Articles tagged 'personal'
It's Coming Home May 30 2006
A superb look from the NY Times at the hopes of the England “soccer” team at this years World Cup in Germany. It’s funny to see an outside view of the English way of handling our big football stars, as they aptly describe the hopes we place on our team, and how the media love nothing more than to bring them crashing down. Interesting article.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, football, soccer, “world cup”, england
Sideways Blinders May 27 2006
So it’s been a long time since my last post - far too fucking long. Lots of shit has happened in the month or so since the last time I bothered to blog anything, so expect a good few catch-up posts. In the meantime, some kind of summary is in order.
Last time I posted I was in the middle of a five-day UML course - it was good, I learnt a lot, but I’m yet to really put any of it to use, and so I’m hoping I’ll find an opportunity to do so (where it makes sense, not where I’m doing it for the sake of doing it). Also, the lack of decent modelling tools makes me chuckle somewhat, all of them are either shite, or are too expensive, claiming to be able to practically write the fucking applications for you based upon a couple of class diagrams. That’s not the purpose I want to use UML for - I want to use it as a way to get down on paper the architecture and structure of libraries and apps that I dream up in my head. It then acts as decent system structure documentation. I then build it myself from that, and undoubtedly because code is code, I’ll realise along the way my original structure wasn’t perfect. I’ll amend, re-think, and re-iterate. Agile development seems to work perfectly hand in hand with this idea, small iterations, tighter development cycles. I’m starting to really dig it.
So what else? Well I’ve moved house now - after what must have been 7 or 8 weeks of playing the solicitor shuffle, I finally moved in with my girlfriend, into the house we bought together. It’s been a very busy time, and I’ve loved every minute of it. I’ve built more furniture in the last few weeks than I ever have done in my previous twenty years combined. We’ve been moved in two and a half weeks now, and there are now no boxes, everything is pretty much tidy now, it’s amazing. Actually scrub that, my girlfriend, Andie, is amazing. I’m responsible for getting TV’s, PC’s, audio systems, broadband, telephones (the easy stuff) up and running, but she has been stunning at tidying, cleaning, getting everything in tip-top shape. I’m a lucky, lucky man.
Speaking of broadband, it took longer than it should (fucking monopolies) to get the phone line up and running, but then I got the broadband sorted out fairly quickly, and so now have a wireless network setup with all my machines up and running again. I hadn’t been able to work on anything for around two weeks, so now I’m edging back into it, tackling a few little things first before I delve headfirst once more into my massive bag of ideas and continue working on a few of the big things I had planned before the move.
That’s it for now, expect more soon.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, uml, “moving house”, broadband, coding
A good start Apr 25 2006
Aha, a good start. Arsenal through to the Champions League final. Now here’s what happens from here on in - Middlesbrough win on Thursday, 2-0, to go through to the UEFA Cup final. Both Arsenal and Middlesbrough win their respective finals, claiming a double over European teams for English football. Then to top it off, England win this summer’s World Cup in Germany. Let’s check back in a few months time and see if I was right :-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, football, soccer, arsenal, middlesbrough, “champions league”, “uefa cup”, “world cup”
Commentary Apr 25 2006
Ok comments are back - simply look at an individual post on my blog now, and underneath, an “Add Comment” section has appeared. Simply enter your comment (just a simple textbox for now I’m afraid) and who you are, then hit “Comment!”. I’m going to be doing some serious development on the entire software soon and commenting will be done properly - but for now at least it’s an arbitrary way for any readers wishing to comment, to do so.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, blog, scrawl, personal, comments
Stacked Actors Apr 25 2006
So, day two of the UML course, and it’s starting to get useful. Use cases, leading on to class diagrams, has me intrigued as a coder. I want to get cracking now trying it out on a system I’m designing (designing before coding, wowee!), but upon looking for some decent UML software, preferably a plug-in for VS 2005, I’m most disappointed. Now I understand VS 2005 has some class diagram tools built-in, but while it looks like UML, it doesn’t smell quite like UML (am I missing something?). I really want something that lets me create any of the different types of UML diagrams (such as use case, class diagrams etc), however the only software I’ve so far come across (such as Borland’s Together plug-in for VS 2003/2005) costs a shitload of money. So, I’m going to keep digging, but my options look limited…
1) personal, “free but only for non commercial” or trial versions - basically yucky cut-down tools
2) NetBeans 5, or at least the latest alpha/beta whatever, seems to have some UML diagramming tools - but come on, a different IDE just for diagrams?
