In Appendix B of .NET Internationalization I provide a number of information resources for the internationalization world. The world is always changing and I keep a list of updates here. Normally I just add new items to this list without any mention but I came across one site recently that I felt deserved a mention: http://www.kwintessential.co.uk. Kwintessential provide language and cultural services so naturally the site is driving towards using their services. That said there are still a number of free resources on the site that are worth a look:-

Country Profiles:-
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/country-profiles.html

Free online translator:-
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/translation/free/online-language-translation.php

Online Test: How Culturally Aware Are you ?
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/culture-tests.html

The Country Profiles are interesting as they delve into etiquette and local customs. The Online Test tests your cultural knowledge and is equally fascinating - I’m not aware of any other such free test available online.

Virtual PC 2007 was released on 20th February 2007 as a free download: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx.

The main feature is that it supports Windows Vista as both a host O/S and a guest O/S. It also supports PXE booting, 64bit Windows as a host and multi monitor systems where the VM can be full screen on one monitor.

Wikipedia Explorer is a free Wikipedia search tool. By itself that’s not very interesting. However, I mention it for 3 reasons. Firstly it has an innovative user interface. Select the 3DExplorer tab, enter your search criteria into the search box and click on the Search button to search Wikipedia. Your results are not displayed in the standard dull, dull, dull list but rather in an animated collection of bobbing results.

Now grab hold of any part of the results with the mouse, drag and the list rotates. I’m not convinced that this is necessarily the best UI experience but it is certainly very interesting and innovative.

The other two points of interest in this application are that it is a WPF app and it is deployed using ClickOnce. An excellent demonstration of both technologies. Good job.

I don’t know which to tell you first: the fact that the Next Generation User Group are holding their own one day event or that Rafal Lukawiecki will be speaking at it. I’ve mentioned Rafal before on this blog and said that he is a fantastic speaker which is born out by him consistently being rated the top speaker at TechEd. I strongly advise you to take the opportunity to see him obviously mainly because his sessions are stacked with content but also to witness someone who should be giving lessons on how to do it properly.

Here’s what Richard Costall and Dave McMahon have to say about NxtGenUG Fest 07:-

The NxtGenUG boys are pleased to announce their very first One-Day Event. We’re not calling it a conference, as we want it to be more than that! We want it to be a day to remember, and another annual highlight for the UK Developer Community.

It’s called NxtGenUG Fest 07 and the initial details are at http://www.nxtgenug.net/fest07. The event will take place at Microsoft UK Headquarters at Thames Valley Park (TVP) on Wednesday 23rd May 2007 and starts at 0900. Food will be provided and we want everybody to go home with a decent amount of quality ’swag’.

The day has a theme: "Into the future...". We start the day looking at current technologies such as Vista, then we move into the ’Orcas’ timeframe, then to 12 months hence or so, probably taking a look at dynamic languages and then really moving out into ’who knows’ with a session from Microsoft Research. There will be a keynote, with an appearance from UK DPE manager Kevin McDaniel and words from the NxtGenUG crew and finally the day will finish with a new ’Game Show’ style session courtesy of NxtGenUG featuring a lot of ’swag’!

We’re absolutely chuffed to bits to announce that the ’headline’ speaker is top TechEd speaker Rafal Lukawiecki and we will also be joined by Daniel Moth and Mike Taulty (perhaps) of the UK DPE and also by Lorna Brown from Microsoft Research. We have one more speaker to announce too, which we hope to do next week.

At lunchtime there will be ’Grok’ talks presented by NxtGenUG members, on a variety of subjects to be announced.

This event is FREE to all NxtGenUG members and a mere £54.99 for non-members until 1 March 2007, check out the URL for more details. Numbers are strictly limited ( I know everybody says that … but we really mean it this time - 230 tops!) so register early is our advice!

This month sees the VBUG South West Regional Coordinator, Chris Myhill, present the Vista Launch at the VBUG Swindon meeting (full details here).

