Richard Conroy's Personal Blog

Learn Code the Hard Way - Social Study Group

2012-02-06T23:23:00.002Z

For a long time I have looked for good coding and related training tutorials that can be followed by novices. I have tried many, written my own and gave up in frustration at multiple stages. However I have been following the series of online tutorials at Learn Code the Hard Way and I have been impressed.

Impressed enough to adapt a kind of social study group around it. Basically, you pick one of the more complete books, and work through the exercises. Once you are done, announce your progress to the mailing list and share thoughts. I will be monitoring the list, and on skype if anyone gets really stuck, or whether people just want an added perspective.

Programming and many related IT tasks like command line/terminal mastery, automation, and databases have a certain mystique about them. The idea is that these skills above average intelligence, or extensive education in related programs. The reality is that much of the grunt work of these skills is simply practice - burying much of the basics into 'muscle memory'. This allows your mind to concentrate on the problem to be solved, without having to constantly use reference material.

As a result people with basic computer skills can overtime learn programming and other computer automation skills, with sustained practice and an appropriate set of exercises.

So if you are interested in following a course like this, @mention me on twitter or comment here and we will exchange contact details. I am trying this out on a low key basis for now, so I might split the lists up somehow (especially where personal contacts are concerned).

Lost Dog - Chewie - reward offered

2011-11-28T20:28:00.001Z

Last seen at Mos Eisley dog park wearing a silver bandolier, flea collar and a laser crossbow. Wookie-Shepard mix, with tan patch behind right ear. Has all vaccinations, neutered and house broken.

Also answers to 'Fuzzball', and 'Big Walking Carpet'. Good natured, doesn't bite (though has been known to tear droids arms off from time to time).

If found, please call Han. Reward 500 credits.

Funny Irish Presidential Election Ballots

2011-10-28T11:36:00.000+01:00

99% of the Ballots are spoiled by 1% of the comedians. Living abroad means I can't vote in a lukewarmly contested presidential election back home. Thanks for everyone like this for making the election relevant to me.

How much is that website in the window?

2011-10-05T14:30:00.000+01:00

There is an article over on Folyo (a jobs-focused newsletter for designers) that surveyed their readers on their web design pricing strategies. Its a pretty interesting read. It is certainly nice to know how successful designers charge for their services.

How much to charge for a website?

The article goes to great pains to say that it's a small survey (~40 people) and an international spread. If the numbers seem high, bear in mind that they include full development costs (programming etc.) and presumably several revisions. For very high end pricing, the work is likely to go on for over a month - the finished product may have just been the final iteration of a long process of prototyping, split testing and client review.

The fantasy of getting paid $10K for a weeks work is just that - a fantasy. You don't get clients willing to fork over that kind of money unless you have a solid portfolio and track record. That takes, skill, time and hard work. You can't bluff your way into that position.

What interested me most though, were the people in the <$1000 bracket. Admittedly these numbers probably came from their international subscribers.

This is the pricing space that I have chased in the past, and it is the pricing space where my webactivate classmates and the W3 Projects members pitch themselves.

Design versus Development

I like to distinguish between Web Design and Web Development. Design is a high level skill, encompassing aesthetics, usability, information architecture, visitor patterns and content strategy. Development is more nuts and bolts - hosting, programming, testing, process automation, service integration, content creation, backup strategies etc.

You can assemble a site nowadays with very little design skills - use an online CMS, pick a theme, throw some content together and you are done. If you are not fussy, 30 minutes and you can have a complete site done.

Design takes time and consideration. You need inspiration, technical skill and creativity. With a <$1000 website you don't have time for any of that, and your customers at that price point are assuming that you spit out designs ready formed.

What you are doing is exploring compatible design elements in whatever CMS you are using, or implementing the clients instructions (in which case the client is the designer and you are doing pure development work).

Development can be very time consuming. There are numerous technical skills to master. However your productivity ramps up very quickly with experience.Design, which requires a lot of thinking can rarely be rushed. Development in many circumstances can be automated.

