In the last two parts of my Microsoft UK Challenger Story I’ve described the first two training weekends.  Now we started coming into the real stuff.  First off though we had news that due to family commitments Ray Booyson, decided that he would pull out to let somebody else have a chance and that somebody was Steve Smith of the UK SharePoint User Group.  Now Steve is a biking man through and through, and at the fair age of 41 he again boosted the average age of the team to over 38, so we thought there might be a chance that we could get one of the over 35 trophies in the final event!

Spurred on by that thought, everybody in the team got right down to some serious training.  David also set up a Friday conference call and sent out puzzles by email each Friday for us all to have a go at.  These were great fun and it was good to chat with the other team members at least by phone since we were all so scattered around the country.  Pretty soon however the final training weekend came around and was in fact a Mini Competition to give us all experience of the real thing.

Mini Competition

So in mid May we all met up at Ilam in the southern Peak District and what a beautiful place it was too.  We were staying in Dovedale House, an old vicarage in a wonderful location.  David unfortunately could not make the weekend, so yours truly was nominated as stand in team captain.  I arrived first at the location and was soon joined by our newest team member Steve Smith.  More people arrived but the remainder of the Tutti Fruttis didn’t turn up until right before the evening Quiz night was due to start.  With the team together at last, we set about the Quiz with a vengeance and managed to finish 2nd!  A great start to the weekend, unfortunately that was the highest we ever went …

The next morning we were up and off to Carsington Water for Stage 1.  This naturally turned out to be a combined water/biking stage.  We had to visit 6 Check Points with a code.  The code could only be gotten by visiting 6 buoys one at a time  which were placed out on the lake, buoy No 1 was closest, buoy No 6 on the other side of the lake.  OK … simple enough you think.  The problem was you could only have one boat on the water per team, the Check Points we up to 4 miles away by road and you had to visit in a pair and we only had about 3 hours to do it all in. Oh … and you only had one oar to start with, the other was at Check Point 1.  There were Bonus Points available too.  It was a fastest to finish. 

We decided that we’d get the Check Point 1 code first and fetch the oar back when we got there.  The only problem was, there was a heck of a wind blowing on the lake which made rowing and steering the boat really hard.  Anyhow, Steve Loader and Gavin headed out first and after about 30 mins managed to get back with the code for CP1.  Off went Steve Smith and Tim to get the oar and to visit the CP.  Gavin and me then went out again with still one oar to get CP2.  The wind was getting up again at this point, but we were getting the hang of this and we managed to get back in 20 mins with the code.  Steve and Tim hadn’t returned from CP1 at this point, so we decided to go for buoy no 3 with CP3 code.  This was our first mistake ….  We should have been checking our strategy at this point and actually gone for CP4 which was the closer CP by road. CP3 was miles away.  Still buoy No 3 was closer than Buoy No 4 and we still only had one oar.  So off went Steve Loader and me and boy did we struggle.  The wind was up still further and though eventually we got to buoy 3, getting back proved a real pain in the ass.  We visited the bank a few times including some willow trees and rocks, I was heard to utter several colourful expletives but somehow we got back just as Steve and Tim pitched up with the second oar ready for the second CP. 

I volunteered to get back in the boat with Gavin to this time go for Buoy No 6 and out we headed.  What ensued next can only be described as a mini version of Captain Bligh and Mr Christian trying to go around the Horn.  By now the wind was really up and I kind of thought we should row up the lake and let the wind blow us into the buoy.  Good plan apart from the fact that we weren’t allowed to carry it through as the safety boat said we had to move down the lake to get out of the way of the Windsurfers.  At that moment we saw a blur of this geezer zipping through the water like nobody’s business.  We saw his point and headed down the lake.  So thereafter for the next 30 minutes Captain Bligh and Mr Christian paddled like lunatics getting nowhere fast and eventually we had to row backwards for 10 mins just to get within viewing distance of the buoy.  At last  we spotted the code and we started back.  By now the kayak had a fair amount of water sloshing around in the bottom and a couple of of near misses on capsizing made for a tense row back.  But … we got there just as the lake’s management decided to close the lake to rowers as it was too windy!!!

So we got back to the start point and met up with the rest of the team and we decided to get to a couple of other points, but by this time we realised we weren’t going to have time to get all the CPs, so Gav and  Steve Loader headed off on Bikes to get a third CP and Tim and me went for a BP.  After a gargantuan effort by Steve and Gav which included scything through a crowd of fun-runners, we checked in but were hit with a bunch of penalty points for not getting all the CPs.  We weren’t too downhearted as not many other teams had either, but we realised we could have gotten another CP with a little extra thought.

