Last night I went to a Code Dojo at Leeds Sharp (the coding user group I have started going to). A Code Dojo is a programming challenge that people work on usually in pairs. The challenge that we worked on was to code a solution to the puzzle game Sudoku. The code we worked with can be found on github. I don’t know...

In the UK today is Fathers Day. Happy Fathers Day Dad! I thought I might talk about how he encouraged my interest in technology, especially as in about 8 weeks I will become a parent and will have someone to encourage and inspire. I am going to sound really old but when I was born there was no internet, no mobile...

WOW! I have reached the milestone of 50 blog posts. I have tried to blog at least every week and I have learnt a lot. I have talked about my work, technology, things I have learnt, things I want to do and many more things. It is too soon to tell if my blog is going to be a success, but I think I am starting to find my...

Why is it so hard to find out exactly what is needed when designing changes to a system? When adding functionality to databases I always like to dive in and start adding extra columns and new tables. But at some point you need to find out what is needed. The process of gathering requirements that I have followed goes...

Today is my day off, but I wake up and have a quick look at nagios to see if there is anything I need to worry about. Yes there is, SQL Server has run out of disk space on its data disk. I race downstairs and VPN onto the server to find out what has happened. One of my monitoring databases has had runaway log growth...

Last night I started reading The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas . One practical tip that immediately jumped out at me as useful in my quest to be a better programmer: Don’t live with broken windows. The theory goes like this: an abandoned building with a single broken window attracts additional...

For a while now I have been at the door of describing myself as a developer, but I think I have finally gone through that door. It is all a state of mind, its not about having x amount of knowledge, its just about saying “Yeah, I’m a developer now.” One thing that pushed me through that door, was an application form...