In my past, my Design skills never got beyond Information/SEO Architecture, Content Strategy and Internal Design (designing the site for use by the end user). Most of what I did was pure development.

Costing versus Pricing

First 'How much does a website cost' is the wrong question. There are almost no non-labour costs in the development of a website, and with the exception of paid advertising, non-labour costs are dwarfed by labour costs. Websites are also, not a commodity, but a bespoke solution. Even the creation of a facebook page will have client specific features.

So 'How much does a website cost' has as much meaning as 'how much does a baby cost' or 'how much does a building cost'.

The real question is 'How much do you charge' and the question behind the question is 'What benefit or value do I get for that price'. As a service provider you need to be able to confidently answer both questions.

As a Web professional, the main questions for you are:

What price do I charge for my time
How do I estimate the cost of fixed price jobs
How do I maximise billable hours
How do I minimise non-billable hours

As a client of a web professional, consider how you make requests of your service providers when you are paying at the cheap end of the scale. It is very easy to corner someone new in the business into fixed price jobs with open ended hours. If you buy fair trade coffee and sugar, consider having the same sense of ethics when you deal with your service providers. The easiest way to do that is to

Make an agreement as to when the job is completed
Work out a financial, pro-rata agreement for followup work

Of course not every developer is capable and competent, and not every client is ethical or understanding. Clients, exercise discretion in who you employ. If you wish to go cheap, understand that you are probably getting someone who is only starting out in the business, and their fixed price services are probably already hovering around the minimum wage end. Developers, learn to walk away, learn how to spot a bad client.

My Pricing Strategy

Early on in my attempts to break into this career, I learned a few things:

I don't like working for free, my time is quite valuable to me, and I don't want to waste it on speculative design work (pre sales) or chicken scratching clients.
I am better at Internal Design than External Design, so I work best with clients who wish to actively use their site, rather than clients who want something pretty at the end of a domain.
I am an even better Developer, intuitively navigating complex tasks, making notes of complicated procedures or valuable software, building on lessons learned and automating complex procedures to save time.
I am a good trainer - I pass these lessons on to people who are eager to learn
I eat my own dogfood. I build sites all the time. Sometimes for a whim. Sometimes with purpose.
I also give really good advice, taking peoples needs into account, not just what I am capable of providing.
I work remotely really well.

So I stopped doing 10 hour dances with clients to land a paying gig. I started taking appointments for consultation, advice, training. I can even build sites in front of you, sort out the thorny business with hosting, domains and domain transfers. I can tell you exactly what you need, how to cut costs and write up a design brief for you. I won't be upset if you take that brief to someone else. If your site is broken, I will roll up my sleeves and fix it for you.

But ...

I charge for my time, all the time.

That includes initial meetings. Especially initial meetings.

Simple eh? Of course the website development gig was never a long term thing for me. I feel that between commodity solutions like free CMS systems, Facebook etc. and the technical challenges of performing at the high levels, there is a lot of price pressure and the middle ground is disappearing as a market.

It was something that was starting to work for me. Then my life and career plans took a turn eastward. So this advice goes out to people I know who are struggling to make fledgling web skills work for them. Especially those who are reskilling into IT after their former careers become closed to them.

Good luck to y'all.

Development Burnouts - going nowhere fast

2011-09-20T20:56:00.001+01:00

I am not the biggest fan of techcrunch, but this argument in favour of split testing is one of their best.

In essence most product development is a combination of founder hunches and early adopter opinions. Metrics that demonstrate success are often attributable to other factors and not feature development. Product development is a pretty expensive ordeal to leave to this kind of chance. The article throws a bunch of occams razors into the pot, and challenges teams to trade in their 60hr work weeks for a months vacation - to see if they are even making a difference.

Best quote:

If this is sounding to you “just like” the scientific method, you’re right, it is. Most of us are currently doing product development astrology, not science. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can do much, much better.

