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Upcoming talks

Colin Angus Mackay — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:36:39 GMT

My SQL Injection Attack prevention talk is on the road. I’ve already given the talk in Dundee, Newport and Nuneaton. And in the coming months I’ll be delivering it in Glasgow, London and Newcastle.

If you want to come and learn about securing your database from a developer perspective you can come along.

Glasgow, 4th February at Scot ALT.NET.
London, 17th February at Edge UG.
Newcastle, 21st April at NEBytes.

SQL Injection Attack Talk in Nuneaton

Colin Angus Mackay — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:18:47 GMT

I’ll be speaking to VBUG in Nuneaton on the 12th January 2010 on the subject of SQL Injection Attacks and Tips on How to Prevent Them.

More details on this event can be found on the VBUG website.

Barcamp Blackpool

Colin Angus Mackay — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:53:21 GMT

This just in:

I wanted to let you know of an event we’re involved in on October 17^th in Blackpool. The event is great for professionals in any field, start-ups and freelancers as it will help them network and explore ideas in an open friendly environment.

I love Barcamps, they’re great fun and you get to learn and relax at the same time.

If you’ve never been to Blackpool, take the day out – come up (or down) and enjoy the event! Blackpool is seriously good fun and we guarantee you’ll meet some of the friendliest people in England right here in Lancashire.

Fish and chips, the illuminations, kiss me quick hats, Blackpool Rock, and of course the pleasure beach! It’s like Las Vegas – but without any money, and more chavs ;-)

WHAT IS BARCAMP?

As an “unconference” there are no scheduled speakers or activities. The attendees are the speakers. At the beginning of the day, attendees are invited to take ownership of a session (3 ~30min sessions run at the same time continually through the day) by putting their name and session title in a time and room slot on a whiteboard. Sessions can be anything the attendee wants: a talk, a demo, presentation, a game… absolutely anything and about anything, it doesn’t have to be technical. The Barcamp provides the space and the facilities, the attendees provide the format. Attendees use the whiteboard to decide which talks to attend.

REGISTER FOR FREE

http://bcblackpool.eventbrite.com/

LEARN MORE

http://barcampblackpool.com/

SQL Injection Attack Prevention talk

Colin Angus Mackay — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:41:58 GMT

In light of some recent events, such as the man who was convicted of stealing 130 million credit card details through a SQL Injection attack and hotel websites that vomit up SQL, I’ve decided to revive my SQL Injection Attacks (and how to prevent them) talk.

I’ve already submitted it for consideration for SQL Bits V. But I’m also happy to come along to user groups that want to hear it.

Links from ALT.NET UK Open Spaces Coding Sessions

Colin Angus Mackay — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:26:03 GMT

This is a small follow up to my previous post giving an overview of the ALT.NET Conference, including Coding day and ALTNET Beers. This post is just a set of links and resources from the coding day.

Inversion of Control

Castle Windsor IoC – download
Autofac
Suteki Shop – source (This project was used as a reference of how to use IoC)

“The nice thing about IoC containers is that the framework is almost not there”- @mikehadlow

Web Frameworks

[ASP.NET] MVC Contrib Project
Spark View Engine
ASP.NET on CodePlex
ASP.NET MVC 2.0 Preview 1 overview - Download

"If you don't look at code you wrote six months ago and think 'God! That's awful' then you are not really progressing" - @mikehadlow

40% off Microsoft Press Books at Books24x7

Colin Angus Mackay — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:10:31 GMT

If you are like me, then you spend hundreds of pounds per year on books, yet at the end I still don’t think I have access to all the books I’d like. I can’t go to my local library because they don’t stock the books I’m interested in. So for the past year I’ve been using Books 24x7 which gives me access to many more books than I’d ever be able to afford to buy for myself. I can search the books for the information I’m looking for on the web and if I want to take it off-line I can download a PDF.

At the moment they have an offer where by you can get 40% the subscription fee.

