GuruStop.NET (@Meligy)

The Usual “Skip To Next” Intro…

Hey everybody,

I know I have been quite away from this blog. Keeping the details for other times many already know I was moving from Abu Dhabi to Sydney and joining th great consulting company, Readify.

But this post is not about that, it’s about the work that has been going during the last month (where I was one of the least involved for honesty) to evolve EgyGeeks as we paused the bi-weekly meetings after Ramadan.

The Podcast

We thought we can even reach more of you out there by trying a different model than online sessions and open talks. That is recorded podcasts.

We are trying this for the first time, trying to simulate the normal tech talks I and you always talk about when we meet a friend developer even if meeting in a cafe with no technical topics in mind. Let’s see if it makes any sense…

The first “published” episode, Pilot,  is mainly around the new Windows Phone 7 stuff. Check out the podcast landing page.

Download MP3.
Subscribe to this podcast via RSS (for Zune and other players).
Subscribe to this podcast for iTunes.
Visit our Podcast page.
Find us on Twitter @EgyGeeks

SitePoint, a well-known publisher of nice easy-but-deep books in web design and web related stuff, has celebrated the end of the world cup (and the fact that Spain has won) by putting an ebook of one of their titles for FREE (“jQuery: Novice to Ninja”, 407 pages) – only for 24 hours (which I don’t know starting what hour, so, go quick!)

Get the book by putting your email here (you receive the PDF link by email):
http://sale.sitepoint.com/

Thanks Scott Hanselman (@SHanselman) for spreading on twitter, hence getting me to know about the book!

Have fun,

http://www.101ftb.com/T80G10C780

Five days ago I got a great email from 101 Free Tech Books. Seems the drawing I wrote about is real!!

Yes, I won a FREE print book. Filled in my shipping information yesterday and got the post that confirms my order was being processed. Feels so real! I’m even asked to give testimonials after receiving the book, which I will…

Which Book?

The book I have chosen is “Professional WCF 4: Windows Communication Foundation with .NET 4”. Sounded like a great title!

There is a trick in here. The option for books is only available from my wish list prior to the random drawing. I didn’t pay enough attention to this earlier, so, had a very small wish list of just “sample” books in it. Some of them I already had as ebooks. This was not very right.

I also tried to choose another book, add to my wish list, and go back to choosing again, but, as mentioned, only the books added prior to wining were there. Makes sense though!

You Can Win Too!

Now, I can recommend those people even more! They emphasize completely on showing how real this is, and I seem to believe them so far.

The SVN News

Today I was hanging around GitHub when realized a relatively old news, dated to April 1, 2010, saying they do support SVN.

Announcing SVN Support

Yes, it’s April Fools day. Very funny date to announce anything serious as they admit themselves in an update to the news post, but it DOES work.

Use the same Git clone HTTP URL, just add “svn.” between “http://” and “github.com”:

http://svn.github.com/[user]/[repository]

It even allows you to write changes back to the repository, as announced in the more recent news post, dated May 4, 2010, check it out for the “cavets” (known issues):

Subversion Write Support

That uses the same URL but with HTTPS:

https://svn.github.com/[user]/[repository]

This should work best when you want to get some project for read-only access or very few commits from your side, when this project has a very long history you are not really interested in. Of course you wouldn’t want to use that if you are leading (or a main committer to) a project hosted at GitHub.

Just noticed this great website for free printed technical books, with free shipping included.

Of course as you know, the sky doesn’t rain gold. Simply this is an advertisement based website (you may have expected it), and advertisement sponsor those books.

Every month they make a drawing for all registered users to choose which ones they’ll send free book. You go, register,, and choose your wish list, and hopefully be included in the drawing for a soon month!

Not bad given you don’t have to do much effort for getting in.

This is the registration link, through my reference:

http://www.101freetechbooks.com/T80G10C780 

This is how they express it:

101FreeTechBooks.com gives you 101 chances to win real tech books each month. Simply choose the books of your choice each month and automatically participate in monthly drawings. monthly winners will receive their books, shipped directly to them, for FREE. Even shipping is free. Want to increase your odds of winning? Simply refer your friends. Don’t miss your chance to win! Start browsing book catalog

Go try it out…

http://www.101freetechbooks.com/T80G10C780

Good Luck!