Some Random Dude

Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

I am presenting at ADUG Sydney in July, but come anyway as there will be pizza.

I’ll be presenting at the July ADUG Sydney meeting. I’ll be giving a practical introduction to the generic collection classes in Delphi, covering the different collections (TList, TQueue, TDictionary, etc) and also some common capabilities across the classes (such as sorting, searching, comparators, enumerators, etc). Even if you haven’t yet got your head around generics in Delphi, my aim is that you can walk out knowing when and how to use these classes.

It’s also the 10th anniversary of the founding of the ADUG Sydney chapter, so come along for either reason and have some pizza.

Virtual Reality in Delphi with Forum8

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I spent the morning at Forum8’s Design Festival in Tokyo a couple of days ago. Forum8 build Virtual Reality solutions, mostly it seems for construction, automotive and railway design, traffic and emergency simulation. A couple of hundred of their customers were at the event, sharing the solutions they’d built on Forum8’s technology and getting a look at what Forum8 have coming in the new versions.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, Forum8’s VR engine and application is written in Delphi, and the SDK that their customers and partners can use to customise the VR solutions is also based on Delphi. There were a number of structural and automotive engineers and designers there who’s first exposure to Delphi was by customising Forum8’s system, and it was really cool to hear how enthusiastic they were about it and what else they can do with Delphi in general. Read On…

Sonic Youth play Daydream Nation in full at the Enmore

You know how hearing some songs or albums can take you back to a certain time in your life, along with really vivid memories of people and places? I have a bunch of albums like that.

Starfish by The Church takes me back to 1988. Waking up Saturday morning, turning Rage on and seeing the video for Under the Milky Way, seeing bands at The Roxy in The Valley, driving my old yellow Volkswagen Beetle and listening to Starfish on tape. Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, Pornography by The Cure, Nevermind by Nirvana, all trigger much stronger memories of times in my life than I could manage if I just sat down and tried to remember.

Up near the top of the list in these stakes would be Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. This is the first album by Sonic Youth I ever heard, and it takes me back immediately to a particularly hot summer in Brisbane in the late 80’s. I can picture the flat I was living in when this played almost constantly on the stereo all summer, the flatmates I lived with, the clubs my mates and I would go to, etc. It’s also the album that started my love of experimental guitar music. Most Sonic Youth fans I know quote Goo as their fave Sonic Youth album, or maybe Dirty, but for me it’s always been Daydream Nation.

I’ve seen Sonic Youth a number of times, but never when they were touring this album, but now they are coming to Sydney in February to do a show where they play Daydream Nation from start to finish. It’s at the Enmore Theatre, and even though I was in meetings in the US when tickets went on sale, I managed to get them while still looking like I was paying attention. They are also being supported by The Scientists playing one of their albums from start to finish. I’ve not heard the album in question, but I’ve been a fan of a few of the bands Kim Salmon has been in, so I may have to grab the album beforehand and have a listen.

This has the potential to be a very disappointing night, as it will be pretty hard for them to live up to my memories (although the album has been one I’ve listened to regularly since then and it has never gone stale. It’s still on my iPod to this day.) Alternatively, it could be a truly great night. Either way, I’m very, very excited.

"It’s like YouTube, but it’s got freaking Zombies, man."

I’ve had this photo from the last Sydney Zombie Lurch in my Flickr favourites for a year or two now.

Well, it seems it’s Sydney’s turn again. I’m kinda disappointed that the living dead are being restricted to the university campus this time around, but maybe APEC last week used up the CBD’s zombie quota for the time being. I find the open-source, community-made zombie film idea strangely amusing, for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on.

Korean Delphi 2006 launch via 200 inch monitor

Last week in the middle of all the stuff going on at Borcon in San Francisco, David and I snuck out late one night to a video conference room at Kinko’s to present 2 hours of Delphi 2006 to 400 developers in Seoul, Korea.

It was 2 hours of nail-biting suspense, as I was expecting the video or the audio to let us down at some point, but except for a few minutes of noise partway through, it all went very smoothly. We were up on a 200 inch screen, which is kinda scary, as I was feeling quite tired from jet-lag and usual late nights at Borcon, so the bags under my eyes must have been about a foot tall

Not sure why it still surprises me when technology works as it is meant to. Maybe this stuff may yet deliver on its promise of letting me travel less.