tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86785058122954742202024-02-21T06:59:57.666+00:00Bernhard's BlogWho knows what meaningless ramblings will appear here.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-33100938557715021172013-06-14T06:00:00.000+01:002013-06-14T06:00:10.842+01:00Make your own sharpening diskDo you have a problem with blunt tools? Do you hate to have to lug a grinder to demonstrations? If so, this may be an answer to the question you've not yet asked.A sharp tool is safe; a blunt one is dangerous because a sharp tool does what you expect it to whilst a blunt one requires force to make it do the job; which is dangerous because it is not as predictable. Enough blurb, let's get on with Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-5953093762622315502013-06-13T06:00:00.000+01:002013-06-13T06:00:00.660+01:00Simple instructions for making your own golden ratio calipersI've written up some simple instructions for creating your own Golden Ratio Calipers. These can be used on spindle or faceplate work to identify ratios between features that should be appealing.
Cut two lengths (a) and (d), 2.62 units long. In each, drill a hole at one end, and another 1 unit from that.
Cut one length (b) 1 unit long. Drill a hole at each end.
Cut one length (c) 1.62 units long. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-63711365990180410232013-06-12T06:00:00.000+01:002013-06-12T06:00:05.458+01:00The Marvellous SkewThe skew is a marvellous tool. I was determined to get to grips with it when I first started turning, possibly because of its reputation. Of course I’ve had dig-ins and catches a-plenty; it's all part of the learning curve. Call them what you will, if you aren’t prepared to risk anything, you’re not going to learn. So I suggest you get some scrap wood and go to the lathe. Some Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-61771082004540114472013-06-11T06:00:00.002+01:002013-06-11T06:00:28.377+01:00Keith West's advice on photographyKeith West gave a talk after the Woodbury Woodturner's 2008 Annual General Meeting on photographing the items we produce. This is a summary of his advice.
Move back, Zoom inThe most important tip that I took from Keith's talk is to move back and zoom in. He explained that modern digital cameras are wide angle lenses by default (when switched on) and that this leads to distortion when we place theAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-53144875057578421822012-05-18T07:59:00.000+01:002012-05-18T09:03:10.449+01:00The financial impact of cheap hardwareThere is a theory that if a CPU isn't running at 100% then you're wasting cycles. It's an old joke to explain the futility of measuring CPU usage. The reality is that if your CPU ever reaches 100% you're loosing time. The same goes for any wait event.
When I am blocked, I will (in order of how long I'm blocked for):
Wait (achieving nothing)
Lose interest (and my chain of thought)
Do something Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-37475809182754252422011-06-09T14:56:00.003+01:002011-06-09T15:10:50.540+01:00Javascript tests in Continuous Integrated buildsWe implemented this approach to incorporate QUnit in our regular CI builds a while back and I think it's worth sharing. Since QUnit runs in a browser, it's typically only viewed when someone can be bothered to run the tests manually. Possible options include launching the QUnit page as a post-build step, but that still requires eye balling the results, which means people can ignore it.
If we Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-14202986543124683962011-06-02T14:01:00.006+01:002011-06-05T16:15:06.985+01:00PhoneGap ExperiencesMy first encounter and use of PhoneGap was an eye opener. The ability to produce a native app for my Android phone, AND other devices, just blew me away. Best of all, I didn't need to learn Objective-C, Java, or any other new language to produce these apps.
The apps are web apps. I'm not going to pretend you can do everything as easily in a web app as you can in native code; it certainly has a Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-13626405387275272912011-05-19T09:47:00.006+01:002011-05-19T09:58:34.761+01:00TFS woesIt's the little things that niggle me about Visual Studio (VS) and Team Foundation server (TFS) that make my daily use of them frustrating. I've used Visual Studio almost every working day of my life for the past 10+ years so I've seen it grow from a decent IDE to a bit of a monster in terms of functionality and size. Here's a small collection of things that still bug me today.
I've just definedAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-37048629235953198072011-04-05T09:15:00.002+01:002011-04-05T09:18:19.554+01:00PhoneGap Build is amazingIn my previous blog I wrote about how to install and configure the various SDKs and applications required to build a PhoneGap app on your own Windows PC. Since then I've discovered a whole new way of building PhoneGap apps for more than just the one platform. In my previous blog I created an Android app and would have had more work to do to build the same app for iOS, Blackberry, Symbian or webOSAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-78322891659921155162011-01-13T19:40:00.018+00:002011-02-16T20:25:44.974+00:00Setting up PhoneGap for Android on Windows 7Everything I see shows this on a Mac, so here are my notes on getting up to speed for Windows 7.
Preparation (Reading and Downloading)
Start with the generic Android Eclipse quickstart here: http://wiki.phonegap.com/w/page/30862722/phonegap-android-eclipse-quickstart
It tells you that you need the Android SDK which you download here (this is the start of a veritable download fest):http://Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-75561015661844934912010-06-11T19:14:00.020+01:002011-02-16T20:27:09.023+00:00Quick and simple Mercurial (Hg) setupI thought the time had come for me to get to grips with a DVCS having heard so much love for Git and Hg. The first big decision; Hg or Git? And this is a tough one, because everything I've heard about the two indicates that there's only minimal differences. Someone I know at work has been trying Git, so to get a comparative test I thought Mercurial. Besides, I prefer the name Mercurial (heard Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-27898321503208509022010-05-13T16:58:00.003+01:002010-05-13T17:33:07.771+01:00Things to avoid in developmentI'm currently very low, probably due to working my but off and not achieving much. I'm a results driven person and seeing few and insignificant results after working like a mule depresses me. So I decided to try note down some of the things that are causing me to be so inefficient so that I can avoid them in future and focus my efforts on reducing or removing them.
