A gadget recommendation - PowerPod Executive Solar Phone Charger

It is not that often I get a new gadget.. I blame the bankers... however as part of my Birthday Pressie this year the wonderful and ever patient val (@slightlydoolaly) got me a "Powerpod" Solar charger for my phone direct from their website, which appeared in 2 days after ordering which is pretty good going considering I am in Northern Ireland!

To be precise the charger is called the i3500 Executive Solar Phone Charger £26.11 if bought direct.

(Picture courtesy of SolarKitsDirect.co.uk)

As you can see it is around the size of an iPhone contains a 3500 mAh battery,
monocrystalline solar cells which are much better than the cheaper and less efficent polycrystalline cells (I work for a company that manufactures high end domestic and industrial solar panels so things like that impress me!) The box also contained a plethora of connection adaptors for most mobile devices and a rather swish carry pouch that can be attached to a belt. The device itself is nice and light and the build quality seems excellent.

Now the main reason I have for buying this is .. I walk .. rather a lot ... and I usually use my HTC Desire's GPS function to record where I have been which sadly sucks the life out of the standard 1300mAh battery that comes with the phone. After 4 or 5 hours on the road and taking the odd photo the phone is nearly dead so I need something for those "all day danders" and I was definite that I did not want an extra battery or one of the "Thick" replacement batteries that requires a new back only gives another couple of hunderd mAhs and can mess up the heat disapation of the phone. So I went for one of these gadgets as it would give me just under 5000 mAh of battery to play with which should be ample for even the longest walk.

It was only partially charged when I took it out of the box so I plugged it into the mains using the supplied cable and the HTC USB mains plug and gave it a good deep charge. I worked out what connectors I needed to keep with the device. The only minus point in the whole start up is the supplied instructions while they cover the main areas well are a bit basic on a few topics. Like how exactly to charge using the sun. That aside .. how did it perform?

The first use was with the phone @ 75% battery with wifi, gps and 3g turned off. The phone charged to 100% in 31 minutes, reducing the charger from 4 status LEDs to 3

The next use was on a walk of about an hour with GPS on a 10 second refresh and 3g data turned on. Normally this would take between 20-25% of my battery depending on how many pictures I took and how much I tweeted. I had the chrager on my hip in its wee pouch and I discovered a bonus as the phone fits in the pouch as well!. The supplied USB cable is long enough to reach from the belt to most pockets and Micro USB adpator fits sunggly and securely in the charger and phone.. After 30 minutes the phone was showing 95%, probably because I used the camera a couple of times and uploaded some pictures to yFrog/Twitter along with the other background processes. At the end of the 75 min walk the phone was showing 91% and as soon as I stopped CardioTrainer GPS and 3G the phone was back up to 100% in 12 minutes, leaving the charger STILL with 3 of the 4 status LEDs lit so I am confident that it will cope with even my most demanding all day walks with ease.

I did have a couple of questions relating to how the device charged so I shot the support desk an email at 11pm and at 8:30am the next day I had a reply and a phone number from Nath one of the support staff suggesting I give him a ring to discuss my queries. So I did just that and I found Nath to be very helpful and knowledgable. He was able to fill in all the gaps about using the sun to charge the device, not that I expect the Northern Ireland sun will ever be out long enough to actually charge it fully :-)

So in conclusion owning a Powerpod has been great so far and the support has been excellent .. well done everyone at PowerBee.co.uk and Nath in particular

HELP !! Really odd Domino Designer 8.5.2 issue

I have a really peculiar error on my Domino Designer and would like your input.

01. I open an NSF in Designer or Right Click "Open in Designer" from the client workspace
02. The file opens in designer and in the title and file location in the left hand designer panel  is correct
03  I open any of the design elements Forms, Outlines, Pages whatever
04. The designer has a think and rather than open it on the server that I opened it on, it goes off and tries to open the file on another server, it is always the same other server, and the file may or may not have a replica on that server. Most of the time the file is on the developement server ONLY
05. This results in a FILE NOT FOUND error if the file does not exist on the other server

Changing to a local replica and everything is fine and the local elements open
Have a replica on the other server and the element you want will open but on the other server even though you have opened the correct server AND the file appears to be on the correct server in designer.

This is what it looks like on the LHS side bar, Server LNS/AVXEUR which is correct.. yes when it tries to open an element it attempts to open the file on AVX_HKG_LNS1  (the hong kong server).

Using the "Open in CLient" option opens the correct file

My Location doc has the correct home server defined.

I have removed all the replicas from my Workspace on AVX_HKG_LNS1

I have check Notes.ini for any evidence of AVX_HKG_LNS1 and there is none

I have delete cache.ndk

I have compressed my workspace

I have removed and re-created all my Connection documents

So where is this coming from? Any suggestions gratefully received!!!!

**UPDATE**
Tracked down the cuplrit and it appears to have been something in the Location document .. I created a totally new location (not a ciopy and edit that DOES NOT WORK!) once i had removed the old Location Documents everything now is normal and has been for 2 days. I have my fingers crossed that this will not happen again anytime soon
Steve

UKLUG 2011 More reasons to go!

UKLUG 2011 is 2 months away on the  23rd and 24th May in Manchester England. I have started perparing my session(s) and the pace is starting to heat up. Registration is starting to get tight and places will be limited. So it would be a really good idea to register now ... and do not forget .. IT IS FREE!

Warren Elsmore has announced that the lovely people at TLCC have very generously offered 20% discount on any of their excellent courses this offer is open to UKLUG attendees only and you get a discount code in your UKLUG handouts. Thanks TLCC that is great!

Also .. yes there is more .. Matt White over at xpages101.net is offering 33% off his excellent xpages training videos.. *PHEW* what more could you want! :-)

See full details of these offers over on Warren's blog so what are you waiting for, register now and we will see you in May in Manchester for all that is good in Social Business and did i mention it ... It is all free!!

LS11 My take from a far

I had been following with interest the info streams coming from LS11 and reading the followup blog posts from attendees and there was a resonance that this was the Lotusphere where the focus changed perceptibly from  announcements of wondrous new products (or improvements to old products) to something else. I wasn't there and it is a bit difficult for me to work out what the "something else" is. It seems perhaps that it might be a move away from pushing a particular software package centred solution where we compromise or work around a function because it is too difficult to implement or is just not possible. So what are we moving towards? Again distance and the lack of clarity in a message being retold by Twitter and blog posts makes me wonder but I do have the feeling that I was being lead to the idea that everything is possible but we need not to be bound by a "yellow" , "blue" or "black" ideology but one that embraces the delivery of function regardless of platform to this new "social" landscape that business is evolving into.

Hmmmmmmmm ... there is one part of me that rises up, reaches for my Yellow Soap Box and gets all William Wallace ... except for the woad ... I have been a Notes/Domino geek for a long time so perhaps that is only natural. However coming from an environment where we already use a plethora of platforms and software and my job has evolved not as a talented soloist in the orchestral of IT but as a conductor getting all the disparate sections to play together I sort of see where that is coming from.

Perhaps and I could be wrong we are being asked by IBM , paraphrasing My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "Don't let our past dictate who we are, but let our past dictate who we become" .....

Developing for Mobile Browsers (Part 2)

Moving on.... so what next, well having decided which method we are going to choose for getting the mobile content to the device as defined in part 1. Next how and what are we going to display?

Mobile stylesheets need to alter your content for the smaller more vertical display on most smartphones. (I am going to aim this at the smartphone mobile, tablets and iPads are a slightly different kettle of fish) If your desktop web site uses multi-column layouts we need to alter this so that it is displayed in single columns. Most mobile screens will be used vertically, so horizontal space becomes even more “expensive” and mobile layouts can rarely afford more than one column of content. Next, reduce clutter throughout the page by setting display: none; on any less important elements. Finally, save additional pixels by reducing margins and padding to create a tighter layout.

