The various Heroes Happen HereHeroes Happen Here community events in the UK/USA to celebrate the launch of Visual Studio 2008 etc. made me envious that we don’t get such events and goodies here on the little island of Guernsey so I thought I’d so something about it!

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.

My good friend Steve Streeting is giving a talk about the Hibernate object-relational mapper at the Guernsey Software Developer Forum tomorrow night. Hibernate is a very successful ORM for Java which has been ported to .NET under the moniker NHibernate.

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).

This evening’s presentation on Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is now available from my appearances page.

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.

I’m just finishing up the slides, notes and writing code samples for my LINQ presentation at the Guernsey Software Developer Forum tomorrow evening.

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).

Since moving house I have been using my MacBook Pro 15″ 2.0GHz at home, for contracting and even for the odd diagnostics and organization in the office.

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.

At the last meeting we decided to try hold a workshop in October where people brought in their laptops and development tools and we’d work through some samples together. Once done we would talk about it and show some of our own code to illustrate approaches (and possibly help with debugging ;-)

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.

I’ve posted my list of Guernsey Estate Agents as other on-line lists were not comprehensive and prevented bookmarking or copying the address to send to others thanks to the annoying framing they used (so 90’s).

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).

My good friend Steve ‘Sinbad’ Streeting (founder of the impressive and popular Ogre 3D engine) will be giving a talk on Thursday 27th September at 6pm at the Guernsey Training Agency above the Post Office in Smith Street. The talk will cover cross-platform development, provisionally:

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.

Last nights Guernsey Software Developers Forum meeting was sparsely attended with a number of the regulars attendees absent. There were however two new faces including Kezzer who I’d been chatting to on-line for years.

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.

This presentation is now available on-line.

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

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.

Now that Sure and Wave/JT are operating in both islands competition is heating up unless you want 3G in Guernsey because the government awarded the licence to somebody who doesn’t operate whilst refusing a licence to the biggest operator. Way to go.

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

This presentation is now available on-line.

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

We interrupt this blog of technical snippets and personal commentary to bring you an interesting look (courtesy of the BBC) at what happens to the various bottles, cans and plastics that are sent for recycling – at least in the UK. (Hit the "In pictures" link next to each person).

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.

The recently-formed Guernsey Software Developers Forum are having a meeting on the 25th of January at the GTA University Centre above the post office at 6pm.

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.

A proposal is currently being considered within the States of Guernsey to ban all replica guns including the air-powered "Airsoft" ones used in the BB-war style sporting events.

I can understand the thinking behind such a decision when replica guns are causing a significant problem such as might currently be in England where the proposals seemed to originate from however a total ban seems absurd.

So, it’s that time of year again.

The 5th of November. Bonfire night. Guy Fawkes.

Last night I booked some flights with your web site and must say I’m rather disappointed with the experience. We needed to book two return flights with one going out on a different day but both returning on the same flight, and ideally next to each other.

It is a little disappointing that to book two different flights that you have to book each one separately despite obviously being possible on the phone or with non-airline sites such as Amazon. To avoid booking one and finding the other not available and being left with useless tickets we decided to book each using a different computer so that we could try and make sure it went through at the same time.

Cable & Wireless Guernsey are offering 1MB and 2MB “Professional” broadband packages for £49.99 and £79.99 a month respectively as from June 17th.

So what do you get for your extra £25 a month with their 1MB pro service over their existing 1MB service?

It seems that the UK Department of Trade & Industry has convinced the ISO to add the codes for Guernsey (GE), Jersey (JE) and Isle of Man (IM) to the official ISO 3166-1 country database.

This is the database often used to populate the drop-down lists of countries seen when shopping on-line.

Time for an update on the state of broadband in the Channel Islands. Some interesting home tariff cuts on both islands. The Office of Utility Regulation is pushing for further wholesale ADSL cuts in Guernsey. More news as it happens.

Now have usage limits in place on their “Rapid” broadband services with the exception of the top-end business service.

Newtel are dropping the price of their Guernsey 1MB unlimited service to £21.99 a month as from this coming Monday.

This compares very favorably with C&W’s £19.99 a month Pay As You GoPay As You Go and £26.99 AnytimeAnytime unlimited services.

There exists a provision, some people mistakenly refer to as a “loophole”, in EU tax laws that allows goods under £18 to be imported tax-free from outside the EU.

Guernsey and Jersey are outside the EU and have no GST/VAT/sales/goods tax of their own and as such the islands have become prime locations for low-value mail order operations.

I’ve decided to fill in some gaps in my DVD collection and was quite interested to know what the current best deals were so filled up my baskets at various stores. All prices are quoted in £ sterling and were correct at time of writing.

Obviously the best deal is to order individual items from wherever they are cheapest. Amazon only include free postage if you order enough items so bear that in mind.

The BBC web site finally reported the phone outage that hit the island yesterday. Like the Channel TV article it was poorly reported with little detail. Cable & Wireless’ news portal decided not to run the story at all although an apology can be found at their corporate site.