Follow these steps to receive a 40% discount to Books 24x7 E-Reference Library for Microsoft Press Titles, a virtual library that contains over 500 technology books that are published by Microsoft Press.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/books/ereference/default.mspx
Note: You can also watch a demo of E-Reference Library by clicking the "Watch an E-Reference demo" link on the page.

Click the "Subscribe to an E-Reference Library" link at the top of the page.

Click the link to the type of library that you would like to purchase. On the next page, you can review a description of the library.

Click the Add to Cart..

Type the discount code below that corresponds to the library type that you selected, and then click Apply.. The discounted price will be reflected.
Discount Codes:

Desktop Library: EREFDESKB

IT Professional Library: EREFPROB

Developer Library: EREFDEVB

Complete Library: EREFCOMPLETEB

Complete the checkout process to purchase the E-Reference Library at the discounted price.

Scot ALT.NET: An Evening of O/RM

Colin Angus Mackay — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:28:24 GMT

O/RMs help us bridge the gap between the database and the code base we love to write. On the night we will be looking at two O/RMs, NHibernate the most mature O/RM in the Alt.Net space and Microsoft's recently released Enitiy Framework, the young pretender to the O/RM thrown.

ScottLogic, a leading financial software and consultancy company based in Edinburgh, have been kind enough to offer the use of their premises for an evening of O/RM knowlege sharing and dicussion. The event will take place on 2nd of July at 7pm, 17 Gayfield Square Edinburgh EH1 3NX. All are welcome!

The agenda

19:00 – 19:30 Paul Cowan - An Introuction to NHibernate
19:30 – 20:00 Chris Canal - FluentNHibernate in 15 minutes
20:00 - 20:10 Break
20:10 – 20:40 Colin Gemmell - NHibernate vs Entity Framework - which is best?

After the meeting we will retire for a beer and some heated discussion. If you are planning to attend, please let us know by registering at the Scot Alt.Net Edinburgh EventBrite page (http://altdotnetedinburgh.eventbrite.com/).

About the speakers

Paul Cowan has recently started his own business Cutting-Edge Solutions. He is a keen advocate of iterative development, test driven development, continuous integration and modern techniques. Paul is a regular committer to the horn open source project. He recently gave a presentation on horn at the Dsl DevCon at Microsoft in Seattle. You can follow his blog here.

Chris Canal has worked at a Web Developer for the past 7 years. Starting with procedural languages like ASP and PHP, he quickly moved onto the .NET Platform when first released. A great believer is continual–improvement, Chris is constantly looking for new technologies, tools and methodologies that will help in creating robust and maintainable software applications. Having felt the pain of using Microsoft "Demoware", Chris has become an active member of the Scottish Alt.Net Community to share his findings and ideas with like-minded developers.

Colin Gemmel is a Web/Application Developer working in the Medical Faculty of Glasgow University for the past 3 years. An avid follower of agile principles and practices he is always happy to pass on his views of software development to anyone that will listen. Colin is also a regular participant of the Scottish Alt.Net Community

http://scotalt.net/blog/2009/06/11/an-evening-of-orm/
http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/contact_info
http://altdotnetedinburgh.eventbrite.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/scotaltnet

Upcoming events

Colin Angus Mackay — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:36:22 GMT

In June Scottish Developers have two evening events with Kathleen Dollard. Kathleen is the Chief Technologist for AppVenture (www.appventure.com) where she leads the application generation efforts. She has been a Microsoft MVP for 11 years and is a member of the INETA Speaker’s Bureau. Kathleen has worked extensively with application code generation and is the author of Code Generation in Microsoft .NET (from Apress). She has published numerous articles on a range of .NET technologies and writes the monthly column “Ask Kathleen” in Visual Studio Magazine (www.visualstudiomagazine.com). Kathleen is also active in the Northern Colorado .NET SIG, Denver Visual Studio User Group, Northern Colorado Architect’s Group, and IASA Denver.

Rethinking Object Orientation

Monday 22nd June, 2009 at the offices of Baillie Gifford & Co.