We had a break after that and got ready for the evening stage which was a running stage. It was a fairly easy stage a number of points to find on foot.  So Gav and Steve Loader set off on the longer section, Steve Smith, Tim and me did the shorter but steeper section, we found our CP and headed back to the Rendezvous point having decided to ‘Do No More!’ i.e do the minimum required.  We waited and waited but no Gav or Steve.  Then we got a text from Gav saying Steve had injured himself getting over a wall and sure enough after some anxious waiting, along can Steve L hobbling and hopping but still going – a sight to make you proud to be English!  We lost time, but hey, we still got in ahead of Stage Close.  However, we’d lost Steve one of our key team members  …

Next morning, Steve’s ankle was pretty swollen and painful, the room didn’t smell too sweet after a night with 5 Tutti Frutti’s snorting away either, still the weather was good and we had a build stage next so Steve could still do that.  The aim was to get water out of a well (represented by a paddling pool) and take it to a village, using only a few bits of wood, bolts, pulleys etc and a bucket.  We won’t dwell on the build stage except to say – if you ever do one of these – read the instructions!!  We did OK, had a good design, but we could have got loads more points if … we’d read the instructions!!!

The afternoon was a biking/running stage which was down to Steve Smith, Gav, Tim and me, poor old Steve had to sit out and I know he was gutted about not taking part.  Still he could help with Strategy.  We had a gooden, “Do No More!” that is get to the Check Points, then make sure we got a few Bonus Points then beat back to finish before Stage Close.  We started off running in the pouring rain. Within a few minutes we were drenched through – but hey – water won’t kill you.  We went at a good pace, me navigating initially.  We got to the 4 checkpoints despite going out of bounds (marshals missed that one!) and then split up with Steve and me heading back to the bikes to get 2 or 3 BPs and Gav and Tim heading out for two BPs on foot.

Steve and me pounded it back to the bikes, hopped on and then mullered it to 3 BPs. An everlasting image I have is of Steve careering down this rubble-strewn , muddy, water logged track at an unfeasible speed disappearing into the hazy distance …, whilst I tootled along behind a bit chicken like … still I beat him UP the hills heh heh.   We got back with about 10 mins to spare unfortunately to find that Gav and Tim had unfortunately strayed out of bounds and this time the marshals did see them … doh!  Never mind everybody had worked their socks off, we’d learnt some lessons and more importantly we’d started to really gel as a team. We felt ready for the main competition and were excited and couldn't wait for June.  How did we do? That’s in part 4 …

Cheers

Dave Mc

Injury Problems

Having returned from the first weekend training session with UPH and a bunch of of the other Challenger potentials I fully intended to knuckle down and start piling on the training. Only trouble was, I found that I’d picked up a back injury and my dreaded left knee was starting to play up.  Over the next few days I found myself unable even to my own socks on, being unable to bend even a little without serious pain.

So rather than try any running I decided to maintain my cycling to work as that didn’t cause too much hassle and to go swimming as that is totally non-weight bearing and good for overall body toning.  This regime worked a treat.  In between times I got treatment for my back from my Osteopath Nigel Kavanaugh who is absolutely excellent with any types of sports injury.  So come March my back whilst still not right was sufficiently OK for me to opt to go on the second week training but I had already decided I was not going to do any running, just cycling and maybe a bit of water work.

Second Weekend Training

Come the second weekend training we had been allocated into our teams and we were off to Centre Parcs again this time in Thetford.  I had been put into the Microsoft Tutti Frutti Team which consisted of David Hobbs-Mallyon the Microsoft UK SQL Server Product Manager, Steve Loader Microsoft UK User Experience Team, Tim Leung from VBUG, Ray Booyson and Gavin Osborn from the Vista Squad.   The last three guys I knew from my UK Community work, particularly Tim who I’ve known for several years.  By the way, if you ever take Tim out for a meal, make sure it’s a ‘eat all you can’ as I’ve never seen anybody put away so much tucker for one so small.  He may not be the fastest eater but he sure makes up for it in quantity!!  Nice one Tim!

Unfortunately Ray couldn’t make the training weekend due to his wife giving birth and whilst Gavin came along, he was out of action due to overdoing it a bit in training earlier in the week!  So David, Steve, Tim and myself did most of the training, though Gavin did join in for the Kayaking bit which was fun.   So the weekend was of similar format as before starting with a ‘beep’ test which is a fitness test.  I had scored 9.8 on the previous weekend which is a good score for a chap of my fair age of 47, and now this time I scored 11.5 which I was very pleased with.  Most other people also had raised their level which was great to see.

David was nominated as our team captain and was a veteran of 2 previous Challenger events and Steve had done the previous years event in Stirling in Scotland, so it was really great to get some feel for what the actual competition would be like.  Over the weekend we did a few test ‘stages’ run along similar lines to what the actual competition is like and again we had a great time though tiring.

One particularly great event was a night time navigation event which saw us dashing around the forests of Thetford on our bikes trying to answer puzzles and picking up bonuses etc along the way.  I did a chunk of the navigation which I enjoy (when it goes right!) and gained a good deal of confidence from keeping the team going in the right direction whilst pedalling furiously.  We did pretty well in that event and we started to see the core of a good team coming together.

The following day was a combined running, cycling event called ‘Reverse Casino’ in which we were given a fictitious million pounds which we had to loose as quickly as possible.  We had to go to gaming points, do a puzzle and depending on whether we got it right or not we were given debit or credit notes to take to the bank.  Here’s the rub though.  There were 2 banking points which we had to visit or we would pick up huge penalties.  Those banking points were only open between certain times and as the day wore on the exchange rate went down.  Not only did we cock-up on our appreciation of the ground, we set ourselves too high a target to get again and ran out of time AND missed the banking points, so all in all it was a bit of a disaster …. but … it was only training and so no big loss and a good lesson learnt!

