group will have it’s first meeting on 17th March 2009 between 7.00pm and 9.00pm in the Shirehall, Union Street, Hereford HR1 2HX. The main speaker will be Guy Smith-Ferrier with a session on Visual Studio 2008 Tips ‘n Tricks.  There will be the usual NxtGenUG activities of eating Pizza and Swagging-out.  To book your place goto http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=203 where registration and meeting is free.  Come along and enjoy yourself and get involved in the UK Community in the West of England!"

So if you are in the area it is well worth going along and checking out. For extra abuse, tell them I sent you LOL.

Technorati tags: Community, NxtGenUG

Developer Day Scotland and Belfast Voting…

…has opened; so if you want to hear me speak then pop along to the following URLs and cast your votes in my favour; if you don’t then you might end up having to listen to Barry Dorrans speak. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/belfast/Users/VoteForSessions.aspx

http://developerdayscotland.com/main/Voting/tabid/81/Default.aspx

Technorati tags: Developer Day Belfast, Developer Day Scotland, Voting Now Open

The Latest CodeCast Podcast…

… (episode 10) is available now at http://www.code-magazine.com/codecast/ where we are talking about various Developer Express tools including CodeRush, RefactorPro and DXCore.

Technorati tags: CodeCast, Coderush, RefactorPro, Podcast

Ever Wanted to Speak at a Community Conference?

Well now is your chance!

The DDD South West Call For New Speakers is now live and we are looking for proposals from new speakers who would like to speak at DDD South West on Saturday 23^rd May 2009 in Taunton. The offer is open to ‘new’ speakers who meet the following requirements:-

You must live in the United Kingdom.

You must not have presented at a major event before (including but not limited to any DDD, TechEd, DevWeek). Speaking at a user group is fine (and encouraged!).

You must have presented your full session at a user group at a date prior to DDD South West (in other words there must be a live practice run to a public audience other than your work colleagues).

The closing date for proposals is Tuesday 31^st March 2009. You can find full details about the Call For New Speakers at http://www.dddsouthwest.com/CallForNewSpeakers/tabid/61/Default.aspx. You can find full details about DDD South West at http://www.dddsouthwest.com.

 

Come on in, the water’s fine!

Technorati tags: DDD South West, Call for New Speakers

DDD Belfast – Call for Speakers Open!

The title says it all really. The call for speakers in now open for Developer Day Belfast. You can find out more about the conference at this site, and the session submission page is here.

Technorati tags: DDD Belfast, Community

Scottish Developers Dundee – JQuery Talk all Welcome!

Date and Time

Wednesday, February 04, 2009 
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Location

Queen Mother Building
Dundee University
Nethergate
Dundee
DD1 4HN

Abstract

A new client-side framework has been taking the internet by storm, many have already been mesmerised by the power of such a small javascript library. And "what is the name of this fantastic framework?" I hear you ask, "jQuery" is my reply.

jQuery is a robust javascript framework with a very small footprint (15kb minified and GZipped) which makes the complicated aspects of javascript very simple. From traversing the Document Object Model to complex AJAX functionality, jQuery can do it all.

In this session I will introduce you to the basics of jQuery, showing you, through code, how to select and manipulate elements on the page, attach functions to events, implement ajax and more! This is the perfect opportunity to learn about jQuery and how it can make the life of web developer so much easier, allowing you to focus more on building your application!

Bio

Andy is pursuing the final year of an Applied Computing degree at the University of Dundee. Durring his time as a student Andy as also worked for GeoMEM ltd and NCR.  Andy has taught himself a wide variety of languages, technologies and techniques which have aided him in both his university studies and professional work, proving that he is committed to continually learning new things.  Andy is due to graduate in June 2009.

Agenda

18:45 Doors open
19:00 Welcome
19:10 Part 1
20:00 Break
20:10 Part 2
20:50 Feedback and Prizes
21:00 End

NOTE: This event is repeated in Edinburgh on 8th April

How to Install Windows 7 Beta on an Acer Aspire One Netbook

Having access to MSDN via the MVP program, I downloaded the beta version of  Windows 7 as soon as it became available, with the idea of loading it onto my Acer Aspire One netbook (an nice little Christmas present to myself!).

With the software downloaded there was just one issue to overcome, how do you install an OS onto a netbook with no optical drive? The answer is you need a bootable USB drive. It took a lot of searching around the net to work out how to do this, so I thought I’d outline the steps here, mainly for my own benefit, so I know where to look the next time LOL. This guide will show you how to get W7 beta onto an Acer Aspire One Netbook, YMMV with other netbooks.

Step 1 – Let’s create a bootable USD Drive!

1. Clearly, the first thing you need is a USB drive and the one I used was an 8GB Seagate model.
2. Plug the drive into your PC.
3. Open a command prompt as administrator.
4. Get the drive number by typing:
   diskpart
   list disk
   On my machine the USB disk was number 1.
5. Format the drive by typing:
   select disk 1
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
6. Mount the Windows 7 beta iso using Daemon Tools or similar.
7. Navigate to the boot directory
   cd E:\boot
8. Using bootsect, we’ll make the USB drive a bootable NTFS drive, ready for a Windows 7 image (my drive was labeled G):
   bootsect /nt60 G:
9. We are finished with the command prompt now, so you can close it.

Step 2 – Copy the installation files from the mounted Windows 7 iso to the USB drive.

Step 3 – Install on the Netbook

1. Plug in the USB drive and turn on the netbook
2. On start up press <F12> to select the bootable drive
3. Select the USB drive and press return
4. The netbook will boot from the USB drive and the installation will begin
5. Install as normal.

I hope this helps someone, and if not, at least I’ll know where to look the next time I need this information.

Addendum: If you are interested in installing Windows 7 Beta on an Asus Eee PC 901, then check out this blog post.

Technorati tags: Windows 7, Acer Aspire One Netbook, Bootable USB Drive

A trip to Las Vegas in January 2009

I’m taking a trip to Las Vegas between January 17th and January 25th 2009.