It’s election time in the UK. This will probably not be the last political post I make here in the next few weeks. At least this one is still heavily tech-related. It’s about the Digital Economy Act, which I wrote an angry letter to my MP about. (Incidentally – no response to that latter, although [...]
I’m a picky eater. I have a very limited range of foods that I can eat without making comedy ‘that’s disgusting’ faces. I’m not like the guy on ‘Freaky Eaters’ who only eats cheese, but it’s definitely far less than a normal range. For the last 30 years it’s not really bothered me that much, [...]
Like most people, I have ideas pop into my head which seem like they’re ZOMGAWESOME and will make me eleventy million pounds. Also like most people, I don’t take any steps to realise almost all of those ideas. This year I want to try to realise more of them. While I’m pretty sure that none [...]
I’m going to start by proposing the following: Doing it right > doing it wrong > not doing it at all. I do firmly believe that in terms of software development, test-driven development (or ‘test-first’, or ‘behaviour-driven’ development, which all seem to be variations on a theme) is the right way to do it. You [...]
It’s been nearly five months since I confessed my dirty little secret and I thought it might be worth looking back to see how things worked out. The first thing to note is that while I did finish my project management system, I never ever use it. I think that Craig was right – judging [...]
For me, the problem with using test-driven or behaviour-driven development while working on my own projects is that these projects are largely learning exercises. I’m not working for a client, and I don’t have a fixed specification to work to. If I think something is too hard for me to do right now, I can [...]
Each evening I post to Twitter ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, today has been X productive and Y% fail’. It’s a simple daily ritual which allows me to quantify both how much I’ve got done and how frustrating it was doing it. At some point I plan to write a script to log [...]
A couple of progress updates on things I’ve written about previously. First up, my ‘MacBook Mini’ is coming along excellently. I’ve been using it at work and to write some short stories, the battery life is brilliant and the keyboard is nearly as good as the one I use with my iMac. I’ve got speaker/headphone [...]
Today is the first day for my new plan of not watching TV at 8pm, and here I am watching TV while I wait for my food to cook. I’m happy with that, though, since the project management system is looking good and I want to take some time to write up my first experiences [...]
The New Year’s Resolution I kept for the longest time, one I made in High School and didn’t break until 2006, was to not make any New Year’s Resolutions. I didn’t keep the one I made in 2006, and I don’t think I’ve ever kept any of the ones I made when I was younger [...]
