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Thursday, April 26, 2007
ASP.NET: sql cache dependecy
I stumbled across some of the Microsoft Virtual Labs the other day and thought I'd give the ASP.NET ones a try. My theory was that whilst they were pretty basic, there may well be areas that I just didn't know about. I've just been doing the ASP.NET 2.0 Data Access Virtual Lab and discovered the SQL Cache dependency. In recent projects we have always separated our data layer out completely, and made use of the Microsoft.ApplicationBlock.Data code to control our data access and so haven't needed to know about the EnableCaching property and its impact. So, the moral of this story is that they're worth persisting with even though they can be quite slow some times.
Labels: ASP.NET
// posted by Jane @ 3:25 PM 
Comments:
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Brighton Girl Geek Dinner - Aleks Krotoski
Another excellent Geek Girl Dinner last night. Aleks Krotoski presented enthusiastically and engagingly on The Social Life of Virtual Worlds.
I wasn't sure what to expect prior to attending this talk, I'm not a virtual world user, I've never used Second Life, World of Warcraft or any of the others. I think part of the reason for this is just not knowing what to expect, and a concern that I would end up spending yet more time staring at a computer screen!
Aleks's presentation was very good, explaining the social aspects to virtual games, how relationships work, and most importantly how important it is to be consistent with your behaviour to result in trust. She describes herself as "I am a PhD student examining the relationship between communication patterns and group processes in information diffusion through an online community." and so this talk covers the results of quite a bit of her research.
The rest of the evening was as good as the last two events, with prizes, wonderful food and of course great girl geeks to chat to.
I wasn't sure what to expect prior to attending this talk, I'm not a virtual world user, I've never used Second Life, World of Warcraft or any of the others. I think part of the reason for this is just not knowing what to expect, and a concern that I would end up spending yet more time staring at a computer screen!
Aleks's presentation was very good, explaining the social aspects to virtual games, how relationships work, and most importantly how important it is to be consistent with your behaviour to result in trust. She describes herself as "I am a PhD student examining the relationship between communication patterns and group processes in information diffusion through an online community." and so this talk covers the results of quite a bit of her research.
The rest of the evening was as good as the last two events, with prizes, wonderful food and of course great girl geeks to chat to.
Labels: Brighton, event, Geek Dinner, sussexdigital
// posted by Jane @ 8:02 PM
Comments:
Friday, April 06, 2007
SkillSwap - Introduction to Rails
Almost 4 years since I attended my last (and first) SkillSwap I had the good fortune to grab a space at last night's Introduction to Rails presented by Dominic Mitchell. This was held at Lighthouse in one of the studios and was a really great venue - although we did have to fight our way through the Day of the Figurines launch party to get downstairs.
The evening started off with a 30 to 40 minute talk on Rails and Ruby, what is good, what is less good, what it does best and of course the history. We then had some hands-on practical tasks, and so we split into groups and worked in groups of 2 or 3 to follow Dom's easy-to-follow instruction sheets.
Stage One: Creation of a model
Stage Two: Creation of a database table
Stage Three: Get rails to create the database
Stage Four: Create the scaffold to get the "quick and dirty" interface working
This followed on really well for me from the excellent Ruby on Rails for .Net developers I attended at WebDD as it covered a similar introduction, but with play time too.
All in all an excellent evening, and again leaving me with the intention to devote some playtime to Ruby and Rails. It would be great to be able to have a follow up event to this one (or I guess I could keep an eye out for Brighton Ruby meetings), as I know that Dom didn't get through all of his slides and examples - I'd love to know what else he had in store for us...
The evening started off with a 30 to 40 minute talk on Rails and Ruby, what is good, what is less good, what it does best and of course the history. We then had some hands-on practical tasks, and so we split into groups and worked in groups of 2 or 3 to follow Dom's easy-to-follow instruction sheets.
Stage One: Creation of a model
Stage Two: Creation of a database table
Stage Three: Get rails to create the database
Stage Four: Create the scaffold to get the "quick and dirty" interface working
This followed on really well for me from the excellent Ruby on Rails for .Net developers I attended at WebDD as it covered a similar introduction, but with play time too.
All in all an excellent evening, and again leaving me with the intention to devote some playtime to Ruby and Rails. It would be great to be able to have a follow up event to this one (or I guess I could keep an eye out for Brighton Ruby meetings), as I know that Dom didn't get through all of his slides and examples - I'd love to know what else he had in store for us...
Labels: Brighton, event, skillswap, sussexdigital
// posted by Jane @ 8:52 AM
Comments:
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Sussex Geek Dinner - Glenn Jones
Last night, Glenn Jones spoke about Microformats at the latest Sussex Geek Dinner. This was a talk I'd been interested in hearing at the WebDD event in February, but failed due to the popularity of the session. It was really interesting, and inspiring, and has added another lot of "to do"s for this site, the jane and richard site and brighton bloggers to make the most of microformats. I'm just heading off to install the firefox addin Operator now to see what pages have got microformats embedded into them.
