This blog has moved!

I can now be found with all my articles at blog.batfishsolutions.com :)

Slides and code from DDDSW

I’ve popped my slides and code on my sky drive, they can be downloaded from here:

I had an excellent time, and really enjoyed giving the talk, as well as going to the other talks :)  Guy and the team deserve every kudos going for putting on such an excellent event!  Hopefully I’ll be back next year :)

Upcoming talks and sessions

So I didn’t make it into DDD Scotland either, again the competition was fierce! Worried? Me? Not at all! I’ve currently got 3 sessions submitted to DDD South West! MUHAHAHAHAAA! As before I’ve submitted my intro to PRISM and intro to Workflow 4.0, but this time I’ve also added in a new Unity based session. So vote for me! I’ll get into DDD eventually! :D

In other news I’ve got a few talks lined up at the GL.NET and VBUG User Groups. The dates are:

24th May VBUG Portsmouth – Introduction to PRISM

5th June DDD South West – Hopefully I’ll get in!

16th June VBUG Bristol – Introduction To Workflow

? September GL.NET – Unity & IoC (link and better name to follow)

So what about NxtGenUG Southampton I hear you cry! Well we’ve got a cracking line up coming up over the coming months. Tonight we’ve got Neil Robbins coming down from the big smoke to do his talk on Document Databases.

Then on the 15th April we join in the UK Tech Days launch festivities with our own Richard Costal talking about Silverlight 4, and have a special guest from Microsoft joining us. Details to follow on the special guest!

On the 27th May we have all round Guru Liz Keogh joining us to talk about BDD. This should prove to be an excellent session, because if you have any examples you’d like Liz to apply BDD during the session then submit them to me via email me at JohnMc@NxtGenUG.net and she’ll select the best ones.

Then on 24th June we’ve got Phil Pursglove coming down to discuss Microsoft’s exciting new Velocity technology.

An absolutely cracking line up I’m sure you’re agree! In fact what are you waiting for?! Go register now! :D

DDD8 & DDDScotland

So I didn’t get any sessions into DDD8, which isn’t surprising considering the number of excellent sessions that have been proposed this year.  But it does mean that I get to go to all the sessions I want to and not have to worry about speaking :)

But I’m not out of the running yet, as I have submitted the same sessions to DDD Scotland, so there is still every chance one of my sessions will get voted in.  The voting for DDD Scotland opened today, so go vote for my sessions now! ;)

The voting link is http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/scotland2010/Users/VoteForSessions.aspx.

DDD8 Voting open!

Voting has opened for DDD8, so pop over there now and vote!  http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/ddd8/Users/VoteForSessions.aspx

I’ve put in 3 sessions this time:

Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0

Introduction to PRISM

PRISM and MEF, Can they be friends

So if you’re interested in seeing any of these, vote for me! ;)  I’ve also submitted the same sessions for DDD Scotland in May.

Little things…

… are making the whole Visual Studio 2010 experience so much better. I know there are a whole range of fantastic features coming in Visual Studio 2010 and everyone’s blogging about them. But for me there are a whole host of little ones too that are going into making the next version better.

For instance, we’re all familiar with the Quick Watch and Watch Panes. They’re invaluable when you’re poking around debugging stuff. But something new that has entered VS 2010 is the ability to pin watches onto the code itself. So you can hover over a variable like you always have to see its value

but now you can pin that value in place and add comments, so whenever you debug into that code, your pinned value is displayed

Which is pretty darn cool :)

It’s a girl!

On Monday 2nd November at 19:12 my wife give birth to a beautiful little girl who we’ve since named Mae Ellen McLoughlin :) Mae was brought into this world at home in a birth pool with the assistance of Eleanor May-Johnson as Midwife. Eleanor is an independent midwife and just plain rocks! If you’re planning a birth in the Hampshire/Dorset area I’d highly recommend hiring Eleanor. You can check out her web site at http://www.hampshirehomebirths.co.uk/.

Cue the cute piccies of mum and baby! :)

Now all we got to do now is to figure out baby communication! :D