Setting display:none; however does not reduce bandwidth, the content will still be downloaded it will just not be displayed. If your workforce regularly travels outside the bounds of their local mobile ISP they may be hit with much more expensive roaming data charges if they can't find a nice friendly free wifi hotspot. In the US this is probably not a problem, however in Europe where proximity to a border can cause you to be hit with 5 euros a meg charges this is more worrisomesome.

If your site uses images for buttons or navigation, consider replacing these with plain-text / CSS counterparts. If you’d like to force the browser to use the alternate text for any of your images, use this snippet (and use JavaScript to add the as-text class for img and make sure that alt-attributes are properly defined in your markup):

img.as-text { content: attr(alt); }

Given the generally imprecise nature of the "click" event it is wise to make any clickable object have a display:block; style with increased padding and perhaps a tad more margin.

If you have made use of tiny or small fonts, consider how these will look on a small screen, if the user has to constantly zoom in on your content to make it usable then this should be looked at and an increase in font size considered

Floats, ah floats oh how I loath you particularly in Mobile layouts, I use them only when I really really have to. Given the ease with which elements are zoomed into and out off floats can really screw up a nice design on a mobile device. I use the axiom that on mobile devs vertical scrolling is better than horizontal.

The good old mouseover event doesn't work on most mobile devices and given the way they are used with fingers and not mice this is fair enough So make sure to have proper definitions of :active-states. and forget about the :hover It may be useful to apply definitions from the already defined :hover states to the :active states.

Avoid drop down Nav bars and menus at all times.. these can be a nightmare to code, instead have them either visible at all times or in a slide in/out panel.

If you want some good JS that will allow you to explore the RIA I can recommend jQueryMobile : The Touch-Optimised Web Framework for iPads and Smartphones which has a growing array of functions and UI widgets that make your mobile web pages sing.

The jQuery mobile framework takes the "write less, do more" mantra to the next level. Instead of writing unique apps for each mobile device or OS, the jQuery mobile framework will allow you to design a single highly branded and customized web application that will work on all popular smartphone and tablet platforms

See here for details of current coverage

In the next post I will look at some of the "mobile" only things you can do with HTML schemes

Developing for Mobile Browsers (Part 1)

I have been working with a web site that needs to be viewable from both desktop and mobile browsers. The site has an established CSS which works well across the current desktop browsers (even IE after a shed load of fiddling and hacking). However there are now a vast array of mobile browsers and whilst they do their best when faced with a CSS definition that was coded, tweaked and hacked for the desktop it basically just either doesn't work or the accessibility for the user goes out the window in a flurry of gestures and scrolling.

Yes you did read that right I used the "accessibility" word. It has, for good or ill, become a euphemism for "We will look at that in the next release", "There is no budget for that" and most tellingly "I am not paid to be that sort of designer".

The concept of the "Usable App" is now becoming firmly ingrained into the user. My better and ever patient half Valerie is a prime example of this. She was a late comer to the tech world but is now equipped with both net book and smart phone. She was lying on the sofa the other night downloading apps from the Android market and if she could not use the app quickly, see it's usefulness and intuitively use it then it was deleted and forgotten very very quickly. This brutal but fair criticism of mobile applications is now appearing daily inside the firewall. Users want similar ease of use of corporate apps on their mobile devices. I have been asked several times "Why can't you make it like TweetDeck*? (*insert app of choice here) and I foresee a time in the very near future when the same sentiments will be expressed about desktop apps.

So where does that leave us the developers? Geek seer and banana imitator Tom Duff perhaps saw this very thing 3 years ago when he did a session ILUG entitled "Moving from a Plumber to a Painter". Well I am seeing my career move in that very direction. I still have the requirement to have all the perfectly lovely uber-geeky back end code but I need to spend an equal effort enabling an interface that allows all my users to access it on whatever platform they want to use.

So I want to share what I have discovered about mobile web coding so far. I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination (and I welcome input from anyone out there that is!) , but I have learnt a couple of tricks and in the next few posts I will run them up the flag pole and you can use or abuse them as you see fit ;-)

So onward with the first Topic ... Getting Started
I have to say I got stuck on this particular thorny question for some time and there appear to be 3 ways you can tailor your site for mobile access :-

1) Server-side Methods & The UA String

One approach to including mobile stylesheets involves detecting the user agent string with a server-side agent. With this technique, the site detects mobile devices and either serves an appropriate stylesheet or redirects the user to a mobile subdomain. This server-side approach has several advantages in that it ensures compatibility and also allows the website to serve special mark-up/content to mobile users with a minimum of fuss, avoiding potentially expensive multiple downloads of style sheets.

This technique can be perfect for big websites on super servers, I have my doubts when implementing on most sites. New user agent strings come out almost daily, so keeping the UA list current is next to impossible and requires lots and lots of testing with the currently available mobile browsers. Additionally, this approach depends on the device to relay its true user agent and yet browsers have been spoofing their UA string to get around this type of detection in the past. For instance, most UA strings still start with “Mozilla” to get through the Netscape checks used in the 90's, and for several years Opera rather inexplicably pretended to be IE!

This method also implies that there are two separate applications a desktop and a mobile one, this can lead to the development of two mutually separate and unique applications rather than one application which has been optimised for particular platforms.

Client-side Methods & Media Queries
Alternately, the easiest approach involves detecting the mobile device on the client side. One of the earliest techniques for including mobile stylesheets involves taking advantage of the stylesheet’s media type, for instance I could add this to my HTML:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="desktop.css" media="screen" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="mobile.css" media="handheld" />

Here we’ve included two stylesheets, the first desktop.css targets desktops and laptops using the screen media type, while the second mobile.css targets mobile devices using handheld. While this would otherwise be an excellent approach, device support is another issue. Older mobile devices tend to support the handheld media type, however they vary in their implementation: some disable the screen stylesheets and only load handheld, whereas others load both which with mobile data costs can be a download to far.

The pubic hair in the soap of this method is that most newer devices have done away with the handheld distinction altogether so that users get a fully-featured web page as opposed to what used to be duller mobile layouts. I have found that media queries work rather well. This method allow us to target styles based on the client based on viewport width.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="mobile.css" 
media="only screen and (max-device width:480px)"/>

First, define two stylesheets: desktop.css with everything for normal browsers and antidesktop.css to overwrite/nullify any styles that you don’t want on mobile devices. Tie these two stylesheets together in another stylesheet main.css which contains this code

@import url("desktop.css");
@import url("antidesktop.css") handheld;
@import url("antidesktop.css") only screen and (max-device-width:480px);

Finally, define another stylesheet handheld.css with additional styling for mobile browsers and link them on the page like this

<link rel="stylesheet" href="main.css" media="screen"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="handheld.css" 
media="handheld,only screen and  max-device-width:480px)"/>

While this technique reaches a large market share of mobile devices, it is by no means perfect. Some mobile devices such as iPad are more than 480 pixels wide and will not work with this method. However, these larger devices arguably don’t need a condensed mobile layout. Moving forward, there will likely be more devices that don’t fit into this mold. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to future-proof mobile detection, since standards are still emerging.
Besides device detection, the media query approach also presents other issues. Mainly, media queries can only style content differently and provide no control over content delivery. For instance, a media query can be used to hide a side column’s content, but it cannot prevent that mark-up from being downloaded by your users. Again given mobile bandwidth and cost issues, this additional HTML should not simply be ignored.

3. User Selection
Considering the difficulties with mobile UA detection on the server and the pitfalls of media queries on the client it could be best simply allow the user to decide whether to view the mobile version of your website. This has the disadvantage of requiring more user interaction but it is arguably the most fool-proof method and also the easiest to accomplish.

