Community developer blogs

Guy Smith Ferrier

Recent Posts

• Alt.NET Bristol Beers #1

  Posted: 30 Jun 2009 at 20:35 by guysmithferrier

  From the guys who brought you the Alternative Track at DDD South West comes the very first Alt.NET Bristol Beers. There's full information here but the important bits are that it is on Tuesday 21st July 2009 upstairs at the Portcullis, Clifton, Bristol BS8 4LE. The evening starts at 6:00pm and consists of arguing healthy debate on a subject chosen by the group. There is also drinking and eating. We've been waiting for this so come along and be part of a great geek social/technical event.

• Internationalizing Silverlight Slides And Source Code

  Posted: 20 Jun 2009 at 09:51 by guysmithferrier

  Thanks to everyone who came to the Internationalizing Silverlight (aka How To Achieve World-Ready Domination In Silverlight) talk at NxtGen Southampton on Thursday. The slides are at and the source code for the completed demos are at . Note that the font I was using is not included in the download as the licence prevents redistribution but you can substitute an alternative font.

• DDD South West On The Day

  Posted: 03 Jun 2009 at 21:18 by guysmithferrier

  The first DDD event to be held in the South West of England was held on Saturday 23rd May 2009 just a couple of weeks ago. The dust has settled now and I thought I'd write a bit about how it went. DDD South West was held at Queens College in Taunton and was attended by 158 people. There are a bunch of statistics on the DDD South West Statistics page including a map of where everyone came from (predominantly the South West of England!

• Localizing ASP.NET MVC

  Posted: 15 May 2009 at 19:44 by guysmithferrier

  I've noticed that there has been a bit of confusion regarding localization in ASP.NET MVC so I thought I'd write up the solution to try to clear things up. ASP.NET has quite a reasonable localization model as by default it uses the ResourceManager and .resx files all wrapped up fairly neatly using the Generate Local Resources menu option in Visual Studio. Whereas there are some gaps the model is reasonably sound.

• DDD South West Agenda Is Up Now

  Posted: 07 May 2009 at 19:14 by guysmithferrier

  The agenda for DDD South West has been published. There are lots of great sessions covering subjects such as Silverlight 3, Azure, jQuery, MVC, Scrum, XNA, MEF and C# 4 as well as sessions in the Alternative Track including the Park Bench Discussion and the Balloon Debate that really show the power of the community. If you haven't registered yet it's free and there's still time (but it's only a couple of weeks away now ? Saturday 23rd May 2009).

• UK Community Leaders Take Up The Microsoft UK Challenge

  Posted: 07 May 2009 at 18:56 by guysmithferrier

  Brave UK Community Leaders, Tim Leung, Dave McMahon, Gavin Osborn and Steve Smith have been foolish enough to take up the Microsoft UK Challenge this June for 3.5 days in Wales doing running, cycling, kayaking, problem solving and using strategy skills (I think Dave's going to sit that last part out). To learn more read what Gavin has to say here.

• Machine Translation Using The Microsoft Translator

  Posted: 18 Apr 2009 at 11:56 by guysmithferrier

  When Live was first released it's true to say that I was disappointed because all other competitive search engines had online translation tools and these were missing from Live. I think it is fair to say that Microsoft has delivered now. The basic online translator, Microsoft Translator, has been available for some time now but at MIX 09 Microsoft announced a widget and various APIs and tools that build on the translation engine and open up machine translation to a much broader range of applicat

• Sod This Podcast

  Posted: 16 Apr 2009 at 19:21 by guysmithferrier

  There's a new .NET podcast on the scene. It's called Sod This and it is the quintessential "two blokes and a microphone" podcast straight from Gary's Garage (actually it might have been Oliver's Garage but there's no alliteration in that). Gary Short and Oliver Sturm, the nomadic DevExpress Scottish and German tech evangelists, provide a series of podcasts involving swearing, interviews, abuse, straight talking, Silverlight bashing and a bit more swearing.

• DDD South West Session Voting Is Open

  Posted: 15 Apr 2009 at 19:34 by guysmithferrier

  Voting for your favourite DDD South West sessions is now open (go here). Voting for your favourites helps us to allocate the largest rooms to the sessions with the highest demand and therefore we can avoid over subscribed sessions. Here's a reminder of the sessions:- Everything you Wanted to Know About Refactoring but Were Afraid to Ask (Gary Short) Creating extendable applications using MEF (Ben Hall) Oslo and the future Microsoft Modelling platform (Robert Hogg) Embracing a new world - dyn

• Kathleen Dollard To Visit The UK And Ireland

  Posted: 15 Apr 2009 at 19:10 by guysmithferrier

  MVP, author and international speaker Kathleen Dollard is making a rare visit to the UK and Ireland in June and will be visiting six user groups:- Cambridge: The Next Generation User Group (Thursday 18th June 2009) Edinburgh: Scottish Developers (Monday 22nd June 2009) Glasgow: Scottish Developers (Tuesday 23rd June 2009) Dublin: Irish User Group (Wednesday 24th June 2009) Galway: Irish User Group (Thursday 25th June 2009) Bristol: The .NET Developer Network (Monday 29th June 2009) The subje

