Peter Griffith’s Weblog

UniSA run 2 programs, Industry Alliance Program http://www.cis.unisa.edu.au/iap/index.html and the Business Information Systems Program. http://www.unisa.edu.au/bis/

These programs involve interaction with Industry, the BIS program gives students 2 x 15 week placements for project work. The CS program invites industry to give problems or development for students to solve.

Last November I attended 2 events showing some of the results of these programs. There were presentations by BIS students on the their placement projects. I believe there were 10-15 students in this program. The second event, 90 groups of CS students (usually 2 or 3 in a group) demonstrated solutions to problems suggested by industry partners.

Our contribution was a CS student who developed a USB interface and software for one of our serial interfaced energy management controllers.

ACS recognized the need for students “work integrated learning” (work

experience) by creating the ACS Foundation in 2001.

http://www.acsfoundation.com.au

By giving a student an ACS Scholarship rather than putting the student on the payroll which adds all the HR things (super, hol and sick pay, employee count, insurance, etc) and the student pays tax on his pay. A scholarship through the ACS foundation avoids all this and in most cases the student gets the whole amount donated by the donor tax-free.

Universities can make it difficult for students to get work experience by limiting the time available for this. I am told some courses now have a unit of work experience as a part of the course.

University courses suffer as a new course takes 2 years to develop and implement. The designers have to predict what’s likely to happen over the next 5 or so years. Not knowing what vendors will still be around, they avoid the problem. When the first graduates emerge from a new course, the concepts can be over 4 years old. It makes it easy to question the current relevance of courses.

I have watched the Howard government tearing the universities apart in their 10 years in Government. For a good description of how bad it was, I am indebted to The Science Show where Robyn Williams interviewed Vicki Sara, Chancellor, University of Technology, Sydney http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/2089488.htm#transcript

Vicki Sara points to a looming crisis in Australian universities as they lose their competitive position due to underfunding and over regulation.

Other OECD countries have increased funding for higher education. Australia has seen a decline of 4%.

Hi

To register for Wednesday’s meeting, use the “Visitor without an ACS Id” option (unless you are an ACS member) at

http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=event&area=9005&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10105694398845

BRING YOUR LAPTOP ALONG TONIGHT to receive your copy of the 26Gb of Heroes Happens 2008 presentations, demos and labs from our USB HDD. It will take about 30 minutes to affect the transfer or download extracts from http://www.expressnetvideo.com.au/adnug/

This month May 2008

1. ADNUG Meeting Programme - 14^th May. Please Register (by Wed am would help)
2. IMPORTANT - MS Press Online Store with UG Specials is now Launched!
3. Employment requests
4. Australian SQL Server User Group meeting – 12^th June
5. ASPUG Adelaide Sharepoint User Group meeting – 20^th May
6. CodeCampSA 12^th-13^th July UniSA
7. Expressnet free hosting offer for ASP.Net web sites
8. Beta version of new ADNUG website
9. Freebies from Microsoft Press for 2008 launches

1. ADELAIDE DOT NET USERS GROUP.

The next meeting of ADNUG will be held on WEDNESDAY 14th May at 5.45pm

at
SA Innovation Centre , Level 2, Westpac House, 91 King William Street, Adelaide .

Visitors welcome. See below for Programme.

PROGRAMME

5.45 pm Finger food and Drinks. Have some nibbles and refreshments before we start

Have something to eat before the meeting.

6.15 pm Questions and answers. Bring along your .Net problems for discussion from members.

6.25 pm Boldock, Alan (CNAHS-RAH) – Senior Analyst Programmer Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) – Tracking Patients using WPF, ASP.NET and touch-screen technologies

Alan.Boldock@health.sa.gov.au

Alan Boldock is a Senior Analyst Programmer and manager of a small development team working within the Central Northern Adelaide Health Service (CNAHS) at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH).

The team is primarily responsible for the development and maintenance of user databases. This includes many ASP .NET web application as well as Microsoft Access and SQL Server databases.

One of our most recent projects required developing a system to track patients as they are treated in the RAH pre-anaesthetic clinic. What was originally suggested was not what they got! The final application uses WPF, ASP.NET as well as touch-screen technologies to solve the problem. This talk outlines how the project was presented, the problems that arose, the solutions we developed, and how the system is used.

7.10 pm Dave Glover – Microsoft DPE – Hyper-V, The new virtualisation technology going in to Windows Server 2008

dglover@microsoft.com

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine. With Hyper-V, you can also efficiently run multiple different operating systems—Windows, Linux, and others—in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing

8.00 pm Meeting close

..

