Venom rules!

Just got back from Spider-man 3 and I've got mixed feelings... It was awesome. Venom was spectacular. The fight scenes rocked. I was even happy with the ending (won't spoil it for you). I did however recall thinking as I was leaving the cinema "I hope they stop there..."

Not sure why... could be the slight changes to the story line for the big screen? Anyway, mission was a success for me, I enjoyed it.

On another note, I had a big evening. Tonight (actually it was yesterday now) I presented at the Perth .Net user group meeting. It was my first presentation and I counted 20 people. Overall I think I'd call it a success. People thanked me and told me it was a good presentation. In hindsight I'm remembering all the little things that didn't quite go as I had planned but I did learn a LOT both in the last few weeks leading up to the presentation, and the actual presentation. They even laughed at the jokes I cracked and didnt laugh when I was trying to be serious. :)

The presentation was on Microsoft's WPF. I did a quick demo of the four products in the new Expression suite and then walked through a few samples of code that I picked up from Charles Petzold's book, Application = Code + Markup. I've read some pretty harsh reviews but also some positive ones. My view of the book is a positive one. Lots of content, loads of examples and Charles's writing style is quite clear and concise. It's argued that pictures and screenshots and colour make for a better book. I wouldn't mind the code being in colour (using the same colour scheme as Visual Studio) but to be honest it really wouldnt have added that much to the book. The book is thick enough without wasting space with screenshots and pictures.

I did come unstuck at one point when I had deviated from my practiced demo and lost my train of thought. It's quite difficult to sit and debug something that won't compile with people sitting waiting expectantly. I fortunately got back on track pretty quick. I also learned that using snippits in Visual studio are great for not having to type code but remembering which ones you want and which is which was a challenge. More practice with the demos and sticking to the plan in future.

Anyway, a big thanks to those who attended. I hope it was informative and gave you an insight into the upcoming technologies, it's pretty exciting stuff!