A friend of mine is a VB.NET / SQL Server contractor, who is available at the moment in the Sussex area. If you need a contractor at the moment, let me know, and I'll pass on the details.

I've spoken to some Sussex geeks recently, and it seems that finding a freelancer or contractor for a short job, a few days or a couple of weeks, is a bit hit-and-miss. Recruitment sites tend to focus on permanent jobs and contracts, usually measured in months. There are some resources, such as the Brighton Farm, which lists members' skills and has weekly meetings, but someone suggested to me that a small job board would be useful, targeted in the local area.

So I've set one up called Sussex Geek Jobs. If you want to hire a local professional for a short job (under a couple of months, or maybe a few hours per month), then post your requirements there. There's a nominal fee of a tenner, which is mainly to prevent spammers, thus saving me moderation time. The ads are shown for 30 days.

If you're looking for a quick job, then check out the job board, and hopefully there'll be something suitable.

I'm going to Hack Day London in a couple of weeks . I haven't decided which APIs to hack yet, but I'll have a good old rummage on the Yahoo! developer network site. If you're going, and want to team up on something, let me know.



[Tags: hackday hackdaylondon yahoo api]

The next Sussex Geek Dinner is on June 6th in Brighton. Sign up on upcoming.org if you'd like to come along.

[Tags: sussexgeekdinner geekdinner sussex danglegg]

Don't you just hate it, every January having to update your website as the copyright notice is out of date? Well, there's a really simple trick to save yourself the trouble. Simply get the year from the current date in code, and never update it again:

&copy; <%= DateTime.Now.Year.ToString() %>

[Tags: copyright update]

Every now and again, I come across a little coding task that seems to be best solved with a nifty regular expression. I usually come to that conclusion after contemplating a string mangling exercise involving at least two SubStrings, a couple of Lengths and a Replace.

The problem is that even though I only used regular expressions a couple of months ago, I cannot remember the first thing about them. I have to start right from the beginning. Is it star dot, or dot star to match any number of any character? How do I make it lazy, not greedy? What is the "or" character?

So I find the last regular expression I wrote, hoping that will help. It doesn't. There is a long line of characters, which start to look familiar, but it takes so long to read, parse and understand that it isn't all that much use. I then Google "regular expressions", and have a read up, and I understand it, have a go at my coding task (while still flicking back to the reference website) and it's done.

As I know that I'll look at it again in a few weeks and be baffled by it, I try and comment it. It's a really hard thing to comment, as I now know all about regular expressions, and any dimwit can do it, so I just need to explain what the expression is for. Then I realise that loads of people don't use them, and an hour ago I couldn't remember how they work, so I think I actually need to explain what the regular expression does, character by character.

Of course, this isn't relational (as in database), as if someone changes the regular expression, the two screens-worth of comments isn't automatically updated, and the next developer won't update it (they never do), so it is then wrong, so it doesn't really seem worth writing it in the first place.

Now, I do like regular expressions, but they seem to be the only coding activity that possesses the property of instant forgetability. Everything else that is used infrequently, such as threading or reflection, doesn't get forgotten so completely. Sure, a couple of method names need searching for in intellisense, but the basics are still there.

Imagine walking up a hill, and then having to stop for a while to do something (like phoning a restaurant to book a table), and then continue up the hill. You start off from the same place you stopped. That's like normal coding. With regular expressions, it's skateboarding up the hill. When you finish the phone call, you look round and find you've rolled to the bottom again.

[Tags: regular expressions forgettable]

Dave McMahon (of Chuckle Brothers fame) emailed me about the FEST07 event. I've quoted his email directly below, which tells you all about it. Unfortunately I'm a contractor now, so I can't just book holiday days off willy-nilly any more, so alas, I won't be going.

Just a reminder that FEST07 the one-day Developer event organised by those NxtGen Boyz : Rich, Dave and John, is just around the corner. It's on May 23rd at Microsoft UK in Reading and the headline speaker is the outstanding Rafal Lukawiecki who has topped the polls at TechEd for the last 7 years. He's speaking twice and will be talking about Vista Security and Future Trends in Software Architecture. The other speakers are look pretty good too, with Oliver Sturm, Mike Taulty and Daniel Moth being joined by Lorna Brown of Microsoft Research which should be a really interesting session. The Boyz are also going to do one of their 'gameshows' as a finale in which I understand large amounts of 'swag' will be handed out. They’re also giving away an XBox 360 with games check out - http://www.nxtgenug.net/NewsArticle.aspx?ArticleID=190

If you are a member of NxtGenUG its a free event. If you're not a member its a measly £59.99 for a day of information, fun, food and of course 'swag'. It's not a Microsoft funded event, and the guys have to cover some costs of speakers and incidentals. To register just go the NxtGenUG site, its all pretty simple. Any probs drop them a line at enquiries@nxtgenug.net

This looks like it's going to be special and different event, best get along ...

Oh there is also a Geek Dinner the night before http://www.zimakki.com/wiki/Fest07GeekDinner.ashx is Zi Makki's Wiki, and you can go to this even if you're not attending the event itself.

Sounds good.

[Tags: DaveMcMahon fest07 nxtgenug]