I had originally planned that my Silverlight Designer & Developer Network presentation was going to be the last one I gave in Australia before flying back to Norway. But then me and Hege decided to do some traveling before going home, and we’re currently up in Byron Bay enjoying some diving and surfing. Wednesday we fly down to Sydney for a couple of days, and my good friend Adam Cogan asked if I could give a Silverlight talk at the Sydney .NET User Group. Off course I said yes – so Wednesday evening (December 10th) I’m giving a talk on business applications in Silverlight. The title and abstract goes as follow:

Building data-centric applications in Silverlight 2
In this presentation you will get a overview of how to build data-centric (line-of-business) applications in Silverlight 2 using LINQ to SQL and WCF on the server. The presentation will cover how to deal with authentication for your WCF services from a Silverlight application, tips on how to architect your Silverlight application, and how to build flexible, testable code your designers can work with. You will also get a sneak preview of an application framework Microsoft is working on to make building business applications easier.

For registration, time and location check out the Sydney .NET User Group web site. I expect the details to be published some time over the weekend.

While in Sydney we’re going to stay at our favorite accommodation in Coogee, which is going to be great. We plant to finally see the opera house (I’ve been to Sydney multiple times for work, but have never actually seen the building!). Friday we fly down to Canberra to spend the weekend with a friend, before flying back to Melbourne Monday, and then back to Norway Wednesday December 17th.

Hope to see you in Sydney!

Update: The details are now available on the SSW site and on their Facebook group.

Time and Place Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Microsoft HQ, North Ryde
Street: 1 Epping Road, North Ryde NSW 2113
City/Town: Lane Cove, Australia

I try to keep this blog more or less focused on software development, but every now and then I think it’s good to throw in some personal updates as well… Last week Hege and I went up to Cairns for a dive expedition with TAKA Dive to the Northern Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea. Before the trip we did some research, checking out YouTube video and Flickr photos from the area, but the trip turned out even better than what we dared hop fore. Already after the first dives on Ribbon Reef #10 a group of 6-7 Dwarf Minkie Whales came up to the boat. We got to snorkel with the animals, and it was just unreal having a 6 meter animal swimming just couple of meter underneath me. Another highlight of the trip was the diving at Osprey reef - heaps of sharks, big fishes and amazing visibility (30-40 meters). We also did a shark feed at North Horn, which attracted schools of white tip reef shark, gray whaler sharks, and some oceanic white tip sharks. On one of Hege’s photos we could count more than 30 sharks in one shot. So I don’t know the total number, but they were plentiful. We did a total of 14 dives over a 5 day/4 night trip, and got to sea sharks, whales, turtles, big schools of fish, amazing healthy coral reefs and more.

We were about 30 people on the boat, but it never felt crowded. It had plenty of space, good cabins, modern mid-deck with plasma TV’s and computers where we watched the video of the days diving every night. The food was top notch, including dishes like lamb roast, roast beef and homemade lasagna. The crew did an awesome job, and I can’t do anything but highly recommend TAKA for anyone wanting a great dive expedition to the Great Barrier Reef.

I’m going to keep this post short, and Hege have also posted a more lengthy story on her blog, as well as heaps of photos on Flickr. I’m including some of the best once here, but I strongly recommend checking out her Flickr feed.

 

 

Just writing a quick post to let everyone know we arrived in Melbourne after a fantastic holiday in Thailand. We're temporarily staying at Ina and Pål while looking for an apartment. We've all ready been on several inspections, and have applied for two apartments. Going to a couple inspections today as well, so hopefully we'll find something by the end of this week/early next week.

I've also been catching up with work these last two days. It's amazing how much mail that stack up when you're away for a couple of weeks. And not mention my Google Reader list… Last night I chewed through 1000+ RSS items to catch up with what's been going on in tech-land lately.

I'll keep you posted when we have a permanent address in Melbourne. I also have a few technical posts stacked up that I'll try to write then things settle down. I think one of the first things I'll look into is a new version of the Free SMS gadget. Ung1881 changed their site, and now the gadget have stopped working. I'll provide an update as soon as possible (hopefully 1881 haven't taken measures to make it harder to access the site).

