New Server

March 12th, 2010

I’ve dumped the old hosting provider, and move the www.fornax.net server to Slicehost. So far, their service and support has been excellent!

Hopefully, everything was migrated across correctly, and all of the RSS feeds still work. Apologies in advance if this post ends up anywhere it should not — please let me know if that’s the case and I’ll be happy to fix it!

The Gallery is moving…

March 3rd, 2010

If you haven’t noticed, the gallery on this site is slowly disappearing. I’ve decided to move everything over to flickr.

Here are the details:

Please note that some of the photos are not public. If you want to see these photos, you’ll need to get a flickr account, and then add me as a friend/contact.

Weekend work…

October 5th, 2009

Finally painted the window frame in the spare room on the weekend. That’s just about all done now! Might take some photos once the masking tape comes off…

Shipping

September 24th, 2009

From Joel on Software:

“Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.”

Too right!

On Change…

September 19th, 2009

From the Signal vs. Noise blog:

“There’s a lot of talk about change being hard, but sometimes it’s harder to keep your mind than change your mind.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve seen the fact that a development team is working in an “agile” environment used as an excuse for not making a decision so many times, it’s crazy. The argument usually goes along these lines: “It’s impossible to know what the right decision is, so let’s just make any old decision. We can always change our minds later. After all, we’re ‘agile’.”

I just want to scream when this happens — just because you use an Agile development process is not an excuse for being lazy in your decision making. Think about the problem, discuss it, mull it over, sleep on it, and start all over again if you need to. But be confident, when you have made your decision, that it’s the right decision.

Yes, you may need to change the decision later, when circumstances change or new information comes along ; but at least start out with confidence, and maintain that confidence until you find a compelling reason to change course.

iPhone

September 13th, 2009

I finally decided that the 18 month budget forecast is looking good enough that I can afford to buy an iPhone, so I called up O2, and guess what? They are out of stock.

Oh well, next weekend! :)

Congratulations

September 3rd, 2009

As a result of recent tunnel vision with regards to tests, I’m running behind in terms of news, so I have only just seen that Anil, who I had the pleasure of working with at OpenX many years ago, has recently left last.fm, and started a Ph.D.

So, congratulations, mate! I am sure you will have a blast — hopefully, we can catch up for a beer soon…

Life in the UK

September 2nd, 2009

Yay! I just passed my Life in the UK test.

Update: Since everyone keeps asking… 4 minutes. :-)

That’s science for you…

September 1st, 2009

I don’t understand why this is not against the law:

“Misleading journalism … is becoming a public health problem.

“Healthy living advice hasn’t changed at all for at least a decade – don’t smoke, exercise, eat more fruit and veg. [Yet] a quarter of all respondents said that because scientists keep changing their minds, you might as well eat whatever you want, because it won’t make any difference anyway.”

isocket Funding

August 28th, 2009

Congratulations to the isocket team on securing their funding!

I did a little bit of work with isocket a couple of months ago, and both John and Zak are great guys, so I am sure this will be the start of big things for them — best of luck, guys, now that the really hard work will start! :-)