I have seen a lot of shockingly wasteful product development done, where peoples money and jobs were gambled on nothing more scientific than a coin flipping exercise.

Food for thought.

Leaving Party

2011-09-13T12:03:00.003+01:00

Well it's time to clear out all my stuff, clean up the house in preparation for by big move to the banks of the Thames. All the basic stuff is sorted over there for the next few months, all is left for me to do is yo-yo back and forth until I sort out a nice gig over there, and finish up the loose ends over here.

Well now it is time for the big house cooling party. A whole summers worth of Home Brew needs to disappear in one night. The brewing antics are well documented over at The Sum of All Beers. Those of you who have attended the 091 Labs Brewing Workshops will have had a small preview of what is on offer there.

Hoping that everyone I know can make it. For those of you travelling, check out the usual options, like Jurys/Wards. I don't expect couch/floor space to open up until the very wee hours.

Google Plus Facebook Page

2011-07-02T18:16:00.000+01:00

I just got an invite to use Google+, Google's new social network, currently in trial, and future competitor to Facebook. I thought I would celebrate this fact by creating a Google+ Facebook Page. How meta.

Use Microsoft Access in Netbeans for Java Projects

2011-05-28T16:14:00.000+01:00

I was faced with a tricky problem where people needed to use an MS Access Database in Java Projects. Specifically with Netbeans. Normally you stay away from this kind of thing. Java is peachy to setup with networked databases, and is pretty good for open source local/file based Databases also (Derby ships with Netbeans, and it is easy to get MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, hSQL support etc.).

But Access is a notorious pain. I went about doing this through ODBC sources but quickly gave up. Local rights permissions were going to be tricky for that sort of thing.

This was intended for a coaching environment, where several machines would be setup for student labs. Getting Access to work in those conditions would not be fair on the students, who are towards the beginner end of the programming spectrum.

So I offered to get a procedure together that they can work with, or follow easily.

Here is the result

Screencast of Integrating MS Access into Netbeans

Interview in the New Tech Post

2011-05-14T23:57:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday Morning 10th May, I was interviewed by Aoife Connelly for the New Tech Post. The interview was a short piece on what W3 Projects is about, and our then upcoming event Digitise the West. It was arranged at short notice, but unfortunately didn't go out until the morning of the event, so we couldn't include it as part of our event promotion.

However much of the interview is focussed on W3 Projects and not the event, so I think it is now even more relevant than as promotion for Digitise the West.

I am just very glad that we got to capture some of these quotes:

“While we’ve being doing a lot of self educating,” Richard says, “there hasn’t been a chance to organise something until now with Digitise the West."

The WebActivate program provided Richard with an insight into how much there was to do in educating people about communicating on the Web. "One thing you see is there are an enormous amount of businesses out there whose websites don’t perform for them. The awareness of what the internet can do for you is not well known. People say “I want a website” so they’ll get a website, they don’t say “I want a successful online strategy.”

“It’s important to be aware that you need to educate yourself when you’re looking for someone to help you build your online presence. You need to know what you need to ask, there’s lot of work you need to do yourself. That’s hopefully an area where W3 Projects can come in, we’re quite approachable and we cover everything.”

To say that we spent ages on our promotional material is an understatement. We are actually very hard to describe. Then I go and improvise the whole thing and it comes out ace. I didn't have these sound bites prepared or anything, though it has been on my mind for a while.

Some people say I can write, but I am a pure hack when it comes to this kind of standard. I enjoyed the interview, but I was floored by the quality of this interview. 30 minutes of interview distilled down to the most essential elements.

Digitise the West - Wrap Up

2011-05-14T21:10:00.000+01:00

My Head is still not 100% after the Digitise the West Wrap up party, but its clearing up enough to put thoughts together while they are still fresh.