After this training weekend we only had a Mini-Competition weekend left prior to the real event, and luckily I picked up no injuries from this  second weekend.  My back hadn’t got worse so it was on with the individual training which I had got into a good rhythm of, cycling each day and swimming 3 times a week, and also eating a good balanced diet, things were going great and the Mini-Comp was looming ….  you’ll find out how the Tutti Fruttis  did on that weekend  in the next post!

Cheers

Dave Mc

Introduction

Some of you who I know are already aware that I recently took part in the Microsoft UK Challenger event, and it was such an amazing experience that I felt inclined to write a longer than usual blog post.

Just to explain to those who are not aware of the Challenger events; they take place around the world in about 12 countries and are run by a company called Intelligent Sport and the clue is in the name.  It is not just a case of doing something sporty you also have to use your noddle.  A typical event will involve some running, some cycling, some water based activity such as kayaking and also problem solving, construction and strategy.  For the last 9 years Microsoft have sponsored the UK Challenger Event and at the same time raised millions of pounds for the NSPCC through the participants obtaining sponsorship.

I was invited to be part of a part Microsoft/part Community team back in December 2008 provided I undertook to be part of a training programme for the event which was held from 10-14 June 2009.  The training took the form of weekend long sessions in January, March and May and also a personal programme.  Now, I‘ve always been able to maintain a reasonable level of fitness. However, in the past any running has generally caused me to have severe amounts of pain and swelling in my left knee due to an injury sustained when I was 22 through not wearing suitable footwear whist running a half marathon.  This was my main concern on entering the event but as it happens my fears were unfounded.

First Training – Centre Parcs Longleat

So in January I went along with some slight trepidation to Centre Parcs in Longleat to take part in the first weekend training which was run by the training partner of Intelligent Sport UPH (now Monkey Business).  UPH stands for Underwood, Peters, Helliwell as in Rory Underwood (of England Rugby fame), John Peters (of 1st Gulf War fame) and Martin Helliwell (of SAS, survival, mountaineering fame).  It was a great weekend and I got my first taste of Adventure eventing.  We had some typical ‘stages’ to do by way of practice as well as some open training sessions.  So for example we had a Kayaking event which went so:

To start answer a puzzle:  “If I have 10 black socks and 10 white socks in a draw.  If I pull out socks one at a time, how many do I have to pull out to guarantee getting a proper pair of socks?”  (Answer is below)

Once you’ve solved the puzzle, then you have to get your team around a course on the lake marked by 4 buoys as many times as possible in a hour using 3 possible modes of transport.  Single Kayak, Double Kayak or 4 Man/Woman Pedalo.  You can only have 2 boats out at once and every team member should use each type of boat at least once.  You need to click in with the Marshals each time you complete a circuit.  You get bonuses for solving puzzles at each buoy, you get penalties for having too may people out or not clicking in etc.

You get the idea.  It’s not a case of tearing around the lake as quickly as possible, it’s about thinking who in your team is good at what, who is fit enough to row fast by themselves, who is good at puzzles.  How can we keep the required number of boats out with the most team members out.  I’m not sure if I’ve remembered all the details totally correctly, but as I say you get the idea.

Another stage was a classic Estimation stage over a total of 4 hours.  First off, we were given a 2 maps with the location of letters of the alphabet.  Based on the terrain and the distances involved we had to estimate how many words we could spell with numbers we could collect (we collected by visiting the letters).  The team I was in estimated we could spell 70 words.  What we had failed to realise was the following though.  Firstly letters collected from one map in the morning did NOT count towards words collected from the second map in the afternoon.  Also we did not correctly estimate times in travelling.  We also failed to really note the penalties for not living up to our estimates!! As a consequence we ended up with such a massive penalty for firstly being late in as we overestimated our travelling times and secondly for not getting the letters we wanted in order to spell the 70 words.  I think we were 20 mins late and had collected CBIZTL … hmmm.  My everlasting memory of that stage is Myles from Rackspace trying to convince the rest of the team that “There’s the next point by that Mansion House, let’s just GO FOR IT!” when cool-headed Matt Dunstan, Challenger veteran from Microsoft steps in and says, “Myles, firstly, we don’t have time, secondly, we have to go down a cliff to get there and thirdly … it’s the WRONG Mansion House!”, it looses a bit in translation, but I tell you, we laughed and laughed about that afterwards, the first of many fond memories gathered during my Challenger experience.

After the first weekend, I felt I had a better idea of what it was all about, I was also pleasantly surprised by my level of fitness, being one of the fittest in my relevant teams, though running was still a bit of a struggle.  It got me motivated too and excited about the whole weekend and also as a side issue allowed me to get back in touch with John Peters a friend of mine from my RAF basic training days at RAF College Cranwell.  All in all a great start.  I’ll cover the second weekend training in Part 2 next time.

Cheers

Dave Mc

Answer to puzzle : Three (pull out a white, maybe a black then if I pull out a white or a black I’ll get a pair …simple!)

