A few notes from the last week.

• A couple of weeks ago I ordered a second hand copy of Delphi COM Programming through one of the Amazon affiliates and it arrived yesterday, it cost $7.50 to buy and $12.50 to ship to New Zealand. It was written for Delphi 3-5, but I'm hoping it will still contain much relevant stuff. I'm wanting to improve my DataSnap knowledge which uses COM extensively. I haven't been able to find much good documentation on COM/DataSnap, just a few articles here and there. Hopefully I'll be making some movies on DataSnap with my new found knowledge - possibly to improve our Customer application. But first I think it needs to be ported from XML based files to a real database - Blackfish perhaps?
• Last night while walking the dog (at about 11pm) I had the privilege of calling the fire brigade again - a small fire in the same place as last time.
• My copy of the Delphi 2007 Handbook has been shipped from Lulu, hopefully it'll turn up next week or two and I'll be able to review it. Have you ordered your copy yet?
  

Emergency Services

I have found my self dialing 111 a lot lately (111 is the emergency number in New Zealand, although I think 911 works also). Last night I was walking my partners dog (Shiva - that's the name of the dog not my partner) and I spotted a small fire, unfortunately I didn't have my phone with me so I went home and dialed. Fortunately I returned to the scene with a bucket which the firemen used to put out the fire (the fire wasn't very accessible to the firetruck and I don't think they wanted to unravel their nicely coiled hoses).

A few nights earlier Jackie (my partner) and I were walking and spotted a tagger (graffitist?) and called the police, we got to watch (from a distance) as they hauled him away to the clink - actually I think they just took him home - he was pretty young. Over the last few years we've called the police a few other times and the fire department at least twice. I guess it comes from living in a less desirable neighbourhood and walking the dog after 10pm every night.

What has this got to do with Delphi, nothing.