David Gardiner - LobsterPot

Magic Tricks

2011-07-26T20:17:00.001+09:30

There's been a few changes for me over the last couple of days...

On Saturday the basketball team I coach won their first game ever! These are young kids, most of whom are playing in their first season. They've been improving every week, but up until now we've found that we've struggled against the opposition. More often than not, the 'mercy rule' comes into play. When we are 10 points behind, the other team has to run back to their key, so at least we can dribble the ball down the court before they steal it and score again 😢

But not yesterday! With the help of a fill-in player everything fell into place. Our shots were dropping, passes were being caught and before I knew it I had to do something I'd never expected I'd need to do – I called a timeout to tell my players that *we* were 10 points in front and that we now needed to run back to let the other team have a go.

It was a great feeling and so satisfying to see the surprised but happy faces of the kids.

The other big change for me was that Friday was my last day at LobsterPot Solutions. It's been great to watch LobsterPot grow from when I became Rob's first full-time employee to where it is now – as Adelaide (and now Melbourne's) preeminent SQL Server and Business Intelligence consultancy.

So what's next? I've decided to accept an offer to join MatrixGroup, and I'm looking forward to the new challenges this will present.

When I told my kids, they responded with "You're going to work for the Magic Tricks Group?" 😀 Which allows me to indulge in my love of the Muppets by closing with a quote from The Amazing Mumford..

"A la peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!"

(which always seemed a very odd thing to have on your sandwiches until I learned that jelly was American for jam.. but then to me that's still an odd combination to have on a sandwich!)

Microsoft SQL Server code-named 'Denali' - CTP1

2010-11-09T21:48:00.001+10:30

Wednesday morning I'll be giving a quick summary of all the new announcements from the 2010 PASS Summit in Seattle (courtesy of LobsterPot's on-the-spot reporters Rob and Roger) to the Adelaide leg of the PDC10 Roadshow.

In preparation for that, I did a quick search for any Denali titbits, and discovered the CTP is now publicly available. I'm downloading as we speak/type. Annoyingly, the Release Notes link is broken at the moment. Hopefully that gets fixed soon.

Download links

My top predictions for new features (seeing as I haven't got it installed yet to find out)

Failover cluster support for Windows Phone 7
Query optimiser support for X-Box 360 Kinect

Ha.. though actually I can see some possible use of Kinect with reporting and data mining in the future.. That would be cool.

Maybe they'd have to call that "Minority Report-ing Services" 😀

Take your partner by the hand..

2010-11-01T17:17:00.001+10:30

If LobsterPot Solutions had a theme song, one pretty obvious choice would be Rock Lobster by The B52s.

It looks like we now have another option!

First Microsoft Partner with Gold Competency in Australia - Well done Rob, Ben, Roger, Ashley (and me!).

Also a big welcome to Ashley, our most recent Lobster to jump in the pot 😀

Rockin' the Lobster

2010-09-02T22:16:00.001+09:30

I thought it was high time I wrote about how much I'm enjoying being part of LobsterPot Solutions. Since joining Rob and Ben about 6 months ago, I've had the opportunity to work with a range of clients on an interesting selection of problems utilising technologies such as:

SQL Server
SQL Analysis Services
SQL Data Mining
SQL Server Integration Services
SQL Reporting Services
Pivot Viewer
ASP.NET MVC
JQuery
WPF
Silverlight
PowerShell
.NET 4.0

Not bad!

I think it's fair to say SQL Server and Business Intelligence (BI) are LobsterPot's bread and butter (or should that be seafood bisque?!), but I also really appreciate the variety of tasks I've worked on. To complete the 3 course meal (following the food theme!), the company continues to hire talented staff. Roger (Mr SharePoint) Noble joined us in May and I'm sure he won't be the last as demand for BI expertise increases.

Another thing that I like is LobsterPot's commitment to staff professional development – from in-house training and conference attendance to user group participation.

Now I'm looking forward to seeing what the next 6 months bring!

Our Pivot in TechEd 2010 Keynote (TechEd Tuesday)

2010-08-25T12:07:00.001+09:30

Getting there

Tuesday morning started with a mad scramble to get the kids ready for school and then saying a quick farewell before rushing off to the airport (don't worry, we didn't leave them to fend for themselves!)