It’s a good job the internet is around and it’s a good job there are people who are committed and altruistically minded such that they take time to write useful stuff down for us to use.  Personally however, I dislike blogs which simple reproduce what somebody else has done, but there is something to be said for providing multiple links to a site in order that search engines rank the target site higher, so this blog entry simply links to a really useful site I found today.

After spending the last year doing SharePoint installations it is forgiveable I suppose to become somewhat blase and think you’ve seen it all, but in the last couple of days I’ve been dealing with the move of a small SharePoint Farm from one environment to another.  The Farm has been rather cobbled together and there are loads of missing/broken lists/features and I was repeatedly getting the following error when I tried to export the farm:

FatalError: Failed to compare two elements in the array.
   at System.Collections.Generic.ArraySortHelper`1.QuickSort[TValue](T[] keys, TValue[] values, Int32 left, Int32 right, IComparer`1 comparer)

Steven Van de Craen’s Blog provided the solution nicely, with a really useful article complete with a cracking little downloadable tool which solved the issue, the article in question is here . The whole site looks to be a good source of information, I’ll certainly be visiting it again I’m sure.

Cheers

Dave Mc

Check out this article I picked up via Slashdot. Once again the whole story is not being painted.  Yes, Western Antarctica is loosing ice, but Eastern is gaining and cooling and overall the ice volume around the continent is expanding and deepening. 

Does this mean Global Warming is a lie? Of course not, Global Warming is a reality, which started many years ago but I firmly believe it was not started by Man.  What it does mean, yet again is that there are so many imponderables when it comes to the climate that you should be wary when you hear either scientists or more specifically politicians claiming that such and such a thing WILL happen.

I also hear that there is 33% more ice in the Arctic this year, not hearing much about that in the news either. However, a good deal of the ice is new not stable old ice which is worrying. Nevertheless, the Arctic has been warm before and it’s still there now, thank goodness it’s not too big, otherwise the UK would be like bloomin’ Siberia!

Just in case you think I’m poo-pooing any concern over the environment, I most certainly am not!  What I worry about is the obsession with carbon and Global Warming.  We can’t do much about the climate if anything.  We CAN however stop people chopping down rainforests, we can stop them unnecessarily building dams, we can stop over-fishing, waste dumping, making poisonous emissions, dropping fag ends, throwing litter, let’s concentrate on what we can influence here and now and deal with what the planet serves us up on the climate front.

Cheers

Dave Mc

A couple of guys who I know pretty well from the UK Developer Community have started podcasting.  Both these guys live in Scotland though Oliver Sturm you will be able to tell is not a native of that northern clime … His partner in crime is Gary Short who definitely is Scottish!  For reasons unknown they’ve decided to call their podcasts ‘Sod This!’ and you can hear them at www.sodthis.com.

It’s nice to see other guys/gals podcasting, Rich Costall and myself started the NxtGenUG podcasts nearly 3 years ago and we’ve had nearly 70,000 downloads now according to the site, which reminds me I need to update the figures!

So check out Oliver and Gary and see what they have to say for themselves and maybe even learn something …

Cheers

Dave Mc

I’ve been away a while and got out of the blogging habit, but like a rising tide, I’ve been building up a store of energy, anger and  frustration, however you wish to term it, at so many of the modern day obsessions, that I’ve come back to blogging to vent my spleen, and also to share with you a few things on the Technical, User Group and other fronts that I feel you might like to read about.

I guess my first blog entry for nearly a year has to be about … Global Warming.

If you read any of my earlier blog posts you know that I fall firmly into the ‘sceptics’ as far as the causes of Global Warming.  I have always acknowledged the existence of such a phenomena, since the last ice age was only about 20,000 years ago, it makes perfect sense to me that the world is warming up.  I was even prepared to accept that mankind may have some influence on the proceedings, albeit fairly insignificant in the overall scheme of things.  What do I mean by insignificant?  Reading the popular media and even the so-called intelligent media, you could get the impression that we are drowning in a sea of Carbon Dioxide (CO2), the simple fact of the matter is that the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is 370 parts per million, that is a shade under 0.04% of the total make up of the atmosphere.  At times in the past it has been much higher and it has at times been a somewhat lower, but the key fact is that it is variable.  It has always been a source of annoyance to me, that the media, politicians and activists, ignore this natural variation as though it is irrelevant. 

It is as though the politically correct and zealots view is that there is a ‘correct’ level of CO2 which needs to be achieved. Quotes such as ‘The Science is Settled’ (aka Al Gore) are not only annoying but dangerous to our scientific endeavours and our own personal freedom.  Who says the science is settled?  Science is NEVER settled! Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is still today being tested, Quantum Theory likewise.  It is the job of science to constantly challenge accepted wisdom and theories to subject them to ever more intense scrutiny.  It is also the job of the media to subject political and public figures to the same intense scrutiny.  Political control of science and media alignment with politicians is, in my humble opinion, THE greatest threat to the Western world.  Religious extremists are no threat in comparison.  Just like computer hacking it is the internal threat that is far more prevalent and insidious than any external danger.  What price freedom? Winston Churchill said it best; constant vigilance.