Firstly the event was a great success. The seminar was a huge hit, audience participation was massive. It wrecked our schedule, and forced us to cancel the group Q&A session, and mingle time. But if the guests got what they wanted, well thats for the best really.

I only realised that all the speakers met together for the first time in the bar afterwards. There was no opportunity to rehearse in advance, and that made co-ordination on the day a bit challenging. We didn't have a set speaking order. I went first so that I could remain free to deal with anything that came up. This of course meant that people who traveled specifically to see me, but arrived late, missed out on my presentation.

Well we put a ton of work into the video side of things, so we will be publishing our presentations as soon as we can. Something that was until a day before the event, a 'nice to have', looks like it will turn out great, and be a huge addition to our self-promotion efforts.

The feedback was fantastic.

There is already talk of running a follow-up event. Certainly there is a fair bit of post-event activity to act upon. We will leave the dust settle first, and get some notes together on what worked, and how to improve an event like this in the future.

There was such a buzz about the event, and one of the great things about being a leader in these things, is that you get a lot of perspective on how they come together. Generally all my hard work was over on the previous Wednesday. This gives you a lot of time to observe how other people are coping under pressure, as their workload ramps up on the day.

In short admirably. I wish I got to observe more of the meet & greet activity, but thats the drawback of running a split event like this, you can't be everywhere at once.

Really this was a great event to give everyone some purpose. W3 Projects was stuck in a rut for a while, it felt like people were meeting for the sake of meeting, and we weren't doing much in the line of getting people work. While this event was great for showcasing our skills, it was more than that. It was an opportunity for people to pull together in a common purpose and be part of something big.

This event isn't even over yet. Our website is getting great traffic day on day, and we haven't posted anything new in a week. More importantly there is a change in W3 Projects. There is a sense of purpose now, a sense that the investment in time and energy is about to pay off. The organisation has a direction now and it is clearer what our next steps should be.

120 Year Old Roll Book - Bragan National School

2011-05-01T15:15:00.001+01:00

On a lazy Friday we were enjoying the weather with some friends back at the house, when Fiona turned up a massive roll book:

This is an old School Roll Book: Bragan National School and it dates from 1887 to 1890. Apparently it has been in the house for ages, and it is fairly good condition considering.

The book was wrapped in brown wrapping paper, and written on with pen, but this writing is much more recent. The Roll Book itself is written in pencil and is hugely detailed. It is quite a large book, being about 28cm x 45cm.

It also contains a series of signed inspection letters, which I presume are annual audits.

I think this is quite a find, but I don't like the idea of it being dumped in a rented house. When I announced this on twitter, I got some interesting responses, and potential leads. I am writing this up so that I can show those people what the book is like, and maybe we can identify where this school is (it may not be in Galway even).

Mostly I would like that this could be properly curated and actively used. I can see the obvious benefits in say, genealogy and I can imagine that it could be useful for any other kind of historical research.

I had considered scanning it, but is is considerably larger than my flatbed, and I am afraid that it would subject it to some rough treatment. While the pages are in great condition, the page edges are stained and the spine is significantly damaged.

So does anyone know where Bragan National School is, or where it used to be? More importantly, who would be the most suitable people to look at this?

Update: Thanks to a few peeps on twitter, there seems to be some hint that this roll book may belong to a school in Co. Monaghan. In fact there is a good likelihood that the names in this book may tally with some of the names in the 1901 Census of Bragan Co. Monaghan

Ideas for the Galway Digitise the Nation Event

2011-04-22T12:31:00.000+01:00

This is just a placeholder so that people in the Galway W3 Project team can submit ideas for this event.

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Lorempixum - filler images made easy

2011-04-21T17:36:00.000+01:00

Lorempixum is a web service that allows you to easily generate themed filler images. It fulfills the same roles as the multitude of Lorem Ipsum generators out there. Whereas Lorem Ipsum fills out text copy so that a design can work, saving you the effort of writing it, Lorempixum does the same for stock images.

