9 January 2003

How quickly time flies. Christmas and new year have passed peacefully. Am now filled with resolution to actually work eight hours a day, finish book and get on with life. To which purpose, the final draft of chapter 1 is now complete and the handler chapter is in mid-flow. It would probably be finished by now if it wasn’t for the fact that I keep managing to find a new way to teach the material in this chapter and rewriting bits accordingly. Still this mini draft - about number 7 - is a lot better than number 1.

My first anniversary as a freelancer has passed and I’m still managing to rub two coins together so I haven’t done all that badly. The house wasn’t flooded like most of southern england but it is now under two inches of snow which makes for a rather cold office. I finally got my copy of VS.NET Everett in the post. All I need now is that copy of .NET server rc2 and I can install it too. If my desktop decides to work, that is.

Ooooo. Kill Bill

11 January 2003

Astounding what a difference a couple of days can make. Little things and the frankly ridiculous please little minds I guess. That and the presence of the first twenty pages of Chapter 5 which I couldn’t be more pleased with. So where to begin. I have had my faith in aimless and widespread browsing for nothing in particular renewed by doing exactly that and ending up with a great sack of new sites to visit whenever I can. There’s only so many times you can dig into Slashdot or lwn before you need something else to read. Check out betastream, memepool, and wincustomize. Random enough? And the band I recorded in November has put the tracks up on their site. It’s only the rough mix, but still gutbusting stuff.

As to the frankly ridiculous, try out the goalkeeping equivalent of Captain Oates, or the investigation into laboratory controlled self-cannibalism. As it was said to me, “Education’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?“. And one final thought - Microsoft changed the name of their new Server product for the fourth time, dumping the .NET moniker to leave it at Windows Server 2003, “so as not to disrupt the ecosystem“. I was unaware of the impact of .NET on ring-tailed lemurs and other endangered species (OS\2 users, perhaps?). That tells me!!??

23 January 2003

Am phased. Head now crammed with knowledge of the various XML APIs in .NET. This is good as it lets me write more, but bad as I can envisage at least six ways to do each task without the context of which is the way developers would take in a real world scenario. Sometimes being a researcher sucks. As Chris keeps pointing out, it’s all very well having this knowledge in your head, but until you actually build a few substantial things, no-one will employ you as a programmer. Books don’t count. As I don’t particularly want to be a programmer, this doesn’t hugely affect me, but it’s something for people to be aware of.

Meanwhile, as we wait in baited breath for the ratification of SOAP 1.2 (the final call for comments is tomorrow), the W3C are starting new ventures which affect us (Web Services Choreography Working Group) and updating old ones (Requirements for XML Schemas 1.1). Of course, that doesn’t mean everything will go swimmingly. Like the patent problems with SOAP 1.2, it looks like the choreography WG has already got its work cut out for it to keep web services technology unsullied by those who’d rather make a quick buck.

11 February 2003

You think that a chapter is going to be plain sailing, then you find a really handy little document to structure it against and all of a sudden it’s growing into a monster again. Now there are news stories to check, opinions to find and god knows what else lurking around the corner. By my thinking, I’m two days late with this with probably a couple more to go. In reality, I think I’ve just booted myself out of an on time bonus. Guess the cookie has crumbled there, really.

Have finished dredging through XML and Web Services Unleashed. Has proven to be very useful background read for me. For the XML side of things anyway.

21 February 2003

Ah such progress has been made as could not previously be credited. Two chapters now totally done, another out for review, two left to go and six weeks to do them. Have also spent two days in the studio mixing Chris’ band, much to the consternation of the non-death/grindcore loving staff there. But that’s done too - hurrah - and I’ve even had time to start filling in job application forms, write some reviews, line up work for after Easter, design this year’s Noises Off t-shirt and do some washing up. My only conclusion is that the longer I leave between making these blog entries, the more I actually do.

To which extent, I offer you these far more intersting blogs to peruse. Mark Pilgrim - a techy person, Kevin Shirley, a well known producing person currently putting the final touches to Iron Maiden’s latest album, and Wil Wheaton - yes that one off Star Trek, though he’s not best pleased with that legacy methinks.