An uneventful flight to Gold Coast airport, and then a friendly taxi driver took us to our hotel room. We're staying in an apartment in the Phoenician Resort in Broadbeach, a 5 minute walk from the convention centre. The apartments are managed by Broadbeach Holiday Rentals – they're in the same complex as the Mantra but are separate. (I booked through World Tourism Travel.)

Narelle is very pleased with the room, and there's lots of space for her to do her scrapbooking (one of her main priorities on her well-deserved holiday while I'm conferencing!)

Getting started

Registration was straightforward, though I discovered that as a TLG (Technical Learning Guide), I didn't get a delegate bag (or so I thought).

Next was an orientation meeting for TLGs, where I got my TLG shirts, and discovered that yes we will get bags later in the week. Pity it will be too small to fit my laptop in.

Straight after that it was time for the opening keynote. In a first for TechEd Australia, the keynote was held on the Tuesday afternoon (apparently to leave more time for sessions on Wednesday).

Michael Kordahi did a nice job as "MC". If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was listening to the Frankly Speaking podcast 😀

August de los Reyes' keynote talk on natural user interface (and what might be next) was quite interesting, and I really enjoyed the fast-paced way he used PowerPoint to enhance his presentation.

But without doubt, the highlight for me was seeing our Pivot being demonstrated by Michael K near the end.

I was so proud to see our work being showcased to the whole of TechEd, that I may have been the person who "yeehaa'd" 😀

The evening finished with dinner in the expo area. Once again I'm reminded how good a job the catering guys do here.

Laptop fixed, passed 70-448, SQL 2008 R2 and a new Lobster in the pot

2010-05-25T21:09:00.001+09:30

Some good things have happened in the last 24 hours:

The Dell technician fixed my laptop.
LobsterPot Solutions welcomed its newest member – Roger Noble! It will be great to work with Roger again. Since leaving UniSA he's been specialising in SharePoint development, which will be a great asset for LobsterPot's Business Intelligence expertise.
I attended the Adelaide SQL Server 2008 R2 launch event presented by Microsoft Australia's Alan Eldridge. A nice overview of new features in R2.
Next Buck Woody gave a humorous and interesting talk on two new features in SQL 2008 R2 at the SQL User Group meeting:
Utility Control Point – managing and monitor multiple instances of SQL Server 2008 R2
Data-tier Applications (DAC) – deploying SQL applications. DAC is only for R2 and is distinct from the DataDude deployment technology that also shipped as part of VS2010, but the word on the street is to expect these two to converge in the future.
Finally to finish off the day, I passed exam 70-448 - TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance. Yeehaa!

Working with the cloud

2010-05-21T18:08:00.001+09:30

So as mentioned yesterday, my laptop is sitting next to me, looking very shiny and pretty, but completely silent. I spoke to Dell support this morning and after managing to exhaust the call centre guy's script of variations on "Have you tried turning it off and on again?", he eventually logged a case for me, and I'm now waiting for a phone call from (presumably the local) support engineer.

One thing I'm not too worried about is the data sitting on the laptop. I know it's there – just a matter of getting a new BIOS (and/or possibly motherboard) and it will be fine. I also know I have a full backup on my Windows Home Server, which is reassuring.

One of the first things I did when I joined LobsterPot was to create a Live Mesh folder to store business-related documents. So that means I've still got access to those documents via the web or my other machine at home – handy as after experimenting with various online solutions, I ended up reverting to using an Excel spreadsheet to track my work hours too!

I've also recently been making use of some of the training content at Microsoft Learning. I download the content to the laptop and have been working my way through it on the bus to and from work (must be riveting for the lucky people who get to sit next to me!). There is an offline reader just for this purpose, though it does have its annoyances (eg. no keyboard shortcuts, doesn't allow text to be enlarged) but one nice thing is that it synchronises your progress. So I can still log into the Microsoft E-Learning site and am able to pick up where I left off, using the "online" mode instead.

Then there's email, IM etc, which all work fine from where ever you are. So, while having a dead laptop is a huge pain, it isn't the end of the world.

Good news.. I just had a call from Dell and they're coming out on Monday. Hope they can fix it quickly.

Head of the class?

2010-04-21T00:00:00.001+09:30

Last week I got to do something quite different – I taught the course 2310C: Developing Web Applications Using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to a group of software developers. I became a Microsoft Certified Trainer at the start of March, so I'm now able to teach a range of Microsoft courses. LobsterPot now has SQL, BI and .NET training comprehensively covered (contact us if you want to make a booking!)

