Codefounders

I'm Still Here!

David — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:45:00 GMT

Hello blog, it's been a while! You've probably been wondering where I've been. Well I'm still here, I haven't gone anywhere, I've just been fat too busy doing other things. I've spent most of the last 6 months working on renovating my house and garden. I've still got lots to do to it, but I've achieved quite a lot so far. I've just uploaded some photos of the work so far to my Facebook page - if you know me personally you should be able to see them if you fancy...(read more)

Finding My Way

David — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:29:56 GMT

I’ve always liked the song Finding My Way from Rush’s first album. It may not have won much critical acclaim but I like the song and the title seems to fit my life quite well at the moment. You may recall from a previous post that my wife has filed for divorce. The decree nisi was issued some months ago and as of 3 weeks ago, my wife can apply to have that enacted and the decree absolute issued. She may have already done so, I don’t know. All I know is that I will come home from work one day to find...(read more)

Windows 7 ate my screen (or how I thought the upgrade had failed)

David — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:48:49 GMT

I like Windows 7, it’s a massive improvement over Vista and my PC’s now work more responsively than a geriatric tortoise. I’ve installed Windows 7 on about 15 different machines now and my installation and upgrade experience has been painless. Until the other day that is… A friend of mine who runs his entire business (and thus supports his family) from a single PC asked me to upgrade his PC from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate. So we set the upgrade going around 10pm one evening.All appeared...(read more)

Arnie was right – I’ll Be Back!!

David — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:11:46 GMT

And I am. Back that is. It’s been well over a year since I last posted a blog entry. So why the long absence? The short answer is because my life turned upside down 12 months ago and I found myself separated from my wife, and now I’m in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. It is a horrible place to be and I wouldn’t wish it on my own worst enemy. It has had a massive impact on my life and caused me to lose interest in all the things that used to interest and occupy me. For instance, and this...(read more)

Laying on the Style!

David — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:54:50 GMT

The .NET development landscape is awash with some fantastic tools. Visual Studio itself includes a wide range of powerful tools but there are some great free and commercial third-party tools available, including some from Microsoft themselves. One I added to my toolchain some time ago is Microsoft's StyleCop , a source code analysis tool which helps enforce coding conventions. I have it enabled by default on every project I work on and I have found it very valuable in improving my own coding...(read more)

Trouble with Glasses or the Inconvenience of Spectacles

Alison — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:13:59 GMT

Is it just me or are glasses a nuisance? Spectacles I mean. I’ve been wearing them since I was seven and I still find them very annoying. Like when I’m getting dressed and pull something on over my head: The neck, no matter how loose always seems to catch my glasses and pull them painfully down on my face. In all those years have I learnt to remove my glasses as I dress – no, I haven’t. Then there’s the change of temperature thing. I get all misted up and spend my time not being able to see clearly...(read more)

I Miss Lawrence

Alison — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:25:13 GMT

Several weeks ago I made the decision to say farewell to our 11 year old cat, Lawrence. Although he was not old, (we felt he was in his prime), he became unwell and I did not want to see him suffer. My 6 year old son had some useful and very unique suggestions to help Lawrence get better as I tried gently to introduce the idea that he would probably die. He was keen to bring a pet to school and chose Lawrence with the argument that if everyone stroked him and petted him that would make him better...(read more)

Give voice to your suggestions and tell us what you think

David — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:50:30 GMT

When I get the chance I listen to a broad range of IT-related podcasts. Just recently I've been catching up on some of Scott Hanselman's Hanselminutes podcasts. In one of the recent episodes I was intrigued to hear about User Voice , an online service which allows website owners to quickly and easily gather feedback and comments from users via a cool little widget that you deploy on your site (see image below). Users can post new suggestions and comments or rate existing comments posted by...(read more)

The future is Red...

David — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:38:01 GMT

I learnt yesterday that Lutz Roeder, who produces the Reflector tool for .NET, has decided that it is time to move on to other things and is ceasing further development on Reflector. If you're a serious .NET developer then you'll already know about Reflector; it is one of those must-have tools for .NET development and one that I use on an almost daily basis. Lutz has done an amazing job in producing and supporting this tool and making it freely available to the developer community for the...(read more)

It’s only a matter of time

Alison — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:01:50 GMT

Is time a reality? Why is it that a watched pot never boils or that time passes more quickly when you’re having fun? I keep running out of time. Perhaps because the objectives I set don’t have realistic time scales: I try to accomplish too many things within too short a time. This leads me to think that time is not a reality but a concept or a measure. As Woody Allen once said, “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.” Time is what separates cause and effect. (*) Our concept...(read more)

Take care of yourself, take care of the environment

David — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:04:08 GMT

I came across an interesting post on Green Blog yesterday which postulated that the reason why most people don't care about the environment is because they don't care about themselves. It went on to suggest that they also don't take responsibility for making themselves happy, continuing in dead-end jobs and not pursuing their dreams, and that how they treat the planet is a mirror for how they treat themselves. This post really resonated with me, particularly as I'd just finished reading...(read more)

Towards Carbon Neutral Computing

David — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:34:19 GMT

For many years now software companies have been engaged in the practice of dogfooding , actively using their own products to convey their confidence in them. I was interested to read yesterday that the UK Government is dogfooding its own IT carbon reduction strategies and aiming to become the first government in the world to make its computer systems carbon neutral ( Whitehall bid to cut IT emissions ). This is indeed a laudable aim, though at this point in time it applies only to the Department...(read more)

Where did my day go? Oh, wait... I've been trying to copy files with MSBuild

David — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:10:54 GMT

I've spent most of my day today trying to copy some files from one location to another using MSBuild. This is something I've done plenty of times before, but in this case I was trying to do something other than just copy an entire directory of files. I'll be the first to admit to being a bit thick sometimes, but MSBuild really does confuse me sometimes and I guess today was one of those times. MSBuild is certainly powerful but I find some of the operations a little counter-intuitive;...(read more)

We've seen it in the movies

Alison — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:05:07 GMT

I was speaking to my brother the other day. We lead very different lives. He’s been living in southern California for the last 20 years. (Seeing it in writing and thinking about it suddenly makes me feel old.) We were talking about life and people’s perception of lifestyles. If our civilisation were to come to an abrupt end, in centuries to come what would people (or aliens from other worlds) make of our existence – especially if the information they were analysing was film footage. Films such as Spiderman, Lara Croft, The Matrix – films with a lot of CGI and shot in front of blue screens. They would wonder what sort of powers and abilities we had. It would portray a very distorted view of our existence.

