sutton050

Announcement time, I'm unemployed... Yes, as of the 28th December 2018 I have not been gainfully employed.  But fear not, I am starting my new job on Wednesday 2nd January. I've covered this in a nattering brief on my YouTube, which I now link, but stick with this post for more information. I've never really spoken directly about the job I've had and how its evolved over the years I've been with it, so I was at that role for 14 years.  That's a very long time, especially in today's markets, but as you all know I keep myself busy and informed on these very pages. I did work in what's euphemistically called "the pay to play industry", this is the gambling industry to the rest of the world, but saying that I didn't write the actual games.  I was a systems engineer, so I wrote software which drove the money accepting and paying hardware, and especially software which worked to store the current state of a machine, avoid frauds, count, collate a...

I was asked this very interesting question this week... "Can you learn to be a programmer?"... Lets be clear, the question is can you be a programmer, not can you learn to program.  I believe anyone can learn to use a programming language, to drive their computer to perform a task for them, after all computers are tools and everyone can learn to use any tool. Be a person trying to write a batch script, create a spreadsheet to do their home accounts, throwing together some python to process a few text files or creating a whole compiled program of some kind, pretty much anyone can make themselves, with a book, a little internet searching and enough time, appear on that bell-curve of skill. Does this therefore make everyone a programmer?  I think it most certainly does not.  I can pick up a saw and a hammer, I have in my time knocked out some dovetail joints and repaired the odd chest of draws, does that make me a carpenter?.. NOPE... And likewise, if that self same carpente...

I am not on LinkedIn, there I said it... This seems to be something of a mystery to folks, why are you not on LinkedIn?  You should be on LinkedIn!  I'll send you a link to link up in LinkedIn... The problem is.... I don't want to me on LinkedIn.  I don't particularly engage with social media; I understand many many people do, I myself personally do not; facebook is extremely minimal for me, Google+ has a message from me saying I won't be using it; just because my YouTube account got forced to create one (and they did that automatically); and I only use twitter to complain to companies about poor service! Perhaps this is the problem, putting oneself on social media makes you immediately accessible, searchable, findable, but not always in the form nor forum you desire, being pulled from pillar to post. I've been reading a book by Neem James, essentially about how distracting life is and as a developer, I find the number of distractions I can recount moment on moment ...

When after ten years with your significant other, know them inside and out and they turn around and declare... "You know what, I'll have a Fillet of Fish" Totally blind-sided me this has.

I have no idea why you can hear my breathing so loud on cam... I promise I don't walk around wheezing... at least, I don't think... Shit, maybe I do?... Fat man fail I guess...  I'm pretty sure I blogged about my gut having to go, it's not... At all.

Where have I been and what have I been doing?  Well my wife has been for more surgery, those of you know the tale will be well versed, for thos eo fyou not in the know, she's on the mend; slowly.  I have therefore been busy looking after her. In the hopes of getting more hours out of me the office delivered one of our huge machines to my home and I've been working from there, immediate results were that I did nearly 48 hours of project work whilst not in the office, unfortunately none of that project work is going to be used as the product has changed... Hey ho.  I've also learned that I could never ever work from home for real, even barring surgery recovery, she simply could not wrap her head around how you have to concentrate whilst doing my job and would say my name, wait exactly one second, and say it again, then again and again... So yeah, never going to be able to work from home. What form did this work take?  Well I was working on porting a Linux USB driver fo...

You know that moment when you've torn your laptop battery apart and find Li Ion cells so generic that you can only call them "orange"... yeah... I'm there.... This is like the third replacement battery I've gotten for this laptop, and I love the machine.  But with a battery life shorter than a Goldfish's memory I need to sort this out. Time to shop, and likely get scammed, trying to find affordable replacements. The wiring on this thing is also pretty rubbish, why the heck are there two batteries with opposing electrodes towards one another with just a piece of thin plastic card between them?... I mean, is it trying to burn my house down?

That moment you get half an hour into watching Brad Pitt in War Machine and the wife suddenly asks.... "Do you know him?" "Who?" "The actor!" "Which actor?" "Him with the grey hair?" "The General?" "Yes" "Brad Pitt" "Fuck off, that's not Brad Pitt" I gave up.