2. MS Online Press Store User Group Specials

I’m delighted to advise you that our press distributor Woodslane in conjunction with MS has developed an Microsoft Online Press Store which is now LIVE!

www.mspress.com.au

To help us launch the Store during the month of May we’ve created a special User Group Members offer of 50% discount on all books on the site. We’d love your help to promote the store to your community by blogging about the site and including the URL in your newsletters and other communication to your User Group Members.

Some of the great advantages of www.mspress.com.au include:

- Express delivery

- Competitive pricing

- Easy Keyword Search facility

- Latest titles and Books of the Month

- Large inventory

- Newsletter sign-up

And until the end of May on www.mspress.com.au

- All User Group Members will receive a 50% discount by using this Code at Checkout (members will be sent code).

- Plus go in the draw for a chance to win an XBOX by providing feedback on the site

We are planning to keep improving the site in the future and I’ll keep you updated as these improvements are made.

Thank you for your support J

Tania Netterfield | Partner Account Manager CPLS | Microsoft Australia | 1 Epping Road North Ryde NSW 2113 |W +61 2 9870 2895 |M +61 418 883 050

3. Employment Requests

Candle ICT (Rohan Bishop rbishop@candlerecruit.com) has permanent and contract opportunities for .NET developers (C# and VB.NET) and SQL Server developers to finally take the plunge and make 2008 the year to follow through on those resolutions! So, don’t let the year pass you by. Contact Rohan Bishop on 8223 3886.

Candle IT – Sponsors of The Adelaide SQL Server User Group and the Adelaide .NET User Group.

ASP.NET Developer (For contact details email Peter Griffith pgriffit@senet.com.au)

Request for an experienced ASP.NET Developer for the development of one of the Corporation’s business critical web applications for a 3 month term.

Skills Required:

• Minimum 3-4 years ASP.NET, VB.NET (or C#), AJAX, XML, HTML, JavaScript & CSS experience.
• SQL Server management, T-SQL, stored procedures & DTS experience.
• Solid OOD and data modelling skills.
• Sound knowledge of the software development life cycle.
• Technical documentation skills.

Skills Preferred:

• SQL Server Reporting Services experience.
• Experience with source control software (specifically Team Foundation Server).
• Computer Science or related degree.

· Graphic manipulation and editing experience.

4. AUSTRALIAN SQL SERVER USER GROUP meeting:

Venue: Level 2 Westpac House (91 King William Street Adelaide)

Duration 2 hours (including light lunch) 12:00 - 2:00pm On Thursday 12^th June

See http://www.sqlserver.org.au/Events for programme

5. ASPUG ADELAIDE SHAREPOINT USER GROUP meeting:

Venue: 5.45pm Level 26 Westpac House, 91 King William Street Adelaide.

Jeff Headley (Alphawest) “SharePoint for non techies” and Paul Turner (SDM) “Building Virtual Development Environment”

To join ASPUG and/or be on mailing list click on www.aspug.org.au

6. CodeCampSA at UniSA:

Venue: Theatre HH4-08, UniSA, City West Campus, North Terrace, Adelaide

When: 8.30am-4pm Sat/Sun 12^th-13^th July

First Call for speakers, email Peter Griffith if you would like to present.

7. EXPRESSNET FREE ASP.NET HOSTING ACCOUNTS OFFER:

Expressnet are offering Free ASP.NET web hosting accounts. They are relatively small accounts designed for personal websites and beginning developer who want to host their work somewhere.

The accounts have 20MB of disk space, 200MB of monthly data transfer and 5 Email accounts. The sites are hosted in Australia (Canberra) on high spec Dell servers.

There is no access to SQL on these plans, so a database driven site like DotNetNuke won’t be able to be run.

It’s not a limited offer and will be available for the foreseeable future obviously dependant on demand.

8. Beta of new ADNUG web site

At last licencing has been sorted..

Thanks to Paul for getting the new web site to a stage that we can now get this project underway to further develop the site.

http://paulturner.is-a-geek.com:9001/default.aspx

This is an opportunity to do some work and get experience in Sharepoint 2007. We are looking for “volunteers” and beginners to get involved. You will be supported and mentored.

See latest suggestions at

http://pgriffith.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/developing-new-adnug-website/

Pick a function that needs to be added to the site and volunteer.

9. NEW - Freebies from Microsoft Press

Free e-book offer and Microsoft Press newsletter

The free e-book includes content from three recent publications from Microsoft Press:

Learn more about the free e-book offer, and sign up for the Microsoft Press Book Connection newsletter, a newsletter that provides news about upcoming and recent releases, special offers, and additional information from those who know our books best.

Check out these additional Microsoft Press books about Visual Studio:

Join the MSDN Connection. http://www.microsoft.com/australia/msdn/default.aspx for details

Going Interstate? For list of Australian User Groups http://www.microsoft.com/australia/msdn/usergroups.aspx

Subscribe to MSDN Flash http://msdn.microsoft.com/flash.

