Minimal

Back in 2002, when I was writing up the process of deciding what car to buy next, I received an email from someone at Renault F1. He was interested in my choice between a Mini Cooper S and the Renault Clio Cup, as he’d just had the same decision to make, but plumped for the Clio.

During a brief email conversation, I wished him well for the forthcoming F1 season, secretly expecting Renault to have a nightmare. He replied to say that he was looking forward to it as Alonso seemed every bit as good as Schumacher when he was with Benetton.

Fast forward 3 years and look who’s world champion. It’s daft, but Alonso’s title feels special for me, as I feel like I was let in on a secret from the start. And to celebrate, I might just replace the Mini with a Clio Cup after all. :)

Yep, it’s a not-disguised-at-all Google bomb. I just want to make sure that people searching for “Mal Ross” find this page first. Minimal used to make up nearly every hit on the first page, but it’s taken a slide recently. My sole mirror project photo is top rank at the moment, for Pete’s sake. Hopefully, this post’ll kick me back up the rankings from my name being in the <title> tag and an <h2>.

Vain? Moi? ;)

So, here I am, sat in Fawdington BMW’s hospitality area, waiting for repairs to my car to be completed. I spy an internet terminal and, after a few minor hassles, manage to access to the web. Sadly, I can’t check my email, as the terminal’s using the company’s standard website-blocking settings i.e. GMail’s locked out. Thankfully, not everything’s blocked, so I still manage to read a very good post at xlab as well as a number of other regular haunts.

Then I decide to see whether anyone’s commented on my recent posts here (as if!). Lo and behold, what do I see?

Your organization’s Internet use policy restricts access to this web page at this time.

Gah! You mean the employees can’t read my glowing reviews of their service?!? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, considering what I’ll be saying in an upcoming post... ;-)

P.S. they didn’t stop me blogging from their terminal, mind. He he.

You may have noticed a swanky ‘read more’-type link on the previous post. Blogger’s Help pages have shown how to do this for a while, but with the drawback that the link would appear regardless of whether the post was summarised. They left the fix as “an exercise for the reader”. Which I guess means they didn’t have an elegant solution. :-/

Now, however, I’ve finally found a nice way of doing it. It relies on CSS2, however, which isn’t supported in all browsers. Still, it’s good enough for me on Firefox (apologies to IE6 users). It was a bit of a bitch to find, mind, hence this post. Hopefully, it’ll show up well on a Google search.

There are still some parts of test driven development that I'm not 100% comfortable with. Sometimes, for example, I’ll be writing a unit test for a method in class A that, it turns out, needs to call a method in class B to do its thing. Only problem is that class B’s method doesn’t exist yet. So I stub it and my test fails. Hurrah.

Now, however, I’ve got methods in two classes that aren’t fully implemented. Really, the method in class B should be covered by its own unit test before I start calling it from elsewhere. So I write a failing test for that method too. I now have 2 failing tests at the same time. This is something that, from my understanding of the literature, should be avoided. So, what should I do to avoid it? [more...]

This month’s Professional Developers’ Conference (“PDC”) saw the unveiling of another new user interface for Microsoft Office. Expect 3^rd party library vendors such as Divelements to go into overdrive in an attempt to get this look in the hands of developers before Vista even launches.

My reaction, as a developer, is a mixture of excitement and resignation. Although it’s unlikely to ever happen, it would be nice if Microsoft could coordinate new UI such as this with the basic controls and style guides provided by and for the operating system. Ah well, one can dream. As a future user of the software, I’m intrigued. The reasons they give for the changes are good ones, but I’m reserving judgement till I’ve had a good play.

Went to see a preview screening of Serenity on Tuesday night. I’ve never been in a cinema where people clapped and cheered the film before. Twas all a bit surreal.

As for the film itself, it was really good. Already being a fan of the Firefly series (rent buy it!), I had high hopes for the movie. In fact, I was a little concerned that it couldn’t live up to my expectations. Thankfully, it exceeded them, with a few surprises and some real “A-ha!” moments along the way.

Given that I knew the characters before entering the cinema, I did of course have a different perspective to any newcomers watching the film. I think Joss Whedon did a reasonable job of introducing the main players and their backgrounds, but only time, critics’ reviews and box office takings will really tell. For my two penn’th, however, I reckon it’s well worth seeing. High quality, no nonsense sci-fi with a liberal sprinkling of humour. 9 out of 10.

Or should that be 10?

The Vessels split [drownedinsound.com]
There I was, listening to the wonderful, lilting Autumn Sounds come onto iTunes, thinking how long it had been since I’d heard anything from The Vessels’ mailing list. Surely I’d missed a gig or two by now? Maybe even a new album? As it turns out, I’ve missed a lot more. They’ve split up. In fact, they split up over a year and a half ago. D’oh! :(

Have to say, I’m gutted. It might be a bit pathetic, but they were one of those bands that very few people had heard of, but who made wonderful music and were like my little secret. I was sure they were destined for big things. Lazily likened to The Thrills (perhaps that was their undoing), they played a light, upbeat blend of poppy, country-esque indie and were an absolute delight live. They will be missed—by me, at least.

If this page starts looking a little unattended, it’ll be because I’m spending most of my blogging time over at Reiver Games. It’s a rather technical blog (a diary of C# game/tool development, aimed at other developers and beta testers), so it might not be to everyone’s taste. Still, at least it explains where I’ve gone.

Oh, and at the end of the month, there’ll be a mammoth post here about my experiences trying to get my car fixed. You have been warned. :)

I reckon my car’s jinxed. Over the weekend, someone drove into it, damaging the rear bumper beyond repair. Once it’s replaced, I’ll be onto my 4th rear bumper (and my 3rd front bumper) in just over 2½ years. Admittedly, I’m counting the original, undamaged bumpers that were replaced by the bodykit, but it’s still some going. :(

If you’re into tabletop games, you could do far worse than give Carcassonne a look. Having played it (till my head hurt) quite a bit over recent weeks, I’m blown away by how perfect a game it is. The rules are staggeringly simple, the strategy simple enough for a beginner to pick up (yet subtle enough to reward experience), and the games themselves last less than an hour. In my book, that ticks all of the boxes perfectly. Highly recommended.

Owen completes move to Newcastle [BBC Sport]
I’m definitely struggling to believe this is happening. Look! He’s got a Newcastle shirt on! WTF?! :-)

Update: HOLY SHIT! As I’ve spent nearly every waking hour of the last few days programming, I’ve completely missed these goings on too:

• Solano makes return to Newcastle
• Jenas completes £7m Spurs switch

Ermmmm... can I have my season ticket back, please?