Tips for remembering names

May 19, 2022

4 minute read

The Tips Tip #1 📝 When being introduced to everyone in an office, take the time to make a quick note in a notepad. Name + role. 👹Fear: not making eye contact, being rude. 😇 Reality: people really appreciate that you care enough about them to make the extra effort....

Detecting bit-rot with md5deep

March 2, 2022

2 minute read

Thanks to luxagen for getting me to actually set something up for this. Turned out to be mighty useful when I accidentally trashed half my home folder and wanted to know if syncthing had propagated any of the damage. The use case is slightly different to mine, but RotKraken is...

Upgrading indirect NuGet dependencies

February 15, 2022

3 minute read

Update - transitive pinning It seems microsoft have produced a solution to this problem, along with the long awaited solution-level package management. Read all about it here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/nuget/introducing-central-package-management/#transitive-pinning About The state of the art for dependency management in dotnet land. Having used ruby bundler and npm this makes me cry....

Older posts

Phone setup notes
December 17, 2021 (89 minute read)

Technical phone screen interview questions
December 10, 2021 (5 minute read)

Being a development team lead
December 10, 2021 (24 minute read)

Integrating ShipStation with QuickBooks Desktop
September 27, 2021 (2 minute read)

The death of custom software development
August 18, 2021 (11 minute read)

Why I want you to use slack threads
July 8, 2021 (5 minute read)

GitHub rebase and squash considered harmful
March 15, 2021 (1 minute read)

Link your outlook calendar with your google calendar
March 11, 2021 (0 minute read)

House buying and selling tip - make contact!
March 4, 2021 (2 minute read)

Podcasting hardware setup
January 26, 2021 (2 minute read)

A book list for my children
January 25, 2021 (7 minute read)

Remote code interview pairing tools
December 4, 2020 (0 minute read)

Database migration options for dotnet core
November 26, 2020 (0 minute read)

Running the CosmosDB emulator on Linux
September 17, 2020 (5 minute read)

Effective GTD with Trello
September 15, 2020 (8 minute read)

Approaches to refactoring, technical debt and legacy code
July 9, 2020 (13 minute read)

Personal backlogs
June 30, 2020 (4 minute read)

Fast backup to external drive with lz4
April 23, 2020 (1 minute read)

Question: where are we at with dynamic static sites?
April 14, 2020 (2 minute read)

What you should do between contracts
April 9, 2020 (4 minute read)

Time to "Shape Up" your SCRUM processes? The new thing from Basecamp
November 26, 2019 (2 minute read)

Should you rebase or merge to update feature branches in git?
October 14, 2019 (4 minute read)

Why I made SQL Schema Explorer open source
October 8, 2019 (3 minute read)

Laptop setup notes
August 20, 2019 (2 minute read)

Why every team needs a Delivery Manager (DM)
July 8, 2019 (4 minute read)

How to find contract developer jobs
June 26, 2019 (4 minute read)

Setting up a static website/blog with jekyll
June 24, 2019 (3 minute read)

Blog refresh - bye bye wordpress, hello jekyll
June 21, 2019 (0 minute read)

Database tools I was surprised existed
June 10, 2019 (5 minute read)

Teardown of a landing page story
December 10, 2018 (5 minute read)

A Modern Digital Government Outsourcer
October 30, 2018 (5 minute read)

Always add braces
August 28, 2018 (0 minute read)

5 ways to make your database better - by Tim Abell
July 10, 2018 (4 minute read)

Building on my own just for you and your database
June 25, 2018 (1 minute read)

Building a Windows 10 Development VM from scratch
April 1, 2018 (3 minute read)

My Screencasting Setup
March 17, 2018 (1 minute read)

Regression Tests for ASP.NET / SQL Projects
March 13, 2018 (5 minute read)

Developers, Love Your SQL Database
March 12, 2018 (2 minute read)

My approach to my work
March 10, 2018 (7 minute read)

Contract developer to entrepreneur - resources
February 16, 2018 (1 minute read)

Down with SDV! long live SSE!
December 29, 2017 (4 minute read)

From contractor to entrepreneur - motivations
November 19, 2017 (2 minute read)

Looking for beta-testers for my new Free Sql Data Viewer tool
November 18, 2017 (0 minute read)

Why SDV could be a billion dollar business
November 17, 2017 (0 minute read)

Git for TFS users
October 27, 2017 (0 minute read)

Choosing wordpress hosting for a new idea
October 22, 2017 (2 minute read)

Home server docker-compose
August 29, 2017 (0 minute read)

Home server backups
August 29, 2017 (1 minute read)

Running sdv in docker
August 13, 2017 (1 minute read)

Patreon open source funding
June 3, 2017 (2 minute read)

Dustbin of ideas - IT Contractor Buddy
May 12, 2017 (2 minute read)

IT Contractor buddy
May 3, 2017 (2 minute read)

New home server with Xen and docker
March 10, 2017 (3 minute read)

New year new blog
January 17, 2017 (0 minute read)

Startup competitors - Data Viewer
January 17, 2017 (1 minute read)

New year new blog, happy 2017
January 17, 2017 (0 minute read)

javascript dates in firefox and locales
September 27, 2016 (0 minute read)

Yet another good-commit-messages post
March 18, 2016 (5 minute read)

Starting up a startup
December 24, 2015 (11 minute read)

Sql Data Viewer - preview release
October 27, 2015 (0 minute read)

100 reasons I hate ssrs
August 12, 2015 (10 minute read)

LibreOffice mail merge - "data source 'SOURCE' was not found"
January 12, 2015 (2 minute read)

throw vs throw ex vs wrap and throw in c-sharp
May 10, 2014 (1 minute read)