What has this to do with Global Warming?  Everything. Global Warming is not just a subject of scientific debate, it is one of the most grotesquely abused political weapons available to today’s ill-informed, media craving, self-interested politicians and to their associated advisors and media followers.  Notice I do not say ill-informed about the advisors and media followers, they simply choose to take certain announcements from the scientific world which suits their cause and ignore those which don’t and feed it to their political masters/puppets.

Whilst scanning around the news and blog-sphere, I don’t particularly follow any one blog, I came across this article from the Australian Online News site in which NASA’s Aqua satellite is discussed.  This satellite has shown that, to date, the small amount of warming which occurred from the 1980’s until the turn of the 21st century has been cancelled out to all intents and purposes by other processes and has resulted in no net warming of the planet for nearly 8 years, and over 10 years a net cooling.   One of the most significant points in the interview is when the biologist Jennifer Marohesy says “So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant.", Michael Duffy’s response is I think, significant:

"It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

Notice Marohesy says the fact that Global Warming has effectively halted at least for the time being is unexpected, a point which disturbs many people.  I see this as justification of a far more optimistic outlook.  In out hi-tech world of computers, TV, Internet we have quickly become insensitive to the wonders around us, and this it yet more proof that we are not as all-knowing as we think, that nature still has some curved-balls to throw at us. 

So I plead with you all, don’t accept the media picture or the politician’s picture of the doom and gloom and the existence of Global Warming due to mankind as being the only reality.  Maybe Global Warming will restart, maybe Global Cooling will continue, the point is that you, me, the politicians, the media and above all the scientists too just don’t know what will happen.  There is only one certainty: we are not in control.  This amazing planet we live upon has had, and always will have the last word on our existance.  We are not and have never been in the business of “saving the planet”, though we might try to fool ourselves through such slogans that that is what we are trying to do.  It is ourselves we need to save, most of all from our own stupidity and ignorance.

On the departure of UK DPE stalwart Daniel Moth, NxtGenUG have released a tribute podcast to "The Greek Wonder".  Check it out here.  Enjoy, it's a cracker!

I forever wonder at the shortness of human memory.  What do I mean by that?  Well a typical example is a football fan.  3 years ago Rafael Benetiz took Liverpool to the Champion's League Final and at the time Liverpool fans were touting him as the man who could lead Liverpool to former glories.  Those same fans now want rid of him, even though at least 16 other clubs would love to be where Liverpool are ...

Just about every year since 2000 has been the Year of the Linux Desktop and that latest distro is just as easy to use as Windows, and despite all efforts it's still a poor third on latest adoption figures. If Windows XP is loosing out to anyone, its to the Mac and Windows Vista.

Oh yes, and about Windows XP.  I don't know how many people I've heard say in the last year "Oh XP was so good and quick, Vista is just too slow, you need new hardware to run it properly".  Well if you're in the the latter group, take a peruse through some of these links below from around 2002:

http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2001/11/16/xp-sucks/
http://4peeps.com/ivb/index.php?showtopic=1098
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-2233-Slow-Loading-with-XP.html
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5746046.html
http://www.sciforums.com/Windows-XP-Sucks-t-6958.html
http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/11951-windows-xp-slow-freezes-ect.html

Sound familiar? I do seem to remember that when Windows 98 came out it ran slowly compared to Windows 95 on the same machine? Ditto Windows 2K over Win 98, Ditto XP over W2K, so is it really surprising that Vista appears slow over XP on some hardware?  Want to see Vista fly? Go get a £400 Inspiron from Dell with Home Premium. It really flies! My wife and 2 lads use it, no problems - gave a 2 min lesson on a few enhancements (Search, Tagging and UAC), they've found everything else via Search themselves. Installed AVG Free Edition - not had a single virus issue, mind you not even had one found!. Couple of problems with a couple of older games (haven't we always had that? Remember 16 Bit to 32 Bit?), but they still run (sort of).

Personally, I think the move to Vista has been much less hassle than the move from Win 95 to Win 98 and less hassle than XP to XP XP2.  Microsoft still have some work to do, the urgent stuff should be out in SP1 I hope, I hope.  Vista should be the Dogs B*****ks and way better than XP ever was by end of 2008 (it already is in my opinion).

Back to Haskell next time I think

Cheers

Dave

Well I've been keeping at it, despite the fact that it is somewhat of a slog, learning Haskell that is.

The documentation is somewhat sparse, done in that somewhat haphazard fashion of 'not-quite complete' style you get with a lot of Open Source stuff - really makes you appreciate what we have in MSDN, I can tell you.  But I thought I'd share a sort of Hello World style of Haskell Program, although it does do a bit more than that  ...

module Main
    where

import Char   

main = putStrLn ( show ( my_map Char.isLower "Hello World" ) )

my_map f [] = []
my_map f (x:xs) = f x : my_map f xs

That's it.  So what does all this do?  What does it mean?

