Keep IT Real

Step into certainty

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It’s a universal truth that 2020 has been a year that will be recorded in the annals of history and talked about for a long time. There are a few keywords that get thrown around that I actually find annoying, “unprecedented” and “uncertainty”. I think the reality of living in our modern world is that … Read more

DDD Perth: Lessons learnt

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DDD Perth was held last weekend in, you guessed it Perth, a sleepy little city in Western Australia. It still makes me smile when sharing with overseas friends that they don’t quite understand the size of our beautiful country. It’s a 45 hour drive, or a 5 hour flight from Brisbane to Perth. The flight … Read more

Inbox:Zero

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Over the years, I’ve subscribed to a number of different productivity philosophies. Being in the IT industry has meant adopting and then tweaking certain aspects to meet my needs. There has to be a balance between productivity pirates (emails, sms messages, Skype, phone calls and other notifications) and providing a response service to customers or … Read more

I’m DXcited !

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And so begins a new chapter… Evident in the pages of this blog is my passion for cool tools, with a definite bias towards the DevExpress tool set. Well today, I am proud to announce that I loved them so much I joined the DevExpress team as a Technical Evangelist for Asia Pacific. In other … Read more

110% DX ? DXTREME

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Before everyone starts messaging me and telling me 110% is not possible, just listen ! For weeks I’ve been watching the countdown over at DevExpress promising to announce something cool. Well tonight 6pm AEST all was revealed – DXTREME In a nutshell, 3 tools in 1 – developing rich cross platform applications, and it looks … Read more

Relevance people !?

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Ok, I understand there is money in advertising, I’m ok that some sites are funded purely by these funds. But shouldn’t they be relevant ?

On a recent visit to VB.Net Forums, I was greeted by some “older woman” in a skimpy black top, breasts prominent, pained look on her face with a caption “Meet older woman for dating”, ignoring the grammatical issues, I found it difficult to see the relevance of the advert on a tech site, I mean, “hmmm.. I have a coding issue, so lets go ask for help, oh, and whilst I’m there why not see if I can find a love interest as well.”

I think it would be much more appealing to see ads targeting the specific audience, tool vendors, training courses, gadgets and such. Since the site is aimed at developers, I’m pretty sure we all know how to use Google to find dating sites if we wanted to !

Relevance people !?

What? You mean I have to *Pay* for that?

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I was answering posts in a community forum on the weekend when I came across an entry asking for help to build a data grid. The requirement was complex. The poster had expressed at the time that the functionality needed was available in a 3rd party control, but did not want to spend the money … Read more

100% DX – XtraReports : bye bye Crystal, sorry ActiveReports

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What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I mention reporting? Crystal? ActiveReports? I have used these and others on numerous projects, but then I learnt about Developer Express XtraReports, lets see if XtraReports can make it into the 100% DX range… For a full run down on all the cool things you … Read more