There are a lot of words I could use to describe the past 5 days .. and "Awesome" would be every one of them. Ha.
It’s Sunday night, and I am absolutely knackered.
Let me just say .. it was an awesome weekend. The content was great, the laughs were many, and the community grew.
Over the next couple of days I’ll be putting together my thoughts and notes and maybe some pictures. They’ll go up a day at a time (per post), so I can spread them out over a few weeks :).
Cheers,
Day 4 is almost done. I’m sitting in Russ’ ABC Compliance Session (2), almost at an end. It’s been a good knowledge gathering couple of hours for template and class writing.
I’ve realised that, especially if I’m speaking at a conference, I really need to get some help writing the notes etc. I am absolutely wacked. Although Bruce will say it’s because I’m bored now that my talk is done .. ha ha .. that is definately not the case. I’m emotionally (and physically) exhausted. My better half can attest to the stress in me leading up to this day. And now it’s done .. well the body is just shutting down.
Anyway, hopefully I’m going to be able to get some notes from other folk. Tomorrow morning I’ll be at Church while Bob talks through .NET etc etc. So I’ve teed up some note taking (cheers Brett!).
Suffice to say, at this point, that the conference has been just awesome (I think i only said that word 4 times in my talk .. maybe 5, heh heh).
There are so many cool people here, each having their own dreams and aspirations. It’s wonderful to talk to and meet with them.
I’d like to think that these conferences really do help establish relationships that bind the community together. It certainly happens for me.
Cheers,
We’re currently sitting in a big room, listening to Bob Z.
I’m not giving away anything yet, although I imagine info will be leaking out all over the place. I am writing pretty crazily in Word however, and will be putting up my notes some time after the Conference ends.
Bob is cool. I got to talk to him a bit before the session. Was good to meet him, and hear a little about things.
Also, today, in the final Capesoft Question Time, we got a squiz at their new product, the Report Writer. I’d missed Geoff’s session beforehand, which went through it in detail .. but it looks like a very cool template. As usual, easy to use, easy to plug in. That is, the awesomeness we’ve come to expect from Capesoft.
Anyway, I’m missing bits and piece of the session .. heh heh. Best get back to it.
I’ll put some photos on here later, possibly tonight, although the talk is going to get it’s final polish tonight .. which might relegate anything else, depending on how it goes.
Cheers,
Bruce’s joke for the day
q.) How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
a.) The lightbulb works fine in my office.
We are into the guts of stuff today .. Bruce is getting us in the Web session to get going, experiment, ask him about compile errors and broken stuff.
Today has been very .. intense. Only because we’ve pretty much been able to work away and ask Bruce questions .. when he’s free. Ha ha.
We got a very good rundown on how to use Frames within NT4WebServer. In fact, Frames have made it into both days so far. They are, according to Bruce (and he’s right) good tools when used effectively. Of course, mostly our brains remember the bad uses. But they have great value.
I’ve continued along with my NetWeb project into the second session today. There’s three of us bogans up the back of the SQL session part 2.
Anyway, I’ll upload some photos tonight hopefully.
Photos from Day 2 (Click for lightbox .. box)
Today began the 5 Days of Awesomeness .. also known as .. Capesoft Training + The Aussie (Clarion) DevCon.
Unfortunately I can’t split myself into three, because there are three sessions going at once. Bruce, Jono and Geoff are all giving of their best to us. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some feedback from people as to the other sessions.
Today I went to 1) the first NetTalk WebServer session, and 2) the Look’N’Feel session.
1) NetTalk WebServer
This Session was an introduction to using the WebServer. From what I saw, most people were there to create their first WebServer app. So Bruce began with some basic questions, reasons as to why or why not you would go with NT4 WebServer, what’s good about CSS and what’s bad (heh heh) .. and other important web serving information.
2) Look’N’Feel
This Session Bruce went through a number of the Capesoft Templates, those that would enhance the look (and feel, obviously) of an app.
Mostly, we gasbagged about methodologies and Google and other important stuff :).
The other sessions went well, although sometimes a little slow apparently. Slow in that people had trouble with getting things to work.
The SQL Session was quite large, and they seemed very hard at work every time I popped my head in.
All in all, it’s 6pm and I’m just leaving the building now.
There’s kind of a different feeling to last year. We were all together, AWAY last year .. which made it more of a group environment i guess .. this is a little more sterile .. but not in a bad way.
It’s good. More tomorrow.
