Category: teched
On Location
The above is the sunset-view from my room. To the left is the hinterland, and to the right is the beach itself.
On Location, at the Gold Coast preparing for a busy, educational week at Microsoft TechEd. Being my first TechEd, anything could and probably will happen. I do know I will leave more educated than I arrive.
Whilst I watched the SBS TV series on the making of the Crowded House album, Woodface, there were much revels going on around me. It seemed to be a beer bash-come-stag party. So I turned up the TV with Neil Finn hopefully calming the din. Neil gets the impact of his music. The mercurial Finn brothers.
Up at 9am this morning thanks to a fire alarm. I could smell the smoke, but thought it was someone smoking on a non-smoking floor. By the time I got my important items (pair of pants on, room key, wallet, camera, phone – in that order) ready to stroll out — the firemen were looking around for the smoking culprit. No one seemed ultra alarmed, so stayed put.
Today, it’s about planning. To quote Uncle Mike: “Piss Poor Planning Precedes Poor Performance”. Checking the camera equipment comes first.
Having installed the new Adobe Production Premium Suite, I tried out OnLocation. And this piece of technology Adobe purchased rocks. It essentially turns your Firewire/Laptop into a hard disk recorder and monitoring station. No more capturing slowly in post-production. Straight into Premiere, encode and you’re outta there.
Tomorrow it starts: danah boyd in Brisbane.
LOLCODE: Part 4, A New Beginning
Time to LOLCODE. Watching the forums, it’s fun watching the definition of a programming language where the grammar is obvious.
And I’ve also thought of a great, quotable reason to use LOLCode:
“Nick Hodge, Enthusiast Evangelist for Microsoft, recommends the investigation of LOLCODE as Enterprise-worthy Programming Language if your development project has a strong requirement to entertain future system maintenance engineers, and your present development team gets LOLCATS humor.” You can quote me on that.
What was not immediately obvious, another effort is to make your lines of LOLCode funny. Careful choice of variable names should result in LULZ.
There were a few occasions where I had a peek at the C# source code of the LOLCode compiler. It will be interesting to see how much of the engine that makes the compiler is taken over by the new DLR, and how hard/easy it is to create a domain specific language. The DLR contains mainy of the infrastructure pieces, such as creation of abstract syntax trees, etc.
Note that these examples compiled with LOLCODE.Net Build 35, and are based on the 1.2 specification.
First program: Hello World
HAI
VISIBLE “hello world”
KTHXBYE
What’s going on here? HAI is the indication of the beginning of the lolcode app; KTHXBYE is the end.
VISIBLE “hello world” prints out, well, hello world.
Second program: Getting Input
HAI
I HAS A FLUFFYZ
VISIBLE “ur namez is?”
GIMMEH LINE FLUFFYZ
VISIBLE “hello “!
VISIBLE FLUFFYZ
KTHXBYE
So, what’s going on this time?
I HAS A FLUFFYZ– declares a variable called FLUFFYZ
GIMMEH LINE FLUFFYZ– gets some input, in this case from the keyboard
The exclamation mark at the end of the VISIBLE “hello “! keeps the printout on the same line
VISIBLE FLUFFYZ prints out the content of the variable FLUFFYZ. Simple
Third program: Looping, Conditionals
HAI
I HAS A LIFE ITZ 1
I HAS A OSCARZ ITZ 10
IM IN YR HEADSPIN UPPIN YR LIFE TIL BOTH SAEM LIFE AN OSCARZ
VISIBLE LIFE
IM OUTTA YR HEADSPIN
KTHXBYE
This code example should work; it compiles in lolc but neatly stops when running in the CLR. The new parts are the assignment of a value to a variable (I HAS A LIFE ITZ 1)
Secondly, the line “I am in your loop increasing your LIFE until both-the same life and OSCARZ” is a simple loop with increment and a test.
The “IM IN YR HEADSPIN” is an example/attempt at humor. HEADSPIN is the name of the loop. Crafting these names to something funny will provide a future code maintenance geek some LULZ in the future.
Blogger’s Lounge at TechEd
Next week (actually, from Caturday for me) is TechEd.
This year, Zaakera is over from Microsoft US to capture the spirit of TechEd in a video-bottle for release on Virtual TechEd.
Also, we have a “Blogger’s Lounge”. WTF? Oh, and there’s a Blogger’s lunch
This is an area on the Exhibition Floor where I will be with my laptop, talking to people. All are welcome, bloggers or not. Chat, photos, linking up. We’re keeping it a little less structured so anything could happen.
Oh, and I’ll be storing your “The Geek Stories” for publishing http://on10.net/
Want to be famous? Go large at Virtual TechEd 2007
Virtual TechEd will be at TechEd Australia. This is a major coup as Microsoft continues to evolve the TechEd format.
As you can see from the existing content on Virtual TechEd, if you have something to say to the world: now is the time to stand up and be interviewed!
Comment here/send me an email and we’ll schedule you in.
Also, I’ll be at the Blogger’s lounge with video camera, laptop and a wireless connection. Come and have a chat!
LOLCODE at TechEd 2007, Australia [Update 23rd July 2007]
TechEd, from a newcomer’s perspective, needs more cowbell. http://twitter.com/atl introduced us all to the world’s newest programming language in May.
Based on a democratic yet technologically flawed vote on http://nickhodge.com/ popular opinion is that LOLCODE should be presented.
Therefore, Chuck has let me subvert the hierarchy and made a slot for me to present the following:
Thursday 9th August
12:45pm-1:15pm NIck Hodge: LOLCODE. CAN HAS NEW .NET LANGUAGE. LOLCODE IZ IN UR TECHED. C U THERE. KTHXBAI
Just the thing to start the day, and shake off any residual hangover.
Not sure what I’ll get to cover in a mere 30 minutes. Maybe LOLCODE will get into the keynote for 2008?
Buy the t-shirt at http://store.lolcode.com/
Technorati Tags: lolcode
I CAN HAS LOLCODE.COM T-SHIRT
As the LOLCATS meme goes TechEd; here one of my submissions:
Now, in the interest of learning new programming languages: I purchased a LOLCODE.com T-shirt. What was interesting was the non-geeks looking at me strangely. People already think I am “out there”, and the LOLCODE t-shirt just proves it.
Before you start dis’in my new language of choice, there is a Visual Studio 2005 with syntax highlighting and Intellisense and a .Net version on the way.
So, my question to the developer community: do we need a special BOF LOLCODE session at TechEd 2007?