About Craig

Developer in the financial sector focusing on back end data management. Interested in technology, good beers, films, games.

Techmeetup Glasgow: January 2014

With the start to the new year, Techmeetup Glasgow is back after its 2 month hiatus. Due to a double booking this month it will take place on Thursday rather than the usual Wednesday but will still take place in Glasgow University.

The talks this month:

Nima Montazeri from ThoughtWorks on Transport Network Route Finding Using A Time Dependant Graph
Nima will share his experiences of building a route finding application for Manchester’s Metrolink system (www.tramchester.co.uk) using open data (GTFS) and graph database technology (Neo4j). He will touch on the data he had to work with, the modelling process (successes and failures), and the importance of time in the model.Thanks to our sponsors Neo, SkyScanner and Glasgow University for making the event possible.

Andrew Fowler from Skyscanner on Test Automation: Evaluating a convergent approach for web and native apps
Within Skyscanner we have been investigating how we could move from a dual automation approach (two different technology stacks, two different engineering technology skill sets, one which is focussed on native apps, one which is focussed on web) towards a convergent tooling stack and approach.
This presentation would include a demonstration of a prototype framework running across real devices and genymotion emulation for mobile and a direct comparison of code constructs across Mobile and Web implementations.

 

As usual, I will be around for further discussion and drinks afterwards.

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks

Its the start of the year; so time to set some learning challenges! A few of the guys from Glasgow Techmeetup started a Code Craft meetup based on the Manifesto for Software Craftmenship and a love for craft beer (just don’t ask about Joe’s chant…). They picked out a book in The Pragmatic Programmers series – Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A pragmatic guide to learning programming languages.

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks

I’ve looked at some of the languages before but not with a lot of progress. Looking forward to getting a good start to learning this year – not to mention drinking some good beer with others on the same journey.

Kickstarter Project Delivery:Part 1

I’ve been a keen backer of projects on Kickstarter for over a year now, and have backed over 100 projects, with most of them reaching their goal (sometimes only just). The attraction of new gadgets/books/games/AR/posters that hit a specific niche seems to be easily filled by someone’s eye for opportunity or desire to bring something they love to life.  However, with over 100 projects back, it is not surprising that many projects miss their originally target dates for completion. Anyone who has ever worked on any kind of project knows this – it happens, people are bad at estimating how long large projects take.

That isn’t to say poor estimates are to blame, some of the projects backed changed designs (part no longer in production/more money better parts/fit a new requirement), some were hit by sudden death of key members of their team, huge impact of demand for the project, manufacturing issues, customs being terrible, shipping companies sending things to the wrong destination – the list goes on. Someone at work posted some interesting stats about how many projects had arrived to schedule and I thought it be interesting to take a look at similar stats for my backed projects.

Late Kickstarter Projects By Month(s) late

Late Kickstarter Projects By Month(s) late

Above is one of the charts I came up with. I thought starting with projects that have not been delivered and are currently overdue. I’ve taken the date for the pledge level to be the date of completion not the beginning (things might look a bit better on months 1-4 in these cases). Just over half of the late projects are over 4 months late with 3 being over a year late! This has me a little worried given the number of projects I have backed and I am starting to understand why some publishers/organisations wouldn’t have given the project the light of day. That said – of the late projects, the vast majority I am happy enough with why they are late – apart from 1. PhoneSoap – they changed their design to fit the iPhone 5, by the time the change was made a part wasn’t being made anymore, the new part they choose to replace it wasn’t manufactured in anywhere near the volume they needed, so it got downgraded to a much lesser component, then there were manufacturing issues, electrical certification issues and finally even the US Government Shutdown/Democracy failure.

Still – many have delivered, and some beyond my original expectations. Part 2 will continue with more stats and charts.

TechMeetup Glasgow: Lightning Talks

TechMeetup Glasgow returns this Wednesday. As always I will be in attendance. This month features another round of lightning talks, featuring:

Gary Fleming, Graeme West, Craig Nicol, Sam England, Steven Grant, Rohan Gunatillake

For those not familiar with lightning talks, each presenter gets 20 slides and has 20 seconds to present each slide before they advance automatically.

TechMeetup is made possible by the amazing financial support from the University of Glasgow, Neo, and SkyScanner.

See you on the 28th of August, 2013 at 6.30pm.
5th Floor
School of Computing
18 Lilybank Gardens
G12 8QQ
by Hillhead Underground
Glasgow Westend

For queries email Ijonas Kisselbach (ijonas.kisselbach@gmail.com)

About TechMeetup Glasgow:
TechMeetup Glasgow is the “west coast chapter” of TechMeetup, Scotland’s finest  monthly tech gathering. We talk about technology, design, code, mobile apps, web apps, social networking and the ecosystem they form.