Get tests in early. Unit testsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-17682289872340920412010-05-09T11:48:00.003+01:002010-05-09T11:55:20.487+01:00I left FacebookI left Facebook a few months ago. I thought I was done; my account was deactivated and I assumed they owned whatever I'd put on the site and that was just how it would end. Recently I've learned that it is in fact possible to delete your Facebook account. I thought these recent entries on the web were worth trying to bring to your attention and I sincerely hope you decide to delete your Facebook Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-44753976884335195222009-10-06T18:57:00.004+01:002009-10-06T19:05:39.699+01:00How many bugsI learned this method from a colleague who used to work with me; Duncan Kennedy. He explained that if we both test the same functionality in our product, we can determine the probable number of bugs by comparing the ones we find. The simple formula requires that two people test independently and then compare the bugs they find.
Let A be the number of bugs that the first tester found and B be theAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-40655424652883574232009-06-24T10:35:00.004+01:002009-06-24T10:49:16.150+01:00Source Control and Diff softwareFor some time now I've been perplexed that most source control systems, although designed and built for source control, are actually nothing more than file control systems. You can put any sort of file in a source control system, and it is treated as a file. Yes, a file; not source code, but a file that might (might not) contain source code. We need this because there are so many different file Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-68242882652002921732009-04-28T11:45:00.003+01:002010-03-22T14:11:37.078+00:00The stages of a new technologyI noticed a blog about the phases of Unit Testing and thought that it was a good indication of the stages we tend to go through whenever we take on a new technology, pattern, technique or "thing" in general.
I tend to start with exploration: download, install, poke at it. This leads on to the learning stage: read blogs, read articles, possibly read a book. It's during these first two stages thatAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-73825332762781612862009-01-27T10:43:00.003+00:002009-01-27T10:47:05.158+00:00File SystemsI was reading Coding for a Living: A Pattern for Fluent Syntax and started a reply that went so off topic and was too long in my opinion for a comment, so I decided to post it here.
I couldn't agree more with what Richard wrote about the shortcomings of the file system. Folders for files are fine when you have a few files, but I repeatedly find myself wanting folders organised for different Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-50643077315727082112009-01-19T09:31:00.003+00:002009-01-19T09:37:38.818+00:00Reading XML? Use XmlReader, not SqlDataReaderI just know I'm going to want to look this up one day, so here it is for my reference:
If you have SQL that produces XML, you might be tempted to try read that XML using a normal SqlDataReader. But doing it that way will not work if the resulting XML is large. In order to read large XML results from SQL Server, you will need to use the XmlReader rather than the SqlDataReader.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-39842316823708511102009-01-09T10:09:00.004+00:002009-01-09T10:14:09.857+00:00How unit testing becomes codingRecently I was writing unit tests for some non-trivial methods on a few classes. I noticed that a lot of the tests were similar, but varied in terms of their input values and expected result values. Which then led to some refactoring within the unit tests to produce code with less duplication. Which led me to think about how I was going to test the test code I had just refactored. The thought Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-29732692725253367242008-12-31T08:31:00.005+00:002008-12-31T08:43:55.873+00:00Why Google is kingSo many search engines out there, so many people trying to nibble at Goggle's position, and yet Google continues to be the first thought when people think search. But not wanting to just blindly follow what we've all been doing I thought I'd give LiveSearch a go. After all, I use Messenger, Hotmail, and now also the Live photos and SkyDrive, so Microsoft are doing a few things I like and Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-28530792533498424582008-11-24T13:42:00.026+00:002009-06-14T12:42:00.687+01:00Setting up source controlI have from time to time had to set up source control on a new system, or after formatting a system that's grown old over time. The steps are pretty simple if you follow the instructions, but they can ramble on a bit in my opinion. I want something short and quick to follow, so when I decided to put source control on a new development box I decided to post this as much for myself as for anyone Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-68901215107870536812008-11-22T09:01:00.004+00:002008-11-22T09:10:17.007+00:00Job matchingI can't help but wonder about the state of job hunting these days as I am now in the process of trying to find work again. It doesn't bother me (yet) that I don't have work, but might do in a week or two's time if I've not had an interview or five at least.
What I do find interesting though, is the whole matching of candidates to jobs. Being a software developer it seem to me that it shouldn't beAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-61029052700997038262008-11-19T07:54:00.003+00:002008-11-19T08:34:14.860+00:00A bad dayI stayed at a friends house again for my last night in Bracknell. I enjoy their company very much, and we have a very nice Indian take away. We had way too much food as usual, but I managed to get it all in :D. We stayed up pretty late watching photos from my recent holiday, and then chatted for a while. It was a lovely evening really. But one of their children was ill and was crying for an hour Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-69153835175000892772008-08-08T17:57:00.003+01:002008-08-08T18:03:59.269+01:00Holidays in the snow or mountain airMy wife and I met in France, whilst on a snow holiday. I say snow because I was snowboarding and she was skiing. Who would have thought, at a time when these two snow terrain customers used to exchange growls on the piste, that we'd actually fall in love.Time has passed and we've not been on a snow holiday in all the years we've been together since. But with two children nearing the age they Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8678505812295474220.post-441819362436276392008-07-17T09:43:00.004+01:002008-11-25T08:20:42.173+00:00Holidays are a lot of workI'm fortunate; my wife arranges our holidays. I just go along and enjoy the sunshine or snow.
But there's a lot of work that has to be done before hand, and there can be quite a bit of work that has to be done afterwards. Most significantly for me these days is the filtering of photos and writing reviews.
I can't help but feel that the holiday has led to more work for me than if I'd just stayed Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210329325429070135noreply@blogger.com0