Simply stick a button or a link that reads Visit our mobile site which when clicked takes the user to the correctly styled mobile page. The one problem with this is Users are stupid and will miss the button or will click it when they are using a desktop, then try to get it to work by touching their screens and then phone the help desk to tell you it doesn't work, but if you have sensible users then this could be the route for you, particularly since some will prefer a condensed layout that is optimized for their device, whereas others may prefer to access the entire website, without the restrictions of a limited mobile layout.

Those are the 3 options I have come across, there may be more and if there are please let me know :-)

In my next post on this I will look at what I think you should change when optimizing for a mobile device.

Oh I really really hate IE !

OK it is old news, really old news but Internet Explorer is a pus filled bag of uselessness that never seems to get any better in fact it seems to gradually get worse as time goes on.

I spent today getting a CSS / HTML framework for a wee social app I am developing and in a couple of hours I was able to get Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari to behave nicely with little fiddling with the CSS the way I wanted it to look just worked out of the box!.

FireFox

Chrome

Safari

Opera

And then we try IE .. 

Internet Explorer

Why? Oh Why? Oh Why?

LS Buzzword Bingo - An Apology and an Update

It seems the Buzzword bingo ignited a fire that it was never intended to do (see comment stream in the last post) The cards were prepared several weeks ago before this whole brouhaha developed and at the time no PM for Notes was generally know and it just seemed "a good idea at the time" which it appears it was not.

The team behind the Bingo apologise unreservedly for any upset caused and we can assure everyone it was done without malice and in a spirit of good humour. We have removed the offending squares from all the boards and the new updated forms can be downloaded here or from the link on the previous post.

Go to the Ask the Product Managers session ask questions and have a good productive time and if you get a line well Tweet out that you did.

LS11 Buzzword Bingo Download ** Available **

OK all you Lotusphere 11 Attendee's I have been passed this by that well known Domino personality, sage, armadillo wranger and jQuery Ninja  Noel Tostus (aka "The Loosest Nut"). He at present has little or no access to the internet as he is contemplating deep and wonderous thoughts about "the cloud" while sat on a Yak high on a mountain in Nepal.

Whilst deep in thoughts of a Lotus Live and google-ish nature he noticed that there were some phrases that lept unbiden to his mind. After due consideration he realised that these phrases had been planted there in the fertile fields of his imagination by the multitude of IBM Product managers he had come across in his daily doings in the Lotus world.

This was one of those EUREKA moments, he leapt from his yak and reached for his Mac Book Pro and sculpted for you the LS11 Product Manager Buzzword Bingo!!

01. Click here to download the PDF
02. Print off a copy for yourself and perhaps a couple of copies for your chums.
03. Have a chat to some Product Managers, attend The "Ask the Product Manager" session

ASK102 Ask the Product Managers
Speaker: Miscellaneous
SW 5-10 - Thursday  11:15am - 12:15pm

04  When one of the Phrases comes up mark it off
05. When you get a line Horizontal / Vertical / Diagonal Tweet "LS11 BuzzWord BINGO!!!!"

There are no actual prizes as such other than the admiration of your colleagues and that warm feeling of having achieved something in the greater scheme of things

Oh and ENJOY LS11! !!

**UPDATE** Download file has been changed to reduce offense

"It is a Small Lotus World" LS prize draw is open to EVERYONE not just LS11 attendees!

Well we are down to the final days before the annual bun fight in Orlando beings. As usual yours truly will be watching the goings on from afar. One of these years I shall be there to join in and bring a sense of "proper" Dominoyesmaybe chaos to the occasion.

Even though I cannot be there I want to remind folks of the "It is a small Lotus World"  draw arranged by Bruce Elgort and the lovely chaps from the London Developer Co-Op which is happening at UKLUG Nite at Lotusphere on Monday 01 Feb in Shulas  bar at 8pm.

Now even if you are not at LS11 or cannot get a ticket or are doing something else that means you cannot get to the UKLUG bash you can still buy a ticket and potentially win one of the prizes that are on offer.and have it shipped to you anywhere in the world!

There are several Lotus Themed Prizes.

First up the lads of the LDC commissioned a piece from "Army of Trolls" called "It's a Small Lotus World"
This amazing piece of art has 100's of visual links to Lotus people and companies and would be a fantastic addition to any office or study wall.

There are not 1 but 4, yes 4!!! beautifully framed prints up for grabs (2 12"x18" prints and  2 11"x14") being given to winners.

Then Mr Sametime himself Carl Tyler has manufactured some webcam clothing  which will be awarded to some lucky winners.

Incredibly useful addition to any geek's wardrobe for those Web Conferences where you really really want to be naked but can't be.

Lastly my own offerings. I have done 3 Lotus Themed drawings pictures, which I have left unframed so you can do with them as you wish.

Sgt Brill's Lonely Lotus Band

The Lands Of the Lotii Map

 

An "Original" UKLUG 11 Poster

Now why are we doing this? Simple - to raise some cash for the Children's Cancer Association (CCA).a charity that gives support to seriously ill children and their families and is a charity close to the hearts of Bruce and Gayle Elgort and one that I, the chaps at LDC and Carl are proud to support in what ever way we can :)

OK So how can you get your hands on these goodies?

Simple jump over to this page and make a $10 .. yes JUST $10 donation and your name will be entered in the draw. You can buy as many tickets as you want and you can enter even if you are not going to LS or UKLUG !

Alternately you can grab Matt White, Mark Myers, Julian Woodward, Carl Tyler, Bruce Elgort or the ever lovely Gayle Elgort at LS any time before Monday evening and give them your name and $10 (or more!) for a ticket to this once in a life time opportunity to grab some unique Lotus Community stuff and be the ENVY of all your colleagues.

So come on dig down behind the sofa for the lost chnage or rob your piggie banks of $10 and get a ticket now. Remember this draw is open to anyone from wherever you happen to be and it is for a really really good cause :-) and we all THANK YOU for the donation it will make a lot of difference :-)

UKLUG 2011 - Meeting #1 Jan 5th 2011 @ 8pm - The Adventure begins

Those assembled :

Warren "Dictator of the Minifigs" Elsmore
Kitty "The Receptionator" Elsmore
Paul "Leather Clad Biker Joy Boy" Mooney
Steve "German Porn Star" McDonagh
Bill "Hoots Mon Me Bollox are cold in this Kilt" Buchan
Mike "Tickle Me Turtle" Smith
Eileen "Tigger with a clipboard" Fitzgerald
Rob "Ooops where is the floor?" Novak
Matt "Captain xPageo" White

The meeting was called to order by Mr Elsmore at 8pm who put it to the committee that the first order on the agenda was that there was no agenda. Ms Fitzgerald was so shocked that she created a list of her her toys categorised them both alphabetically by name and cross indexed them by size and weight, forced them thru a bubble sort and then threw them, in the correct order order out of her pram.

Put to the vote the committee passed a motion of no confidence in the non agenda mainly to stop Ms Fitzgerland throwing Tigger out of the pram. As Mr Buchan noted this was a health and safety issue as the aforementioned Tigger Soft Toy was many many times bigger than Paul Mooney. It was decided by a majority that instead of a non-agenda that there was an quantum agenda which conforming to Heisenberg's uncertainly principal we could know there is was but not what was on it (or vice a versa) at the same time.
Mr McDonagh drew a picture of a Schrodinger's cat in a box and this distracted Ms Fitzgerald sufficiently so that Mr Novak could hide the rest of her Toys behind a picture of David Tennant.