Lets start with

module Main
    where

This is fairly plain. I'm declaring a module, a unit of code really called Main.  The where refers to what comes next.

import Char   

The import Char means I'm referring to the namespace Char which has a number of functions, well one in fact which I need.

main = putStrLn ( show ( my_map Char.isLower "Hello World" ) )

The next line is the actual main function.  Note that functions or more generally expressions in Haskell begin with lowercase letters whilst types such as Main begin with upper case letters.  This is required by the Haskell compiler.  The main function essentially writes output using the putStrLn to write the output of show, which converts a type into a String, and the input to show is the output of the my_map function.

my_map f [] = []
my_map f (x:xs) = f x : my_map f xs

The my_map function is declared on 2 lines and takes two arguments a function and a list.  Lists are defined in square brackets in Haskell  i.e [].  What the declaration says is that if the second argument is an empty list, then return an empty list (first line). If the list is not empty, then  (x:xs) represents the non-empty list as a list element x appended to the front of an existing list xs.  In this case we apply the function f to the individual element x and append it to the output of my_map f as applied to xs, i.e in a recursive manner.

In essence the function is applied to each member of the list.  In the actual code of main, the function applied is the isLower() function which outputs a Boolean value of True if the character is lower case and False if not.

By running this program in the Glasgow Haskell Compiler Interactive window (GHCi), the following is the resulting output.

[False,True,True,True,True,False,False,True,True,True,True].

So this simple program shows the following facets of Haskell:

1.  The program is in fact one function
2.  You can define functions on separate lines (curried).
3.  You generally define functions (non-trivial) as recursive functions
4.  You can pass functions as arguments
5.  You use Actions to deal with IO Issues (putStrLn is an Action)

I've done a few other bits, I'm keeping reading bits over and over again, and found some other documentation. Its proving to be a bit of a rough ride and I'm trying to find something 'useful' to do and to produce, which is always the issue with these sorts of things.  Still another post will come soon, and I'll try to produce something better for you next time, maybe try to interact with another library or something...

Meanwhile, have a great New Year, see you around the community!

Cheers

Dave

Browsing via Google Reader and my Live Desktop I noticed one of Daniel's latest posts on How You Start A User Group. As one of the co-founder's of NxtGenUG I thought I'd put my slant on this one from a UK perspective.  Chris William's 21 thoughts on starting a User Group are interesting, valid and I'd say cover a good deal of what is required. 

I do disagree with a few of his points particularly No 10 about avoiding certain months of the year.  NxtGenUG have a meeting EVERY month, come rain, shine, whatever.  In this December we've had nearly 100 people register for meetings and of the 2 we've had so far we've had about a 90% turnout rate.  In July 2007 we had one of the biggest month's ever for attendances at NxtGenUG meetings, ditto August, the so called 'quiet' months.  The reason?  People are hungry for information, not everybody goes on holiday the whole of July/August, people work up until 24th December quite often, why not have a meeting in December?

On Chris's point No 6 I would quibble too.  Whilst DPE at Microsoft are a great help and a fantastic support to the community, there is a difference between being a support and being a crutch.  I wouldn't get necessarily get a DPE guy in to do a first meeting.  To me when starting out with NxtGenUG, it was a point of pride for me that we wanted to prove that we could organise, fund and build a group without direct help from Microsoft whilst effectively promoting their technology.  This to mind my strengthens our position as a User Group as it makes a statement about who is really driving it.  It strengthens Microsoft's position too, whereby they can point to us and say, "these guys are doing these great things, promoting our stuff, with no direct support from us, we must be doing something right!".

Funding is always a hot subject in the User Group leader arena.  Chris skirts a bit around the issue a bit in No 8 and talks about sponsorship.  It comes down a bit to what you want to achieve with the group  you are starting.  With us at NxtGenUG it has always been a passion and a drive to put on the best possible meetings, without the need to worry about finance.  To that end NxtGenUG is primarily a subscriptions based User Group.  Our promise to our members is to provide top content in our meetings, food of course, swag of course but above all else VALUE for MONEY! 

Because we generally achieve that we don't get the situation in No 15 on Chris's list.  We hardly ever have people complain.  We do have comments occasionally and we act upon them, but because we actively promote feedback, read it, act on it (as Chris states) be it positive or negative and we make it easy to gather online.  As a result,  we nearly always get only constructive or positive feedback on our meetings.

Other User Groups do things differently and have just as valid but different models.  London .NET, Scottish Developers, DotNetDevNet, VBUG all run different types of groups and get support different ways.

Daniel challenged us to add to the list ...

22. Have Fun.  Make meetings enjoyable.

23. Give the speakers you invite a GOOD introduction, not a wishy-washy "Here's what-sit-face?"

24. At a meeting if you're an organiser/helper, mingle with the attendees, chat, have a laugh.

25. Have fun, smile, enjoy it, don't take it too seriously ...

26 through to 100. Have Fun ...

Nice spot Daniel,

Cheers

Dave Mc

That's a question I get when first asked "What are you doing at the moment?" and I reply "Learning Haskell".

Let's go back to April 2007, and Ian Cooper comes along to NxtGenUG to give a great session on Object Orientated Practices. During that session he mentions The Pragmatic Programmer as a good book to read to improve oneself as a software developer. As luck would have it my co-worker, utility 'king' and good friend Andy Maggs has a copy.  I borrow it,  read it, well most of it, but that one piece of advice in the book which sticks, really sticks, is "Learn a new language each year".

That seems like an awful lot of work, and I put that thought aside. 

Along comes VBUG Conference for which I do a session on LINQ to XML.  During my research, I have a brief flirtation with monads which brings me into contact with Haskell for the first time. Interested, I see its a pure functional language, but don't really give it much attention.

