Blog

Error Feedback for Web Services
18 May 2009

I have been thinking, writing and speaking a little bit about web services recently, starting with a few thoughts on authorisation mechanisms for services. Today we'll look at another really important aspect of authoring web services, and one feature that will definitely get used - error handling and feedback! Having clear …
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Speaking at FOWA Tour, Leeds, May 28th
14 May 2009

I'm surprised and delighted to announce that I will be one of the speakers at the rather excellent FOWA Tour even in Leeds on 28th May (two weeks today!). The day is like a roadshow version of the famous FOWA conferences, with a morning of (free!) cloud workshops and an …
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Leeds GirlGeek Dinner 27th May 2009
13 May 2009

I'm delighted to hear that the date has been set for the next Leeds GirlGeek Dinner - Wednesday May 27th 2009! I've been really enjoying this series of events and always meet some really interesting ladies when I attend these events. The idea is to get geek girls together for some …
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Presenting Under Linux: xrandr
11 May 2009

This is a mini-primer on using xrandr to configure a second screen under Linux, but first I'll start with some background.

I've been a linux user for a few years now but when I started working for Ibuildings I started giving presentations, either as a speaker or when delivering training …
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PHPNW TestFest
10 May 2009

Yesterday saw the PHP North West User Group hold their first Test Fest in Manchester. As a relatively young user group (at less than a year old) with not a single @php.net email address between us, this was an ambitious venture. Scott MacVicar very kindly offered to come and …
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Looking Forward to php|tek
07 May 2009

This year I'm excited to be heading to the php|tek conference in Chicago (May 19th to 22nd), and even more excited to be going there as a speaker. Over the course of the conference I will present or co-present three sessions; one tutorial and two talks.

The tutorial session …
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Testing PHP
04 May 2009

I'm organising the PHP Test Fest that is happening in Manchester next weekend, and in preparation I decided it was high time to sit down and figure out what testing PHP is all about. People kept telling me it was easy but I had no clear picture of how all …
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Kubuntu Freezing on Splash Screen after Jaunty Upgrade
02 May 2009

Today I upgraded a bunch of machines to the latest Kubuntu offering, version 9.04, or "Jaunty Jackalope". Well, it was all going a bit too well and when I came to upgrade my main work machine, a thinkpad T400, I ran into problems. There are a couple more kinks …
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Auth Mechanisms for Web Services
01 May 2009

Having been involved in quite a few service-related activities in the last year or so, I've been having a few thoughts about what I've learned from this and what decisions I make when designing a service. Hopefully there will be a few of these posts - but to start with, I'm …
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Replacement Love-Knot Wrap
26 April 2009

A few years ago, when my little sister turned 21, I made her a crochet love-knot wrap. She's used it (as a warm scarf) since then but recently lost it moving between multiple different places in the French Alps while working as a nanny for a hotel chain. So I …
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Quiet Diff
21 April 2009
I recently saw a problem that we were having difficulty replicating, despite assurances that both the code base we were replicating on and the one that exhibited the error were identical. They are large codebases and when I got copies of them both I tried to check for differences:
```
diff …
```
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Curious Combination of Craft and Code
18 April 2009

I'm a software developer, so I like to make things. The fact that some of these things involve yarn, fabric, or wood rather than code doesn't make any difference to how I feel about building things. For the most part my programmer friends think I'm strange for making woollen things …
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