I have developed with two or three screens connected to my PC (or laptop – using Matrox’s excellent Dual Head 2 Go) for many years. Like desk space, my view is you cannot have enough screen space to help keep organised and productive. Recently I took the plunge and purchased a 4K screen from Amazon. […]
Recently when explaining to a student the basics of database design and the need for primary keys, foreign keys and indexes generally, I fired up SQL/Server 2012 and typed in a few simple examples on my laptop. A very brief summary of this is that you need primary keys to uniquely identify rows in a […]
Although I’m a .NET developer, and I haven’t used the LAMP stack for a number of years, when it came to creating this blog, there was no choice other than WordPress. Its well established, quick and easy to set up a WordPress blog, and this can be polished and finished off with little effort and the […]
I just wanted to relate this snippet of information. Often you get wireless networking gear and they are notoriously difficult to set up, the instructions often translated from chinese. Its only in recent years that I learnt of a good way to setup repeaters, which I have not seen in the instruction manuals. Imagine you […]
The C# vs VB.NET debate is as old as .NET itself, although thankfully appears to be calming down in recent years. When I started using .NET over 10 years ago, I started with VB.NET because although I had 6 years C experience from a previous life, I was also experienced with VB6 and VBA, so […]
Why, after more than 30 years as a developer, have I decided to create a blog? First and foremost, a blog is a form of communication with other interested parties about subjects that are mutually of interest. I wouldn’t dream of disabling comments like some companies do, all forms of feedback are greatly appreciated and […]
Learn six ways effective product owners ensure their teams’ success. [...]
Succeeding with Scrum is easier when you know when and why to conduct each of the Scrum events during the sprint. [...]
Story points are perhaps the most misunderstood topic in agile. Story points are not based on just one factor--such as complexity, as is often mistakenly claimed. Instead, story points are based on a combination of factors. [...]
I’ve been quite adamant lately that story points are about time, specifically effort. But that does not mean you should say something like, “One story point = eight hours.” Doing this obviates the main reason to use story points in the... [...]
I've been getting more and more emails lately from people confused about the difference between "user stories", "epics" and "features." So I thought this month we'd return and cover some basic--but very helpful--territory by explaining those terms. First, the terms don't matter that much. These are not terms with important specific meanings like "pointer" to a programmer or "collateralized debt obligation" to whomever it is that's important. [...]
Mastodon is a free, open-source social networking service that is decentralized and distributed. It was created in 2016 as an alternative to centralized social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. One of the key features of Mastodon is the use of the WebFinger protocol, which allows users to discover and access information about other users on the Mastodon network. WebFinger is a simple HTTP-based protocol that enables a user to discover information about other users or resources on the internet by using their email address or other identifying information. The WebFinger protocol is important for Mastodon because it enables… [...]
I have been blogging here for the last 20 years. Every Tuesday and Thursday, quite consistently, for two decades. But last year, without planning it, I got tired and stopped. Not sure why. It didn't correspond with any life events. Nothing interesting or notable happened. I just stopped. I did find joy on TikTok and amassed a small group of like-minded followers there. I enjoy my YouTube as well, and my weekly podcast is going strong with nearly 900 (!) episodes of interviews with cool people. I've also recently started posting on Mastodon (a fediverse (federated universe)) Twitter alternative that… [...]
I am not a Home Assistant expert, but it's clearly a massive and powerful ecosystem. I've interviewed the creator of Home Assistant on my podcast and I encourage you to check out that chat. Home Assistant can quickly become a hobby that overwhelms you. Every object (entity) in your house that is even remotely connected can become programmable. Everything. Even people! You can declare that any name:value pair that (for example) your phone can expose can be consumable by Home Assistant. Questions like "is Scott home" or "what's Scott's phone battery" can be associated with Scott the Entity in the… [...]
I was reading Gabby's blog post about the new TypeScript/JavaScript project experience in Visual Studio 2022. You should read the docs on JavaScript and TypeScript in Visual Studio 2022. If you're used to ASP.NET apps when you think about apps that are JavaScript heavy, "front end apps" or TypeScript focused, it can be confusing as to "where does .NET fit in?" You need to consider the responsibilities of your various projects or subsystems and the multiple totally valid ways you can build a web site or web app. Let's consider just a few: An ASP.NET Web app that renders HTML… [...]
I've talked about how I love a nice pretty prompt in my Windows Terminal and made videos showing in detail how to do it. I've also worked with my buddy TooTallNate to put my real-time blood sugar into a bash or PowerShell prompt, but this was back in 2017. Now that I'm "Team OhMyPosh" I have been meaning to write a Nightscout "segment" for my prompt. Nightscout is an open source self-hosted (there are commercial hosts also like T1Pal) website and API for remote display of real-time and near-real-time glucose readings for Diabetics like myself. Since my body has an… [...]
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