Today is my day off, but I wake up and have a quick look at nagios to see if there is anything I need to worry about. Yes there is, SQL Server has run out of disk space on its data disk. I race downstairs and VPN onto the server to find out what has happened. One of my monitoring databases has had runaway log growth...

For a while now I have been at the door of describing myself as a developer, but I think I have finally gone through that door. It is all a state of mind, its not about having x amount of knowledge, its just about saying “Yeah, I’m a developer now.” One thing that pushed me through that door, was an application form...

Rubber Duck is a process in development where you talk through an issue with an inanimate object such as a Rubber Duck. It gets its name from the book The Pragmatic Programmer where it was first used. I am the only programmer where I work and often I find myself with a question that I can’t find the answer to. I do...

I have been recently working on a database that hasn’t been designed but has been hacked together by lots of people over the years. It started life as an Microsoft Access database created by my director to keep track of all the projects that our company does. It was not much more than one table listing everything. At...

So my first Raspberry Pi project is a security camera. If you have read my previous Raspberry Pi posts you will know that I have been playing about with the camera but I had one or two problems with Pidora so I am using Raspbian for this example. To take a photo with the camera module you can use the command...

I am currently buzzing with excitement about my Raspberry Pi. I will try to document here what I have done so far. I decided to buy the camera module along with my Pi. It was straightforward to connect them up, lift the connector behind the network port, insert the ribbon cable, push connector back down. Next I...

TeamCity is a Continuous Integration software package which is very easy to install and set up. So easy I managed it over a weekend. First of all I fired up a VM in Azure. I found that a Basic A1 VM was sufficient so running a CI server doesn’t have to be expensive, alternatively you could always set a Virtual or...

I recently went to an event called ITBoss organised by Core Com Consulting . It was really good, helped partly by a free bar and great food. The event was hosted in a pub in central Leeds, so I rushed to the train station from work to get there. And yes I was the first to arrive (Why do I always do that?). The event...

Every developer uses source control, it is a great tool for keeping track of changes to your code, seeing who has done what. However I keep messing up, my use of it. I am fairly disciplined when creating new features, all my changes will get committed to source control and when I am happy I will deploy these changes to...

I have spent most of the day tweaking my Azure websites. Lots of fun! Last week unfortunately Azure had some problems and many websites that were running in the North Europe data centre were unavailable for several hours. And you guessed it my websites were hosted here. All hosting providers are going to have downtime...