Something a bit different this week!

Taken in August 2015. I probably still have these somewhere if anyone has a good use for them?

Taken in August 2015 at Longleat.

Taken in Krakow, Poland during October 2014.

Taken in August 2015 somewhere near Stonehenge.

Taken in December 2016 looking out from the grounds of Windsor Castle.

The first of what might become a regular thing.

Taken in July 2015.

The Problem

I don't really do MS SQL (preferring MySQL and PostgreSQL) so it came as a surprise to me today when I found that MS SQL backup files can contain multiple backup sets (within the "volume" that is one file).

When restoring such files via the MS SQL GUI, the summary information includes a "Position" column to say which …

For a while now I've been using vagrant (with VirtualBox) VMs to test an application I'm working on. Unfortunately quite often these VMs would only last one or perhaps two tests before apparently having corrupted their disk.

The symptoms would tend to be "Input/output error", eg things like:

-bash: /usr/bin/less: Input/output error

...although it could be almost anything that failed …

Grails 2.x uses it's own configuration loader that includes the ability to read extra configuration from additional, external files. This is a great feature for reading production, deployment specific configuration values; while keeping them separate from a standard WAR file. I've found this very handy when the same application needs to be deployed to multiple machines with only some configuration …

The combined Tweetup and Redhill Micropreneurs social in Reigate this month was an excellent and enjoyable evening.

It was attended by about 20 local people, mostly with some kind of small business. Some were full time (or parent time) on that business while for others it's currently a sideline.

Just a few of the walks of life (and businesses) represented …

St Joseph's Primary School (map) is having it's Summer Fayre on the 27th June from 12noon and everyone is welcome. Entrance for adults is £1, children are free; and there are some great things to see, do, eat and enjoy.

Celebrity Guest

TV's Will Mellor (Hollyoaks, Two Pints, White Van Man, In The Club, No Offence) will be in attendance …

I'm working on creating a local group for freelancers, small businesses and other home workers …

I live in Redhill, Surrey. I'm working on building a freelance and micropreneur group in Redhill.

There is an excellent freelancers group that meets weekly in Brighton (which I visit occasionally). There are also many, many entrepreneur and freelancer groups that exist in London. There are also co-working groups around, the nearest of those I can find being …

Yesterday I set myself a writing challenge, as suggested by Dan Norris, dedicating the working day to creating new content and attempting to produce 10,000 words.

Today I want to reflect on the challenge, see how I did and whether it was useful for me.

My Results

Trying to write 10,000 words (complete with proof reading and editing) …

It is with some slight discomfort that I must admit to having sat down on my bed (well my wife's actually, but what's hers is mine, yes?!) one evening last November to hear a loud cracking sound. I don't believe that I sat down particularly heavily on this occasion; in fact I had just put my youngest son in his …

The title may sound like a foregone conclusion but this is actually very much a challenge, an experiment for me really.

My Day

I have made today a content writing day. The idea for having a dedicated content writing day on this particular day came from Dan Norris who's using it as an experiment for a book he's currently working …

The first Grails 3 pre-release went live a few days ago.

Soon after I updated my super simple grails download and launch script (on github) with the new download locations and other small tweaks for Grails 3 support. Grab the updated script from github then try out Grails 3 with:

grails 3.0.0.M1 create-app my-test-app

Grails 3 comes with …

Some while ago now, I considered the question of Grails vs Django as my web development framework of choice. Since then I've created a few Django web applications. I've also continued to work on several Grails based projects, new and old.

So with fresh battle experience of both frameworks I thought I'd revisit my previous thoughts to see what …

This approach is useful for testing all sorts of changes in boot setup without actually risking a real reboot. Whether you're about to remove a hard disk, just want to test RAID with disk failures, have installed a new boot loader or just changed the configuration; this can help provide reassurance that your remote server will come back when you …

I spent yesterday evening at the latest Tunbridge Wells developers meetup and as well as providing some some links from the talk I gave I thought I'd write up a little about the meetup.

The event was held in the upstairs room of Sankey's in Tunbridge Wells and had a slightly smaller than normal turnout with nine people making along. …