Agenda for Meeting 159 on Wednesday 7th May 2008

BUSINESS MEETING

Rostrum Club 10 – Presentation Skills

6 pm (please be there by 5.45 pm.)

to be held at

Excom, Ground Floor, 191 Pulteney Street Adelaide   SA   5000

If late and locked out, phone Peter Griffith  0408 832 891  to be let in.

5.45pm Light refreshments and networking.

BUSINESS

6.15pm Open Meeting Chairman: Helen Bills

· Introduction of guests

· Welcome of guests – MC Peter Griffith

· Apologies –

· Icebreaker – Jack Salagaras

· Minutes of meeting number 158

· Business Arising

· Induction of Mark Prodoehl

· Reports  -  President

-  Secretary including correspondence

-  Treasurer

-  Dais Member

· Business Meeting items, statistics for DAIS.

· General Business

o Notice of motions

§ Motion 1: “That Club 10 regularly submit news and information to the Rostrum Newsletter.”

§ Motion 2:  “That the M.C. for that month be the contributors to the Rostrum Newsletter”

PRESENTATION PROGRAMME

MC to introduce each speaker before each presentation – Peter Griffith

6.40pm 1^st Presenter – Terry Franklin (20 mins)

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.05pm Set-up break

7.10pm                  2^nd Presenter – Eun Young Choi (10 mins) “Seeds for Nutrition“

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.25pm                  3^rd Presenter – Mark Prodoehl (5 mins) “Maiden Speech”

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.35pm                  Set-up break

7.40pm                  4^th Presenter – Helen Bills (15 mins) “Maths for Minors”

Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

8.00pm Review programme for next month (5 mins) – Peter Griffith

Any Other Business

8.05pm             MEETING CLOSE

MASTER OF CEREMONIES – Peter Griffith – pgriffith@senet.com.au

PRESENTERS please email the following information well before the meeting to the MC

v Purpose v Competency (if applicable)

APOLOGIES TO Program Director- Peter Griffith on 0408 832 891 (H) or pgriffit@senet.com.au

The Heroes Happens VS2008 sessions files are now available for downloading.

I received the following email from Simon.

“As discussed, I’ve uploaded the Visual Studio 2008 files to our server for those who didn’t have a laptop the other night.

There are two zip files containing the Training Kit and the heroescommunitylaunch.com. There are two folders containing the videos and the VPC files. The VPC files are a set and all need to be downloaded before use (~4GB).

The files can be browsed and downloaded from http://www.expressnet.com.au/adnug “

Thank you Simon.

As I pointed out at the meeting, these sessions, presentations, demos, labs and doco contain a wealth of well prepared information on VS2008, and will be an enormous help to your take up of VS2008.

Happy VS2008ing.

PG

Duke Ellingtons “A” train is a real train on the New York  Subway.  It is the “fast” train  from Harlem (Manhattan) to Queens.

http://www.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/tacur.pdf

Why was the “A Train” written?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/04/99/duke_ellington/325798.stm

Duke and Ella

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhK-zYfFsIY

PG

Agenda for Meeting 158 on Wednesday2nd April 2008

Rostrum Club 10 – Presentation Skills

6 pm (please be there by 5.45 pm.)

 to be held at

Excom, Ground Floor, 191 Pulteney Street Adelaide   SA   5000

If late and locked out, phone Peter Griffith  0408 832 891  to be let in.

5.45pm Light refreshments and networking.

BUSINESS              

6.15pm             Open Meeting Chairman: Helen Bills

·         Introduction of guests

·         Welcome of guests – MC Helen Bills

·         Apologies –

·         Icebreaker – Peter Griffith

·         Minutes of meeting number 157

·         Business Arising

·         Reports            -  President

                                          -  Secretary including correspondence

                                          -  Treasurer

                                                            -  Dais Member

·         General Business

-

 PRESENTATION PROGRAMME

MC to introduce each speaker before each presentation – Helen Bills

6.40pm             1^st Presenter – Terry Franklin (20 mins)  

                        Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.05pm             Set-up break

7.10pm             2^nd Presenter – Neil Hamilton (30 mins)

                        Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

7.45pm             Set-up break

7.50pm             3^rd Presenter – Jack Salagaras (5 mins) “Maiden Speech”

                        Criticism (5 mins) Roger Bills

8.00pm             Review programme for next month (5 mins) – Peter Griffith

                        Any Other Business 

8.05pm             MEETING CLOSE

Saturday 29^th March 2008 at Excom, 191 Pulteney St., Adelaide  $22 (includes lunch).