3) a separate tool, such as an open source tool - again, I’d prefer it within my main IDE, but oh well…. *sigh*
Anyone have any ideas? As some may have guessed, this is one of the reasons I quickly cobbled together the ability to add basic comments again tonight, benching all of the big ideas I’ve got for my blogging software in favour of quickly deploying a way for my loyal readers (both of you, including that Google search bot) to post any suggestions they may have!
More UML tidbits soon hopefully…
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, uml, modelling, “use case diagrams”, “class diagrams”
Fragile Development Apr 24 2006
Today I did a bit of modelling - data modelling that is. I started my five-day UML course, as I’m attempting to learn the deadly art of analysis. It was actually quite interesting - after Getting Real recently (must get round to finishing that book) I was starting to dispense more with documentation/design diagrams and all that in favour of writing the damn code. However there are times when I need to crystallize my thoughts, gather design details, and really plan more complex concepts. It seems after today that UML, and design analysis, is a good way of doing that. In many ways, the course I’m doing (which is actually object-oriented design and analysis, specialising in UML) does tie in with a few agile concepts - in particular, the idea of smaller iterations of development, and an especially agile process for coping with design/requirement changes. On top of this, the idea of use cases defining functionality, doubling up nicely as easy scenarios for testing, ties in with test-driven development. So while I initially poo-poo’d heavy-handed design, analysis, and UML, I’m finding it refreshing to look at a project from a far more architectural point-of-view - especially when the model-view-controller pattern was brought up as being a Good Thing ™ - something I’ve spent a lot of my spare time working on recently. Over-all: interesting stuff, and expect a few more thought provoking posts (with hopefully even more amusing titles).
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, uml, design, analysis, coding, programming, unit-testing
Safety Apr 24 2006
Ah, guarenteed Premiership football next season after tonight’s victory. Sweet.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, football, fulham
Icy Cold Apr 22 2006
Holy shit, how’d this one sneak up on us? Somehow we’ve been teleported back in time forty-five years to the Cold War. Russia supplying anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. I thought either naivety or a simple good-nature explained Russia’s involvement with Iran to help them with nuclear technology (they proclaimed that it was only going to be used for nuclear energy, and therefore peaceful purposes), however anti-aircraft missiles aren’t really dual-purpose and the intention is surely pretty clear. It’s quite an antagonistic move, and certainly one that doesn’t help the diplomatic process.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, politics, usa, russia, “middle east”, iran, war, “cold war”
More classic House Apr 20 2006
Another great episode of House tonight - and another classic House quip:
Henry: I assume you’ve been in love?
House: Is that the one that makes your pants feel funny?
Glad to see it’s been picked up for another series.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, house, tv
scanR Apr 18 2006
This is pretty cool, with my 2-megapixel Sony K750i, who needs a scanner now? I might have to give it a go a little later, let’s see how I get on.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, scanr, scanning, “camera phone”, “sony k750i”
Easter Apr 18 2006
I had an excellent Easter weekend away up north in Lincolnshire visiting relatives - and it was really enjoyable. Some photos from the weekend are up here and here. Anyway, Andie and I stayed at my grandmothers for the weekend, and spent the Saturday and Sunday visiting with various relatives I haven’t seen in a long while - and it made me realise I should make more time to see them more often. Sometimes they drive me nuts, often in fact - but it’s fun to see them and after-all, it’s family :-)
Came back Sunday, and yesterday had a nice relaxing day - back to work today though, feels like a bit of a drag as you’d expect. However, it’s only a four-day week, and I’m already looking forward to the weekend again!
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, easter, family, relatives, holiday
Photo overload Apr 13 2006
I’ve just stuck a load of photo’s I’ve been collating over recent weeks up on Flickr, in a photo uploading binge. As always, check out my photos here, or subscribe to the photostream here. Enjoy.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, photos
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