Photos from Day 1
SMITE .. A New Order Of Application Security
The comic isn’t that good. Kind of phoned in the hard work, which comes after the sketching. Coloring, filling out the characters, etc etc. Urg. Takes a long time.
Anyway, Dan Scott had a couple of threads going on the newsgroups recently, talking about security. Specifically, how to stop the Users validation one copy, and then copying those files across into the other workstation/locations.
There were some good responses. Jim Hrubes in particular both piqued my interest and made me laugh.
Dan,
You can serialize the software and they won’t be able to run it on a different machine, look at the crazy discussions about SHA and HDD (they usually deteriorate with discussions about food) in the newsgroups and that will get you started. There are a bunch of crypto geeks in the clarion newsgroups that love to show you how to protect your stuff so search around and you will find it.
HTH
JEH
Multi-Classing to Thief/Fighter/Mage DropCombo
Dave Beggs asked about subclassing a drop combo. It seems using the "setprop" api didn’t work with drop combos.
The answer (apparently, no further threads) was a simple line, given by John Christ:
PROP:ListFEQ
Nice!
Sorry there’s no comic Dave! Actually, this one probably would have been awesome fun. Having bits of a Thief, Fighter and Mage all trying to get into a Drop Combo stain-glass window .. ha ha. Maybe I should do it tomorrow.
With Aussie DevCon arriving, people are starting to gear up .. on the Third-Party newsgroup, Alan Telford has been busy, getting out some really cool questions in regards to NetTalk (WebServer) mostly. Which reminded me I’d better start collating any questions etc, so I get the most out of the Capesoft Awesomeness Expedition in the three days before DevCon.
My talk is coming along. I’ve hit upon a better title, which goes with how the content has evolved.
I’m planning to be blogging what’s going on, especially any Clarion 7 / SV news .. I might even put up a special Live Chatbox. That might work. Or not. Ha ha.
Wednesday through Friday we attended "The Capesoft World Tour 2007", the Aussie Leg.
There were too many choices to make for these three days! Bruce, Jono and Geoff all had very interesting seminars throughout the three days.
You can look here for the breakdown of sessions.
If one thing can be said for the Capesoft guys (and lots can be said) it’s that they can hit the heart of a matter very quickly. Almost a pre-cognitive ability .. hmmm, could there be Mutants walking amongst us? [ .. cough .. ]
And this is, forgive my presumption, one of the more important things you can learn from developers like Capesoft. How to approach problem-solving. How to ask the right questions.
I’m not sure if I can explain it any better than that. But if you spend any time with Capesoft, or indeed others, then watch and learn how they approach development. How they seek out the heart of the matter, or how they don’t. How often does Bruce say "That’s not really important ..", or "You’re looking in the wrong place ..". I guess it can wrankle, but I prefer to see it as a good learning process. You could also just not ask stupid questions .. but Bruce says there are no stupid questions, only stupid people. So .. hmmmm. Ha ha.
Technically, I saw a specific example of just how powerful the Capesoft products, and their training, are (is?).
My workmate Bill brought along a semi-formed app built on NetTalk 4 WebServer templates. It was a new "lite" version of a far more comphrehensive and powerful desktop system.
Over the five days of conference, Bill had transported from TPS to SQL, added Multi-Database functionality (first in TPS, then SQL), other fancy SQL functionality, Letter merging, Word Document creation, extra PDF functionality, an "Inbox" feature, and TPS and SQL program in the same source code!
Freaking amazing. Just fantastic. Awesome.
In my own app, I was able to nail down some specific functionality (sorting of browses dynamically, graphing, reporting, other funky stuff). It was just very cool seeing a pie graph appear with meaningful data out of a browser.
If you don’t use any Capesoft products, then possibly the value of three days of training might not be that much. I’d still argue you could learn a lot about development, but then, you can learn that kind of stuff listening to any good dev, of which many abound all over the net, amongst other places (you might be one too, heh heh).
But if you use Capesoft products, then there is absolutely no question as to the value of attending their training. Their tools should be adding that much money-potential to your product(s) that paying for it isn’t a problem. If it is .. then start saving now for next time!
Definately, I’d say you should go with something specific in mind. Whether that be a product you want functionality added to, or just to learn how to use their products.
All in all, the Capesoft segment of the DevCon was a wonderful time. We made jokes, ate those round white mint lollies, and drank heaps of water. Or at least i did. Wait. We also talked, discovered new tricks, fabulous products, and gave our apps an injection of raw talent, power and good looks.
