Author Archive
Stack ’em up!
OK, clearly I have been remiss in my bloging duties and owe you all some code. To be fair, it’s because I’m head down developing a brand new platform that will form the basis of our future products and it really has been all go. One of the most fundamental structures in programming languages is […]
.NET fundamentals – the singleton pattern
For those interested in another sample of our in-house training here is a snippet where I introduce the singleton pattern: Related Images:
.NET fundamentals – an intro to structs
Every couple of weeks I give an ‘off the cuff’ talk on .NET fundamentals. Its always fast paced, irreverent, opinionated and completely unprepared (you can tell). Aimed at our developers – as part of their continuous professional development – the 1hr+ talks are recorded and used as part of our training regimen. It’s not for […]
The Entwistle Payoff
So the current BBC naval gazing is kind of getting old, but today’s public outcry on the reported £450k pay off to the outgoing Director General of the BBC raises the kind of questions that I can’t resist letting pass without comment. What has driven me to write this post (on my iPhone no less) […]
The hidden secret of the Concurrent Dictionary
When it comes to my favourite ‘new*’ classes in the .NET BCL, one of my top ten is definitely the ConcurrentDictionary . So much so, that (after IEnumerable) it’s probably one of the classes I go back to most frequently to solve any particular problem (particularly caches). I still remember the frustration and failure I […]
Developing a career
Well it’s been a while since my last post, frankly I’ve been heads down in a code rush (maybe I’ll let you in on it a little later), so I figured for my first post back I best make it a big one. Following, from the success of my guest lecture at Manchester, I was […]
Colorado, a tale of two tragedies
The first time I came to this great state was in September 2001. The first time I came to Denver was to visit the airport on 10 September 2001. The 18th African Children’s Choir were set to fly back to West Africa, via Belfast and Choir 19 (that I was chaperoning) met up with them […]
Jubilation
When it comes to the Queen, I’m a big fan. It’s become fashionable to mock the pomp and circumstance and to view her Highness as a dusty old relic of a bygone age, but to do so is to misrepresent a monarch that has done more to modernise and adapt than any predecessor – and […]
Leadership
Today I had the privilege of addressing the graduating cohort of about forty-five students and their police trainers from the Natural Born Leader’s programme being run by Greater Manchester Police. This great programme takes young people on a week-long course to develop their natural leadership skills. The speaker before me was Duane Bryan, who was a […]
Breaking the cycle of training
This article first appeared as a guest blog on the GMCC Blog on 22 June 2012. I’m a technologist. I have an iPad and an iPhone, I have Android and Windows devices, I have an Xbox, a PS3, a Wii and even an AppleTV. It would be natural to think that I believe in technology […]