the case against .NET

The first taste of a new beer is usually a special moment, particularly when the beer in question is (soon to be) brewed in your home town.
When I read on the Adur Brewery Blog that the final bottles from the prototype batch of Merry Andrew had been delivered to the local off license, I quickly [...]

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As someone who works in Worthing (and a former resident) it’s exciting to see the town take a lead in innovative use of the web for presenting its portfolio of services - and promoting the area. Worthing Borough Council has a great new web site, complete with draggable gadgets, multiple RSS feeds, a lovely [...]

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Last night’s dinner was certainly the best of the three I’ve attended to date. Many thanks to Simon for his hard work once again.
Two innovations: (i) a move to Brighton, arguably the epicentre of Sussex geekery, and (ii) the inclusion of a presentation within the format. Both were successes. There was a [...]

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Spent the day at this Carson Workshops Summit, along with four colleagues from Eurotherm.
With high profile speakers such as Joshua Schachter from del.icio.us, David Heinemeier Hansson of Ruby on Rails fame and others, this was always going to be a worthwhile event. For an excellent account, see Jeremy Keith’s blog entries (starting here). Jeremy’s [...]

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Thanks to Simon Harriyott for organising another fine Sussex Geek Dinner this week.
Slightly disappointing that our venue, the Highlands in Uckfield, has recently become a chain pub. However, it remains a very comfortable place with great staff. The chain pub food was also very good, as was the wine - the event was again sponsored [...]

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I wrote in October about why I was reluctantly giving up Pandora, the personalised Internet music streaming service.
I’m very happy to say that I’m now able to reverse this decision. They’ve just released version 2, and have addressed almost all my criticisms.
Most importantly, there is now a free ad-supported version. I firmly believe [...]

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Wednesday last I attended my first Sussex Geek Dinner. I’ll never be a proper blogger, because it’s taken me four days to record the fact. Simon, on the other hand, knows how this stuff is meant to work: he went home and updated his blog within about an hour of us vacating [...]

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A few weeks ago I enthused about Pandora, a personalised Internet radio station based around your favourite artists and similar music. At any time, you have the option to purchase the track you’re listening to, from either iTunes or Amazon.
So why didn’t I subscribe when my free trial expired? In short, I can’t [...]

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A number of bloggers have been writing about Pandora. I found it via Scoble, and have been trying it for almost a week.
It works like this: you tell it a band/music artist you like, and it builds a radio station (streamed over your broadband connection) including that artist and others you may like. [...]

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Been a bit quiet lately, due to a recent vacation. In fact, my previous 3 posts were queued up prior to my departure, as my colleague Adrian correctly deduced.
Anyway, I was chatting with my manager the other day when he made an analogy which was so obvious I was amazed I’d not come across [...]

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