Check out Heges Flickr site for some pictures from our last days of the holiday in Singapore.

Turned out my last comment about dive center density on Phi Phi was an understatement. Every other shop on "main street" was a dive center who arranged local dive trips, as well as speed boat trips to Hin Daeng and Hin Muang 60 km away from Phi Phi. The different dive centers have a "price agreement" on dive trips and Padi courses, so you don't have to worry about price when picking a operator. We ended up diving with Visa divers, after the two first guys we talked to turned out to be Norwegian and Swedish.    

On Tuesday we went on a local dive trip and had one dive at Bida Nok and one at Palong/Maya North. The local diving at Phi Phi turned out really good. We had good visibility and saw a few things we didn't see on our Similan trip, like cuttle fish, black tip reef shark and sea turtles. The dives where also a bit shallower (around 15m) so we had around 60 minutes bottom time on each dive.

After the first dive we had lunch a bit north of Maya Bay, famous from the movie "The Beach". One of the dive masters tipped me about a spot where you had a good chance of seeing black tip reef sharks, so after a quick lunch I grabbed my fins and snorkel and had a look… At first I didn't see any sharks, and I was just about to swim back to the boat when to black tips cruised in at about 4-5m depth. I followed the sharks for a bit, who swam back to their friends. At most I had 7 black tips, ranging from 40cm to about 150cm in length cruising below me at a bout 5-6m depth.  We briefly saw one black tip on our last dive in the Red Sea last summer, but this was just amazing! We decided to start the second dive at the spot where I saw the black tips, and then swim over to Palong. We got some brief sightings of the black tips while diving, but they're really shy and don't like the sound of bubbles when you dive. It's much easier to get close to the black tips if you're snorkeling.



On Wednesday we decided to dive at the King Cruiser wreck, half way between Phuket and Phi Phi. It's a little farther away, so we used a speed boat to get there. The dive was OK, a bit current and bad visibility, but it was my first wreck dive so still exciting. The second dive at Shark Point turned out really good! Great visibility and tons of life under water, among other things a full grown leopard shark swimming freely in the water. They're really gracious swimmers with their long tail. We ended the day with a dive at Maya South (south of "The Beach"). We swam along the mountain wall at around 20-25m. We saw a bunch of nudie branches in various colors, as well as a huge lobster (wonder what you have pay for a one like that on the marked..?). The dive site is also known as "Whale Shark Wall", but the odds of actually spotting one are really small. At the end of the dive we actually found a group of 10 huge Cobias, a fish that normally follows either Whale Sharks or Manta Rays, but unfortunately we didn't see any.

We had booked an early flight from Phuket to Singapore Friday morning, and had to leave Phi Phi on the afternoon ferry to get to Phuket Thursday evening. This meant that we didn't have time to go diving Thursday. In stead we followed up on a tip we got from the Norwegian instructor on another good place to sport black tip reef sharks. The best time to spot black tips is early in the morning, so we got up around 0700 and walked all the way to the end of long beach (about 20min walk). The site is also known as Hin Pae, and many tour operators offer "black tip reef shark safaris" to this place, with a "money back guarantee" that you'll see a shark. You don't have to pay the operators to go snorkeling at Hin Pae, you can simply rent snorkeling gear for 100 THB a day and walk there you self, or take taxi boat. The guy from Vista divers who tipped us about the place said that people often goo too far from shore, or too deep, to see the black tips. Turned out he was right again. At about 1.5-2m depth, just 50-60m from shore we found a group of black tip reef sharks cruising and looking for small fish for breakfast. I guess we saw about 6-8 different sharks, ranging in size from 40-50cm to 150-160cm. The shark didn't seem to care too much about us, so we could get pretty close before they moved away. Just amazing!



For more photos check out Heges updated Thailand photo set on Flickr.

