I am moving my blog to a self-hosted environment here at http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog. Having owned this domain of Softwaremaker.NET for some time now, it only makes sense to move my blog back there as well.
Not only am I moving my blog back there, I am switching blog engines as well...from .TEXT to dasBlog. I love the fact that dasBlog gives me more customizable and extensible features and also NOT to forget to mention that dasBlog doesnt use a database, just XML Files. That saves some licensing costs for me as well.
The most important part of this move is the fact that I retain control over my blog. That is a huge plus point for me !!! I have noticed that .TEXT Weblogs hosted on DotNetJunkies seemed to run into many problems recently. Downtime, some very common recurring exceptions of SQLParameters and @ItemCount have also plagued the weblogs of DotNetJunkies recently.
Having advertisements on the blogs of DotNetJunkies was the final straw that broke the camel's back and triggered me to make this move.
Sorry Doug and Donny. However, thanks so much for providing me with a fantastic blog host for the past year.
For the rest of the folks who follow my blog, do NOT forget to point your links, opml to me at http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog and I hope to be able to further interest you with more technical and XML Services blog posts in the future.
See you there. (Hows that for some in-your-face marketing ? 
)
Sunday 12 Sept 04
Palace of the Golden Horses (PoGH) of MINES Resort City is a rather long drive away from the airport. In fact, the airtravel from Singapore to KL is faster...
Met Steven Forte, the MS RD for New York. He looks like and seems like one hyper party-animal dude ;)
Met a couple of the local Malaysia DE and MVP. Finally, I can put some faces on these names that I have been corresponding with.
Went to the speakers lounge area of the MS TechED conference a few times to check if the Internet Access is up. That setup took a loooooooooong time.
Finally, the internet backbone (IX) is up, only at 2300 hours...Yah, that is just the backbone IX. The proxy configuration is not even up yet !!! Will have to pick some bones with Fun Jin, MS RD for Malaysia who happens to be the technical director for ISA Technologies, the company who is providing COMMNET for this event.
Monday 13 Sept 04
Breakfast is decent...altho not as good as the one i had in Golden Sands, Penang.
Met Kimberly Tripp (MS RD for Seattle, Washington) while having breakfast. She commented that she did a transit in Singapore before coming here and bought a 1GB USB Drive for SGD240++ (equivalent to USD1.41 @ 1:1.71exchange). She said it was one of the best bargains she has ever came across. In fact, she found Singapore so attractive that she is thinking of making a short stopover this weekend before heading back again. I am thinking about hosting her when she gets to Singapore. If she thinks what she gets at the Airport is cheap, I think I will bring her to Sim Lim Square where she can get hundreds of gadgets for a fraction of what they cost in the US. Too bad, she just missed COMEX 2004. She would have picked up thousands of great bargains.
Finally, Intenet Access is up...! :) Could finally communicate with the outside world...and get to do some work,
Met fellow RDs from all parts of the world
Sanjay Shetty -- MS RD, India
Adam Cogan -- MS RD, Australia
Tim Huckerby -- MS RD USA (California)
Kimberly Tripp -- MS RD USA (Seattle)
Lim Fun Jin -- MS RD Malaysia
Richard Campbell -- MS RD Canada (Vancouver)
Malek Kemmous -- MS RD Morocco
Goskin Bakir -- MS RD Turkey
Stephen Forte -- MS RD USA (New York)
Brian Noyes -- MS MVP (ASP.NET)
Cool stuff and Cool networking ...
Tuesday 13 Sept 04
DEV313 (Introduction to UDDI for the Corporate Developer) --- I thought this went quite well. UDDI was a hard topic to understand and will usually be grasped by people who understood the concept of the WSDL-Contract First approach. And when I asked the audience for stats on who had done Web Services and the implementations of it, I only got a measly 5-6 people out of about 80+ people...so I knew I had a tough sell ahead. However, I got many eager hands and questions where is a good thing. People wanted to know more about UDDI and the how-tos of the contract-based approach, and that, to me, is always a good start :) However, there are many more who came to me asking for my signature, which is for the MVP-RD-INETA Bingo Draw to win the Wireless mouse and Keyboard (which is quite attractive, btw). I was told that my signature was the hardest to get as my picture or mugshot doesnt even resemble my present being at all. (I was tanned, had a white cap and sunshades on in my mugshot :)) So, people came actually to my sessions to spot me (my name is on the Speaker List) and to get my signature. That is fine by me. I made all the people who wanted my signature to sit through the whole session before they can get me to sign. :)
ARC402 (Connected Systems: Using Web Services Enhancements v2.0 for Messaging Over Multiple Machines and Networks) --- This one went quite well. A packed session at Congress 2 which equates to about 100+ people. Most people were very interested in the Pub/Sub demos (as usual...this one had the most visual features). I tweaked it quite a bit and added in better UI presentation for the subscriber. However, this session was held in a very hot room and everyone was sweating by the end of the session. Maybe the small size of the room contributed to this ? I was entertaining questions 30 mins past my presentation. I had to take this off-stage as the next presenter couldnt start his speech with people crowding around. All in all, it went quite well.
