We at the Guernsey Software Developer Forum are hosting a community event in conjunction with Microsoft to celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008.

The event starts at 6:30pm on March 27th (next Thursday) at La Rocquettes hotel in St. Peter Port, Guernsey.

We will be giving away a bunch of goodies including the Heroes Happen Here launch packs with promotional copies of Visual Studio 2008 Standard, Windows 2008 Enterprise Server and SQL Server 2008 Developer as well as demonstrating some of the new features of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5.

I’m hoping this event will be bigger than normal GSDF events given the cool stuff we are giving away and the interest from non-developers in Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2008 so tell your friends (if you’re in Guernsey of course)

[)amien

The event, as always, is open to everyone and commences at 6pm at the Guernsey Training Agency above the old Post Office in Smith Street, St. Peter Port. They normally run for around 1 hour followed by an optional 30 minutes in the pub for those who can’t get enough (code, not alcohol).

In related news I have been liasing with Microsoft who have agreed to provide support to host a VS 2008 InstallFest event to celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2008. The idea is you bring along your laptop (if you have one) and install one of the copies of Visual Studio 2008 Professional we will be giving away (full, not-for-resale copies) as well as enjoying some food, demos of the new features of .NET 3.5 and a bit of Xbox 360 guitar hero.

We’re just looking for a venue for this event (and potentially future GSDF meetings) as the Post Office has now been sold and will not be available from the end of February :(

[)amien

The event went well with 12 developers (it’s a small island) and took a less time to produce because I didn’t write a script for but slides to lead us through areas I wanted to cover.

This means the on-line presentation is of less useful than previous ones however I am pondering the transcript/audio-track option (in my best radio voice of course).

We are now considering topics for February and with something a bit special for March.

Stay tuned!

[)amien

Hopefully the broader scope of this presentation will mean a few new faces – the previous talks on Subversion and web application security might have been a little specific for a such a small audience (Guernsey is around 70,000 people on an island 9 miles long).

As always I will put the presentation up here afterwards but will also revise the older ones with the new style and put up both PowerPoint and Keynote versions under an open licence as well as a couple of cheat sheets.

Is there any interest in adding audio narration and transcripts?

This presentation is now available on-line.

[)amien

The last 20 months have been a bumpy ride with the logic board being replaced twice once for whining and the second time when the inner memory slot went dead. The battery has been recalled and the power supply cable started melting and the paint started flaking off the enclosure but thankfully Apple sorted out all these problems rather swiftly with advanced replacement parts and speedy repairs through local service centers iQ Guernsey and Guernsey Computers.

Every company has problems with products, especially first revisions, but how they deal with them is important and one of my logic board failures was a couple of months out of warranty but their customer services department authorised the replacement anyway. Such service counts for a lot in my book and so now I have outgrown my notebook another MacBook Pro will be it’s replacement…

My paltry 100GB disk space got eaten up with an extensive music library and plenty of 10 megapixel RAW digital camera images. Subtract a 15GB Boot Camp and I was soon looking at external storage. Parallels and Visual Studio 2008 meant I needed to up from 2GB to 4GB of RAM and I found myself constantly missing my 24″ Dell monitor. I also need to be able to test 64-bit applications now that I am developing Cocoa apps.

The Apple Store UK just added the 2.6GHz processor and 200GB 7200RPM drive options this week and although Guernsey is barred from The Apple Store UK local reseller iQ matches their ex-VAT prices on Pro gear so on Saturday I ordered my new dream machine complete with the high-resolution 1920×1200 anti-glare LCD (no glossy mirror for me thanks).

They also have friendly shop staff unlike Guernsey Computers (although Vernon in their service department is helpful if you can get to him). One thing I really can’t stand though is Apple’s pricing policy on RAM.

To upgrade from 2GB to 4GB they want £450 extra! Crucial UK will do a 4GB kit of the same spec for just £98. I’m not alone in this observation.

It’s just insanely ludicrous.

[)amien

We would need to choose one or two subjects to focus on for the workshop in order that we might have some time to put relevant materials/sample to walk through together.

The topics of generics in .NET and XSLT transformations came up so I have put these up as poll options on the forum. If you have alternative ideas post them there and I will add them to the list of options.

You can change your two votes as often as you like until the cut-off date (October 13th) in case something new is proposed that you’d rather see.

[)amien

Yes, I’m house-hunting again after my estate agent failed to mention (claimed to be ignorant of the fact) that all the lovely fields and views from my proposed home were already marked as a target housing area by the States of Guernsey as part of their Urban Area Plan (PDF, 5Mb).

These sites were set in 2002 and number just five. I wonder how long these people would last in IT if they took such an active disinterest in their field?

[)amien

1. Benefits of considering cross-platform solutions
2. Definition of a ‘platform’
3. Typical implementation challenges
4. Common techniques and approaches

Steve also assures me he’ll be touching on some cross-platform libraries like the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and wxWidgets UI library. As always the doors are open to all and the event is totally free so come along, learn something and make some contacts.

On a sad note GSDF founder Filippo Borselli will be leaving the island to go and work with the great people at ThoughtWorks in the UK.