I really enjoyed being up front teaching – an interesting contrast from just sitting at a desk in front of a screen. One of the first things I learned was how useful Win+P is for switching my laptop/data projector from 'duplicate' to 'extend' display modes. The PowerPoint slides were in 'extend' mode with the presenter view on my laptop screen, but for code demos I would switch back to 'duplicate' so I'd be seeing the same thing as the students.

The other useful thing was having a Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. This was a gift for taking part in the Demos Happen Here competition (along with a bright orange t-shirt). I'd worn the t-shirt a few times but the mouse had been sitting in a drawer feeling neglected. Last week it got a good workout though - really handy to swap between 'mouse' and 'presentation' mode to flick through the PowerPoint slides.

The course 2310C is a fast trip through various features of Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5, and is not a bad introduction to most of the things you'll need to get started doing web development. I'm pleased to observe 2310D looks like it will be available next month – with updated lessons on Silverlight 3, ASP.NET MVC and ADO.NET WCF Data Services.

This week I'm booked in to do three .NET 4.0 exams (they're beta/pre-release which means there's no charge but also means you need to wait a few weeks to see if you pass or not). Passing those should mean I'll be able to teach courses on Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4. I'm also planning to do some SQL 2008 Business Intelligence exams (70-448 and 70-452). These will not only be a good way for me to improve my SQL BI knowledge, but should be useful in LobsterPot getting the new 'Advanced Competency in Business Intelligence' (though if you've met Rob, you'll know he's a one-man walking advanced competency in BI already :-)

My new laptop – A Dell Studio XPS 1645

2010-04-09T12:41:00.001+09:30

One tool that I was lacking in my new role as a Senior Consultant for LobsterPot Solutions was a laptop computer. Back in my UniSA days, if you needed a laptop for a presentation or a conference you just borrowed one, so it was never a problem. Post-UniSA I borrowed my Mum's nice Toshiba, or more recently the small (but capable) HP Mini Netbook that I got from Tech-Ed last year.

Rob and I did a fair bit of research, compared brands and options (including the Sony Z-series which I see Nigel chose), and settled on the Dell Studio XPS 16 model. Being a "laptop-newbie" I particularly valued Rob's good experience with his previous Dell laptop.

The XPS 16 comes with:

Intel® Core™ i7-820QM Processor (1.73GHz, 4 Cores/8 Threads, turbo up to 3.06GHz, 8MB Cache)
8GB RAM
640GB HDD (will replace with SSD soon)
15.6" Screen
ATI Mobility RADEON HD 4670 – 1GB
Backlit keyboard

The CPU and RAM are similar to the Hyper-V server I built – though happily, while this CPU is also a Core i7, unlike it’s desktop cousin it doesn’t require a great whopping heatsink/cooler stuck on top (which could make shutting the lid a bit tricky!)

Some nice things I’ve discovered so far:

It looks very nice, though the glossy surface does show up fingermarks very quickly.
You can do "two-finger zooming" on the touch pad – great for Google/Bing maps.
Windows 7 x64 runs very nicely.
Rob noticed you can disable battery charging when on AC power.
Doesn't seem to get too hot (though the AC transformer does)

After having a quick play I was pleasantly surprised to find that Dell had shipped it with the latest BIOS firmware - that is refreshing. Nevertheless, after a precautionary backup to my Windows Home Server, I did a clean install of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and am proceeding to load up all the various "mandatory" applications (Office, SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc).

I'm also thinking I might leverage Windows 7's "boot to VHD" feature to have separate Win7 instances where I can try out pre-release/beta software without "polluting" my primary OS.

We chose the red ones, because a) they go faster (obviously!) and b) it kind of matches the red of the LobsterPot logo :-)

Rob Farley on Talking Shop Down Under

2010-03-31T13:17:00.001+10:30

LobsterPot Solutions' very own Rob Farley is this week's guest on the Talking Shop Down Under podcast!

Since my last post about podcasts I'm listening to, I've now added the following to my collection:

Talking Shop Down Under – Interviews with Australian developers
The Home Server Show – Latest on Windows Home Server
FranklySpeaking – Microsoft Australia's Andrew Coates and Michael Kordahi
Elegant Code – Quiet since November 2009. One contributor now appears to be involved in PluralCast
Daily Audio Bible – Brian Hardin reads through the entire Bible in one calendar year.