Along comes MIXUK, and in the last session Simon Peyton-Jones delivers what I have described elsewhere as a 'thunderbolt' of a session on Transactional Memory.  During this session Simon mentions Haskell again and the fact that he is one of it's architects.

By now, my interest is up but so are my commitments, speaking at several UK conferences including DDD, MIXUK, SQLBITS and VBUG Conference.  Also looming is TechEd 2007 where I would be delivering my XSLT Extreme Session.  So I put everything on hold until post TechEd. 

So November 13th I decide that I will grab that thought from above , learn a new language and its going to be Haskell!  Why?  Well here's my rationale.  I'm not saying you should learn Haskell, just here is why I'm learning Haskell:

1. XSLT is my favourite language - it's functional albeit in the XML domain, so functional programming is not entirely alien.
2. Functional languages seem to offer a potential for coping better with the multi-core future we're facing, time will tell if this potential can be realised.
3. Silverlight is not a technology I can really embrace. I have little or no designer skills.  I can understand and do understand the underlying technology, but I don't believe can make the most of it, besides there are plenty of guys and gals looking at it. Ditto LINQ.  And I felt I needed to do 'something completely different' to quote Monty Python.
4. I spoke to Don Symesat TechEd, one of the main architects of F#, and he encouraged me to learn Haskell as it would stand me in good stead when learning F# if I decided to learn that.
5. I plan to put together a session over the next 6 months describing what functional programming is and what pluses it offers developers like myself, plus its pitfalls and drawbacks.

That's why I'm learning Haskell, but why am I writing about this? It's that man Ian Cooper again.  At DDD6 Geek Dinner, I told Ian what I was doing and how it was actually all his fault, his response: "Make sure you blog your journey through Haskell". 

So, who am I to argue with a lynchpin of the UK community and great speaker that Ian is.  So this was blog number 1 on Haskell, more to come as I delve further and further into this somewhat different world ... Next time we'll have a chat about getting started with Haskell, and what I did to write my first Haskell program ...

Cheers

Dave Mc

I've uploaded to SkyDrive the complete code for the XSLT 'Extreme' session which I delivered on Friday 9th November at 15:15 as part of TechEd Developers 2007.  Any problems you have accessing the code drop me a line at dave@nxtgenug.net

http://cid-59f714755d6e2a69.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/TechEd2007?uc=1

If you attended the session and provided feedback, thank you for the feedback and the kind comments. I hope the content of the session will help you in your work.

Cheers

Dave

If you missed Daniel Moth's session at NxtGenUG Coventry last week, you've another chance to see him in action at the Coventry VBUG meeting, details here: http://www.vbug.com/Events/November-2007/VBUG-Visual-Studio-2008-for-the-web-developer-with-Daniel-Moth.aspx.  Daniel's  a TOP presenter, so I recommend you go along and check him out. 

Cheers

Dave

It's all getting a bit frantic here. One week to go before TechEd Developers 2007 Barcelona and there's a bunch of things to do before we go:

• Got to pack, obviously
• Got to host the Birmingham NxtGenUG meeting on Wednesday
• Got to prep up some game shows prior to flying out.
• Need to shoot some footage for some videos we're going to be showing as part of Speaker Idol
• Got to release Podcast No 43 (VBUG Conference)
• Got to get in 5 good days work!

Never been so busy in me life!  But I wouldn't have it any other way. There is some really interesting stuff going on at the moment.  For instance ...

Expression Blend

Had a good workout with Expression Blend over the weekend, building a NxtGenUG Game Show (To Be Announced at TechEd), and although I am the archetypal developer with 0% Design DNA, I'm quite proud of the result!  There's a few foibles with it but after a while getting some swanky motion going through the Timeline stuff is pretty easy. Some of the GUI editing in the background of the XAML seems a bit limited sometimes and I had to on occasions dive into the XAML to get it to do exactly what I wanted. It seemed to run OK.  I think it bombed on me once during the whole weekend, which I thought weren't bad for a first release.

Overall I'm pretty impressed. A few oddities:

• It seemed to refuse to acknowledge the fact that I did have a App.xaml.  Only when I compiled it in VS2008 and reloaded did it want to know, this meant it was a little fiddly to test the application.
• Another little 'gotcha' was the Timeline drop down.  Sometimes the Timelines just seemed to disappear, only to reappear when I created a new timeline. 
• I also seemed to get a little stuck when selecting container objects and when I got the yellow banding around my selected object. At one point it wouldn't let me do anything to the objects within the container.
• Not sure about that grey either ... still I suppose I could change it.

Ah well, into the week of weeks, and out the other side into TechEd - hope to see you there

Cheers

Dave

(To be read perhaps in the style of Stuart Hall)

Well yet another conference done, this time SQLBITS the first DDD Style conference in the UK dedicated to those bastions of the IT world - the database guys and gals.  

