Robert MacLean

Community Night, the best way to meet, mingle and learn (if you don’t know about it – read here) happens on the second Tuesday of the month… except in September due to an event at the venue on the Tuesday which can’t be moved.

So for September it will take place the Monday before, in other words Monday the 12th September. Please help get the word out to the various user groups and communities!

See you there!

Kicker, is my first WP7 application and is a simple time waster. I don’t want to use the term game, because there is no challenges. Touch the screen and unless you are unlucky, you score a goal.

This was written mainly for my young son, who had a game like this on my old Nokia 5800 and he loved it so really just porting it across.

You can get it online RIGHT NOW!!

Important Notice for August 2011

Community night is normally the second Tuesday of the month, however since that is a public holiday it has been moved to Monday the 15th of August!

What is community night?

For those who do not know this is a FREE event that happens monthly where a variety of user groups get together at Microsoft's offices. User groups are not influenced by Microsoft, they just use the facilities. User groups that are there on a regular basis:

• Information Worker: Technical focused SharePoint & Office
• Business User Workshops: User group that looks at the issues that face power users in enterprises. This month the understanding where a portal ends and CRM begins.
• Game Dev: One of the biggest with plenty of game developers & artists getting together.
• JavaScript: For all you JS fixes
• Mobi: My good friend Rudi Grobler hosts this group focused on mobile (iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone)
• UX: For those who understand there is more than 16 colours
• Architecture: For architects of any IT systems!
• Languages: For developers who are interested in learning the pros & cons of other languages.
• SQL: The fantastic Gail Shaw runs the best SQL user group anywhere!

There is also FREE beer, cool drinks & pizza!

Where is Microsoft’s offices?

Microsoft Bryanston Office
3012 William Nicol Drive
Bryanston
2191 Johannesburg
South Africa

Click here for map and more details.

Times?

Various user groups starts at different times. I think the first UG kicks off at 16:00 and it can run to 21:00.
However depends if you attend multiple UG, stay for passage conversation, etc…

So up to you, I have nights where I arrived after 17:30 and other times left at 18:00, no pressure!

Tomorrow is another community night, and I realised that there is MANY people who do not know about this fun event. This is a gathering of communities (or user groups or interest groups if you prefer) who meet on a regular basis. This is a totally free event which takes place the 2nd Tuesday of every month at Microsoft’s offices in Bryanston.

*Yawn* another Microsoft marketing session? WRONG! This is run by communities and Microsoft has NO say in the content or agenda, unless a community allows them Microsoft is really trying to help all communities by providing the facilities – not the content!

To give a concrete example MobiZA, a user group focused on mobile development is doing a session on Android! talk about not Microsoft marketing there!

There is also a variety of communities in a attendance so you can also see things you would not have seen before, for example the business user group or the game developer group! And of course there is plenty of corridors for interesting discussions and some even contain food & drinks!

Hopefully I have given you a taste of what is in store and why you should attend and you can find more details on the DPE team blog.

Finally, if you have a user group maybe you should think of joining us at community night? Free venue, projectors, seating, food & drink. Plus plenty of people attend, could be a great way to grow your group. I would personally love to see some Linux & PHP groups there because it would allow those who have not had a chance to see the non-Microsoft world an opportunity and hopefully learn that it isn’t so cut & dry out there.

Remember, tomorrow 12th April 2011 @ Microsoft (map to the left) from first sessions kick off at 16:30 and second sessions get started between 17:30 & 18:00!

UT3 is pretty (not Crysis pretty, but pretty enough), but the gameplay rocks and replayablity is high. The problem is to get it smooth enough for competitive gaming you need to tweak those INI files, well thankfully someone has built a tool to do it: UT 3 Tweaker

All coming 2008!
Next Game
Next Project (not a game!)
And in the same vein as the next project, something a little different.

In my previous post on BioShock I commented that the VitaChambers were a big gameplay issue for me since it made it far too easy. What I didn't comment on was how they broke the story completely. Why am I the only person who can use them?

This weekend I finished BioShock and despite the 5 star review Gamespy gave it, I fail to see this as the next level of gaming. Note: Spoilers exist below.