The first item discussed on the non-spatially apparent agenda was the "theme" for UKLUG 2011, many and varied suggestions were posited by the committee but there seems to be some life in "UKLUG 2011 : The Crayola Conference" which arose from Mr Smith who had fallen asleep in the corner so we poked with a stick to get  his input and as he rose, tousled haired from his dreams of world dominioation he muttered that we as a committee could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others are bright, some have weird names, but we have to learn to live in the same box. The committee will debate this idea further as it seems like a good metaphor for collaboration and it would be a nice bit of themed (and not terribly expensive) tat for the in bag giveaway.

That lead us to the appointment of the most important role of "UKLUG Tat Tsar" (or Czarina) the usual  rounds of xTreme Rock-Paper-Scissors were not required this year as someone has "THE" pictures from ILUG 2010 and is not afraid to use them. Their appointment remains top secret because the world is not ready for pictures/video of certain lotii doing ...  errrr .... things in Marybeth's cloak.


Moving on .. UKLUG ... it was decided will have an infinite number of tracks. There will be Admin, Dev, Management, Sponsor as usual but each of these will be subdivided into a recursive array of "virtual" tracks. Mr Novak is in charge of these Virtual Tracks and has Promised that Mr Robichaux and Mr Krantz will not only have a Quickr Place ready but a Symbian, Blackberry, iPhone, Droid and WinMo app so that the worried conference attendee will not have to bend space and time to work out what session is on when.


Mr White was voted in un-opposed as "Snoopy Matty Squirrel - the web site pimp"

Mr McDonagh was tasked with ensuring that the minutes were not made up like he had for ILUG cos it can look TOO professional  (as if I would).


Ms Fitzgerald wanted it noted in the minutes that "DAVID TENNANT WAS NOT GETTING MARRIED NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!". Mr Buchan provided the distraught Ms Fitzgerald with a Kleenex.

Ms Elsmore then steered the conversation back in a geekward direction with some well chosen words about accommodation near the venue, availability, room rates, proximity where all high on the list of must haves along with a decent bar and snacks available until at least 4am.

The discussion then turned to key note speaker and in a move away from a geek speakers UKLUG may be opened this year by someone who may well have once drunk in the snug of The Rovers Return in Coronation Street with Ena Sharples, however such stardom is expensive so we cannot say to much just yet.

The meeting reached the 26 minute mark and it was noted that this was a record and it would have been had the meeting ended there, it didn't. What we discussed next is so ultra sensitive that I cannot even minute it for fear of starting the Loticopalypse! Needless to say there was much ZOMG!!ing and WTF??ing and some tittering from Mr Buchan and Mr McDonagh (but they can't really help it)


Before the meeting closed it was put by Mr White that it should be mentioned that the UKLUG night is getting closer and should be "biggied up" because not only will it be a WHIZZ bang affair BUT ALSO  he, the LDC chappies and Mr McDonagh are raising some $$$'s for a damn fine charity with some works of art.
So get your hands in your pockets spend $10 and get a ticket for the draw here!

With that the meeting fell into disorder and some of us went off to do rude things with a set of cushions and yogurt..... (Ooops sorry Paul was I not meant to minute that?)

2011 a Review backwards

Casting my eye over Planetlotus i note with interest the number of reviews of 2010 that have appeared, it is the time of year for that sort of thing i know, but I have never been one for following the trend in such things, I plough my own furrow so to speak.

Being Irish and coming from a long line of Irish rogues and nere-do-wells it was deemed useful for we adult male McDonaghs to be adepts in the ancient art of Rhubarbomancy, (Which for those of you unfamiliar with the occult arts is seeing into the future using Rhubarb ... i can not go into details but it involves sugar in your belly button and coatsie's rhubarb jam recipe)

So I have cast the leaves, mashed up the stems and filled my belly button with sugar and can now give you the Review of 2011

January
Not a lot happens in January well for me anyway other than a greater than usual Lotusphere 2011 envy. Which was due to the twit stream and blogs being full of the leaked news of a new lotus web 2 gadget called The Blog And SameTime Aggregated Rss Device now affectionately known as "The Bastard". Ahh to be have been there when it was announced  but such is life.
Paul Mooney gets no taller.

February
A bit of bad code in the new UKs Electoral Commission Candidate Registration Software slips thru unit testing but more on this in May. Theo Hesselmans unveils to much applause his iBlooter his expertly crafted calendaring and scheduling app for mobiles devices linked to the Domino MonLezGetBlootered NSF
Paul Mooney gets no taller.

March

Ed Brill is awarded the Senior Exceptionally Imposing World Wide Figurehead Personage with a really tidy blog design award 2011. Ed was, as always, gracious at the award ceremony where he promised that he would continue to both be a figure head and have a tidy blog
Paul Mooney gets no taller.
April
I get a new mac book pro, and ipad, a new fireblade, new leathers, new helmet for my birthday ... which is nice ...  as is the offer of a place on the Ulster Rugby team for the Heineken Cup Final, but I couldn't really take it up SWMBO wouldn't let me, something about being to old!

Paul Mooney gets no taller.
May
The bug in the Electoral Commissions system results in a corruption of the candidates for the local Northern Ireland Elections with the Crufts Dog Show entrantts list. As a result the Mayor of Belfast is now a Pommerainian called PootsiePoo.
UKLUG in Manchester is a roaring success and at an after conference meal Rob Novak believing he was signing for some 4am chips actually signed himself Viktor and Julian up to Manchester United. Julian was last seen worrying about the end of game communal baths. Viktor and Rob play in the FA Cup Final.

Paul Mooney thinks he got taller, but there was a twist in the measuring tape
Bill Buchan wins a rosette at the Marykirk raft race, it seems he won the "best raft" prize after floatingon his back for 10 mins near the finish.

June
The month of the great podcast famine ... the release of fat electrons onto the Internet by ISPs to throttle streaming of BBC's Top Gear accidentally cause chaos as no-one can download podcasts. Stuart and Darren's TWIL and Bruce and Julian's Taking Notes (Julian is now playing left back for Man United) are hit badly and we in the yellowverse have nothing to listen to. Sales of Take That's come back CD rocket as a result

Paul Mooney gets no taller.
July
There is a heat wave everywhere except Coleraine where it snows. Everyone strips off and goes to the beach, mountains, lakes or anywhere else but their desks. As a result nothing happens
Paul Mooney gets no taller.
August
SWMBO Val gets telegrams from the Queen,Pope and all the heads of state of the G7 for staying married to me for so long and in doing so has made the world a safer place for the last 25 years.Eileen, Coatsie and I receive good news that the 2012 Olympics are allowing the Danderathon as an exhibition sport.. The Danderathon comprises going for a long walk having a cracking good meal and drinking a lot.

Paul Mooney gets no taller.
September
In a surprise move IBM shock the community by announcing Notes 8.5.4 has got a new version of Lotusscript however it transpires a "NOT" was left out a press release but it did provide the bloggers with ample grist to the mill of vent, rant and professional dribbling. It continues even now.
Paul Mooney gets no taller.
October
Java suddenly makes sense! ... No wait that was a dream i had after a particularly fine Stilton and a few glasses of port.
Paul Mooney gets no taller.
November
Twitter's new interface is unveiled ... everyone thinks it is shit but then they always do
Marybeth Raven unveils the new Notes UI which incorporates the new Temporal To Do List which takes your Future To Do's, opens a small portal in the space time continuum checks if you actually do the task or just couldn't be arsed and if the latter it silently deletes in. To Do lists sudden become REALLY useful
Paul Mooney gets no taller.
December
The mini ice age strikes again cold cold cold snow snow snow ice ice ice. This year LS12 plans not only to provide a nice backpack but special Lotus Snows Socks for the northern hemispherian lotii.... and so the slide production begins again for LS12
Paul Mooney gets no taller.