The ethics of economic success?

David — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:46:10 GMT

Modern business, at least in the Western economies, is predicated on continued economic growth and returns for shareholders which often results in the the ability to generate profits being viewed as the only indicator of success. I may be odd, but I've never really subscribed to this point of view. Aside from the fact that I don't see how you can have infinite growth in a system bounded by a finite availability of resources, I think there are many more ways in which businesses can be perceived...(read more)

Firefox, please let me make my own decisions

David — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:49:54 GMT

I finally got around to downloading and installing Firefox 3 today and on first inspection it does some to have a better look and feel and some nice improvement over version 2. One thing I wasn't impressed with though was the installation process. Firefox uses a typical installation wizard but I was a little miffed to get to the final step before installation began to find a message indicating that Firefox was going to be made the default browser. Nowhere in the wizard did it give me the option...(read more)

McConnell on Software Professionalism

David — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:21:00 GMT

It's half term holidays which is giving me a break from my normally hectic schedule for some much needed family time. It's also a good opportunity to catch up on some reading and I've just finished reading Steve McConnell's Professional Software Development which has been on my reading list for some time. It's a very good book which makes an excellent argument for software engineering adopting the same professional ethos, behaviours and techniques as other branches of engineering...(read more)

The World is Going Green

David — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:29:01 GMT

Not in the environmental sense unfortunately but in the literal sense. Why so? I had reason to be doing a lot of web surfing yesterday and couldn't help noticing how many of the sites had logos, buttons, graphics and images in various shades of green. There has been a lot of backlash against companies overplaying their green credentials recently (so called greenwashing ). Perhaps what we're now seeing is an outbreak of subliminal greenwashing? At least the world is literally going green in...(read more)

A Noteworthy Day

David — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:38:03 GMT

Around 7:50am today something unusual and noteworthy occurred. The issue of Peak Oil got an airing on Radio 4's Today programme. Many people are unaware of or unwilling to talk about Peak Oil, the point at which the world's oil supplies start dwindling and we have to start coping with the consequences of our entire Western lifestyles being supported almost entirely by oil. (Look around the room you are in now - can identify one object that in some way does not depend on oil for its creation...(read more)

Powerdown Energy Saving Software - new version released

David — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:22:29 GMT

I am delighted to announce that we have today released an updated version of our Powerdown Energy Saving Software for Windows systems. Powerdown helps you reduce carbon emissions, minimise energy use and maximise cost savings by controlling the power state of individual computers. Idle computers are turned off or placed in a low power state and can be automatically restarted for maintenance or operational purposes. Unlike competing solutions Powerdown does not rely on computers being connected to...(read more)

Vista SP1 installation failing with file permission errors

David — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:52:20 GMT

One of my colleagues asked me today if I had any experience of installing Service Pack 1 on a 64-bit Vista machine. He is having great difficulty getting it to install; about half-way through the process the installation fails with a file permissions error. He's tried several fixes listed on the Microsoft web site but to no avail. I had to admit that I have no experience of the 64-bit version of SP1 as I don't actually own any 64-bit Vista machines. I did suggest that he might like to try...(read more)

We're not addicted - we can stop any time we like

David — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:51:44 GMT

In some ways the current strike at the Grangemouth Oil Refinery provides an interesting insight into how ordinary individuals will deal with peak oil and the future lack of oil supplies. The refinery is only scheduled to be shut for two days yet the public has engaged in a round of panic buying which has emptied petrol stations and required additional fuel to be shipped in from the continent and elsewhere in the UK. The average car/van probably runs for the best part of a week between refills so...(read more)

A Sad Loss

David — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:39:56 GMT

I was deeply saddened today to hear of the passing of Humphrey Lyttelton, renowned jazz trumpeter and broadcaster. I've spent many happy hours listening to Humph on the radio, primarily in his role as chairman of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (the funniest programme on radio) but also his Radio 2 jazz programme. Listening to the radio will never be quite the sae again. del.ico.us | Digg It | Technorati | StumbleUpon | Furl | reddit...(read more)

Being Green is about taking responsibility

David — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:25:14 GMT

There's an interesting article by Dr Tom Crompton, change strategist for WWF-UK, on the BBC News website which argues that the time for small measures to help address climate change is over and the time for large-scale action is now overdue. It's a good article and I agree with the points he has to make. There are also some interesting comments from other readers, including one who states 'Save the planet? Seriously? Stop being so arrogant. The planet will be fine. Humans may be in trouble...(read more)

Blogging on the move

David — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:12:00 GMT

Maybe it is the corollary of the old adage about work expanding to fill the time available but these days I seem to have less free time with each passing day. So I was intrigued to see that Richard at Black Marble has produced a Windows Mobile blogging tool which enables you to submit blog posts from your mobile phone. He was kind enough to give me a copy and it is brilliant! Sort of like a stripped down version of LiveWriter, it means I can now post to my blog in any spare minute from wherever I...(read more)