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The Newcastle Coders group is moving to a new venue. In May we’re back to our usual date (first wednesday of the month) but this time we’re planning to meet at the Forsythes Training centre – 9 Denison St Newcastle. We’ve been generously offered the use of this facility for the coming months and it really is a tremendous location. So we’re trialing the room in May with a view to holding future meetings there. The date of the next meeting will be Wednesday 2nd May 2007. As per usual everyone is invited for an informative night where you can catch up with your peers
and hear from a terrific speaker. We should also have a decent prize on the night -
but you’ll have to turn up to have a chance to win.

This month we’re featuring Andrew Coates, Microsoft Developer Evangelist. Before joining Microsoft, Andrew was an independent consultant specialising in database applications using Microsoft technologies including SQL Server, Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office. Andrew’s wide range of experience includes telecommunications, SMB inventory, dispatch and accounting systems, using both web and rich client front ends. He has developed and delivered class room training and has mentored a number of developers in Visual FoxPro and SQL Server technologies. Andrew has spoken at international conferences on Geographical Information Systems, health statistics and database maintenance. An MCSD, Andrew also holds a Masters degree in Civil Engineering. In his spare time Andrew hangs out with his wife and two young kids, plays socially competitive hockey (the real stuff – not that whimp’s game played on ice) and the occasional game of cricket.

Andrew last visited us in February of 2006 when he came to tell us all about Visual Studio Tools for Office. This time he’s planning to talk about Micrsoft’s Solution Development Using The 2007 Office System OpenXML File Format. Learn about the huge change that will affect the role Microsoft Office documents can now play in business processes and solutions. Previously the binary formats had meant Microsoft Office documents were treated more like a “black box,” but that is no longer the case, as these open formats allow documents to serve as a first class source of data as they travel through workflow and other business. Document content can now directly integrate with systems new and old. Generation of documents based on business data
for up-to-date and accurate rich content is now possible throughout your own solutions. This session delves into schemas, solution code, and numerous examples.

Time: 6.00pm
Date: 2nd May 2007
Place: Forsythes IT Training Rooms, 9 Denison St Newcastle
Cost: Free!

Food and Drink will be provided by Microsoft. Bring yourself and any of your friends and colleagues that have an interest in coding. Please RSVP if you plan to attend so that we can plan for numbers.

Like many people, I have both Internet Explorer and Firefox on my laptop, but still tend towards Internet Explorer due to familiarity and habit.

I’ve never really bought into the “my browser is better than yours” wars. After all, Firefox isn’t a magic panacea; it has security problems too. And I believe in pragmatism: it may well be that Internet Explorer doesn’t enforce standards as robustly as Firefox, but I still need to view web sites. I can’t just say, “well, that web site developer didn’t know what he was doing.”

However, Jeff Atwood – who writes the brilliant “Coding Horror” blog – has given two absolutely top-class reasons to use Firefox due to amazing extensions available: Web Developer Extensions and Firebug.

These allow real-time debugging of HTML, CSS and JavaScript – plus modifications, with instant re-rendering. You can modify the CSS on the fly, or execute ad-hoc JavaScript. It’s brilliant stuff and only available for Firefox.

Here’s an interesting news item from today’s Sydney Morning Herald – in Japan, mobile technology has advanced to such a point that many youth do not feel a need to use conventional desktop computers.

The article made a point that computing skills were on the decrease – which I found surprising, for a nation which is generally perceived to be highly technical.

What was particularly interesting was the description of mobile technology in Japan, with high-speed bandwidth and devices that handle Flash and other diverse file formats. Why are we lagging behind?

Akismet reports that it has blocked over 500 spam comments posted to this blog.

Why do spammers persist with trying to post comment spam? Do they really think it will succeed?

I’d like to see an option in Akismet to send on spam to SpamCop.Net so that the sites generating spam can be identified and blocked.

As part of their presentations, Andrew and Paul showed some good sample apps. I was keen to track these down.

Here’s an impressive set of Visual Studio starter kits. This includes the Amazon-enabled movie starter kit Andrew showed, but there are lots of other very useful ones there.

Here’s TrialBalance – Paul’s own WPF work-in-progress.

Here’s a nice site I discovered through Andrew Parson’s blog – select the countries you’ve visited and it presents a colour-coded map:



create your own visited country map.

Tonight’s meeting of the Newcastle Coder’s Group was, as always, top class with two great speakers – Andrew Parsons and Paul Stovell.

Andrew spoke about tricks and trips in Visual Studio 2005 – also the subject of his book Professional Visual Studio 2005 – and Paul spoke on Windows Presentation Framework (WPF).

Both talks were inspirational. I’m dead keen to now go and write some Visual Studio 2005 macros and get stuck right into WPF and XAML!

Oh my! KITT is for sale – http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21498280-2,00.html. Anyone got a spare $AUD 185K for me?