... so there you go,, that was 2011

"Sargent Brill's Lonely Lotus Band" the 3rd prize for the "It's a small lotus World" draw

Okey Dokey

As mentioned in the last post.. there is a draw happening at UKLUG nite at Lotusphere and a REALLY REALLY nice pixel art framed print is up there for first prize.  All you need to do is nip over to here and make a $10  donation, (or as many $10 donations as you want cos you can have more than one)

All monies raised are going to a very fine charity, the Children's Cancer Charity

Now were the chance of winning the Pixel Art not enuff I have done 3 pieces of "unique" art for 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in the draw. There is a painting, a map (see last post) and now this..

"Sargent Brill's Lonely Lotus Band"

(Click for a better view)

If you are not on it, sorry ... i ran out of room...

Cast (in no particular order)

Susan "Notes Goddess" Bulloch

Warren "Lego" Elsmore

Gab Davies

Mark "Wookie" Myers

Ben "Curmudgeon" Poole

Mary Beth Raven

Tim "El Nacho Libre" Clark

Ed Brill

Vowe

Chris "IDoNotes" Millar

Rob "Capt Oblivious" McDonagh

Stuart "TWIL" McIntyre

Darren "T'Other TWIL" Duke

Rob "Free Beer" Novak

Julian "Urinal Cake" Robichaux

Marie "I hate IMAP" Scott

Jess Stratton and Jenna

Kevin "Lotus Guru" Pettitt

John "Starfish" Head

Nathan "Escape Velocity" Freeman

Me

Kathy "Never done Running" Brown

Tom "Duffbert" Duff

Bob Balaban

Paul "Short Arse" Mooney
Carl Tyler (the blue man years)

Matt White

Gayle Elgort

Bruce Elgort

Eileen Fitzgerald

Francie Tanner

...there are also two pint of Guinness, one of Mary Beth's Shoes, the OPEN button, a cock, a squirrel and a kitten and an unabashed plug for Duffberts book.

$10

Thats all .. just $10

and now 4 prizes !

Extra items for the "It's a small lotus world" draw at LS11 UKLUG Nite

The force of nature that is Mr Bruce "Call-me-Animal-cos-I-drum-a-lot" Elgort  and the irrepressible posse of Lotii from the London Developers Co-op have had a whizz bang idea to raise some $$$s for the Children's Cancer Association (cca) and are offering a framed "Pixel Art" image that has lots and lots and lots of Lotus related things to find. Bruce and the London Dev Co-op chaps are and will be revealing bits of the image over the next few weeks as the excitment for LS11 starts to build.


Basically you can enter the draw by buying a $10 (us) ticket here via paypal here or by or from Matt, Mark, Gayle or Bruce at Lotusphere 2011. All monies collected will go directly to the CCA in honor of Danielle Elgort who lost her battle with a brain tumor in 2003.

As you may know I do a bit of drawing and painting in my spare time and as luck would have it I had done a drawing and a painting that are much less exciting that the main draw Pixel Art picture (which is really whizz bang fandabbydozey wonderful !!!), which I am shipping over to add to the prize haul for this draw.

So if you dig deep into the wallet and spring for a $10 ticket here  there are now a second and third prize piccies with a "Lotus World" theme in the draw.. so why no buy 3 tickets .. or 6 or 12 ???

First up .. we have what we all really really need .. a Map to the "Lands of the Lotii"

(Click to Make it bigger)

 And ... a still life of The UKLUG Advertising campagin in full swing

  

So go on.. dig deep and lets get some cash raised for a might good cause!

Brian Cowan is a nice man , I know he is :)

Brian Cowam is the Prime Minister of Ireland and is supposed to be a very nice chap.. so I sent him this email this morning. I wonder will be reply?

The UK Insurers MarkerStrudy Group are a shower of useless prats

68 Days ago I was knocked off my motorcycle at a junction by a car driver who managed to have his eyes closed. He must have because (a) I wasn't moving (b) I am a largish chap on a largish bike and (c) he was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Once discharged from hospital I phoned my insurer (Equity Red Star) and reported the accident gave them all the details and they had a form with me the following day less than 24 hour later. Because my statement and the police accident report absolved me of any blame they recorded the details of my claim and because I was Third Party Fire and Theft insured and not fully comprehensive yet had legal cover got me in contact with a solictor.

One week after the accident my solictor had been given all the relevant paper work by me, the doctors and the bike's mechanic. I was ready to start the process of getting back on the road.

However The MarketStudyGroup who were the insurers of the driver that hit me have a policy they will take no phone calls or emails about claims you MUST connect with them via snail mail. This was duely done, and done again , and done again.

Not a f**king peep out of them, no loss adjustor to see the wreckage of bike, helmet, jacket, trousers and phone. No request for my medical records or interest in the 3 times a week trip to the medical center to get my leg wound dressed. Nothing. Nada, Zip not a fecking sausage.

Then my Solictor sent them a sternly worded letter threatening court action, not to get them to process my claim the action was JUST to get them to respond to his requests.

Then today 68 days after the accident over two months later I get a form from them in the post!

68 Days? 68 Days?

It does not take 68 days to stick 3 pieces of paper in an envelope, address it and stick it in the post.
It does not take 68 days to correctly administer a process that takes around 2 minutes and thats if you write slowly with a crayon and are not to clever with your letters.

To add insult to injury the covering letter says
"[we] will endeavour to settle this claim quickly without the need for expensive court action"
emblassoned on the cover.

Sorry Markerstudy Group you do NOT! You make the slightest effort to get off your arse and post a form into a labour of Hercules. Your endevaours to date make continental drift seem brisk.


If you are a UK driver and are thinking of insuring with the Markerstudy Group PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reconsider as it seems they really could not be arsed doing anything other than taking your money and laughing all the way to the bank!

#fail#fail#fail#fail#fail#fail#fail#fail

Generating a Random number on an iSeries in CL

This i have to admit is very very esoteric and even the iSeries Geeks out there may not be that interested however if you ever need to get a Random Number in CLP or RPG on an iSeries here is a way to do it.

Neither CLP nor RPG has a Pseudo Random Number generator built in, so we have to kludge it to get it to work. You can link the QLEMF C library and use the CERNAN0 api which is the method I found when I went and Googled it the other day.

The other way which I didnt find is to use the QSH shell to do it. This method generates a random number between 0 - 32767 inside the QSH shell env and then stores the result in a DTAARA so that the calling program can access the value, as there in no native way to return vars from QSH environment

01. CRTDTAAARA MyRand *CHAR 5
02. Insert the following code into your PGM

DCL &CMD *CHAR 40
DCL &MYRAND *CHAR 5
CHGVAR VAR(&CMD) VALUE('print $RANDOM|datarea -lw MYRAND')
QSH CMD(&CMD)
RTVDTAARA DTAARA(SX002A) RTNVAR(&MYRAND)

The Print $RANDOM generates the random number

The | separates the two commands

The datarea -lw  MYRAND takes the random number and stores it in the DTAARA

Simples

The Yellow Bitchiness Quotient Analytics begin

Given the great brewhaha re bitchiness in the Yellowverse and being of a scientific mind I have spent a considerable number of McDonut CPU cycles analysing and cogitating over how some sensible base metrics can be achieved so that a decent, fair and equible "pointage" system may be applied.

Using my not inconsiderable skills and the rather lovely HTML Canvas (excanvas for IE* users) object I have managed to combine multiple RSS streams, Planetlotus, Twitter, Facebook and applied some Bayesian tricks I learned from Spam Filtering and come up with the AYB (ambient Yellowverse Bitchiness) gauge you can see to the left.

Hopefully over the next weeks and months we can get some baseline figures together, form an operational committee and start allocating Points as an when required. .... I will need a period of extreme bitchiness for the next couple of days to get a decent calibration. So do feel free to be as Bitchy as you like.

