Just a Coder - nickfitz.co.uk

Get a First Life!

It’s back! BarCamp London 2 will be hosted by BT on February 17th - 18th. Check out the BarCamp site (above) for signup details.

I’ve got my place, and now have to decide what subject to present about. One thing I’m certain of: I’m not going to leave it until the last minute this time. I missed a lot of good stuff at the last BCL because I was tucked away in a spare office, frantically hacking together a demo to illustrate my points about underused aspects of HTTP. This time, I’ll be ready.

WebDD is a web design and development conference to be held at the Microsoft Campus in Reading, UK this coming 3 February (a Saturday). There is, naturally, a certain emphasis on Microsoft technologies, but not exclusively. Actually, although there are several presentations involving MS technologies, I was wrong to think that Microsoft were somehow involved in organising WebDD: they are providing sponsorship and hosting the event, but it is indeed a community-organised conference. Thanks must go to Phil Winstanley and Dave Sussman for organising this. With sessions covering Accessibility, CSS, Microformats and much more it promises to be an interesting event. Best of all, it’s “free as in beer”! Registration is opening Real Soon Now now full; my badge arrived in the post a few days ago.

Already up and running is the Backnetwork. This is the same system that Madgex developed for d.Construct 2006 (Glenn Jones of Madgex is giving a presentation on Microformats), and proved itself to be an excellent system for keeping track of contacts and following the general Flickr and blogging buzz around the event.

See you there, if my car has been healed by then. (I dread to think what the train would cost.) the car having been healed through the miracle of a few hundred pounds. (Broken trailing arm, whatever one of those is.)

I thought this particular urban legend had died a death some years ago, but it surfaced again down the pub last night. So, as a Public Service Announcement, let me make it clear that:

Bob Holness did not play saxophone on Gerry Rafferty’s song Baker Street.

The musician responsible for the legendary riff was in fact Raphael Ravenscroft, and the whole Bob Holness thing started life as a joke by journalist and BBC presenter Stuart Maconie in the New Musical Express.

In other late-breaking news:

• The late Richard Whiteley did not play washboard with Slayer in their early days as a Doncaster skiffle band.
• Valerie Singleton and Muffin the Mule did not co-star in the series Lesbian Lavatory Lust Volumes I - XVIII.
• And, just to be positive for a change, Monkee Michael Nesmith’s mother did, in fact, invent Liquid Paper.

Thank you. You may now return to consuming your Kentucky Fried Rat, with lashings of green cola. (This means you, Gaz.)