The really cool bits (yes there is more than one) is that there is an easy to remember URL syntax to specify what you want. Once you are in the flow of hacking together a prototype the last thing you need is to be taking constant breaks to upload/download/resize images:

Here is how it works:

Random Picture 400 x 200 pixels

http://lorempixum.com/400/200

Random grayscale picture of 400 x 200 pixels

http://lorempixum.com/g/400/200

Random sports picture

http://lorempixum.com/400/200/sports

Specific sports picture

http://lorempixum.com/400/200/sports/1

Simple!

The other advantages are that it is totally free as far as I can tell, and that there is a reasonable range of themes. The fact that you can use non-random shots is important too, for design consistency at the prototype stages. Probably the best feature is the fact that you can specify the dimensions. Thats is almost certainly the biggest time saver.

From speaking with my colleagues in webactivate and W3 projects it seems that sourcing images for clients was the biggest obstacle to getting sites completed. In some cases they would not pay for stock images, or couldn't agree on suitable ones. This resulted in sites not being completed in time, and eventually abandoned in a lot of cases.

Well this little tool is now embedded permanently into my box of tricks.

Webactivate portfolio

2011-04-14T15:00:00.000+01:00

Some of my last posts on webactivate focused more on the problems associated with publishing the sites. A lot of effort has gone into taking these sites live, from both the program and the participants.

However there hasn't really been a wrap up event. I am eager to compile information on these sites together. Many of the students in Galway and the other sites formed strong relationships. People continue to meet up, and in Galway our W3 Projects group meets up on a weekly basis.

It is unfortunate that nobody has had the opportunity to review the body of work completed as part of the program. I am one of the few who has. I compiled a lot of links together from the last few surveys, some of the weekly updates, and my own records.

It is still very incomplete, and I would like to take this even further. If you could complete the form below I think it would be very useful. At W3 Projects we have good experience at automating these data collection methods, and we can compile this into a showcase of our collective work.

I believe that there are ongoing efforts to relaunch the program, this summer, but we shouldn't lose sight of what was accomplished.

Special notes: If you have successfully launched yourself as a web professional, you can include sitework that you have built independently. (Put the site live URL in as the staging site address, so that they can be distinguished.).

If you don't like the form, or have difficulty compiling all of the information together, you can contact me privately. Don't add links into the comments here, as I am most likely to delete them. Please forward this post to former webactivators in other sites. I know all of the Galway people, but I am also keen to get to know the students in Cork and Dublin, and their work.

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Exploitation Now

2011-04-08T19:35:00.000+01:00

Today I agreed to meet a potential client that was referred to me. They had problems with a website that was built for them, that should have been easy to fix. I was uneasy about the whole situation, considering that the referral came from the client's previous designer and their relationship had gone south.

What followed was an hour of pure exploitation. All I wanted to do was nail down what was expected of me. What really happened was an hour of pure triple distilled unpleasantness. I had to endure:

slanders against the previous developer(s)
racial slurs against my nationality
an expectation that I should provide my services for free and indefinitely, because the client had problems turning their livelihood into income

This is standard Béal Bocht stuff.

You could say that I should have known better. But I did, but I felt compelled to deal with the client.

If you have ever had difficulty with a freelance professional, and you feel that they were money grabbing, insistent, or non-altruistic, understand that they have likely met many people like I experienced today, and their entire livelihood is under pressure by those who would take advantage of them.

I walked out before it could get worse. It was already bad enough. I learned an important lesson today:

There are individuals who will use your basic human ethics against you. Any favour or liberty you extend them will be exploited for their own gain. The courtesy that you extend people in normal human relations is a weakness that people like this exploit, they look for it and take advantage of it.

I started to watch this today - it was like therapy:

2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. from SanFrancisco/CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

Installing/distributing PLUNC binaries on Windows

2011-03-11T15:48:00.001Z

This is a short post, intended to help out some of my girlfriends college mates.