If anyone would like a copy of the widget please do let me know

The ILUG Paradox

Well it is over for another 2 years!
I can say without fear of contradiction that I am totally knackered but smiling from ear to ear.
ILUG does that to me, always has and with a bit of luck and professional planning and 12th level black belt ninja clipboarding always will.

Once again it was my honour to be a "green shirt" although the better half the ever lovely and patient Val does posit that green is not my colour ;-). I have now been "in" on an the preparations for UKLUG09 and an ILUG10 and I can say that even the months of oraginising are achieved with smiles and the best sort of professional fun ... (and the occasional chorus of the Tigger Song and endless height gags) With this sort of preparation what else would the final product be but fun.

ILUG is about having your blue touch paper lit so that you can go back to work and have the bravery to take the next step into a new skill knowing there are people out there that have done it and to whom you can reach out to when you stumble.

ILUG is about learning that you are not alone in your cubicle. There is a worldwide community of real people out there all doing the same thing as you.


ILUG is about being involved in something that is bigger than any one of us, the greater Domino Community (yes even admins)

Others have mentioned the sterling efforts of Paul, Eileen, Warren, Kitty, Gab, Rob, Tom, Tim, Matt ,Kerr, Bill, Mike, Julian and Coatsie so I will say nowt other than without all the efforts of these stalwart souls ILUG would be a different beast ... well done all of you!


The sponsors - well this year more than most now money is tight, you came through again and paid for the event - major major kudos to you all !!!

The speakers - a fine bunch of lads and lassies briming to overflowing with enthusiasm, wit and charm sharing their expertise for free, you all rock!

The venue - who put up with some strange end of day activities and odd requests.

However ILUG wouldn't work with out all you and there lies the paradox. No matter how we fiddled ,futtered, pimped and preened to get the "perfect" conference, if you the attendees did not come ILUG would shrivel and die very quickly

In our hectic, fast-paced, tech-driven society, it's common to feel overwhelmed, isolated and alone. I hope that you all re-discover the healing and empowering role that our wee community can bring to your lives. The sense of belonging I feel when I interact with the Domino community gives me a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in my professional life. So , both as an minor helper in the ILUG team and as an attendee, to all the friends old and new that make up the wider Domino community THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH! :-)

Now ... Monlezgetblootered ;-)

The story of my recent wee crash and my HTC story concludes

The Full Crash incident report is detailed here

The HTC can be found here

Getting My HTC Desire repaired by Carphone Warehouse\Geek Squad (part 3)

Part 3 of the sorry tale here

Getting My HTC Desire repaired by Carphone Warehouse\Geek Squad (part 2)

The story continues on the family Blog here .. day #9 and still no phone but it has arrived at the repair center and they are diagnosing it.

Getting my HTC Desire Reparied by Carphone Warehouse/Geek Squad in the UK

Read part #1 of the story here so far six days of silence are being annoying and worrisome in equal measure

ILUG 2010 It is getting closer are your registered yet?

ILUG countdown widget

If you would like an ILUG 2010 Widget like the one on the left just copy this code into a convienent HTML/JS widget enclosurer on your blog

<script language='javascript' src='http://slightlydoolally.com/ilugcd.js'></script><div id='ilug'></div><script>ilugcd()</script>

Help required with Duffy The Opera (An Idea waiting for a very drunken party)

It has been suggested by Mike Smith that we make the "Duffy" epic into an opera.. and tentative work has begun.. picture the scene.. duffy in a cubicle with the lights subdued and a general air of saddness fills the stage.. Duffy takes a deep breath and start to sing....the Duffy Aria ....

Im being swallowed by a sharepoint migration
I'm being swallowed by a sharepoint migration
I'm being swallowed by a sharepoint migration
And I don't like it very much

Oh blow (oh blow) it's swallowed my workflow  (it swallowed my workflow)

Oh peff (oh peff) it's swallowed NSF  (it's swallowed my NSF)

Oh pishty (oh psihty) he's up to my twistie (it's up to my twistie)

Oh Lawks it's swallowed my BookMarks (it's swallowed my bookmarks)

Oh grace (oh grace) he swallowed my workspace (he swallowed my workspace)

Oh dash it's swallowed my cache, (it's swallowed my Cache)

Oh feck, it's up to my .....

[Duffy collapses in a sobbing heap]

This is a work in progress additional lines required .. apply below

Single authenticated point of entry to iNotes for all your users

It has been a while since I did a Domino Geek posting, however I came across this today and thought I would share it. Basically you can if you know the URL get into your Lotus Notes eMail via a browser. The problem is that most users can be .. well .. forgetful and having to remember a big long string of characters is a bit of a pain that and we wanted a single URL that would (a) authenticate the user and (b) open the mail file so we came up with this solution.

*Edit* It has been pointed out in the comments that there is a "Redirect" function  built into notes, there is and it very useful, however it does require some work on each server and when you have lots of servers in remote locations using different languages and to be honest I wanted a simple one stop shop, replicate it to all servers when needed. what follows is an alternate to, but not necessarily better than what is provided naturally **

A single NSF with a short URL  http://[yourserver]/wmg.nsf/wmail.html
This launches a page that looks like this

The user logs in and if successful their mail file opens.

So how did I do this?

A) When the Button on form on the page is clicked a call is set up to
names.nsf?login with the PostData set up with the userid and password
most importantly there is also a "REDIRECTTO=" parameter in the PostData that directs (on successful authentication) to an agent called OPENMAIL

B) The call to the url with the postdata is sent to the server via an AJAX call

C) If the authentication fails the AJAX call receives the default login page, and an error msg is sent to the user

D) If authentication is sucessful the REDIRECTTO parameter is called directing the browser to the OPENMAIL agent.

E) The OpenMail agent does a look up on the NAB and extracts the mail file name for the user

F) The URL that will open the user's mail file is constructed on the server and returned to the browser as a JSON variable.


G) The URL is used in some JS to change the location.href, and since the browser is now authenticated the mail file opens.(in this case in LITE mode you can tweak the code the way you see fit)


Simples...

Proper un-encrypted and ACLed file


Download .. stick in the data dir of your server, sign it, sign it again (just to be sure) and got to http://[yourserver]/wmg.nsf/wmail.html or add the link to your intranet 

Enjoy

Offical Minutes of the ILUG oganising committee - 9th Aug 2010

**** Names, locations and proclivities have been redacted to protect the guilty ****

ILUG 2010 is now so certain to go ahead that Celine Dion is penning the lyrics to the theme song and even as I write the organisers are throbing with preternatural wibbliness for tonite was one of the famed ILUG 2010 skype calls.

Date : 09 August 2010

Time : 21:00 BST

Place: Skypeverse

Those Present:

The very small just married one who can't say THREE properly

The very organised one with a clipboard and matching walking boots

The one that builds things from wee bricks

The one that looks after the one that builds things from wee bricks

The American one that gives away drink

The socttish wide and pleasantly demented one

The scottish one that is less wide than the other scottish one and has better ties

The goddess of all things adminy, thrice blessed be her id file and smiting wand

The quiet perpetually tired one (well he does have twin toddlers)

The one that can never get a hotel room cos reception laugh about his name

The one who wont see ILUG because the organised one will have killed him with a clipboard

Apologies:

Apolgies were heard from the one that actually has a social life because was having a social life and it was nothing at all to do with xPages .. honest .. were read into the minutes and accepted amidst much muted jealousy and "Harrumphs!"

Agenda 

********* had an agenda, but managed to loose it in *** handbag. ******* put it to the floor that we should make it up as we went along, this was seconded by ******** and put to the vote which was passed with ********* abstaining because he wasn't llistening and thought we were voting on allowing ******* with cucumbers to be a special session thread.