• NxtGen Claims Manchester Scalp

  Posted: 01 Apr 2009 at 19:16 by guysmithferrier

  Rupert Murdoch doesn't often get ruffled but recent events in Manchester have the tycoon calling for his closest aides. A few months ago I revealed that a secret leaked NxtGen document showed plans for their Risk-like domination of the UK and all has come true. NxtGen are opening another outpost and this time its in Manchester on Wednesday 20th May 2009 (no doubt they were anxious to get the first event in before DDD South West on Saturday 23rd May 2009) where Andy Wilkinson and Steve Robbins ar

• NxtGen: How To Achieve World(-Ready) Domination In Silverlight

  Posted: 01 Apr 2009 at 17:52 by guysmithferrier

  In a long overdue first return to the Southampton chapter of The Next Generation User Group I will be giving the following presentation on internationalizing Silverlight on Thursday 18th June 2009:- How To Achieve World(-Ready) Domination In Silverlight So you've written your Silverlight application and you want it to work in another language ? Then this session is for you. World-Readiness is all of the work that a developer needs to do to globalize an application and make it localizable

• Silverlight's System.Globalization Namespace

  Posted: 31 Mar 2009 at 20:22 by guysmithferrier

  One of the ever-present questions in the Silverlight world is "what's missing ?". In other words what does the .NET Framework or WPF have that Silverlight doesn't ? In terms of globalization the obvious place to start is the System.Globalization namespace and to this end I have written a simple Silverlight Globalization Class Comparison document that lists all of the classes, methods and properties in the .NET Framework's System.Globalization namespace and indicated whether the

• DevWeek 2009 Slides And Source Code

  Posted: 23 Mar 2009 at 12:32 by guysmithferrier

  You can find the slides and source code for my DevWeek 2009 presentations this week here:- StyleCop (or How To Start A Fight) (Slides) Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005 (Slides) Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005 (Source Code) Visual Studio 2008 Tips And Tricks (Slides) Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight Applications (Slides)

• DevWeek 2009 Slides And Source Code

  Posted: 23 Mar 2009 at 10:32 by guysmithferrier

  You can find the slides and source code for my DevWeek 2009 presentations this week here:- StyleCop (or How To Start A Fight) (Slides) Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005 (Slides) Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005 (Source Code) Visual Studio 2008 Tips And Tricks (Slides) Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight Applications (Slides)

• DDD Scotland Registration Is Open!

  Posted: 05 Mar 2009 at 15:38 by guysmithferrier

  'Tis the free conference season and DDD Scotland has opened its registration so if you live anywhere near Scotland (or you don't mind travelling for a free event) get over to http://www.developerdayscotland.com and get registering. DDD Scotland is being held on Saturday 2nd May 2009 and I will be presenting:- What's New In C# 4 ? At PDC 2008 Microsoft unveiled C# 4 and all of the new features within. So now we start the roller-coaster of catch up all over again as we desperately struggle

• DDD Scotland Registration Is Open!

  Posted: 05 Mar 2009 at 13:38 by guysmithferrier

  'Tis the free conference season and DDD Scotland has opened its registration so if you live anywhere near Scotland (or you don't mind travelling for a free event) get over to http://www.developerdayscotland.com and get registering. DDD Scotland is being held on Saturday 2nd May 2009 and I will be presenting:- What's New In C# 4 ? At PDC 2008 Microsoft unveiled C# 4 and all of the new features within. So now we start the roller-coaster of catch up all over again as we desperately struggle

• DDD South West Registration Is Open!

  Posted: 03 Mar 2009 at 10:59 by guysmithferrier

  Go! Quickly! Stop reading this and register now! Registration for DDD South West is now open. Be able to tell your grandchildren that you were there at the very beginning. Remember, there can be only one first time. DDD South West is a free one day technical event on Saturday 23rd May 2009 at Queens College, Taunton with 13 of the countries' best speakers providing 19 technical presentations.

• DDD South West Registration Is Open!

  Posted: 03 Mar 2009 at 08:59 by guysmithferrier

  Go! Quickly! Stop reading this and register now! Registration for DDD South West is now open. Be able to tell your grandchildren that you were there at the very beginning. Remember, there can be only one first time. DDD South West is a free one day technical event on Saturday 23rd May 2009 at Queens College, Taunton with 13 of the countries' best speakers providing 19 technical presentations.

• DDD South West Registration Opens Tomorrow

  Posted: 02 Mar 2009 at 15:21 by guysmithferrier

  Registration for DDD South West opens tomorrow (Tuesday 3rd March 2009) at 10:00am. To register for the event you must first register on the site and if you want to save time tomorrow you can do that part right now. DDD South West will be held on Saturday 23rd May 2009 at Queens College, Taunton.