After 24+ hours of travel (Oslo-London-Hong Kong-Bangkok) we arrived in Bangkok Saturday evening. We had planned to spend a few days in Thailand's capital before flying to Phuket and go directly onboard the MV Sai Mai for a four day dive trip. After recommendations from friends and family who have been travelling in Thailand a few times we decided to stay at the D&D Inn on Koh San Road, a popular hotel/district among back packers travelling through Bangkok. Saturday evening at Koh San Road can best be described as a circus. The streets where swarming with tourists/back packers and Thais trying to make a (some what) honest living out of them. Bars, shops, tailors, street food, street bars selling bucket-sized drinks, pirated DVD sellers, people in all ages and shapes in one lovely mix. Truly fun and interesting!

During our three days in Bangkok we visited Siam square to check out some shopping centres more classy than anything we have in Norway. We watched the new "National Treasure" at the luxury "Nokia Gold Screen" at Paragon Centre. A shopping mall that sells anything from cheap electronic to Gucci purses and Ferraris (!), as well as running a full size aquarium in the basement and a IMAX cinema at 6th floor.

On Monday we went on a full day trip covering the floating marked, a snake farm, the river of Kawi and the tiger temple (you know, the monk on Animal planet with the tigers). The guys at the snake farm are nuts, catching angry snakes with their teeth! The tiger temple felt a bit like a tourist machine, with long queues (you could pay to skip the queue and take "special picture", which we did), and everything very strict and organized. But what can you expect? As long as you get to see/touch a real tiger I'm happy! We also got a chance to spend some extra time with three of the tiger cubs, where things wasn't as crowded/strict as with the big cats.

Wednesday morning we flew down to Phuket where we got picked up at the airport by a guy arranged by Jamie at Sunrise-Divers. A popular activity among divers is going on "liveaboard" trips, where you live onboard a dive boat for several days. There is a wide range of boats operating off Phuket, and I spent quite some time this Christmas trying to figure out which boat to choose. The boats differs in size, standard, price, destination, length of trip and so forth. We ended up booking a 4 days/5 nights/16 dives trip with the MV Sai Mai. We arranged the booking through Jamie at Sunrise-Divers, who did a great job at answering my e-mails quickly and where really helpful! I would definitely recommend booking through Sunrise-Drivers.   

The reason we ended up picking the MV Sai Mai was a combination of price, standard, length of trip and number of divers. The Sai Mai only takes 8 divers and 2 dive masters, which isn't much compared to other boats who take up to 20 divers. The Sai Mai also have double bed cabins with private shower/toilet, which is a big plus if you don't want to share a toilet with 16 others… The boat turned out great! It wasn't too small, had a good dive deck and was kept in a really good condition. We left from Tab Lamu pier Wednesday evening, and had our first dive at the Similan Islands Thursday morning. The Similan Islands and Richelieu rock rank on many "top 10 dive sites in the world"-lists, and is considered to be one of the absolute best in Thailand. During the trip we dove at different spots on several of the 9 islands making up the "Similan Islands"-group. We also dove at Koh Bon, Koh Tachi and Richelieu Rock.

During our dives we saw a bunch of new things we didn't see in Egypt this summer, ranging from leopard shark, ghost pipe fish, nudie branch to the magnificent manta ray. The dives where amazing, but the visibility wasn't quite as good as in the red sea. But the dives where still great! Hege got a chance to play with her new underwater casing for her Canon EOS 350 SLR camera. She hasn't bought a underwater flash yet, but still many of the pictures turned out quite nice. She event caught a few nice one of the manta cruising above us at Koh Bohn. Check out her Flickr site for a bunch of pictures...

After four days and five nights onboard the Sai Mai we arrived back in Tab Lamu, a bit north of Phuket, this morning (Monday), and then went directly to the pier in Phuket and took the ferry over to Phi Phi Island. We're going to spend some days here before flying down to Singapore. We haven't made any dive reservations, but like Richard said (one of the guys onboard the Sai Mai trip), dive shop density at Phi Phi is about the same as Starbucks density on Manhattan.  I'll keep you posted. Later!