As you can see from the URL, I've now archived this blog and converted it from Wordpress to static HTML. New blog to follow.

I can’t believe it … I finally moved my site off VPS.NET. I’ve hosted my site there for the last 4 years! When tried to upgrade OpenSSL due to the Heartbleed vulnerability, the Ubuntu 10.10 repositories had been deprecated and so I was stuck on a obsolete OS and limited upgrade options.

Migrating my site kept finding it’s way to the bottom of my priorities. I finally bit the bullet today and had a digital ‘spring clean’.

I’m no doubt the only person to notice the improved responsiveness. When I find more time, I still endeavour to migrate off WordPress to a ClojureScript driven site, hosted Github pages with an Elastic Search back end. In the mean time, enjoy the faster page loads :)

I took a couple of books away with me on holiday this summer. The first was Steve Jobs biography, I’ve been reading this forever, since April 2012. It’s one of those books I’d only pick up when travelling and I was determined to finish it during the my 10 day break in Mexico. I figured that wasn’t enough reading material so I also picked up a copy of Hidden Value.
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I spent around an hour piecing information together about how to install this printer on Arch. It seems Canon’s support for this device is near non-existant. Their newer devices seem to be better supported. I recently installed a PIXMA 5350 on my parents Ubuntu 12.04 desktop within five minutes. Installing this older model on Arch Linux wasn’t as straightforward.
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My employer has had a recruiting drive over the last few months. Having been interviewer maybe 30 times throughout my career I thought I’d document some of the recurring mistakes candidates make. None of these points are ground breaking, just common sense – yet many candidates still make them!
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I’ve owned an iPhone since September 2008, so almost 4 years. On Thursday I received my HTC One S from Amazon. I’m still learning my way around but as they’re fresh in my mind, I thought I’d make note of obstacles I ran up against as an Android noobie.
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This might sound heavy handed and radical but it’s widely accepted, particularly among the testing community that statics are evil. Specifically I’m referring to static properties and methods, with exception to self for late static binding and parent used in inheritance.

At first glance, statics are a convenience but as your code base grows, and especially if you try to write unit tests around your code, the convenience turns into pain. Why?
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