TechMeetup has been run in Glasgow since April 2009 and draws a good crowd of nice folk and great speakers – held together by the magic of pizza and beer.

TechMeetup is held in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

As always we will be in Brel afterwards for a few beers. For more information visit http://techmeetup.co.uk/ or follow @techmeetup on Twitter.

TechMeetup Glasgow: Gaming & Startups

TechMeetup Glasgow returns this Wednesday. As always I will be in attendance. Details can be found below:

TechMeetup Glasgow is back on the 5th Floor of the School of Computing this Wednesday – 24th of July 2013 – at 6.30pm

Our two talks this month form the focus of a great gaming/startup-oriented evening.

Alan Shaw on WallaBee: 83 Countries, 50 US States, 2 Years.
Alan is on the creative side of game mechanics, artwork at WallaBee. This talk is about how WallaBee launched, built up users and how they retain them. Alan will also focus on third party developers, their products and how they can make money off WallaBee.

Roger Dubar on Zapcoder
Zapcoder lets you create & share games & apps on smartphones, tablets and desktops. Roger will tell us about his journey creating Zapcoder and his journey finding funding to support his project.

TechMeetup is made possible by the amazing financial support from the University of Glasgow, Neo, and SkyScanner.

See you on the 24th of July, 2013 at 6.30pm.
5th Floor
School of Computing
18 Lilybank Gardens
G12 8QQ
by Hillhead Underground
Glasgow Westend

For queries email Ijonas Kisselbach (ijonas.kisselbach@gmail.com)

About TechMeetup Glasgow:
TechMeetup Glasgow is the “west coast chapter” of TechMeetup, Scotland’s finest  monthly tech gathering. We talk about technology, design, code, mobile apps, web apps, social networking and the ecosystem they form.

TechMeetup has been run in Glasgow since April 2009 and draws a good crowd of nice folk and great speakers – held together by the magic of pizza and beer.

TechMeetup is held in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

 

A few of us will be heading to Brel on Ashton lane afterwards to continue the discussions over a nice cold beer.

TechMeetup Glasgow Tonight 6.30pm Talks on School Pupils & Tech + OpenGL/WebGL

TechMeetup Glasgow is back TONIGHT on the 5th Floor of the School of Computing.

Besides drinks, pizza, and a natter we’ve two great talks on offer:

Aileen Hamilton
Encouraging school pupils to follow a career in the world of Technology.
Daniel Livingstone and Andrew Richards
Khronos: Leading OpenGL, WebGL and many others. 

As ever, the event is free and no sign-up is necessary.

TechMeetup is made possible by the amazing financial support from the University of GlasgowNeoSkyScanner and small donations from community members. Thank you all.

See you TONIGHT at 6.30pm.
5th Floor
School of Computing
18 Lilybank Gardens
G12 8QQ
by Hillhead Underground
Glasgow Westend

Here’s a Google Map to the venue.

For queries email Ijonas Kisselbach (ijonas.kisselbach@gmail.com)

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Aileen Hamilton before at my induction to the STEM Ambassador program (http://www.stemnet.org.uk/content/ambassadors/). The program is important to help give pupils role models within STEM industries as well as knowledge of the industries. Often teachers do not have practical experience of what they are teaching in a real world environment; by giving teachers the resources to do this, we can help inspire the next generation of programmers, engineers, scientists, statisticians that will be joining our industries. It should be an interesting talk, and hopefully inspire more people to get involved.
As usual I will be hanging around afterwards to continue the discussions in Brel over a few beers.

Huge Collection of Free Microsoft eBooks

Spotted that Microsoft Sales Excellence Program Manager – Eric Ligman is giving away a load of free eBooks, that developers might be interested in. I don’t currently work with any of the technologies but have seen a few in action and they seemed impressive (at least when using the entire Microsoft stack).

Huge collection of Free Microsoft eBooks for you, including: Office, Office 365, SharePoint, SQL Server, System Center, Visual Studio, Web Development, Windows, Windows Azure, and Windows Server

 

 

BCS presentation on SAP

This evening I will be attending the monthly BCS Glasgow Branch meeting.

“The main focus is going to be on two SAP products that look to accelerate the Business Warehouse – SAP HANA and BWA. This is of particular importance in todays world of Business Analytics.
The presentation will also look at how to guage what size of implementation is required.”
Refreshments will be available from 6:00pm, and the meeting will start at 6:30pm.
Details can be found on the Glasgow BCS Branch site.
Update Jan 14th @ 17:43 : due to work, I am now unable to attend the event.