Pann's Thoughts

A few of us got together for a braai at Ruari's place. He decided on fish and although I don't know anything about fish, I think it was Red Roman that he cooked. As per usual it was great.

Event though it was fairly windy, we did not miss the opportunity to use the pool, although some of us did it involuntarily . There are some pics here

While attending the "Chalk 'n Talk" session by Ernst, we somehow got onto sockets (that's what's so cool about the "Chalk 'n Talk"). Anyway there were these two interesting guys attending (Peter & Paul and no, I'm not making it up) that pointed us to mentalis.org. They provide an open source .net secure socket library.

While browsing the site, I also came across an open source proxy server written in C#. It supports FTP proxy, HTTP proxy, SOCKS proxy and a portmapper. Not only are these tools very handy, but you have access to the source as well.

Yep, I took the test. Can't say I'm too excited with the result.

Which File Extension are You?

This is to say thanks to a whole bunch of people

First I have to thank Armand for moving my blog over to dotnet.org.za. Saying it occurred without any trouble would not be entirely correct.

Secondly I have to thank Danny Naidoo and Kaylash Bhana for the invite to TechEd. These guys really care about the communities and it was great to see their active involvement. Have a look at Kaylash's moves here (courtesy of Thea). I didn't personally see Danny on the dance floor but hey, maybe next time .

Then of course the event would not be what it was without the presenters and MVPs. A great thanks goes out to these guys and gals. A special congrats to my friend ruari. Even though it was his first TechEd presentation he got the highest evaluation score for the event. That really shows commitment.

The "Chalk 'n Talk" sessions held by the MVP's were excellent. I just wish we could have more of these kinds of events especially with the MVP's present. They really know their stuff and like to share (event if it is Evan talking about sound waves)

Although the presenters and MVP's kept me entertained during the day, I have to thank the new friends I made for the midnight/morning entertainment. Sure, they resulted in me hardly getting any sleep but it was worth it. I think IT people are the only people who will still talk about work at 4 in the morning with a few beers behind them. I'm still trying to figure out if this is a good thing or a sad thing .

So to close off thanks to the organisers, presenters, MVP's and friends for a great time.

Tech-Ed this year rocks!!

The best part for me was actually putting faces to names to the SADeveloper and SAArchitect members. A bunch of really cool guys (and a few gals).

Last night we had an early night, only got to bed at 4 am. So I should probably say this morning was an early morning. We should have known everything was not going to go well after be staff of “The Shebeen” left the place before we did and promised us a shuttle. Yeah, right. At least some people had refreshments to help them with the great walk back.

The sessions at Tech-Ed are interesting although I find the “Chalk 'n Talk“ sessions the best. It's great to be able to talk to peers and share ideas and problems. I intend attending a couple of them today as well.

Now let me head back, there's a book with my name on it.

PS. I'd just like to thank TinaE, Chad, RacerX, PacMan, Neo and Ernst for assisting me in my (almost) all-night vigil.

Hmm. Haven't blogged for a while. That's sad.

Anyway I got a couple of the SA Developer calendars from Ruari today. If anyone wants some let me know and we can arrange something.

I've also been playing with CodeLib for a while now and although I like it, I think it has one major problem and that's it search functionality. It allows you to enter all kinds of code snippets, notes urls and pictures but the searching is extremely limited. I can't find a way of doing multiple word searches where the words are NOT treated as one phrase. If anyone know hot to do it, please drop me a line.

Ofcourse I'm looking forward to TechEd this weekend and can't wait to meet my fellow members at SAArchitect and SADeveloper.