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22
Aug

Moving home

By Damien Guard Categories: Personal Tags: , .

I have been planning on moving my blog off my little Windows Shuttle PC at home onto a hosted service for some time and the latest flurry of activity followed by DSL line meltdown was enough to give me the nudge I needed to get the job done.

Rob Conery provided a useful .NET/Subsonic app to make the transition from Subtext about as painless as possible bar the obvious one of going with a PHP based solution when I know .NET is a better technology.

I simply felt the .NET blogging engines didn't give me what I want right now and yes, I know I should be contributing to them to get them where I want them but I'm just so busy on various projects that if I was coding a blog in the evenings I wouldn't be writing on it. Hopefully the great, and no doubt equally busy, guys behind those engines will forgive my little foray into WordPress for a while.

The non-blog parts of the web site (yes, there are some, with downloads, fonts, cursors, little tools and a mini-biography) will be integrated with the site shortly and the theme will probably gradually change to something more me. I also want to add a few extra things, the tag cloud and identicons for a start.

The title of this post also has a second meaning... yes, I've put an offer in on a house and will hopefully be taking possession in around 6 weeks providing nothing goes wrong.

Your invite to the house warming party will be in the post...

[)amien

1 Comment
21
Aug

Apology for the odd theme and sluggish speed

By Damien Guard Categories: Internet and Personal Tags: .

I've switched to a lightweight theme (300KB less per initial hit) whilst we are overloaded with requests from the excellent Daring Fireball regarding the font rendering philosophies post.

I've tried moving some images off site but it's just typical this happens the week before I move to proper hosting. My poor home DSL line is melting!

Update

Things have calmed down and through a combination of moving images off-site, switching theme and enabling gzip compression for .js and .css the site has survived despite being overloaded at times through lack of bandwidth (CPU and RAM were just fine)

I'll leave the theme as it is for now in case we get a second wave - the hits appear to come in waves as different time-zones hit different parts of their wake-up, get-to-work and get-home cycles.

The 60 day old post has now had 20,000 hits - about 19,500 of them within the last 24 hours. Slicing and dicing the stats in SQL reveal that my blog has been running for 977 days, consists of 263 blog posts averaging one post every 3.5 days. It has received 1239,51 hits in that time, a sixth of which were in the last 24 hours.

It's amazing for so many people to read something I have written but as analytics is already pointing out fame is fleeting.

Here's hoping a few of them decided to add me to their news reader :)

[)amien

3 Comments
19
Jul

What are you doing for the next 6 months to be a better developer?

By Damien Guard Categories: Personal Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Scott Hanselman posed the open question on his Hanselminutes podcast and there have already been some good responses. My own plan includes:

Improve programming techniques

My girlfriend gave me the well-regarded Code Complete, Second Edition for my birthday. I shall read it cover to cover and adopt good practices I am not currently practising.

Manage my life

I have started reading GrinGod's copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I will move tasks out of my head and concentrate on what is achievable right now.

I have set-up these tasks now in Midnight Inbox (great but a little rough) and will keep an eye on OmniFocus. I will be prepared to use my free Moleskine I won in the Moleskinerie summer draw if neither does the job and not immediately write my own software.

Interact with other developers

My Subversion talk at the Guernsey Software Developers Forum went well. I will seek new members and engage in discussions of development with regards to local issues such as those in the finance industry.

I will spend less time on IRC as it is distracting and the non-persistent nature means good answers are lost. Instead I will help more on forums and be prepared to wait for answers to my own questions.

Learn new technologies

I will investigate technologies and learn them where they appear applicable to my work or I find personally interesting. These include:

  • Ruby on Rails - clean MVC development with AJAX support... but what about libraries and performance?
  • LINQ - simple but powerful object-relational mapping as standard but far away in .NET 3.5
  • Cocoa - Apple's OS X development based around Objective-C giving compilation and dynamic typing
  • MonoRail - if I'm going to continue with ASP.NET it won't be with WebForms
  • SharpDevelop - the Visual Studio API is terrible and this project looks well designed and usable

Contribute more to open source

I will contribute more to my favourite open source projects. This includes:

  • AnkhSVN - improve user interface and head up the 1.1 release
  • SubSonic - refactor more code and help out where I can

Lead development at work

At my new job I will concentrate on the new technology and vision for the next-generation of tools to deliver to our staff and customers and lead my team as appropriate.

I will distil my experience contracting for the last 7 years into the best practices for the company and continue to lead them in adopting modern practices. We now have have source control, formalised request for change and release management procedures however we still need to embrace new tools, write comprehensive unit tests and switch to object-relational mapping for new development.