Decades after object orientation design altered programming, it’s still evolving, and we’re still learning to use it better. Many changes in the tools we use and how we write applications affect the approach we take to OOD. Some of these changes relate to architecture where new approaches like SOA and the layering revolution behind Silverlight alter the place of traditional OOD within the bigger picture of architecture. Other changes are language improvements that alter the very meaning of the phrase “object” from a design point of view. While touching on architecture, this talk focuses primarily on the effect of language features like generics, extension methods, delegates/lambda expressions, partial classes/methods, reflection, anonymous types, and declarative programming. I’ll the growing role of interfaces as a contractual base in block based development and show a roll your own example of dependency injection so you understand this basic technique more often accessed through a tool. You’ll come away ready to leverage new features while retaining solid overall design.

Sign up for Rethinking Object Orientation!

Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF

Tuesday 23rd June, 2009 at Glasgow Caledonian University

Decoupling portions of your application has tremendous payback during both development and maintenance. Your application becomes more testable and flexible and can more easily evolve to meet changing demands. Decoupling your application also allows a new level of partnership with external groups because you can safely incorporate their code in your application without recompiling or releasing source code. Microsoft has exposed different provider models in many areas of the framework and libraries, and this year has moved toward consolidating its efforts at decoupling with the Managed Extensibility Framework, or MEF. This tool differs from an IoC container because its focused directly at simplifying the extension of applications and focuses at extensibility, discover, and composition. The underlying engine can support Microsoft efforts like Visual Studio and your own applications. MEF comes up short when you encounter isolation and versioning issues, such as wanting that external code to run in its own AppDomain. The Managed Add-In Framework, or MAF, focuses on these problems and the significant complexity they bring with System.AddIn namespace of .NET 3.5. You’ll learn more about architecting applications in pieces and the sweet spot of using MEF and MEF together. You’ll leave ready to evaluate the role of MEF and MAF in your applications.

Sign up for Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF!

Developer Day Scotland 2009

Colin Angus Mackay — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:24:10 GMT

There is less than 2 weeks until Developer Day Scotland 2009. There are still a few places left so if you haven’t got one, now is your chance. If you’re still not sure then read on.

Developer Developer Developer events are founded on a number of principles which I think makes it unique and well worth a single day of your time once a year.

DDD events are free. It doesn’t cost you anything to attend. Think of any large conference that you might like to go along to. They costs hundreds of pounds, if not more. Sure, we might not have all the bells and whistles of a big fancy conference, but at the end of the day what do you want out of an event like that? Do you want the glitz and schmaltz or do you want to learn something new?

Speakers from the community. We invite people that have something to say, a story to tell, or an experience to learn from. This year we had 84 session submissions from all sorts of folks and on all sorts of subjects. The majority of these people are real day-to-day software developers or DBAs that actually work for a living.

DDD events are democratic. All the sessions are voted in by the community, so we only put on what people have asked to see. This year the 84 sessions were whittled down to 20. We have 5 database sessions all lined up so if you are a DBA or database developer you won’t miss anything. We also have a route through the agenda for Web Developers. We also have sessions on languages (dynamic and functional languages as well as what’s coming soon in C#), processes and tools (such as scrum, virtualisation, TDD and refactoring) and architecture & patterns (such as MVC, MVVM and AOP)

No Marketing BS. The core philosophy for the sessions are that they contain useful information. Stuff that you can either take back and start using the next day or (if not yet available) to start planning how to move to that technology.

To paraphrase the Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, Developer Day Scotland is of the developer community, by the developer community and for the developer community.

Upcoming events

Colin Angus Mackay — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:56:05 GMT

There are a lot of upcoming events that you may be interested in. I’ve been putting posts on the Scottish Developers site as I get told about them and there have been a fair few this week. So, here’s a quick round up in chronological order:

2nd May: Developer Day Scotland 2009 takes place at the Continuing Professional Development Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University.
6th May: UX Book Club meets in Glasgow to discuss Designing for the Social Web.
7th May: Scottish ALT.NET group meet in Glasgow.
12th May: An Insight into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Magic at Glasgow Caledonian University.
14th May: Girl Geek Scotland has its launch event with a Girl Geek Dinner in Edinburgh.