I spent quite a bit of the rest of the evening getting opinions on my request for comments on Brighton Bloggers the other day. Joh, Danny and Rosie had some great feedback and I look forward to following up with one of Joh's ideas shortly.
I spent quite a bit of the rest of the evening getting opinions on my request for comments on Brighton Bloggers the other day. Joh, Danny and Rosie had some great feedback and I look forward to following up with one of Joh's ideas shortly.
Labels: Brighton, event, Geek Dinner, photos, sussexdigital
// posted by Jane @ 9:26 AM
Comments:
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Old job - new job
The consultation period started in January when the announcement was made that Glass's were looking to streamline the business and close down the Crowborough office. The news was made official a month later with an end date of May 18th. Different people handled the news in different ways, but everyone started looking for jobs and opportunities - the first of my team left on Friday, to start his new role at Ballard Chalmers.
I started networking more, but otherwise didn't do much other than set up job alerts at wired sussex, jobserve and the it job board (although to be honest the quantity of jobs coming through from jobserve was so overwhelming that I deleted the email more often than I read it). Friends and colleagues sent through some job adverts they thought were appropriate to me, and I made use of the fortunate position that our ex-CTO now works at RBI and sent my CV through to him too. The "friends, colleages and ex-CTO" approach got me 2 interviews, one in East Grinstead, one in Brighton - neither feeling like the right job for this time, although they were both great opportunities. I started to list what I wanted from a new job, and felt that the most important things for me were (in no particular order): walk to work, or get bus/train to work - need a break from driving, web work - probably an agency so there is variety, busy - a job where things get delivered and I get a feeling of achievement.
On Tuesday I got a Wired Sussex alert email and followed the link to discover that Madgex wanted freelance senior developers. Madgex are a company I have heard good things about, and from what I'd heard, and from reading the website I got the feeling that they met my requirements. So, I sent off a quick email, attached my CV and waited to hear more. I didn't have to wait long, and I had a good email conversation with the Chief Technical Officer and we agreed that I should go in and meet them on Thursday for an inteview for a permanent position with them. I did just this, got on well with him and the other guys I met and went away with a great feeling.
My CV lists this site for all to see, I feel that blogging, and all the information held here is part of who I am. Madgex are the only company who I've interviewed with this time that took the time to follow the link and read a bit about me - resulting in a conversation about BrightonBloggers - where the idea came from, how long I've looked after it etc. The fact that someone had taken the time to do a bit more research in preparation for meeting with me was really pleasing to me.
The upshot of all of this is that as of May 21st I will be permanent, full-time, Senior Software Developer for Madgex Limited. I've signed the contract today (April Fool's Day - hope that isn't a bad sign!) and am looking forward to moving on and starting to make a contribution.
I started networking more, but otherwise didn't do much other than set up job alerts at wired sussex, jobserve and the it job board (although to be honest the quantity of jobs coming through from jobserve was so overwhelming that I deleted the email more often than I read it). Friends and colleagues sent through some job adverts they thought were appropriate to me, and I made use of the fortunate position that our ex-CTO now works at RBI and sent my CV through to him too. The "friends, colleages and ex-CTO" approach got me 2 interviews, one in East Grinstead, one in Brighton - neither feeling like the right job for this time, although they were both great opportunities. I started to list what I wanted from a new job, and felt that the most important things for me were (in no particular order): walk to work, or get bus/train to work - need a break from driving, web work - probably an agency so there is variety, busy - a job where things get delivered and I get a feeling of achievement.
On Tuesday I got a Wired Sussex alert email and followed the link to discover that Madgex wanted freelance senior developers. Madgex are a company I have heard good things about, and from what I'd heard, and from reading the website I got the feeling that they met my requirements. So, I sent off a quick email, attached my CV and waited to hear more. I didn't have to wait long, and I had a good email conversation with the Chief Technical Officer and we agreed that I should go in and meet them on Thursday for an inteview for a permanent position with them. I did just this, got on well with him and the other guys I met and went away with a great feeling.
My CV lists this site for all to see, I feel that blogging, and all the information held here is part of who I am. Madgex are the only company who I've interviewed with this time that took the time to follow the link and read a bit about me - resulting in a conversation about BrightonBloggers - where the idea came from, how long I've looked after it etc. The fact that someone had taken the time to do a bit more research in preparation for meeting with me was really pleasing to me.
The upshot of all of this is that as of May 21st I will be permanent, full-time, Senior Software Developer for Madgex Limited. I've signed the contract today (April Fool's Day - hope that isn't a bad sign!) and am looking forward to moving on and starting to make a contribution.
Labels: job
// posted by Jane @ 8:10 PM
Comments:
