Category: life
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Tips on the London Eye
Pretty much everyone who comes to London goes on to the London Eye. If you want to save yourself some time and money, book tickets online at their website to get a 10% discount, and you get to skip the ticket queue when you turn up to collect your tickets. Great way to save yourself…
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A fire-side chat about programming
Every once in a while I go through a period of introspection where I pose questions like “why am I solving the same stuff all the time?”, “is there a better way to be doing this?” and “what’s around the corner?”. I think it’s pretty healthy, and I prefer to give it a good two…
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The Moustache is Back!
During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I’m growing a Mo. That’s right I’m bringing the moustache back, because I want to help tackle men’s health issues and fight prostate cancer.The Movember rules are simple. I start out on the 1st clean shaven, and for the rest of the month grow the most awesome…
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Conference organizing no more
After taking a step back to have a think about my situation, I have regretfully pulled out of organizing the IJTC conference in Dublin this year. Putting together a conference is a hugely involved activity and I just do not have the time to spare on it this year. I wish the remaining organizers the…
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Irish Java Technologies Conference 2008
It’s that time of the year again. We are just starting to ramp up getting this year’s conference in Dublin together for November. A good few months this time, as opposed to our insane 3 month schedule last year. There are a bunch of themes that we are looking to cover in this year’s line-up,…
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Who reads your blog?
So, why no blog posts lately? Most of the interesting stuff that folks blog about are those issues and ideas which have currency, those at the forefront at their minds. Tech blogs too deal with the everyday. Issues that we have come across, interesting ideas, problems and techniques. However, in this day of corporate non-disclosure…
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Teenage Knife Crime in London
An unfortunately pessimistic, yet topical, post this time. You only have to walk past the news stands any given day to see the topic of the month. Knife crime is increasing, with the victims typically being teenagers. What were a couple of isolated incidents now appear to be accelerating into a sustained trend. Anyone who has read…
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Surfing the information superhighway again!
After 3 months in London without having a net connection at home I am finally on that interweb thing that all the kids are into these days with their Bebos and their Facebooks and things. Yaay! It’s amazing just how disconnected you feel when you don’t have access to your email – not to mention…
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The Long Tail of Java Tools
I went to an awesome session yesterday evening that did a rapid fire listing of small tools that you should know about if you are working with Java. The breakdown is on the Dublin JUG site.
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Dynamic Language Smackdown
I just came out of a session comparing scripting (but probably better described as dynamic) languages. Groovy, Ruby, Python and Scala went head to head in three rounds; desktop app, web app and freestyle. Whatever language you follow, the possibilities for use are awesome with excellent features in each language ecosystem. While each compile down…