AngularJS has been a library that I never really saw the point of, back end server languages + the excellent front end frameworks such as jQuery and bootstrap have always delivered far more than even my most demanding corporate clients could want or need,  however while booking my ticket to the jQuery conference 2014 I  noticed that one of the workshops being held beforehand was entitled ‘Diving into AngularJS’  I figured that perhaps I just did not appreciate the framework’s better points and I should man up and learn it, also the fact it was being presented by Peter Bacon Darwin a well known member of the AngularJS world and a published author was not going to hurt

Initially I thought I had made a mistake, there were lots of mistakes in the printed version of the exercises and a distinct lack of structure to the course, then I pulled the stick out my arse and started playing proper attention,  the course was never designed to be completed in one day the material is a full course that you can do at your own leisure with all materials located on https://github.com/petebacondarwin/foodme,  Peter was there to guide you over the tricky humps, answer your questions and WTF moments as well as give you the background reasoning to a lot of the baffling areas of angular,

The day was in microcosm an exact replica of the classic AngularJS learning curve –V and Peter’s presence was the reason for that, hopefully this means I wont hit this save curve on a live project

In additional it provided me with a personal epiphany when it comes to javascript, I have never really enjoyed the asynchronous nature of javascript, it never had the same control that I am used to with things like Java multi-threading or better still Scala’s Actors, but peter took me though the whole thing and introduced me to the https://github.com/kriskowal/q library and its AngularJS derivative $q, I had been using javascript promises the same as everyone else (even if we don’t call them that) but this really opened my eyes on the whole subject 🙂

Frankly put I learnt more than my brain can absorb in a day, very very good value

Sigh, I’m a bit late writing this one up (again) but never mind

On a barmy spring evening Mr white and I potted up to a very trendy part of Old Street to attend the 29th London Node User Group

Held in the Shoreditch village hall (which was far posher than I remember village halls being and with no smell of urine)

This was in the background of Old street which used to be a place you would not venture into without a body guard and an axe but is now Londons start up tech hub

There were 3 talks on the night:

Jeremy Ruston A Tale of Two Hosts: rebooting TiddlyWiki for Node.js and the browser

This talk was done by its creator and such talks are always fascinating, his discussion had a lot of moving from old tech to new with serious and precises technical terms (I had to go look up what transclusion means)

The talk was less about node.js and more a product demo, this was fine as I was really impressed with Tiddlywiki the product, very cutting edge with a lot of CSS3 and HTML5, I learnt about a couple of new HTML5 features I was unaware of as well as lessons on large scale state manipulation or lack of it

The product it’s self looks a boon for academics although less so for corporations due to their habit of living on old browsers.

It runs in both the browser as well as node.js and its ability to create multiple entries or wikis at will puts corporate wikis to shame.

Simon McManusHome Automation With Javascript

The home automation talk was an easy going change from its hard core predecessor, but Mr McManusHome was just a tad rushed and garbled (sounds like he has been busy at work)

It was interesting to see the challenges that even an obviously clever person has in trying to glue all the various home automation standards into something you can use for what you want

It was captivated seeing how hard he had to work to get even simple things working, it does however seem that there are companies out there that are fighting the good fight.

In the end I felt dumb but exhilarated and galvanised to learn more

Ismael Celis Streaming downloads proxy service with Node.js

This talk rounded up the night and concentrated on the bootic eCommerce application.

While not as fun as the other presentations, it was pure practical demonstration, strongly focused on node.js and shared a lot of lessons learnt and good tips and tricks, well presented especially considering that English does not seem to be Mr Celis first language

Roundup

The atmosphere between and after the talks was really welcoming and very friendly compared to something like a Java user group (they even do free training nights), I suspect this was because most people were from start-ups rather than the serious corporate landscape, indeed my references to using various technologies inside the corporates was treated with a bit of horror as if I was suggesting selling out to the forces of evil, a strange but refreshing attitude and a good U.G. all round.

I was taught by Mr Ben Poole that a good contractor should leave his desk empty and clean at the end of each day, and watched how Gab Davis seems to be able to work from anywhere at a moments notice so I have been trying for some time to manage both things.

As normal I have not quite got the hang of the simple part, and given the small nature of my studio flat where I do most of my from home working I have tried to pack my whole office into one bag but it does have a few advantages

• I don’t mind working anywhere as I have no ‘homebase’ as such.
• I can always give my all at a clients site as I will never be lacking anything
• I don’t mind doing less than a day at a clients as I can just get on with other stuff

This all works well for me as I enjoy people’s company and do my best work in a busy environment. so I though I might share what I carry in addition to a the real basics: a Laptop (Thinkpad W510), Phone (Nexus 5) and headphones (Sennheiser 550-X)

Core Stuff

• The silent and powerful USB fan from Thermaltake, saved me from misery in many an over hot office.
• In my opinion the best mouse in the world the Logitech M570
• Baby TPLink 150Mbps Wireless N Nano Router , USB powered and perfect for sites where they may not have a desk setup for you, you can just plug this in and you are up and running.
• Bloody huge Thinkpad charger, weighs a sodding ton, but can be used as a ball and chain in those tricky meetings.
• At last a proper retractable and collapsible UK power cable this one by ReTrak
• Western digital Elements Portable HDD inside its Caselogic case a more reliable and essential paring I have yet to see
• Anker portable USB 15000mAh battery + the lovely smaller version provided by Panagenda
• Decent 2Amp USB charger any brand is fine, but this one is from Lenovo
• Torch: present from Matt White (for some late night working) + spare batteries (including ones for my headphones)