Switch keymap to Dvorak

I have swapped out my Das 2 at work for my Apple Pro with the key caps rearranged for Dvorak. I will stick to this layout until I can properly touch-type. I won't actually make me a better developer but it should keep RSI at bay. (This post was written using Dvorak)

[)amien

6 Comments
17
Jan

Five things you didn’t know about me

By Damien Guard Categories: Personal Tags: , .

I've watched this go round all the .NET development blogs I read but alas none of them tagged me.

This in fact turned out to be a bit of a blessing because now that Alex has tagged me I suddenly found I couldn't think of five things nobody knew about me.

So here are five things you may or may not have known.

  1. I learnt to simultaneously program on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Acorn BBC Micro at age 11. Both originally in BASIC then later in Z80 and 6502 assembly respectively - I guess I've always been platform independent ;-)
  2. I was the first Internet Service Provider in the Channel Islands providing free Internet e-mail via my Black Ice BBS a few years before Guernsey.Net and Local Dial formed.
  3. I want to build my dream-home in British Columbia, Canada in a small-town a few hours away from Vancouver. Now I've passed my degree I have enough points to emigrate without needing to find a job before I go...
  4. I accidentally set fire to my kitchen last year. I was out of the house when I got a phone call and upon returning home found the place full of firemen. Whilst the kitchen needed major work everything else was ok and even better the owners insurance paid up for the damage.
  5. I'm very lucky in most areas of my life - from little things like finding parking spaces and things I want to landing good jobs and surviving what should be serious accidents with minor scrapes. Alas the luck doesn't extend to relationships.

I'll tag Gringod, Steve, Wilco, Arild and Swoo.

[)amien

1 Comment
04
Jan

Things I learnt in Japan

By Damien Guard Categories: Personal and Travel Tags: .

Airports

  1. Commercial airlines take the fun out of flying. Airports are often overcrowded and always have so much 'dead-time' waiting for check-in, security, boarding, take-off, baggage claim, customs...
  2. Heathrow is horrific and I'm glad Guernsey doesn't fly there any more.
  3. When UK customs say one piece of hand-luggage per person they mean it. Handbag and laptops are a piece and taking liquid or gels is still a pain.
  4. It takes around 1h 20mins to transfer between Heathrow and Gatwick by coach.
  5. Seoul's airport is impressive even under construction - shame about the one-hour delays on the runway.
  6. Korean Air's fleet delivers interactive individual LCD screens with seat-to-seat gaming or ancient dodgy CRT projectors depending on the luck of the draw.

Trains

  1. The JR Rail Pass offers massive savings for those wishing to get around. As well as Shinkansen bullet-trains between major cities you can take slower trains between towns and JR lines inside cities.
  2. Show your JR Pass and ticket at gates instead of putting your ticket in the machine. Otherwise be prepared for a polite yet firm official to tap you on the shoulder.
  3. JR Pass doesn't let you get on the Nozomi Shinkansen. The quickest you can ride is the Hikori which is the same speed but has more frequent stops often.

Subway

  1. Tokyo subway is quite easy to navigate despite the sheer size and number of people thanks to near-complete Romaji maps.
  2. Kyoto subway is a bit of a mess thanks to multiple operators and no unified map.
  3. Fukuoka's subway is fast, clean and easy to navigate... it is also new.
  4. Buy a credit ticket that will be deducted per trip. It saves a whole lot of time messing around with machines and costs and lets you get on the last few trains when the ticket machines have closed.

Technology

  1. All Internet cafes should consist of cubicles you can sleep in with TV, workstation, bean-bag, unlimited soft drinks and a free comic library like Gera Gera.
  2. Mobile phones are everywhere with people texting and gaming in the street, on trains etc.
  3. Mobile phone system is UTMS/3G so a GSM-only phone won't work. You'll also need to make sure your operator has a roaming partner in Japan because you can't buy pay-as-you-go SIM's in Japan unless you're a resident.

People

  1. Japanese people are incredibly polite and helpful whether it's a stranger sharing her umbrella at a road junction, somebody helping you pick up the contents of your bag sprawled across the floor or somebody from a shop coming outside to help you get your map the right way up and point you in the right direction.
  2. Tiny Police stations (boxes) scatter Tokyo and are equipped with maps to help lost people - addresses are hard to find without one. Check the web-site for where you're going and you'll probably find a printable map.
  3. Emotion is all about the eyes and not the mouth in Japan. It's not just anime but even emoticons are eyes-only. A sad mouthed-face here is tearful eyes!

