I said I was going to blog about the training course the other week. I didn’t. I told you I was rubbish at this blogging shit. Ah well. I learned loads, anyway. Days 1 and 2 were a lot of stuff that I've done before and was doing anyway but didn't know what it was called. Now I have names for the faces, so to speak. I've been unconsciously using inheritance, polymorphism and interfaces for ages but not been aware of it. Does that make me a better programmer than I thought ... Read More

Well, here I am in London. All on my own in a big room with three beds. Balfour Beatty decided to send me on a course. Yes, after 15 years of programming (10 of which was "commercial" development) I finally get to go and actually LEARN how to do it properly! Oh, I did a university course (on C++) and a project (in VB3) and Dixons tried to send me on a course about 7 years ago, but this is the first time I've officially been sent to learn how to develop in .NET. I wanted ... Read More

In contrast to yesterday's large blog post, here's a small one. On Thesaurus.com I looked up a word (idiot, actually), and the tip at the top of the screen said "why use a small word to define small? Use four syllables instead (linked to diminutive)". So I embarked on a plan to construct an unfeasibly large word to mean small. As always, Latin works. Contrapraegrandis wins for me. If you can construct something larger, feel free to comment. :-)

As promised, my second Facebook rant. Facebook is a new communication media, right? People are using it now as the "new" thing to use for short form communications (alongside twatter) as well as sharing photos and stuff. This all presumably is phase 4 of the drive to Keep Everyone Inside And Promote Lack Of Social Growth. So it's analogous to a cross between SMS messaging and instant messaging and carrying a photo album to someone's house. It's also public, where ... Read More

Today's post was meant to be an expansion of yesterday's Faceberk post, but a news article in Rail Technologies Magazine made me happy so I'm going to write about that instead. RTM reports that rural rail lines have seen a HUGE surge in popularity over recent years, with loads of community led rail projects carrying a fair amount of passengers to rural or coastal destinations. It proves to me that the Beeching Axe of the 60s was indeed bunkum, as many believed at the time, ... Read More