Item 1: Session Threads
It was decided that unlike other LUGs we would strike out in new creative ways and rename our session threads. So for ILUG 2010 instead of Administration , Development , Management and Sponsor threads they would be called and themed "Postman Pat" , "Bob the Builder", "Dragon's Den" and "Top Gear" 


Item 2: Organisers Costumes
Given the credit crunch ILUG2010 will be unable to pay for the complete body wax for **** ******** and as a result there will be no, I repeat no, Developer Guru Mankinis. However it was proposed that in the spirit of solidarity with our bothers and sister geeks from around the world we will dress up as cups of coffee and pieces of cold pizza.


Item 3: Entertainment
It was noted in the minutes that we in ILUG are forward thinking, tuned in, hip to the beat sort of people and we take seriously our responsibility to entertain our guests. Much discussion and ideas were considered and a suggesstion by ********* seconded by ********* that ********* be tied to a stake and flogged with a dead fish because of the "tigger" song was thankfully not passed. However "Turf Throwing" , "Wheelbarrow Jousting" "Cucumber Sandwich Discus Throwing" and "3Legged xPage Coding" are all in the short list.

Item 4: Session selection

As per usual ILUG has been gifted with a surfeit of sessions and as we have too many some will have to be, reluctantly, turned down. Some of the ones that didn't make it are.

"iTrolley - The making of the track your shopping trolleys mashup"

"Making it so - xPage Mobile Contols and Star Trek" 

"Organized Crime and DAOS - the untold story"

"NerdGirls are from Venus and NerdGuys don't know what soap is for"

"Tivoli - Cool Software or a big park in Denmark?"

"Quickr flavoured Yogurt - the real story"

with fantastic sessions like this not making the cut how good are the select ones??

Item 5: Any Other business

********* Asked "Why is it called Donkey Kong when there is no donkey?"  the response from ********* was that if a hen and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half it would take a donkey with a wooden leg 20 mins to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle. These seeds made up the contents of the barrels in the aforementioned game ergo Donkey Kong.

There being not other any other business the new ILUG tune was played and everyone sang along with great gusto except ******* who really really doesn't like being called Tigger and had never heard the song before.

Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 3 "Is this your Ewok?"

Where we are introduced to a Pseudo French Inspector, Mistress Marybeth of the "Never used Vista Virgins" and the difference between Dastard and Bastard


He looked around the room surrounded by the detritus of a party. Half eaten pizzas beer bottles by the dozen, an unturned bottle of diet Coke in a ice bucket, a dart board with a picture of Bill Gates on.. the picture was more hole that picture. He stooped and picked up a crumpled flyer "Sharepointless Summer Party" .. yes they had been here and recently.

Flinching at the creaking of a floorboard he turned and dropped into Debugo-Ketsu Dachi stance in one fluid movement.

"Hello..." said Privet "Why are your wearing gloves and a hazmat suit and why have you stuck one thumb in your nose and the other in your ear?"

Privet while a recognised expert in all things javascript was not a adept in the higher forms of programming martial arts. Duffy nudged him and said "Shhhhhhhhhhhhh"

"ello" said the man his accent thick and quite hard to understand "wot our yew doing ere?"

"We live here" said Privet

"Ahhhhh " said the man .. "that wood hexplain hit"

"And you are ..... ?" Privet let his question drift like a fart in a crowded lift.

The man relaxed "I am Inspector Áchaux, Rob Áchaux of the Surrette DAOS squad" he paused, "Is this yer eeewuk?"

"yereeeewuk?" enquired Privet

"Oui  yer EEEEWUK?"

"Sorry no still not quite there.. my what?"

"EEEEWUK you know .... zay our zmall and vury hairy .... from stur warez"

"stur warez? ... ooooo Star wars .. ahhh you mean EWOK!"

"Yes EEEEWUK zat is what I said"

"That is not an Ewok" Privet replied, " Zat is .. sorry that is Duffy"

"Duffy The Banana Slayer (tm)?" asked Inspector Áchaux, his accent suddenly replaced by a southern drawl, which to some ears is as bad as a faux french one.

"Yes that would be me" replied Duffy somewhat hurt but not that surprised by the Ewok reference, well it was better than Pappa Smurf but not much.

"I have been sent here by..." Áchaux paused, looked around and whispered "Bruce of the Very Large Fonts ,may he be Brilled for ever, of the council of elders sent me to bring news of the HellNose"

"Right" said Duffy, "and about time too! Privet ... make tea, come Inspector Áchaux we have much to talk about"

"Portaland is full of evil evil forces. There are some things I can just smell. It's like a sixth sense" said the Inspector

Duffy finched "No, I think that would be one of the normal five."

Privet returned with the tea ... "well Duffy is the man for you if fighting evil is what you want"

Duffy swelled to his full height ... "I can beat up the Microsofties until the cows come home... and then I can beat up the cows."

"So we in the council of Elders have heard" intoned the Inspector, " and that is the reason I am here!. After many meetings and staring into the shiney side of the Sacred Connections Installation DVD we have become aware of a plot, a dastardly plot..."

"Yes Microsofties are reall bastar..."

Duffy interupted Privet .. "No Priv Dastard, it is like bastard but written in C#"

The Inspector sipped his tea and continued

"Indeed dastardly , dastardly in the extreme. It would seem the powers of evil are amassing on the other side of the rift. Large ripples in the sametime development cycle have been observed and Mistress MaryBeth of the We have never used Vista Virgins has had troubling visions of really really really boring user interfaces and infinitly pointless button bars!"

The inspector's words hung heavy in the air just like when you walk into a pair of just washed tights hung carelessly in the bathroom by a girlfriend.

"Feck" said Privet

"Feck indeed!" said Duffy "Tell us More inspector.. we need details"

Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 2 "The Journey Home"

In which we do not meet Nigel the out of work sarbannes oxley auditor and bus shelter attendant, Duffy has a Beatlemania flash back, Bill Buchans Knees make an appearence and we meet Gladys from the Sharepoint Coven


The group had been partying in the tea shops of south central Portaland. Tonight was the re-opening of the hottest geek club in town. The owner had completely remodelled the club in yellow and renamed it "Banana Daiquiri". No one actually knew who it was that now owned the club there were rumours of someone called Big Ed from Chicago who seemed to spend a lot of time in airports. Much Googling by the locals had turned up nothing of interest apart from a rather good article on knitting with seaweed by someone called Brill. Why he named the club the way he had was another mystery. Bananas were scare in Oregon lots and lots of Moose and few bananas, but everyone agreed, it made a pleasant change from "The Debuggers Break Point and Social Club".. and there, gentle reader we will leave the revellers and catch up with our hero.

Duffy pulled the collar of his coat up against the light drizzle that was falling and strode out into the dusk. He hated it when it rained! Being a short arse meant that he had to be careful near the deeper puddles particularly if he hadn't brought his water wings, which he hadn't on this particular night.

The Bus Stop was empty, which was odd. Nigel who had made the bus stop his home was no where to be seen. Nigel, a Sarbannes Oxley auditor who had been caught in possession of a sense of humour and had his auditing propelling pencil broken into seven pieces by a super secretive cadre called "The Auditorium" prior to being fired, kept the bus shelter clean and tidy. He had even gone as far as installing Free Wifi, coffee machine, floral curtains and a set of steps so Duffy could climb up to the seats.

Duffy scanned the nearby alleyway, nothing there but the worn out dreams of yesterday, yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away, but now it seems they are here to stay.. yesterday.