To register on ACS booking system, use the “Visitor without an ACS Id” option. Pay by credit card or request an invoice if you want to pay at the door.

http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=event&area=9005&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10100942788273

9.00am Lap around Visual Studio 2008 & .NET Framework 3.5 – Paul Turner

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 provide several key features that allow developers to build a variety applications more quickly. During this session you will learn about some core enhancements to Visual Studio that all applications can take advantage of, such as multi-targeting. You will also learn about all of the key areas of “orcas” from a high-level, before we drill into each of the topics throughout the 5-day event.

10.10am Coffee break

10.30am ASP.NET development - Paul Turner

Introduction to ASP.NET AJAX

In this session, you’ll learn how to use ASP.NET AJAX to build a richer, more responsive user experience. Topics include partial rendering, web services, structured scripting, and integration with Silverlight.

11.40am Windows Development  - Keith Zerna

Building rich, full-featured Smart Client business solutions is often essential to complement web-based development efforts. This session covers new features and improvements made in Visual Studio 2008 for Smart Clients, including integrating Authentication, Roles and Profiles with ASP.NET web solutions.

Visual Studio 2008 integrates designer support for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This enables developers to work hand-in-hand with design creations from Expression Blend, and helping to improve the user experience of your solution to drive user acceptance and productivity. This session will be packed full of demonstrations.

12.40pm Lunch

1.50pm Office Development Platform -  Daniel Brown

Building SharePoint Workflows

This session demonstrates how VSTO reduces complexity and greatly speeds development of SharePoint workflow from within Visual Studio.

3.00pm .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ)

Language Integrated Query (LINQ) provides the ability to write query expressions directly within C# or Visual Basic. LINQ makes it significantly easier to query and access all types of data. During this session you will get an introduction to LINQ and you will learn about several different flavors of LINQ including LINQ to Objects and LINQ to XML.

4.10pm Service Oriented Development - TBA

Connected Application Foundations using WCF, WF, and Windows CardSpace

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and Windows CardSpace are powerful technologies for services, workflows, and identity management, respectively. This talk introduces developers to all three technologies, describes how they work, and how to write applications that take advantage of their features. Topics covered include: SOA basics, WCF architecture, WCF bindings, hosting WCF services, WCF behaviors, WF architecture, WF activities, WF hosting, WCF and WF integration, CardSpace basics, and integrating CardSpace into web applications.

5.00pm Close

Look forward to seeing you at Excom Tomorrow

PG

Peter Griffith MACS

http://pgriffith.wordpress.com

PH: 0408 832 891  08 8365 4993

Saturday 29^th March 2008 at Excom, 191 Pulteney St., Adelaide  $22 (includes lunch). 

ADNUG Happens {VS2008} is the opportunity for you to get an in-depth understanding of Visual Studio 2008. In just one day, you’ll see live demonstrations of the tools you need to deliver the next generation of secure, flexible applications. Register on ACS booking system, use the “Visitor without an ACS Id” option. Pay by credit card or request an invoice if you want to pay at the door. http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=event&area=9005&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10100942788273

Sessions will follow the VS2008 stream similar to the Heroes Happen Launch 2008.

8.30 Register

9.00  Visual Studio 2008 and service oriented development

10.10 morning tea10.30 Visual Studio 2008 and Windows  development11.40 Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.NET development12.50 Lunch1.50 Visual Studio 2008 and Office Development Platform

3.00 Visual Studio 2008 and Application Lifecycle Management -

4.30 close

PG

Peter Griffith MACShttp://pgriffith.wordpress.comPH: 0408 832 891  08 8365 4993

Many of you will have seen reports or ads about a missing schoolboy Daniel Morcombe from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

Daniel has been missing for nearly 4 years this year.

He’s my nephew (refers to author of this email), and my brother Bruce and his wife Denise, have raised over $100,000 to fund an advertising campaign which is currently underway, in an attempt to solve Daniel’s abduction, and hopefully to capture the person or persons involved. http://www.danielmorcombe.com.au/

There has been wonderful coverage of this tragic event, including “Australian Story” on the ABC, and a major article in the current edition of “The Australian Women’s Weekly”, but still the crime is not solved.

The police now think two men were probably involved, together with a “blue car” as per the composite photo below.

Sending out emails may hopefully trigger someone’s memory, or someone’s conscience, and makes the image of Daniel and the “blue car” below available for longer than is available on an ad.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could forward this email on to all your email contacts, friends, relatives and business contacts, in the hope that someone will be able to provide the missing clue that the police are looking for.

If everyone has just five email contacts, who each have five email contacts, who each have five email contacts, who each have five email contacts, that’ll be well over a million people we’ll be reaching.

Thanks a lot - it’s really appreciated.

PS. Don’t forget to ask your email contacts to forward your email on to as many people as they can.

HAVE YOU SEEN DANIEL?

Low-cost robots for the production line and the home