The MINDS Usergroup and INETA Asia Pacific are very active in this event and I met quite a few members there. Now I can finally put some faces to their names. I came across so many of their handles in http://www.sgdotnet.org and http://www.mind.com.my but never knew who they are. So, this is a good exercise for me. They have an appearance tomorrow on some Cyberjaya TV where they are going to talk about and be interviewed about a World Class Developer Community in Malaysia. I am seriously thinking about attending this to get exposure for me, for http://www.mind.com.my and also for http://www.sgdotnet.org as well.
Wednesday 14 Sept 04
WOW....what a day so far !!! Went to Multi-media Super Corridor Highway (MSC) to be on Cyberjaya TV for their Live telecast on Power Breakfast. Was on TV “Live” for the very first time. Cool or what ? I went with the key members of MINDS and INETA and Adam Cogan, the MS Regional Director for Australia, and we were all on TV. I am trying to see if I can get the video archive to download. Hopefully, I can get it and get to show it in Singapore and do something like that as well. :) We were quizzed on Open Source Software (OSS) which was an ad-hoc-not-on-the-menu-subject thingy and so that kinda threw us all off. I thought I handled it pretty diplomatically, without getting myself in trouble. ;) I spoke about building a world-class developer community in Asia Pacific, the next wave in software development, what is coming up next in the technology landscape and SgDotNet as well, however, there was apparently some mis-communication amongst the video crew members and they flash http://sg.net instead :(. Hmmmm...that is not good. Wonder what people will get when they click on that. Why not you try ;) ?
ARC401 (Connected Systems: Using Web Services Enhancements v2.0 (WSE) to Secure Web Services
) --- is supposed to be a standing-room only presentation for both TechED US and Europe. However, this session was about 30+ ppl (weak) here in TechED Asia. It was rather disappointing. I suspect that it was scheduled too late into the evening at 1715 hours and therefore people wanted to get out there to go home fast to escape the jams. The hovering rain clouds in the horizon didnt help much either as I could see hordes of people leaving so that they wont get caught in the rains (which, btw, really came tumbling down)
ARC401 was supposed to be the driest topic of all the 3 presentations I did today. I “fore-warned” :) the audience about it beforehand and therefore I was very surprised that all stayed till the end (ok, not all stayed...2 sneaked off...) However, I am even more surprised that I got some eager and good responses from the floor after the presentation. A couple of them commented that my session was not dry at all, even though they expected it to be :) So that is quite a bit of gratification for me :) I had a demo that compared the message payload and the time taken to send multiple messages (with data in them) with and without the SecureContextToken (SCT) as specified in WS-SecureConversation. That one caught everyone's attention. Most of them commented at how surprised they are at how fast symmetric encryption can be for a secured session. Finally all my presentations for TechED 2004 Asia were over. I was so happy and relieved.
We had a speakers' dinner at the polo lounge where I mingled and got to know all the other RDs better. I spoke to Fun Jin at length about open-source software and talked to Malek as well. Stephen Forte, as usual, was a hoot and a crack to be with. Dinner was light with finger-foods and satay which suited my taste-buds very well.
Skip to Friday 16 Sept 04
I thought that this was a good TechED Asia 2004. Barring little minor intermittent internet access and minor hiccups in the event management, I thoroughly enjoyed this event. As usual, the netwoking is great. I met so many great people in the event. The only thing I think that could be done better is the co-ordination of the speakers and their subjects of presentations. Some topics that are very relevant to each other were going on at the same time. If people had the chance to go to both presentations, they would appreciate the topics more.
Case in point:
For example, Malek Kemmou's WSDL Contract-First approach presentation is a perfect example of a presentation that could come before or after my UDDI presentation BUT it came during my presentation, so people couldnt appreciate either of the concepts much. Put the same people together and sit them through both presentations, they will understand it a lot better.
That is just one example. I have heard from other speakers about the lack of sequential co-ordination between the content and the speakers, which resulted in {a} and {b}
a. Lower turnouts than expected.
b. No proper understanding of the abstracts and concepts as they couldnt follow through.
Some tracks could be also be classified better. For example, UDDI should be an architectural track. However, it was placed in the developers' track.
It is no wonder they said UDDI was the most misunderstood technology...
Oh well, I hope to see you all in TechED 2005 in Malaysia again...
Saturday 18 Sept 04
Hosted the hera (goddess) of SQL, Kimberly Tripp while she was on a stopover in Singapore. Took her out for gadget shopping. She is known as the gadget girl and Richard Campbell (RD for Canada) is known as the Toy Boy (as some of you familiar with Carl's .NET Rocks would know). Then took her out for curry before driving her down our major shopping district, Orchard Road to take in some sights and sounds.
I am bound for MS Tech.ED 2004 Asia in KL, Malaysia this weekend to deliver a few things :). I have created a MS Tech.ED 2004 Asia Category where I will post and blog stuff from there. Maybe I can get some participants from there to check in here as well.
It will be really nice to meet fellow RDs there such as Fun Jin Lim, Tim Huckerby, Malek Kemmou, Richard Kimball, Sanjay Shetty, Steven Forte, Adam Cogan and of course Kimberly Tripp. See you there.