Lets look at the BBC article and break it down. I’m not having a particular go at the BBC or really even C&W just looking at how reporters play their personal tone through selection or words and selective omission of facts;

So the phone lines here have been out now for well over an hour. ADSL is still working as is Guernsey-to-Guernsey mobiles but everything else is giving dead tones, no tones or “Network failure” messages.

So much for a single point of failure or resilient network. They currently boast;

Shopping on-line from the Channel Islands isn’t always a pleasant experience. Many companies can’t be bothered with the making a VAT-exempt outside-EU sale and when they do they like to use expensive shipping options instead of the often reliable and cheap Special Delivery service.

Here’s a few tips and sites to make things a bit less painless.

Surfers Against Sewage are holding a 60-hour vigil practically on my doorstep (no I’m not responsible for the Sewage) over at Charles Frossard House here in Guernsey at protest over Guernsey pumping raw sewage into the sea (Jersey has a proper plant so I’m told).

These guys travel around the UK and Europe meeting government representatives with an agenda to improving waste disposal procedures and methods including full treatment of sewage.

Breaking bad news to clients is always tricky but a bit of intelligence might be able to soften the blow. A few days ago British Airways sent me an email to let me know that the Gatwick-Munich route I use (indeed their only route I’ve used lately) is to be axed from the start of the 2006 summer season.

While this is incredibly annoying at least I know about it. In the next paragraph they try to soften the blow by letting me know that there are going to be additional flights from Heathrow. intelligence fails them however because I don’t have access to Heathrow and their database already knows this.

Last week I was at the Apple Store UK ordering a universal dock connector for my iPod. Unexpectedly the the shipping address was not accepted – it claimed they were unable to accept orders from my post-code.

This was a strange turn of events – I’ve ordered a PowerBook G4, iLife, Apple Pro Keyboard, 20GB iPod and various other accessories in the past. I’ve not changed address or post-code for over a year so what’s the problem?

A few changes from the various players so a quick run-down.

While local ISPs could argue their bandwidth is limited they have no such excuse for charging 3x the price of a UK outfit for IP addresses as Newtel are doing in both islands.

I’ve been thinking of giving TV another shot, especially if I can get a lot of free channels and PVR functionality with no subscription. I’ve been looking about at the current state of television out here:

Free but a mere four channels and no apparent plans to give us even channel Five.

This week is the annual Battle of Britain week here in Guernsey and today sees highlight of the weeks events, the air display. Alas, I missed the a chunk of it but managed to catch the star attraction The Red Arrows. As always it was most impressive, dives banks and turns at low altitude while retaining perfect form in an number of geometric shapes. The weather was less impressed and the low cloud ceiling canceled out the various cross-overs we are normally treated to.

Today sees the completion of Cable & Wireless Guernsey’s free ADSL upgrade from 512KB to 1MB. My parents and friends got theirs earlier but even mine was enhanced this morning. If yours is still running at 512KB give them a shout.

Our small island roads today witnessed the Oakley Charity Motorcycle Spin, an event to help raise money for a caravan to be located at Church Farm Holiday Park where ill children from Guernsey can enjoy some time away.

The was the dream of six year old Oakley Waterman tragically diagnosed with cancer and who passed away this Friday. I never had the fortune to meet the little chap but the local paper referred to him as a brave soul who didn’t let his illness bring him down and remained both cheerful and cheeky.

Yesterday, at St. Pierre du Bois Parish Church, my eldest little sister got married and I was fortunate enough to be the one to give her away. The ceremony was perfect and the newly appointed best man got everything spot on despite the one days notice. My little brothers even managed to perform their usher roles without supervision.

After the obligatory photos and confetti storm we headed to the beautiful island of Herm, just a 15 minute trip by boat, for drinks followed by conversation and a rather unusual but tasty mix of food in the specially erected marquee. We toasted the married couple and tried to put into words our own personal messages in their book while snapping the many photos that were filling film and memory card. My sister’s red trainers (put on for the reception, not the service ;-) were well hidden beneath her dress but will no doubt appear on some of the pictures.

Wondering what happened to Cable & Wireless’ planned 1MBit ADSL upgraded service? Their web site has been very quiet so I emailed and got this response I thought I’d share;

Dear Customer

I’m still feeling a little ill but I guess the worst of it is past, poor Clarissa is still very unwell :(

I thought I’d cover some of the bits and pieces going on in Guernsey at the moment for a refreshing change…

Living in Guernsey requires you develop a thick skin with regards to availability of goods and services. Many a time you can find a great deal on-line only to find they won’t ship here or if they do they want to charge you £50 to get it here. And get used to phoning and emailing companies for your VAT back every time you order (such as for Amazon and Apple).

One such annoyance is the inability to use short-code text messages such as 604664 for Google SMS as well as the silly UK TV voting systems.

I want faster DSL…. 512KB just isn’t cutting it, I used to enjoy 2MB in Jersey… Let’s examine the pricing shall we…

Yes you could argue the C&W Gsy has better contention ratios but the fact is they don’t even offer a home service for anything above 512KB.