"Damn" exclaimed Duffy, shaking his head, "I am having another rampant Beatlemania flashback" The bite of a semi-dead beatle obsessed MS-SQL 2000 admin had happened over 10 years ago on a balmy karaoke night in Kimonos. The SQLombie had not taken offence at Duffy's part in the performance of "Don't go Breaking my Heart" By Elton John and Kiki Dee, but had been driven mad by the FLASH FLASH FLASH of the white.. oh so very white knees flashing neath the hem of his partner Will Bill Buchan's kilt. Such was the potency of the toxin in the bite, Duffy would break into spontaneous Beatle related thought processes. He also had an un-natural need to talk about "Inner Left Joins" when kissing his long suffering wife.

The rain continued to fall, the bus stop remained deserted and all of Portaland seemed to be asleep, but then Portaland always seemed that way. Which in itself was odd. A town planning screw ups back in the 1850's had sealed Portaland's fate because rather than build the town on a field called "Wibbleawonqucholicasqamish" which means in the local Indian language "A nice place to build a wee town field"  the founding fathers chose a field nearby called "Zolunquanobblefon gaffa gonwallopaonopee"  which means "Undead zombies live under the rocks build your town over there in the field with the nice name stupid". Over the years those "in the know" had come to realise that Portaland was in fact built on a rift in the space time continuum thru which reruns of "I love Lucy" and "days of our lives" leaked directly into the frontal lobes of the inhabitants during the day. At night.. OOOOO .. at nite Portaland lived up to the name the slayers used for it ..... HELLNOSE.

The party goers spewed from the Banana Daiquiri into the darkness of the Portaland night. Singing songs fueled by Hendricks gin, Guinness and cucumbers they staggered down the block towards Duffy and his bustop.

He heard them long before he could see them. He made sure his coat was buttoned and he had a firm grip on his stout stick for he knew like he always did that these were the spawn of the nose. Hag ridden denizens of the realms of Redmond who were riding high on the temporary freedom of a night in Portaland.

"They may pass by" Thought Duffy, but he knew they wouldn't they never did.

"Ah ha!" shouted their leader, a tall leggy blond called Gladys. "If it isn't The Slayer!"
She spat the words out as if the saying of them had soured her spit.

Duffy turned and gave her a withering look.

"You never learn Gladys do you. You Sharepointers are all the same you never have quite all the patches that make you run clean"

"So you think you are hard .... are you hard LITTLE slayer?   are you ...."

Duffy turned slowly, arms akimbo, "Leave Now, take your friends with you"

Gladys and Duffy stared at each other looking for a weakness and in that moment .... draw

Just then a Moose that was sneaking past let loose with a stentorian fart, as is common in beasts that eat a lot of roughage. Gladys winched for a second, that was all Duffy needed, quick as flash he had intoned the sacred words of the first paragraph of "Best Practices for Building Web Applications for Domino 8.5.1" and set on Gladys and her friends with a whirlwind of blows from his stout stick.

Soon all that was left was a pamphlet on Active Directory fluttering in the breeze and a faint but distinctive smell of Bananas

Duffy sniffed

Duffy still had it.. he IS the Banana Slayer!

The bus arrived, Georgina the driver and part time WWF wrestler nodded to Duffy
Duffy got on.. and the bus pulled away
Somewhere someone was playing the music from the end of "The Hulk"but very quietly so only the gassy moose noticed

Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 1 "The Adventure Begins"

Where Duffy and his sidekick Privet are introduced to the reader and Matt White gets Dissed

"Are you sure this is a good idea Privet?" Duffy asked, peering at the screen

Privet laughed at the concern in his friend's voice. "It'll be fine, Duffy. It's a very simple xPages App. I won't mess it up."

"I don't know," Duffy said, unconvinced. "I'm just not sure you should be using fancy coding tricks to spice up your life." He thought for a moment, then chuckled. "I'm still not used to the idea that you *have* a life, come to think of it."

Privet gave him a glare and stuck his tongue out playfully. "You're just jealous cos I am tall and you are a short and look like a smurf"

The comment made Duffy think of Paul Mooney

Privet noticed, and dropped the grimoire He'd been reading on him desk. "Oh, Duffy, I'm sorry! I should have thought before I said anything."
He reached down and patted Duffy on the baldy bit on the top of his head.

"It's okay, Priv," Duffy assured him, dodging the patting which was really quite hard and rather unpleasant. "I'll be okay. It's just hard, y'know?"

"I know it is," Privet said. "I don't even want to think of how I would cope if an ILUG session crowd turned THAT nasty on me, and all because you mentioned Share....."


"SHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Don't even mention it! It was bad enuff for me but what about Bill?" Duffy exclaimed,

"What about him?" Privet replied, confused.

"I don't think they ever managed to remove that QUICKR memory stick!" Duffy said

Privet whinced at the memory and started to reply, and Duffy cut him off...
"You never spend any time with the debugger any more. You're always cracking code with no error trapping ... Commando Coding..." Duffy shook his head "Pretty soon you will be appearing in your OWN worst practices session at lotusfear!"

"That's not true!" Privet said, stung by Duffy's words. Duffy gave him a look, and he went on,
"Okay, I guess I am It's just... weird , Duffy. I've coded in LS since I was a young coder, but since xPages came along I feel like .... I don't even know LS coding anymore."

"And why do you think that is?" Duffy asked.

"I don't know," Privet said. Duffy gave him another look, and he sighed. "Okay, I do know. It's Matt White. Everything's been different since I took his xPages 101 session at IamLUG."

“Ah HA!” Exclaimed Duffy … “You HAVE been more than dabbling in the dark arts then?”

"I have not!" Privet cried.

"Yes, you have, Privet. .. i am sure I saw you muttering “Repeateo Controlleoamus the other day!"
Privet thought for a moment, then looked down at the keyboard, unable to meet Duffy's eyes.

"arse,...." He answered in a very small voice.

Duffy nodded. "Yeah," He said, softly. "arse indeed, Priv. You are nibbling away at the dark side's cookies and soon you will have NO time for Lotuscript and you will code nothing but xPages”

Privet shivered, remembering the undead double variable that had caused so much trouble with the POS application. "That was the last time.. honestly!"

"It had better be!" Duffy said. "because you know the next stage is a quick slide into CSS and then it will all be over!” Privet's head snapped up, and Duffy reassured him, "That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's natural for you to want to play with new things. But you can't forget the old, the Old Ways are important, too."

"Yeah," Privet agreed. "I know." He looked into Duffy's eyes. "Did Steve ask you to talk to me about this?"

Duffy smiled. "Yeah," He admitted. "He is an old fart but Steve and Bob B are the Arch prelates of the Old Ways and while they won't admit it, but they are worried about you"

Privet smiled back "I do miss the joy of DIM s as NEW NotesSession ... Okay, then. I'll throw a few LS Libraries together , I promise, and I will put them on OpenNTF too.”

"Good," Duffy said, climbing onto a handy box of Lotus 4.5 installation diskettes to shake Privet's hand. "Very good."

Releasing his friend, he asked, "Now, are you sure you want to do this code?"

Privet replied. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure."

"Do I want to know what it does?" Privet looked heavenwards, after a second Duffy went on, "That's a no, then. Just be careful, Privet. and no playing with the live servers or Eileen with have your guts for garters?"

"What do you mean?" Privet asked.

"ITIL Protection, that's what I mean. You'll make sure you're safe, right?"

"Of course, Duffy! I, uh, I did “Change Management for Careless Devs 101” only last week. I even stayed awake the WHOLE way through! And I always use... you know...", Privet Blushed Deeply,  "Lots of logging" his voice trailled off , embarrassed.

"Good," Duffy said, relieved. "And on that note, I'm outta time. I'd wish you luck, but I don't want to get that involved, and I have a bus to catch"

Privet laughed. "I don't blame you. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Good," Duffy said. Then he waved and left Privet alone with his code.

Privet smiled after him friend, then went back to sorting arrays using arcance and deviant tricks.