Friday 26 September 2014

Food last night

Cooked for a dinner party last night at Cari's...

Steve had this to say:
Lanroth:  very middle class and domesticated of you ;-)


Smug mode: true

Bookmarks for 20140926

Afternoon all, here's the stuff.

Black Desert #CB2 Character Creation video. Sheer, utter MMORPG graphics porn:


Pain in the ass stuff about upgrading Apache that just bit me while I was upgrading Ubuntu on a hosted box of mine:

https://www.linode.com/docs/security/upgrading/updating-virtual-host-settings-from-apache-2-2-to-apache-2-4/



Currently reading: Jeff Noon - "Pollen" (UK) (US)

Friday 19 September 2014

Leaving the hive

Looks like I'll be casting around for a new development gig that starts in November. I've had an interesting six months working at Spacehive and it's been nice to work in Canary Wharf without feeling responsible for the global economic collapse and recessions, you worldfuckers.

I really want to build applications in Conclave. Next gig just doing that, yeah? Please?

Reading: "Vurt" by Jeff Noon (UK) (US)

Sunday 14 September 2014

Another day, another bit falling off ...


I would heartily recommend not buying an Acer Aspire 5943G or any laptop which has a similar case. Whomever designed this was a fucking retard. I'll be very surprised if I get through the next twelve months without tracking them down and burning their car.

The DC power cable socket you can see on the side there has some plastic mounts inside which just plain broke off shortly after purchase. This recently got so bad that I had to use epoxy putty to fix the connector in place. The power button itself has always been dodgy and today was the day it decided to just fall into the casing due to the shit plastic faring being massively shit. I guess I should have seen that coming. I've removed the plastic faring, the plastic on/off button and now I have a bare push-to-make micro-switch to use which, frankly, feels more reliable already. Insulating tape to follow.

My laptop is the Psion of some cyperpunk dystopia. Hear me roar.



Friday 12 September 2014

Bookmarks for 20140912

Some bookmarks as I haven't done this for ages and I need to test some automation.

My friend @PullMyDaisy 's new KickStarter, "Glass Senses"
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1337820983/glass-senses

Great Sci-Fi short story by Tobias Buckell - "System Reset"
http://io9.com/read-this-intense-pre-apocalyptic-hacker-story-by-tobi-1542763261

The art of Nick Gentry, which I am a particular fan of, especially the more abstract floppy disk pieces
http://www.nickgentry.com

A piece I found on using database tables as queues which is just useful to read
http://rusanu.com/2010/03/26/using-tables-as-queues/

That Manchester Evening News donation drive for Manchester Dogs Home just hit £857,000. Stunning.

Manchester Dogs Home

I got upset this morning. I read back through Twitter and realised that there was a news story about an arson attack last night on Manchester Dogs Home. The place was ablaze, at least 53 dogs had died and there were 150 to evacuate. It felt like a punch in the gut that someone could do that. Then I read further and heard about the huge amount of people who had poured into the surrounding area, bringing food and blankets for the dogs, some risking their lives by going into burning low sheds to try and rescue any more of them. Then I read that there was a donation drive going on via JustGiving, having been set up by Manchester Evening News.

They were trying to raise £5000 to help and had a simple description of their wishes to help on the page as it had been set up in a hurry. I clicked a few times and donated 20 quid. Then I went and looked for a link to the page to share on Twitter and noticed the total amount pledged by people as of 9AM this morning. £280,000... and rising. Completely shell-shocking and very emotional... there were actual blubs.

And now... Jesus. Well. As of ten minutes ago, they just hit £730,000 and have raised the target to a million pounds and I have every confidence that they will hit that easily. People can be so good.

Monday 8 September 2014

Anywhere but here

Every day on this project is the same. I want to work on a feature, but the complete hash a few archaeological layers of developers have made to a Microsoft MVC website bite you, and if they don't get you then the disastrous Entity Framework repository implementation will probably take you down, and if that doesn't, then it might be the home-spun data attributes / view-model objects / AutoMapper combination that finally shits in your eye. Or the weird cache. Don't forget the weird cache.

But every time I do work with Conclave, a weight is lifted from me.

Lacing an ailing, legacy application with another technology isn't a choice to make lightly; At worst, you've just added another degree of dependency, complexity and a migraine for the next developer to pick up the mess. At best, you can distil what the application is doing and capture that in a way that will make it easier to re-write the whole thing from scratch, with, in this case, new Conclave models, stores and behaviours.

Christ, I can't wait. I'm so tired of wading through the muck.


Reading: "Glow" by Ned Beauman

Wednesday 3 September 2014

Lady Invisible

She has vanished, alas!

Invisible - with a swish of her cloak, she turns to glass; stealth technology of the highest order that US Generals, fearing rival borders, to own would surely sell loyalties both homeland and extramuros.

A hazy, busy camouflage is all I see, but I recall dark and gold spun curls alongside me; before invisibility.

While communication, fading nightly, causes motes to tumble crazily, describing arcs in air and drowning brightly where she has passed.

Is this Winter? Will this last?

And, I wonder still and ask the air aloud of she - Lady Invisible, will you soon appear to me?



(By me, circa 2012.)