I recommend going to this one because Chris has an honest and enthusiastic presentation style. He is a real developer and this shows in his delivery as he presents information and not marketing schpiel. In particular he tends to talk to the audience instead of at the audience so it is easier to keep your attention for the whole 2 hours. Plus he’ll be talking about all of the new cool stuff in Vista.

See you there.

I have added a new page to this site that contains a listing of all of the resources that you can download here:-

http://www.guysmithferrier.com/resources.aspx

(There is also a link in the bar on the left under the section entitled "Resources").

It contains the slide decks and source of most of my presentations since July 2004 as well as links to webcasts, articles, podcasts, interviews and other stuff that you might find useful. (I didn’t bother going back further than July 2004 because it all gets a bit obsolete before then). I will update the Resources page as I give each presentation so it provides a common point that you can check at regular intervals (and I will continue to post entries with updates to it so you will get an RSS feed anyway).

Note that I only post the most recent copy of the files so if I have done the same presentation at multiple events you will only get the most up to date version.

I have also added the slide decks for a number of presentations that were previously only available to people who actually attended the presentations in person.

Blog Tagging is where someone writes a blog entry containing 5 things that people wouldn’t ordinarily know about them and then they name 5 other bloggers who haven’t been tagged yet and get them to do the same. Virus ? Bit of fun ? Major security risk as people expose critical information about themselves ? Who cares. Malcolm Groves tagged me so it’s my turn.

1. I am the inventor of Python: The Drinking Game. Like all drinking games it has fairly simple rules. One person says a line of Monty Python. Any line from any performance (television, movies, recorded performances). The next person has to say the next line in the sketch. If they can’t they have to take a drink. They can, however, challenge. In which case the person that said the first line has to say the next line. If the first person can then the second person takes two measures. If the first person can’t then they have to take a measure. The process continues to the end of the sketch or until someone can’t say the next line whereupon the person after them starts again with a new line of Python. There’s only one more rule: if it is your turn and not only can you say the next line but you can also say the whole of the rest of the sketch then everyone in the game takes a drink.

2. I have plotted my own murder. You know those "How To Host A Murder" games where you turn up at someone’s house and pretend to be Captain Scrub Nightly or some other ludricous name ? Well I did a load of these and learnt the formula and ran out the ones that at least made an iota of sense. So I wrote my own. But because I knew who did it and how and why it had to be me that died otherwise if I played a role I would have given the game away. So I had a group of friends come as themselves only I exaggerated their real lives to the same extent you see in the commercial games. You know the kind of things: strippers, illegitimate children, shady business deals, blackmail. And I gave them all a motive to murder me. Excellent fun.

3. My 21st birthday was a custard pie fight in Chislehurst Caves. More fun than you can shake a wet banana at. Chistlehurst Caves is 22 miles of ’haunted’ caves in Kent (but we only got a section of it). At 9:00pm everyone was let loose with plates and pie foam canisters and 50 people ran around the caves pie-ing each other. Probably the most fun I’ve ever had in a cave.

4. I once entered the World Pinball Championships. A long time ago I used to be quite good at pinball. I had a pinball machine in my house so I could practice whenever. I heard about the World Pinball Championships and thought I should try myself against some real serious types. I was confident. I shouldn’t have been. In the first heat I played probably the worst game of my life and I was out. I didn’t enter again the next year.

5. I collect fast food taste sensations. Not just common or garden junk. Real nasty stuff. Stuff that has a reputation. And the further afield the better. Holland has the Showarma kebab which is one of those foods that you never eat during daylight or when you’re sober. Coventry has the Faggot And Pea Batch (no, it’s true). Canada has the amazing Poutine which is even better for it coming from a land that has no other food in the same class (Poutine is chips, gravy and a sludge of chemicals that Canadians call cheese but is frankly insulting to cows everywhere). And Of course, Sydney has the Pie Floatter. So that’s two things that I have to ’thank’ Malcolm Groves for. Thanks, mate.

And like all people who have been blog tagged I get to pass the virus on to the next victims: Chris My