Magnetic Clasp for Chain

January 22, 2014 | Comment

This just about squeezes into technology as a gadget (well it’s is my blog so I can cover what I like!). Recently the clasp broke on a chain and I looked at replacing it with the usual hook kind but the local jewelers wanted to charge me £20 for the privilege. I politely declined feeling that I could get it cheaper elsewhere and do it myself.

While searching on eBay I found a company selling magnetic clasps so I gave that I go and was really impressed. The clasps use rare earth magnets and are incredibly strong but easy to … Read the rest

Hat tip to Kernighan & Ritchie

January 15, 2014 | Comment

IMG_7937My last post was all about what has changed in the world of databases since I graduated. This post is all about what hasn’t.

I graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 1988 and during my course we learn’t a number of programming languages including C. Then THE bible on the subject was by Kernighan & Ritche.

My younger son has just started his second year Computer Science degree and this year they too are learning C. When he told me this I mentioned the book and wondered if they would still use it. Yesterday was his first lecture … Read the rest

The Evolution of Databases

January 10, 2014 | 1 comment

iStock_000016066249XLargeOne of the beauties of a long career is that you get to see how things in your sector evolve over time. Being in IT is no different other than the phenomenal rate of change.

Nowhere is this more evident than in databases. When I started out in the late eighties I was a COBOL programmer working on hierarchical databases and specifically IDMSX on ICL’s VME platform. These databases worked on the basis of linked lists and you had to “walk” through a whole chain in order to get to the record you wanted.

Hierarchical databases were straightforward to learn … Read the rest

A great way to recognise and reward employees in a small business

January 8, 2014 | Comment

This post could either be considered as being slightly late or very early but I thought that it was such a positive and interesting story that it was worth telling now.

A friend of mine who runs a small local business of about ten staff was telling me about their Christmas party. As they are mostly home workers and geographically spread they met in London for a meal. Before they sat down for the meal each was presented with two envelopes one containing £20 and the name of another employee and the other £100. The former was for secret Santa … Read the rest

What I learnt from my 2013 side project

January 3, 2014 | Comment

LogoIn 2013 I worked on a side project, The Chubby Challenge, which I continue to develop and move forward. This was built in response to another goal of mine – to lose some weight. I have found in the past that like so many other things in life it is far easier to reach a goal if you are working toward it with others. So the idea is that you challenge others to see who can lose the most weight over a given period.

The system works well and was a great opportunity for me to learn a whole … Read the rest

The Easiest T&Cs to Accept

December 19, 2013 | Comment

So I signed up for a trial of Adobe’s eSignature service Echosign today and was initially presented with the following screen asking me to accept their terms and conditions. I assume that the huge white space is where they were supposed to have been displayed. So I went right on and accepted.

The question now is where do I stand legally as I accepted a blank set of T&Cs can I be bound by the ones Adobe failed to display?

Discuss.
Screenshot_19_12_2013_14_33… Read the rest

Microsoft Accelerator – Demo Day

December 14, 2013 | Comment

IMG_7765So the big day finally arrived and it was back once again to Canary Wharf for the Microsoft Accelerator Demo Day.

Even though the event didn’t kick off until mid-afternoon we were there early in order to go through the pitches once again with all the teams going through their pitches twice. This was not without its glitches as demos didn’t work as expected and words were stumbled over.

Early afternoon, before the guests arrived, boxes of branded cup cakes were delivered which was a neat touch and great to see our logo baked! Tim and I put a couple … Read the rest

Anatomy of of popular tweet

December 12, 2013 | Comment

I have been tweeting for a number of years now and still have a relatively low number of followers (you are following me right?). Last night my iPhone started to go mad with notifications from the Twitter app of favourites and retweets coming through at a steady pace, normally I’m lucky to get one a week. On closer inspection I found that the notifications were all for a single tweet sent about a month ago – the one that you can see shown here.

… Read the rest

Textever Pro – a Quick and Beautiful Editor for Evernote on iOS

December 10, 2013 | Comment

IMG_0668Evernote is great but on iOS it is just too slow to start up when you want to add a quick text note which is a real disincentive to using it on the go. To get round this I have been using Squarespace Note on my iPhone as this is quick to start and has Evernote integration. This has worked well but I have lost notes a few time when I have been offline, which was frustrating.

Enter Textever Pro a well designed iOS app that was built specifically for this use case: getting text notes quickly into Evernote. One … Read the rest