Well, although it is half way though January, Happy New Year. I have not been posting as much as I would like but that should get turned around soon.

Today saw my first game of Warhammer 40k in 2009 and it very painfully showed me that some of the changes in 5th edition have made Tyranids even harder to play (automatically passing morale checks in a lost combat now kills hormaganuts very effectively, more so than 4th edition), still was a good game and I have some new tricks up my sleeve for next time. For the record: I hate Tau!

Geekery out of the way, time for some more, er, geekery. I will be giving two talks on jQuery in the coming months which may be of interest to those either in the Tayside area of Scotland or those willing to travel to Edinburgh. These will be my first public talks outside of university and I am excited to see how they turn out since interest thus far has been quite good.

Abstract

A new client-side framework has been taking the internet by storm, many have already been mesmerised by the power of such a small javascript library. And “what is the name of this fantastic framework?” I hear you ask, “jQuery” is my reply.

jQuery is a robust javascript framework with a very small footprint (15kb minified and GZipped) which makes the complicated aspects of javascript very simple. From traversing the Document Object Model to complex AJAX functionality, jQuery can do it all.

In this session I will introduce you to the basics of jQuery, showing you, through code, how to select and manipulate elements on the page, attach functions to events, implement ajax and more! This is the perfect opportunity to learn about jQuery and how it can make the life of web developer so much easier, allowing you to focus more on building your application!

Both talks are the same, An Introduction To jQuery, however there are two different venues and dates.

• Queen Mother Building at the University of Dundee on Wednesday 4th February 2009
• Microsoft Offices in Edinburgh on Wednesday 8th April 2009
  

As with other Scottish Developers events, both sessions are completely free and all are encouraged to come along. If interested, it you be greatly appreciated if you could register for the events using the links above to give us an idea of number.