Today I did a clone of one of my git repositories and it took ages to download. Looking into what got downloaded it was easy to see why. The .git folder was over 500Mb in size. I know how this has happened. This repository was created in 2013 and has been used by me as a dumping ground for lots of things related to the...

Like many DBAs I spend a lot of time maintaining my SQL Server backups. From SQL Server I maintain both full backups and transaction log backups. I have often restored my full backups but until recently I have never restored a transaction log backup. All backup strategy’s are only as good as the last time you tested...

I spend a lot of my time creating new features that simplify my companies business processes. A good example of this is an invoicing system I created. Instead of users working off different spreadsheets and copying and pasting data between various different programs the user can click a couple of buttons and everything...

Star Trek Episode Review Arena

Episode Title: Arena Star Trek Type: TOS Original Air Date: 19 January 1967 Teleplay: Gene L Coon Story By: Frederic Brown Directed By: Joseph Pevney The episode begins with the Enterprise in orbit of Cestus III. Commodore Travers requests a tactical team join the away team. When the away team beam down Cestus III...

Disaster Planning

Over the Christmas break the city of York experienced the worst flooding disaster it has seen in recent years. If you want to help donations are being taken at York Flood Appeal . Luckily I wasn’t affected but it was really sad seeing many of my favourite streets full of water. Thousands of people had to be evacuated...

A look back at 2015

Wow! What an amazing year 2015 has been and with 2015 about to end I thought it would be good to look back at what happened in this amazing year. January I started the year with a declaration that 2015 would be my year of code. Well I have had a few breaks from programming but I have learnt loads this year. I have...

Christmas 2015 with the Fosters

Four months ago James David Martin Foster was born. And he is even more awesome now than when he was born. As I write this James only has a few sleeps (as James sleeps multiple times in a day I can’t put an exact number) until his first Christmas. James is pretty much unaware of what is going on as he is still too...

Roddenberry comic

The Oatmeal created a comic which you really should check out. It can be found here . The comic tells the story of a plane crash, in which the 25 year old co-pilot goes back into the burning plane to rescue passengers and lead a group of survivors through the desert to find help. The co-pilot was named Gene...