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Text Commands for Skype
18 June 2010
Read moreI use Skype on linux and the client is quite limited in terms of buttons etc, which doesn't bother me at all since I don't use a mouse unless I must (answering skype calls forms a lot of the "must"!). In group chats however, its annoying to have the alerts …
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Poor Man's Caching
10 June 2010
Read moreDescribing something as a "poor man's" version of the thing is to say its a bit of a cheap or short-cutting version. I thought I'd share some VERY poor man's caching that I came up with the other day.
To set the scene - I'm hosting the Dutch PHP Conference this …
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A "new" Netbook for Conferences
12 May 2010
Read moreA couple of years ago, I attended ZendCon for the first time. At that time, the only laptop I had was a work machine weighing 5kg, and I was staying in a different hotel from the main conference - so I hastily bought pretty much the first non-ee netbook on the …
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Thoughts on OggCamp in Liverpool
06 May 2010
Read moreLast weekend I went to Liverpool (my first visit there!) to attend OggCamp for the second year in a row. This isn't a part of the software community I normally interact with, but I accidentally went to a LUGRadio event once a couple of years ago and have been hooked …
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Bzr-svn: Preserving Commits and Rebasing
26 April 2010
Read moreRecently I've been using bzr-svn when I'm working with subversion repositories; its a bridge between a local bzr repository and a remote subversion one. I travel fairly frequently and the pain of being disconnected from the server, unable to diff or log, and then either unpicking everything I've done or …
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svn+ssh with specific identity file
22 April 2010
Read moreHere is a quick howto on using a config file to associate an SSH connection with a particular identity file. When I ssh directly from the command line, I can specify the port, identity file to use, and a whole raft of other options. However these options aren't available when …
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Book Review: Making it Big in Software
19 April 2010
Read moreRecently the kind folks at Prentice Hall contacted me to ask if I'd like to read a new publication of theirs , "Making it Big in Software". It sounded like something I'd be interested in and the copy duly arrived. My first impressions were of a wordy book, very much aimed …
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Ada Lovelace Day 2010: Mrs Maginnis
24 March 2010
Read moreThis is a post in celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, recognising women in science and technology. Last year I wrote about Kathy Sierra for Ada Lovelace Day; this year my subject is someone much closer to my own life.
I'd like to write about someone who influenced me greatly - in …
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GETting RESTful collections - may I filter?
23 March 2010
Read moreAt work at Ibuildings recently, I've been teaching some classes on web services, and its a topic that I've spoken about once or twice at conferences. But something has always bothered me, so I find myself in the unusual position of blogging a question.
RESTful collections
So, when you are …
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Simple Database Patching Strategy
01 March 2010
Read moreOne problem that seems to need solving too often is how to keep databases in sync across different platforms, different developers working on a project, and deploying database changes along with code changes. There are lots of ways of approaching this, none of them are really excellent however and personally …
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Supermondays: Recap
23 February 2010
Read moreLast night I travelled to the northeast of England to speak to a thriving technical community up there called Supermondays. They contacted me some time ago asking if I could get there to speak one Monday, and last night was the night! It was a very civilised gathering, with sandwiches …
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Open Office Presenter Console
19 February 2010
Read moreI've been having issues with the presenter console on both my ubuntu machines since upgrading to Karmic (9.10). One is a Thinkpad T400 running kubuntu and the other is an aspireone netbook running ubuntu netbook remix. Neither wanted had a working installation after upgrade and I couldn't get the …