Abroad and in the dark

• Eagle Creek bag to store everything from all the pictures in (they also supply the small bag in the next image)
• The awesome GoalZero Luna LED light
• Skross World Adaptor Pro+ which is by far and away the best socket adaptor I have found, both in terms of amperage it can take and the fact it is earthed.
• Lenovo Travel charger + its thousands of cables and adaptors
• Various adaptors: Euro to US, kettle lead to figure of eight and vs versa

Little Bag

• 5 USB cables of various lengths
• 2 USB OTG adaptors so that I can plug things like keyboards and usb sticks into my phone/tablet
• Mini USB hub
• SIM adaptor and tool (in case of phone dieing at a critial time)
• USB Sticks
• Audio adaptor cables for my Sennheiser 550-X bluetooth headphones
• Lindy retractable Ethernet cable, this may look big but its nice and long and most importantly it protects the little clips from being broken which happened to its 2 predecessors
• Spare mouse by Swiftpoint
• Spare headphones

One thing that people tease me about with my setup but frankly I simply could not do without is my Magma laptop Riser, this combined with a USB version of the ThinkPad Keyboard and a couple of mouse pads as arm rests mean I get to have the top third of my laptop’s screen at my sitting eye level which is how its supposed to be.

What do I carry all of this in?

After the destruction of many brands of rucksack including the Wenger backpacks that everybody else swears by, I have finally settled on the Lowepro pro runner 450aw which while rather large means I can carry everything I want and JUUUSSST get it on a plane as carry on (its right on the limit), if I’m travelling on a budget airline I use a Lowepro Fastpack 350 which always fits.

And here is how it looks when I’m all setup ( in this case at a Regus Office near a client at Bank station London )

Of course in addition to this I carry pens, pad, spork, small flask, umbrella and the usual ‘man bag’ stuff, but that was all boring

Another late event review, but what can you do 🙂

So the first CSC event is done and I feel it was a great success particularly for a first event in a new format.

A lot of this due to the organisers effort, the same as with all good conferences, in this case Gabriella Davis, Mike Smith and Matt White (the rest of us can best be called helpers)

I really really enjoyed the day, it was the right mix of tech and none tech, and even with only 2 paths there were times when I wanted to be in both rooms at the same time, I learnt far more than I expected particularly in the life sessions (the “The challenge of home working” workshop was fascinating), it also gave me a wonderful heads up on various technical subjects that I am bit behind on (or even missed totally in the general overload of the Internet), both of these areas were key as with a lot of other conferences its all about the corporation rather than the worker and technical subjects are limited by vendor or product, where as here they are only limited by how useful and interesting they are.

You could see people getting into the far more interactive/discussion format of the event after the first couple of sessions, and this will grow as nearly everybody has something they can teach the rest of the attendees.

The finances of the event were a bit different to normal conferences, but once you understand the underlying reason for the conference they make sense, The Turtles and LDC footed the whole bill :/ with no sponsors or other help, but we were not allowed to do any sales pitches (Matt White even made sure my slide deck template was as low key as possible) and this is because the conference and its future siblings are genuinely not a sales pitch, it is plan that Gab has come up with to try and rejuvenate and expand the IBM Social Community, there were and still are a lot of good people in it but due to a variety of reasons it is getting smaller as people move to other technologies (such is life), personally I think that this is because the existing “yellow bubble” is very inward facing and while what used to be called ‘Groupware’ is now called ‘Social’ used to be limited to only a couple of vendors every bugger is now at it and so the community needs to flow with that.

So to sum up, I felt we achieved a good break through and now need to get the balance of future events right (not too many not to few and of what sort as well as getting the right useful subjects in place) so we can build on the Idea, we have proved to those people who did not come thinking it was a sales pitch that it was not judging by the feedback we have got this is exactly what people want.

viva la Community

Stupidly I did not take any photos, which is extra dumb considering how nice the venue was but here is my short 10 min slide deck (though slide share seems have done something odd with my fonts)

Sorry I’m a bit slow with this review 🙂

So Blug has got an new name, a new venue and lots of new content, but praise be to all it still has Theo Heselmans at the helm and this year was was another brilliant outing

So what made it so good?

• An excellent turn out by IBM, yes they were a strategic partner which means that they should turn out for it but for a while now the community has really felt that IBM have not given a flying toss about them, however their behaviour during these 2 days really dispelled that feeling, major credit goes to the fact that proper high level people came and more to the point they left the lawyers at home, extra special credit goes to Suzanne Livingston who really injected life into IBM’s offerings.
• It did not feel cheap, there was no wastage or pointless things paid for, but it felt professional and confident in what it was delivering.
• Wide range of quality new content (I learnt a shed load)
• Theo has the knack of getting people into the vendor hall all the time without forcing you so the vendors are more relaxed.

All in all and hour for hour it was better than the main IBM Connect conference and anyone who just went to it rather than Connect has not missed out on anything, it is without doubt the premium IBM social conference of the year for Europe.

Highlights:

The Venue was full but never ‘packed’, however it was standing room only at the OGS

Matt white and I did a compact version of our learning connections dev leaving quite a few stunned faces in the audience, but we also got much more audience activity and questions than we got from the audience at IBM Connect which was very gratifying.

Our room was nice and airy but a tad bright for the projector meaning quite a lot of our code snippets were lost on the watchers. ah well

As normal the conference Bag for Engage/Blug had local guides in it, a very nice touch and something other conferences should do (although this is apparently normal for academic conferences and only the commercial ones are just packed with nothing but adverts)

Talking of which here are a dozen of the reprobates venturing out in search of food and Beer

Finally as per normal LDC tried to take a serious team photo to mark the event, and per normal it did not go so well, I name this one “Everybody pointed to the favourite part of the wall” after the Rupert Fawcett Cartoon and thanks to Tim Clark for taking it.