[)amien

Hopefully the low numbers were down to the seasonal summer holidays and the subsequent knock-on effect that we couldn’t get email out to the BCS Guernsey division to gather sufficient awareness.

I did a short presentation on Web Application Security for Developers that covered HTML injection, SQL injection and cross-site scripting including some live demonstrations on sample code. Slides and sample are available although without audio or screen cast of the demonstrations until I work out how to do that with Keynote.

Download Web Application Security for Developers (Flash) (1 MB)

Download Web Application Security for Developers (PDF) (120 KB)

Download Sample of vulnerable and secure code (ASP.NET) (196 KB)

I’ve come to the conclusion that putting presentations together takes me around 1 hour of preparation to 1 minute of presentation…

[)amien

I will be giving a talk about web application security tonight at the Guernsey Software Developers Forum.

Web application security is a very large subject I will only be covering SQL injection, HTML injection/cross-site scripting and input manipulation. If there is enough interest I’ll consider covering other subjects such as session hijacking, defensive programming, hashing etc. in a future talk.

As always the doors are open to everyone opening at 6pm tonight (Wednesday 15 August 2007) at the Guernsey Training Agency above the Post Office in Smith Street.

The talk will last around 30 minutes but the meetings tend to go on to around 7:30pm for those that want to discuss it or other developer topics.

[)amien

A number of changes are happening within the Guernsey Developer Users Group!

We have changed the name to the Guernsey Software Developers Forum to better reflect the nature of the events and moved the Guernsey Software Developers Forum web site over to a new location, host and software.

It is also our intention to arrange presentations as often as possible as fewer members were interested in the free-format discussion events.

Next event

The next event will be on Thursday 28th of June 2007 starting at 6pm at the Guernsey Training Agency offices above the post-office in Smith Street, St. Peter Port.

As always the doors are open to everyone so if you have an interest in any of these subjects just turn up and grab a chair. The planned agenda is:

Opening

Welcome to the forum, news and announcements.

(6:00 pm)

XP2007 Conference Report

The XP2007 8th International Conference on Agile Process in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming took place this month in Como, Italy.

Filippo Borselli will be sharing what he learnt over the course of this five day event as he attended many of the keynotes, tutorials, workshops and panels on offer.

(30 minutes)

The OGRE 3D Graphics Engine

OGRE is an open source library that makes it easier to render highly detailed virtual worlds in real time using the latest in consumer graphics hardware.

The founder of the project, Steve Streeting, will introduce some basic 3D graphics principles, show what OGRE brings to the table, a quick technical overview and code example, and will end with some sample demos and videos from people around the globe who use it.

(45 minutes)

Questions & Answers

Questions and answers session.

Group Discussion

Open-format discussion between attendees.

Closing

Discuss the date for the next event, determine what presentations are possible and what attendees would like to see.

(8:00 pm)

[)amien

Basic plans

Wave/JT should be commended for offering the same plan and rates across the islands.

Sure have some balancing to do between island and need to offer a lightweight plan below their basic £20 a month rental in Guernsey. They do offer cheaper rental pricing when taking out an 18 month contract however.

Both operators have a make-your-own-plan scheme available.

1. No roaming
2. Minutes or texts, not both

Voice calls

Measured in £ per minute dependent on destination.

Messaging

Measured in £ per-message independent of destination whilst you are on your home network.

Data packets

Measured in pence per kilobyte (KB).

Video calls

Measured in £ per minute dependent on destination and network.

[)amien

I will be giving a talk entitled “Change management with Subversion” at the Guernsey Developer User Group later this month.

The talk will start with the reasons for change management and the terminology Subversion uses before delving into a typical work cycle. The AnkhSVN client for Visual Studio and the TortoiseSVN client for Windows Explorer will be demonstrated and various other points covered such as when to branch, when to merge, what server options exist etc.

If you are interested in source control, team collaboration or release management then feel free to come along.

This GDUG meeting takes place on the 24th of May at the Guernsey Training Agency’s office above the Guernsey Post Office in Smith Street. As usual the meeting will start at 6pm and the talk will likely start shortly after that and run to around 30-45 minutes (I’m still finalising the content). Keep an eye on the GDUG site for the official agenda.

This location is the venue for the tonight annual general meeting of the Guernsey section of British Computer Society. I believe this particular BCS event is only open to BCS members but if you are a member then this is a gentle reminder. At least 4 of us from the GDUG will be in attendance.

[)amien

It is interesting that the companies involved highlight a few items that are troublesome to recycle – this information needs to make it back to consumers so that we know they’re not going to be part of the recycling process and choose to adjust our buying habits.

From what I can see green bottles are currently in overload, envelopes cause a problem especially brown or windowed ones and telephone directories (perhaps use an on-line one instead).

Here in Guernsey the government does not collect items for recycling but offer advice and information on a number of recycling points you can take items to. Friends of the Earth Guernsey also have a page about various items that are accepted by various charities.

[)amien

The founder, Fillippo Borselli will be giving a presentation on FIT – a Framework for Integrated Test and it should be a good place to meet a few fellow developers.

[)amien