Yes, for a whole Saturday, a crowd of 321 ANSI standard, execution plan, nanosecond and performance obsessed people including myself, milled around Microsoft Reading building 3, when they should have known better.  There was a time, I'm sure in ages past, when to ignore the spectacle of an English Rugby Team beating the colonial outcasts of Australia would have been a treasonable offence, not so these days, more's the pity, and that noble and glorious victory went virtually unnoticed in the unrelenting fervor to obtain that one piece of SQL know-how which might make for a serene workplace or perchance create a rampaging database capable of putting a man on Mars before the year is out.

No question, SQLBITS was a success, in my eyes at least.  The overseers were Tony Rogerson, Simon Sabin, Martin Bell and Chris Webb.  The 'top brass' of the UK SQL Community, gathered in a single place surrounded by an army of followers, willing or otherwise, and a sterling performance by all it has to be said.  Development, SQL 2008, DBA, and BI were the pillars of the day deployed in Chicago 1, 2, Memphis and Everest to which the faithful were guided and shepherded by the ever present Microsoft Events staff (do they ever sleep?). 

The mood was light, the smiles ever-present, they enjoyed themselves it seemed, as sessions on SQL Server Deployment Security, Analyzing Indexes, Analysis Services in SQL2008, SQL Integration Services, Unit Testing in SQL Server and Database Mirroring came  faster than Louis Hamilton around Silverstone and more often than repeats of Big Brother on Channel 4.  The day was packed, with barely time to grab a chicken sandwich and foil-fresh packet of Cheese and Onion crisps, it was session after session of tips and tricks and news and gems.  To cap it all the vendors were there, flaunting their wares in a bold and sassy manner that would put a cockney street seller to shame. Idera, vibrant Orange, Quest, blue and serene and Solid Quality quiet, unassuming, professional. 

But where were Redgate? Those pinnacles of quality and good form in the SQL World? They were in the crowd, so give them a cheer, I said, they paid for the busses to the knees-up after the event! And so the day ended, the crowd rolled away, dissipating like confetti after the wedding with some going to the Group By party for a last bowl, beer and chips.  The rest, including me, exhausted, fulfilled, stuffed with knowledge, wound our way home to reflect on the wonder that is Community ... Podcast to follow.

Don't miss the next SQLBITS if you do any SQL, and don't forget about DDD6 at the end of November if you do any sort of development.

Cheers

Dave

Fellow NxtGenUG-er Barry Dorrans of Cardspace and Hacking Websites for Fun and Profit fame has been made an MVP in Visual Developer - Security specialization.  Good on you Barry, it's gonna be fun at the Summit this year, you and Alun Rogers together - Oh Dear!

Cheers

Dave

Well I went to MIX UK 07 with a little trepidation, I'm not much of a designer and I'm more a frameworks and SQL kind of guy, albeit in the web space and I've never really embraced whole-heartedly the ASP.NET Server Controls stuff, being content to use the ASP.NET process and to work with XSLT to publish my web pages.

I have to say though Visual Studio 2008 with Expression Suite looks the business.  I was particularly taken with some of the enhancements relating to Java-scripting and the Expression Blend Designer.  I was also really impressed with a simple but effective demonstration of converting a PDF to an XPS format file (XAML) and then editing it to be used as a data entry form, Mike Hawes from Sage did the demo and you can hear an interview with him on the latest podcast from NxtGenUG.  The speakers included Scott Guthrie, 'The Man Who Never Stops Coding or Blogging ...' who did some great sessions on writing web apps using a bunch of the new features available.  I enjoyed 'A Nice Cup of Tea and a Chat' again with Scott, Phil Winstanley (one of the MIX organisers), Dave Sussman and others.  It was a general open microphone session and we chatted about the effects such technologies might have on BI and Windows applications.

Next day was good with a great session on getting started with XAML by Robby Ingebretsen and Paul Dawson.  Not sure I agreed with everything they said. I felt some of it was fine if you worked in a big company on big projects.  What they advocated with regarding to go watch people and gather information relating to personalities IS good to do, but try convincing customers of SMBs they should fork out for me to go watch them doesn't seem realistic to me. Notwithstanding that, they made some very good points, and I'm glad I attended.  I managed to grab an interview with Robby after the session which will be on podcast No40 from NxtGenUG.

In the afternoon of the second day Rich and me donned our speaking caps in the loosest sense of the word and delivered an 'Out of Sync' 20/20 talk which went well and then did a session of 'Swaggily Fortunes' which seemed to go down well too. It was all a bit of a laugh, no content but plenty of swag!

The highlight of the whole 2 days for me was a mini-sneak peek by Simon Peyton-Jones on Transactional Memory - a 20 minute thunderbolt of a session which blew my mind with its content and with its delivery.  Simon is the total enthusiast, but eloquent, witty and clear thinking with it.  Transactional Memory is a simple idea, hard perhaps to implement but simple never the less and is a means to simplify the growing need to make multi-threading computing an "undergraduate experience rather than a publishable achievement" as Simon put it.

To cap that was impossible, but hey I left bearing a copy of Vista Ultimate and Expression Web both of which will be re-appearing as 'swag' for some lucky NxtGenUG meeting attendee, seeing as I already have these via MSDN Subscription. Oh and I managed to gather a bit more swag for NxtGenUG meetings too, so watch out for that!

Great 2 Days, thanks to the organisers, events staff and everybody involved.

Cheers

Dave