Stuffing XML into someone else’s system is always a treat when there is no schema or DTD. It’s even more fun when the original dev teams on both sides have moved on, leaving no documentation whatever. The particular system I’m…
I had been expecting to do some development work on my Android project over the holidays, but I ended up taking a break from programming altogether. I made some little notebooks at my kitchen table instead. I needed a break,…
Bookcloth is lovely but hard to find exactly what you want. Making your own is easy, and opens up a whole world of textiles for use your bookbinding projects. Here is the procedure I have been using. Materials: Fabric Rice…
Here is some colour footage of Lancaster B IIs from 426 squadron. Unlike other marks, the B II was fitted with radial Hercules VI engines. These engines were popular with crews because they offered a smaller target from below than…
Font scaling in a messy business and LibGDX is no exception. It can take a lot of effort to get a crisp rendering. There are a number of strategies for getting the result you want, and utilities like Hiero are…
Here is a Prezi presentation I made to explain Jenkins and the advantages of using it for process automation. The audience was mostly non-technical. Jenkins CI: What it Is, What it Does, and Why it Matters
In this post I will discuss a simple programming problem which I have solved. Writing it allows me to pad out my blog. I’ll write about how the super-cool project I’m working on was nearly derailed by the problem. I…
I spent some of the holidays at a resort in Veradero, Cuba. I collected about 50 pounds of seashells and spent a lot of time doing nothing at all. One afternoon, I saw a an example of the legendary Cuban…
I can proudly report 2013 was a sterling success. I met a whopping 16% of my technical objectives. Some may scoff at this success rate, but I can guarantee 2013 will end on schedule at 23:59, December 31st. For this…
I just finished a project using Talend ODI to push around mountains of XML and am pleased to say it is well-suited to this kind of grunt work. The learning curve was steeper than I had expected, and it has…