Today, I was discussing software with a friend. It soon became clear that he and I share diametrically opposed opinions about just about everything. Once we realised this, we had quite an extensive discussion over Ventrilo ranging over several subjects.…
Don’t cross the BEAMS! or, RSPEC? where’s my data?
I am working on a project at the moment, using RSPEC. All was going swimmingly until I started using fixtures for some of the data. Once I did, some of the specs (not always the ones mentioning fixtures) started falling…
Bending sql to your will. Crossing an sql table with immediate data.
Well, you are probably wondering what prompted my last post about ‘sql ghettos’. And well you might. The incident that spawned the term happened over a year ago. But, I thought I should get my personal stand on the matter…
Web development frameworks and SQL ghettos.
My platform of choice is Ruby on Rails. In an early project, I implemented some reports by coding special purpose sql statements embedded within model methods. This worked well, and allowed the reports to run reasonably speedily. As I continued…
NPOWER Gas Bill Shellgames
We have recently moved our gas supplier from NPOWER. When with NPOWER we have been having meter readings, some estimated but many actual readings. In addition, we have been paying by direct debit. So, I was very surprised to receive…
WoW WOW – The Guild
I had heard about this from a few sources before, but had not followed it up. This morning it was mentioned on The Instance and I followed it. The Guild is an episodic show that follows the online and offline…
An Enigma? It’s a bloody liberty, that’s what it is!
I have just finished watching U-571. An American made film about capturing of enigma equipment during the second world war. Now, I went in, KNOWING that I would be annoyed, but willing to forgo historical veracity for the sake of…
Rails to_xml, thar be dragons.
Ok, so I have been using to_xml to handle generating xml serialised lists for a restful xml interface. I came across this interesting situation. If you are serialising a collection which is implemented as a set of subclasses using STI,…
Quote of the Day
“A software developer is in the unhappy state that by the time he knows everything he needs to start work, he has probably finished” Who said that? Peter Morris, 2008.
Oh, the Pathos!
I don’t need to buy any fiction books anymore. Nor go to the cinema. All of my dramatic needs are met, simply by reading my email. I received this message from a young lady requesting my assistance with the following…