PLUNC is a software package, that is developed out of the University of North Carolina for preparing radio treatment plans for cancer patients. I don't know if it is actually used in the field, or if it is a kind of training software, but this is the software used in NUIG as part of a project in the medical physics course.

My favour skills got overdrawn trying to help herself get this installed on her laptop.

I work with a lot of software, and after a while you tend to see everything and anything offered up. That said it is unusual to see actual real software that is used seriously in any field have such a byzantine install procedure.

The PLUNC manual calls for an involved install procedure that requires that you compile from source. This is not atypical for open source projects on POSIX systems, but those projects tend to take their end user responsibilities very seriously, and conform to the various package manager systems (aptidude on debian, rpm on redhat etc.).

Compiling from source, and not using a package manager system, or a working source repository is a very alien thing indeed. It usually means that the software is completely unsupported, and it does not say anything favourable about the developers.

The instructions are actually pretty difficult to follow, and get a bit hand-wavy at times. These are instructions that require you to be brutally explicit about every file operation.

That is on Unix.

They also expect you to compile from source on Windows. This is almost the height of inconsideration for end users. Getting a compiler toolchain to work on Windows is not simple, and is beyond the expectations of any windows end user. This is purely for Windows Software Development professionals only. To make it worse the instructions are full of things like modifying Visual Studio batch files and environment variables. Oh Dear.

The normal procedure on windows is to distribute your program in binary format. That is - precompiled executables or windows installer packages.

Anyway I completely failed to install this on windows by following their instructions. Their compilation procedures brought on my hulk rage. If I was handed a procedure like that from a colleague, I would be inclined to throw it back in his face and return when he had finished it, and tested it on a clean system. Both things that were missing here.

However it was mentioned that there were versions of this pre-installed on the college windows computers. Seeing as the software was compiled in place, it should be possible to pull the pre-compiled binaries off of one system and onto another.

Procedure

This procedure has been adapted from the NUIG labs. It may not work everywhere.

Step 1

Copy the installation directory

C:\Clinic

To a portable media device.
Also copy the desktop shortcut

Step 2

Restore these files to the machine that you wish to install the software on. Ensure that the directory names match, and that the desktop shortcut is copied to the desktop

Step 3

This is the tricky bit. There is funny folder/directory nesting in the install. In addition to the folder:

C:\Clinic

you should also see

C:\Clinic\Clinic

You need to copy the inner directory over its parent directory.

Step 4

Download and install the Perl runtime distribution for windows (ActiveState Perl Binaries for windows, community edition)

Step 5

Launch the application from the desktop shortcut and cross fingers.

I did a lot of trial and error to get this far, but the step 3 was the critical one. You shouldn't need to modify any of your environment variables, and this should let you duplicate the software across windows machines.

Best spoiled vote ever

2011-02-26T19:30:00.000Z

What is stuck to my Wii controller?

2011-02-25T09:38:00.001Z

Some marketing sleazebag thought that this would make for a good Wii Party game. Of course they never realised that there are no good party games on the Wii. There are plenty of Wii Games that are good for parties, but the cynical, cheaply produced, mini-game pap are just awful as a rule.

You would expect quality to be overlooked when the entire marketing campaign is based on couples using this for soft swinging and pushing their sexual boundaries. Very little in-game footage is shown, and most seems to be totally ripped off from a few titles.

Non threatening male models: check
Female models posing suggestively with Wii controller: check
Completely impractical use of gaming system: check
People having great fun doing something obviously ridiculous: check

The worst bit? This is clearly a game that will be picked up by a shadier kind of date/boyfriend. Any women trying to entice their fella to try something different are clearly going to succeed without resorting to €45 gimmicks such as this. Just owning this game will mark you as some kind of creep - I reckon this title will end up buried beneath the stag night porn.