Food

  1. The street-tent Japanese eateries are a great place to meet people as locals of all ages and foriegners get chatting.
  2. Cheese, milk and chocolate are not common. Kit-Kat and Snickers are about the only recognisable brand chocolate bars.
  3. Eggs turn up in many many dishes. Boiled and dropped into soups, or cooked and laid upon practically anything or sometimes raw over rice dishes.
  4. Food is beautifully prepared, even supermarket sandwiches and lunch-boxes. Crusts are too ugly for their sandwiches.

[)amien

2 Comments
18
Dec

Remote denial of present (DoP) attack via Amazon wish-list

By Damien Guard Categories: Internet and Personal Tags: , , .

I placed eleven items this year into my Amazon wish-list for my family and girlfriend to pick from and all were quickly purchased.

A few days later my mother asks if I can put some items to buy because after purchasing one or two the others have now gone.

My brothers don't have debit cards, my sisters have limited net access my girlfriend claims she hasn't brought them and nobody else knows about it.

Either I've got a secret Santa fulfilling my every Amazon wish or... somebody is executing a remote denial of present attack upon my Christmas!

How it works is simple.

  1. Find the Amazon wish-list of the target
  2. Buy items from the wish-list but ship to your own address
  3. Enjoy the items yourself
  4. Rejoice in knowing the target is deprived of the item now that Amazon believes he will get it

It's pretty evil.

The only way I can see that Amazon would be able to prevent this attack is to either let you pre-select other Amazon accounts that are able to use your wish-list or to be able to see who brought what.

Ho-ho hum,

[)amien

3 Comments
17
Dec

BSc (Honours) Information Technology and Computing, First-class

By Damien Guard Categories: Personal Tags: , .

As anyone who's been reading this blog for too long will know I've been taking a degree in computer science (well, the closest the Open University had) in my spare time since 1999.

Yesterday the results came through for my final year where I managed to achieve a grade 2 pass (which requires 70%+ on both assignments and exam).

Combined with my three distinctions, one other grade 2 and three grade 3 results (hey, sometimes those exams are tough ;-) that means I have managed to achieve a First-class with Honours.

Phew!

Now I just need to wait until next year to go and pick it up and get my photo taken in a silly hat.

[)amien

6 Comments
10
Dec

Update from Japan

By Damien Guard Categories: Personal and Travel Tags: .

Will only be a short one as I'm pretty tired from all the walking and travelling around.

Got into Fukuoka and spent a few days exploring and a few evenings being entertained by Jo who also gave me some pointers on Japanese culture etc. I also subjected his friend Hitori ? to my incredibly poor attempts at Karaoke although my rendition of Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Home almost veered onto the side of not quite making ears bleed.

We ate the fabled delicacy Ramen - noodles in a meat soup - and visited a cool local bar as well as trying out a DVD of some Japanese comedy set in a hotel that was rather good - plenty of set-up and bringing the various elements together for the final wrap up.

After a few days I took a train down to Nagasaki which was hit by the second atomic bomb during World War II just a few days after Hiroshima. Went to the monuments and peace garden there - it's a stark reminder of too much power too little responsibility.

Then decided to head all the way up to Tokyo on the Shrinkansen bullet train and have spent a few days in a haze of neon.

I've visited shrines, temples, gardens, parks, stores, markets but far too many subway stations and their rather long connection walks (about 0.5km much of the time).

I feel like I've walked to the ends of the earth between that and all the walking around parks, shops, streets etc.

I also visited a geek paradise known as GoraGora - you get a small cubicle with a sliding closing door, padded floor, bean-bag, pillow, PC with net access and games pre-installed, TV, lamp and somewhere to put your shoes. Nearby is the free soda machine, showers and comic library (Japanese only - doh!). You can also have food delivered to your cubicle - all for the price of 980 JPY for 3 hours (about £5 GBP or $9 USD).

Hit the Sony Building which Jo's generally-good TimeOut guide to Tokyo claims has a whole floor of PlayStation gear and games. It no longer has any such thing and indeed I couldn't find a single PlayStation 3 in the building although I did see a Wii and the associated bits in a store but it should be out in the UK by now.

Tomorrow I'll be taking another fast train down to Kyoto for a couple of days to get some more Japanese gardens and wild-life done. I think I've reached my shopping and bright lights limit - apparently Tokyo is one of the two biggest cities in the world depending on how you measure it (tied with Mexico City).

Everybody I've met is incredibly nice and polite - I've had Japanese people running out of their stores/hotels to help me when I spend more than a few minutes outside staring at my map and a kind lady in Nagasaki held her umbrella above my head for me. Which reminds me - I've left my newly purchased umbrella in the last hotel.

[)amien

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