Being English, specifically an avid supporter of English Football this week is extremely hard to bear, the hope, the wish, the fear the turbid mix on the street, wafting on the radio airwaves and in nearly every news report. I love English football, the agony, the pleasure, that moment the wife storms out the room declaring "I'm stopping watching this" only to see here peeping around the door-frame thirty seconds later. We love you England, we do. And I find a tear in my eye whenever I think back to that warm summer of '96 as here in Nottingham we saw the Turkish team play at the City Ground and the hurt that followed. I stand up to be counted.  I am English.  We are United.  We will play.  I hope they can win. But whatever the weekend brings, we still have our Lions, three of them, proud and loud. Hear Us Roar.

I've a small gripe with technology recruiters, if any of you out there are reading this (which since I just cast my CV around, you should be). And this is their penchant for skills lists... I have a very minimalist CV, one page of A4, it covers the primary software languages I like (C++, C, C#) makes mention of my favourite working styles (Agile/Scrum) and it has my history and pertinent academic background. That's all... Minimal, just me, my page one shot done. Anymore and it never, ever, gets me anywhere.  It apparently comes across as "hey look at me" attempts to garner and keep attention with the right buzz words, which I myself despise.  Or it comes over as not having a lot to talk about in the interview, as everything you want to know might very well be in this tome of a CV, and I myself reading them find that I want to ask every question I can in the interview stage, so having it all there you disengage, hurting both your interest in the candidate and their cha...

I have a terrible relationship with food, my childhood was pained with my mothers dreadful attempts at cooking (nearly everything was either burnt or tasteless, and the menu variety was dismal) which resulted in my binging on sugary treats, cheeses or bowls of cereal to make up the deficit in calories, fine when one was training Karate four times a week and burning the rest off in walking places as I had no car.  But a problem as I reached my thirties, with two broken ankles Karate left the options list and furnished with terrible eating habits the weight came on board. Even the good-food I ate as a child, notably my Grandad's cooking, was heaped on me "big eats" was one of his favourite sayings, fine when I was a growing child, but later in life this feeling of needing to eat stayed with me. Combine all this with a clear genetic predisposition to be a big lad - my Fathers side of the family are all rotund - and a sedentary job in software I'm now approaching the big ...

Just watching this travesty.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44017172 What he fails to mention is that when everyone has a gun they hang out of casino hotel windows gunning down festival goers, kids kill kids in the hall ways of schools and colleges, that murder suicide is through the roof and you can be shot dead for as little as looking at someone in the wrong way. Donald Trump and especially the NRA have this attitude utterly and totally wrong, and I can't begin to express how god awful this man is. But then, let us remember, he is "leader" of a country where we report mass shootings as "the worse in" and insert very short amounts of time.  This however is glossed over in US reporting of this to it's citizens.  Where as we hear that Stephen Paddock killed 58 people, " the worst mass shooting in the US since 1991 ". The CNN version states " the deadliest mass shooting in modern US History ".... Define Modern Mr Trump and Ms CN...

A beautiful story, really liked this.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-43998773/i-play-minecraft-with-my-eyes

I think life mocks me at times, today I've taken delivery of a couple of things to review... The Victor Electronic Rat Killer Trap and a bunch of bait... And, I literally went to groom the guinea pigs and since this morning, I stepped into the shed and there was an immediate god awful smell.  The smell of rat. But this isn't life mocking me...  No, the mocking comes from the fact that the bloody test model rat trap doesn't work, and then I put the blocks of bait (which only come in a plastic bag) on top of the cage for an hour whilst I cooked tea... And when I returned the blocks and bag were gone, replaced with a set of six fat shiny fresh rat shits! So tomorrow it's WAR! The guinea pigs and rabbit are being taken out of the shed, all the storage bins (which are large plastic and covered with heavy lids) will come out, everything will be swept and the whole shed will be torn down and chopped up. All the paving slabs are coming out and being stacked... and I'm diggi...

This is a post about the worst beginner programming post I've ever read... I've been hounded by someone, I'll call them "LN" they have mailed me and told me that they really like one of my articles from June 2012... Checking my clock, I've posted a whole host of other stuff since.  However, they seem fixated on that pretty old post and strangely have mailed me that it makes perfect reading for "juniors as well as experienced programmers". I'm really not sure what they're referring to in that month of posts I go from inappropriate references to Ghost Busters, to peoples awful toilet habits to talking about the English football team and shit... Yes, I have a post titled "Hyperdefecation". In essence this emailer is full of utter crap, so what are they trying to do?  Well they've references another blog I do frequent "coding horrors", but again their comment is off the mark... Then they ask me to look at their 3000+ word ...

With our thanks to DK Carriage Horses.... Success! Full Review: http://megalomaniacbore.blogspot.co.uk/p/dk-carriage-horses-review.html