The worst bit? We used to call the controller's protective sleeve the 'Wii Condom'. Thank you Ubisoft for de-metaphoring our joke. There is going to be at least a few wierdos who will hit a home run with a game like this, probably on their housemate's Nintendo. The last thing we need is an amended Safety Notice:

Need to have a proper Wii party game? Here are ones that are time proven.

Fine Gael Advertising Fail

2011-02-21T21:00:00.001Z

Fine Gael's social media advertising latches onto some interesting videos. In this case, the youtube video for Rubberbandit's 'Bag of Glue'.

Full vid here, the ad comes up straight away.

You decide - tragic placement, or missed opportunity for Willie O Dea?

Vote Fianna Fail to bring about change

2011-02-17T14:18:00.000Z

If you want real change in Ireland vote Fianna Fail. This man in Sligo explains why.

Summary: Break the system and reform the country from the ashes. Fianna Fail have us half there already.

Funny source code comments

2011-02-12T12:44:00.003Z

The tech industry isn't the glamourous high-paying, work-life balancing career that it is made out to be.

Everyone in the industry knows that it is mostly about patching up the mistakes in barely functioning applications. All of these mistakes are made by other people, and usually fixed by someone else.

This article highlights the worst offences. People so enraged by what they saw, that they felt the need to mark the source code with warnings, taunts and expressions of despair.

A small bit of programmer culture that I thought I would share with you. My favourite:

/**
 * For the brave souls who get this far: You are the chosen ones,
 * the valiant knights of programming who toil away, without rest,
 * fixing our most awful code. To you, true saviors, kings of men,
 * I say this: never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down,
 * never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry,
 * never gonna say goodbye. Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
 */

Rick-rolled in a comment. Amen.

W3 Projects Calendar of events

2011-02-08T23:58:00.000Z

I maintain the calendar of events for W3-Projects here. It is easier to find if its on a web page.

Also included is any networking events or local activities that may be relevant, as well as the couple of 091labs workshops that is relevant to what people want to learn at W3 Projects.

I will find a better place for this soon.

iPhone App for beginners workshop at 091labs

2011-02-06T17:32:00.001Z

I just got word that 091labs have scheduled their iPhone/App development course. Adrian and Ellen have been talking about this for a while now, and it is good to see the new year labs activities start off with a bang.

It is specifically aimed at beginners, both those new to programming, or just new to iPhone development. A lot of people are very interested in this kind of work and it is a long workshop, running from 7PM - 10PM on Wednesday 9th February.

If you have a Mac, bring it, and be prepared to share the screen with other attendees. iPhone app development is notoriously fussy about what platforms you can do it on. Also, the event is free to both members and non-members, but they do ask that people volunteer a contribution towards the running costs of the space.

The labs members are very keen to run a lot of these workshops (including re-running their popular Linux and PHP workshops from last year). However it is hugely time consuming for the individuals involved. Turnout and feedback are important, and these are good opportunities to get a feel for what the labs are about.

You can find out more at the write up here. I will be there if anyone from W3 Projects wants to go.

Political Angst #01

2011-02-04T16:29:00.000Z

Political Satire filmed in the Crane Bar, with appearances from some former webactivate trainers.

Webactivate site issues presentation

2011-01-27T19:00:00.000Z

This is the report that I delivered to the W3 Projects meetup on Wednesday 26th January. This summarises the issues that people reported in, and has allowed us to open a dialog with the staff to move things forward.

The presentation was a large chunk of work, but it was actually a lot of fun, and the audience participation was massive. I expected responses, as this is a contentious issue, but I was overwhelmed.

Note, we are still collecting issues, and I regularly drill down through the issue list. Just because a report has been published doesn't mean that the list is done with. Feel free to add issues using this form. We are especially keen to see the successful results and live sites.

Please note though, I didnt record the Q&A session. If anyone can remember the questions they raised, can you submit them to me? Or add them in the comments below.

I would especially welcome any feedback from webactivators in the Dublin and Cork centers. Especially you rebels, we barely get a peep out of you guys.

If there is enough interest, I might do a follow up.