Why publish open source when you are commercial?
March 8, 2014 (1 minute read)

Bash command line editing cheat sheet
February 10, 2014 (0 minute read)

Converting kml to gpx with python
February 3, 2014 (1 minute read)

Returning to commercial ASP.NET from Ruby on Rails
January 7, 2014 (2 minute read)

Getting rails 4 up and running with rbenv on Ubuntu 13.10
December 4, 2013 (1 minute read)

Unfinished hyperlinks - add a todo
May 25, 2013 (1 minute read)

Installing ruby 2 + Rails 4 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
May 13, 2013 (3 minute read)

Java checked and runtime exceptions and how to transition
April 2, 2013 (3 minute read)

Subversion to git - the pain retold
December 5, 2012 (6 minute read)

AA Gold member benefits, the real cost
July 10, 2012 (1 minute read)

Configuration confusion in visual studio
July 10, 2012 (0 minute read)

automatic mysql backups
June 14, 2012 (0 minute read)

Connecting to smb shares on a domain in gnome
June 11, 2012 (0 minute read)

Debugging stored procedures in VS2010 / SQL Express
May 22, 2012 (1 minute read)

Enabling TCP/IP in SQL Express 2008 R2
May 22, 2012 (0 minute read)

Running IE Application Compatibility VPC under Virtual Box
April 18, 2012 (0 minute read)

Poll svn server for changes with git clone
April 5, 2012 (0 minute read)

Announcing the Communication Book project
March 21, 2012 (0 minute read)

Quote of the day - scrum progress updates
February 14, 2012 (0 minute read)

The BBC and the bouncing emails
January 25, 2012 (2 minute read)

The trouble with agile is it's a bit too good
January 17, 2012 (9 minute read)

Git, Windows and Line endings
January 11, 2012 (4 minute read)

Multiple working folders for git on Windows XP
November 16, 2011 (1 minute read)

GpsPrune file matching
November 9, 2011 (0 minute read)

LVM + ReiserFS for the win
October 25, 2011 (0 minute read)

share your test data for your project
October 3, 2011 (0 minute read)

Simple water butt level meter
August 5, 2011 (0 minute read)

Auto-expanding django formset with jQuery
July 7, 2011 (2 minute read)

Data driven test in NUnit with csv source data
May 23, 2011 (1 minute read)

Reliable javascript checkbox events
May 18, 2011 (0 minute read)

Using Pidgin for IRC
December 15, 2010 (0 minute read)

configuring kdiff3 as a mergetool in msysgit
September 3, 2010 (0 minute read)

openlayers svn into git
February 4, 2010 (1 minute read)

backing up Vista
December 18, 2009 (2 minute read)

MCTS in ASP.NET 3.5 - Mission accomplished.
December 18, 2009 (0 minute read)

getting supybot to announce new bugzilla bugs
November 16, 2009 (1 minute read)

bugzilla upgrades and user tokens
November 8, 2009 (1 minute read)

life update - software learning
October 24, 2009 (0 minute read)

backuppc and windows vista
October 23, 2009 (1 minute read)

git-svn imports for open source projects
April 11, 2009 (0 minute read)

mini police eye in the sky
April 11, 2009 (0 minute read)

format all documents in a visual studio solution
January 29, 2009 (1 minute read)

password-free ubuntu login with facebrowser
December 18, 2008 (1 minute read)

error "Not a valid object name" filtering an ex-svn git repo with renames
September 10, 2008 (0 minute read)

reseting home folder permissions in ubuntu linux
August 24, 2008 (1 minute read)

Don't trust audible.com, it's drm infected and they don't tell you
July 23, 2008 (1 minute read)

work at emapsite
July 16, 2008 (0 minute read)

New wiki, mostly for car pc
July 14, 2008 (0 minute read)

Nightly Shutdown, a new product from Proven Works
July 3, 2008 (0 minute read)

A vision of open in-car computing systems
June 6, 2008 (2 minute read)

sharing work between computers with a usb flash drive and git
May 29, 2008 (3 minute read)

Removing the execute flag from many files
May 17, 2008 (0 minute read)

My bash prompt
March 31, 2008 (0 minute read)

stop motion animation on linux
March 27, 2008 (0 minute read)

Tech support at its worst
January 30, 2008 (3 minute read)

Preparing photos for a digital picture frame
December 28, 2007 (5 minute read)

Enabling TV-Out on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 on a Dell Inspiron 8500
December 9, 2007 (5 minute read)

Making money with free software
November 4, 2007 (9 minute read)

xsession sold out
November 4, 2007 (0 minute read)

OSS Contribution Number One!
October 27, 2007 (0 minute read)

Creating a blogroll
September 3, 2007 (0 minute read)

Taking a Microsoft Learning course - my experience so far
August 16, 2007 (2 minute read)

Blocking web adverts
July 2, 2007 (0 minute read)

Ubuntu screen locking
July 2, 2007 (0 minute read)

backing up your home folder
June 20, 2007 (2 minute read)

My mum and her super ceramics
May 28, 2007 (0 minute read)

Get emailed Tim's blog and photos
May 27, 2007 (0 minute read)

starfighter
May 27, 2007 (1 minute read)

running partimage in batch mode
April 10, 2007 (7 minute read)

bad geek joke: the bourne shell
March 30, 2007 (0 minute read)

partimage + stdout, existing code
March 30, 2007 (0 minute read)

compiling partimage
March 26, 2007 (1 minute read)

tim; now available with flickr pics
March 23, 2007 (0 minute read)

Multi-room music at home
March 16, 2007 (2 minute read)

Today's project - partimage enhancement
March 13, 2007 (1 minute read)