Whoah.... what a busy 10 days!

I have been working pretty hard and time flys when you are having fun etc!
This week (just been) I held what I think is the first ever Judo coaching Webinar, which was stressful but a huge buzz.

It was a version of the Coaching Digital Natives talk I have given before. It was an interesting experience and proved to me that Webinars can be useful for Judo. I have started planning out some more webinars!

I have also been participating... well okay lurking on two online learning activities. One is a 6 week workshop and this weekend a online conference. It's all teachers and lecturers in academia, so I've been enjoying it a heck of a lot.

The WiZiQ software is brilliant (www.wiziq.com) and I think I'll use it for future webinars. I like the way it will let me embed YouTube videos and have a larger audience than the Vyew software I used this week.

I also took a drive across to Bath to discuss the very scary proposition of my doing a PHD! Which is actually looking realistic. I emailed my father to tell him scared he might die of shock. :-)

Work-wise, I have been pretty busy. This was partially because of the snow that brought England to a halt on Monday. A major disaster, millions/billons of pounds lost to the country. Silly really as it really was not that much. The main issue is just that England is not prepared for any sort of variation from damp and cold. Very hot the world ends; too cold like this week and it ends also.

Playing in the snow with my twins was F A N T A S T I C ! ! !
Snow balls, snow angels, snow men. Great stuff!


Wow, I should also mention we had a quick break to Disneyland Paris, which was also amazing. I am such a Disney junky. On Sunday, somehow we managed to be the first people on the first ride on the Peter Pan ride. Which has been my favourite ride and remains so and is so far above the others now it's not funny. I want to be an imagineer SO bad! The people who created that ride deserved a bunch of medals.

I havn't made the gym or a run or Judo... but what the hey!
Disturbingly I have also failed to get any notation work for my BSC research project done, getting very close to the wire now!
Too much happening, too little time.

Ah well.

Lance

Recently I have been asked to make some changes to a Windows application written in Perl. As a Mac user it raised the issue of how to write the code and have it end up as a .exe file for running on a Windows 2003 server.

Cross platform is probably possible, but why bother. I have a nice little Virtual Machine (VM) in Parallels with XP on it. So I decided to clone this XP machine and set it up for use exclusively as a development environment for this Perl code.

Previously I had used ActivePerl, the context text editor and perl2exe to develop Perl code and turn it into an EXE when I worked as an employee elsewhere. This time I decided to go a different path and try Strawberry Perl and Padre. This is really easy, "Alias" had done all the work for me ( http://use.perl.org/~Alias/journal/38312 ) I was also tempted by ( http://padre.perlide.org/wiki/PortableStrawberry ) which is the Strawberry Perl and Padre for portable use on a USB stick.

So I downloaded the .EXE ( which was not quick ) and away I went. It installed no problem at all, the only trick is that there is no icon for Padre installed. So you click START, RUN, then type in padre and hit return. Up it pop and looks a lot like... well like notepad.

I tried immediately to run the code, and it failed as I was missing a CPAN module. So from within Padre I clicked on Perl in the toolbar and then Install Module, Install CPAN Module. I simple typed in the name of the module foo::bar and off it went and downloaded and installed the module for me. I hit F5 to run the Perl code again and cool, it worked.

After running the code I wanted to make some changes (hypothetically at least), so I opened the subs window, which comes up like a sidebar on the right and it had all the subroutines in my code. Double clicking on them took me right to that subroutine in the main editing window. This was/is a must have feature and at first I didn't think it was there.

I found this through the view menu, which had quite a few other features disabled, like code folding, which I turned on then off as I don't really like it aesthetically speaking. :-) Turning on Syntax checking is good for catching silly errors.

Part of the project I have to do is to deliver the code as a Windows Executable (.exe) file. previously I have done this with Perl2Exe, but I wanted to try it using just Strawberry.

This requires bits and bobs that are not installed by default, so you need to install things manually, I shall post on that in another entry.

So, this week has been a good one for me.
I have been working hard on my new business and it is like all new experiences one I am learning from. The main thing i have learned is that I need to change from a geek to a salesperson. I need to change heads, Worzel Gummidge style.


The really great thing is when you have a conversation with someone and you find a need for something you can help them with. It's such a satisfying feeling to be able to see what you do as a valuable addition to someone else's business.

The other nice thing about this experience is that I am enjoying being a salesman. Not your 1970's red tie wearing salesman, someone who finds solutions to people's needs.

In other news, NoseRub is moving along great. Last night I did some testing with Dirk of the email alerting when someone comments on one of your entries... even on a different server to yours (remember it's a distributed social network).

Judo-wise this weekend I shall be attending the Hampshire Junior Squad training session this weekend to lend my support to the excellent work that that my colleague Danny is doing.

Life-wise, I took my wife and the twins out to a lovely Italian restaurant, which was a bit fancier than I had realised. Luckily, my daughter had decided we were dressing up, so she was in a nice dress and my son even wore one of my ties (too cute!).

It was great to be able to take them to a "grownups" restaurant and know they wer going to be fine; and they were!

Working for myself has meant that I have been taking them and often picking them up from school, I am loving spending more time with them! It rocks!

So despite the lack of funds associated with being a start-up in a recession, I am loving it! Not missing my old job in BlazingSmoke one little bit.

Regular readers of this and my other blog will be aware of the lecture I gave at the University of Bath and more recently at the British Judo Association national performance centre in Dartford. The lecture is on "Coaching Digital Natives" and is all about how as Judo coaches we need to adapt how we coach to match the way young people are using technology to learn.

Well... this year the talk goes international!

I have been invited to deliver the lecture for coaches in Scotland (which trust me is a different country to down here in England... trust me on this).

I have also taken a leap and decided to try delivering the lecture as a webinar on February 4th, 8:30pm (2009). Looking at the traffic statistics for my various Judo websites itis apparent that a large proportion of my visitors are from outside of the UK. So hopefully a webinar will allow me to share the ideas with a wider audience.

The webinar is totally free and you can sign up for one of the remaining 18 spaces by click ing the button below:



If it proves popular I have plans to prepare a number of other topics for delivery in a similar manner.

It is one of the benefits of working for myself that I can with a clear conscience work on projects like this that I could not do as a employee. Of course... the downside is that I am not working on other IT items on my todo list. :-(

Lance

It seems that things come to you that you think about. For a while I have been thinking of organising some sort of geek meetup in Southampton and then all of a sudden someone else goes and does it!

Dan Griffey over at http://slipstreamstudio.com/ is organising Southampton OpenWeb on Feb 12th!

There is a discussin list over at http://groups.google.com/group/openwebsoton too.

So, internet types in Hampshire, come on down!!

Lance