Work

  • Faking Production – database access

    One of our services has been around for a while, a realy long time. It used to get developed in production, there is an awful lot of work involved in making the app self-contained, to where it could be brought up in a VM and run without access to production or some kinds of fake supporting environment. There’s lots of stuff hard coded in the app (like database server names/ip etc), and indeed, and there’s a lot of code designed to handle inaccessible database servers in some kind of graceful manor.

  • Resigned & Signed

    Today I resigned my post as Head of Technology for SLA Mobile and signed a contract with atg where I’ll be workin the eStara team.

  • Mobile Monday comes to Belfast

    I’m one of the speakers at the first Mobile Monday event in Belfast, I’m still working on my slides, I have a “tech” talk and a “business” talk, I may have to toss a coin to make the decision.

  • Fear of the-phone-ringing|opening-your-email

    Is it right that you should live in dread of the phone ringing? Or opening your email? I’m not talking about being stalked, or chased by creditors. I’m talking about the latest communication from the office. It’s not right that your heart drops when you have a missed call from somebody, or email from somebody.

  • Writing, Briefly

    My job seems to have morphed into writing a lot and not doing a lot1, while distracting myself from something I should have been doing, I stumbled on this: Writing, Briefly, from Paul Graham. A good read. Although I’d break stuff up more than he does/has in that article 🙂

  • Joel does it again

    Joel Spolskyhas an excellent set of brief articles on management styles in IT (focused on software developement, but I believe the comments apply across the board for creative technology[1] roles) They are as follows: Introduction – Three Management Methods The Command and Control Management Method The Econ 101 Management Method The Identity Management Method Worth a read if your management or managed. I work with several ex-military people, where we have a mix of C�C and measurement…I’m still mulling over what that means 🙂

  • Change of scene..

    On the 15th July I jumped on a place (well, two planes, and jumped is hardly right, as easyJet stung me an extra £40 for being over weight1) and headed to Durham, North Carolina, for a couple of months, work offered me an exciting opertunity, and after some discussions with my wife, we took it, she joined me here a week later. Her work has been good enough to let her take some extended leave so she can spend the time with me out here, she joind me out here a week later.

  • Can’t being too badly!

    I’m in Paris for the week, staying in the Holiday Inn Opera, I’m here for a course on a new service we are going to be offering..