Engineering notes from the sharp end

Practical writing about software, systems, delivery, and things that behave strangely under pressure.

wade womersley – york based software engineer I write the way I work: direct, useful, and more interested in what holds up in production than what sounds clever on a slide.

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Help us with our first house!

Posted on By Wade No Comments on Help us with our first house!
Help us with our first house!
Ego-centric

Years ago I met my partner in Leeds, I was an office guy, he was a soldier in the US army serving over here. This was back in the time when we weren’t allowed to let them know we were a couple as the American army had the DADT (don’t ask, don’t tell) rule in … Read More “Help us with our first house!” »

A rather nice marinade (maybe for pork?)

Posted on By Wade No Comments on A rather nice marinade (maybe for pork?)
A rather nice marinade (maybe for pork?)
Food

To be honest, this post is more for myself than anything, I want to ensure I don’t forget this simple, tasty marinade! 1 tsp season-all 1 tsp liquid seasoning 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp toasted sesame oil sprinkle of lime pepper sprinkle of piri piri flavoring (dry mixture) few drops smoked tabasco few drops … Read More “A rather nice marinade (maybe for pork?)” »

Ultra High Definition TV Coming Soon

Posted on By Wade 2 Comments on Ultra High Definition TV Coming Soon
News
Sky Sports are already testing the next generation of television pictures, variously known as Ultra High Definition TV or by the rather more geeky moniker of ’4k’…

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phantomjs custom module – require and create

Posted on By Wade No Comments on phantomjs custom module – require and create
Programming

Recently I’ve been working with phantomjs in order to do some on-page control without wanting to use an actual browser (phantomjs is headless and requires no X server to be running). One of the first things I wanted to do was created custom modules so I could organise my code clearly. I found a surprising lack … Read More “phantomjs custom module – require and create” »

C# MySqlDataReader – “one line” function to return a row as an instance of a class.

Posted on By Wade 1 Comment on C# MySqlDataReader – “one line” function to return a row as an instance of a class.
Programming

MySql in C# is rather painless using the MySQL Connector for .net, but one thing it is missing is a no-frills, no extra requirements, no pre-defined ERD return a row as an instance of a class function. Coming from a PHP background, I love the PDO function fetchObject(), it’s just right there and you get … Read More “C# MySqlDataReader – “one line” function to return a row as an instance of a class.” »

Cloudant’s Rather Awesome dbcopy for re-reducing the output of existing map/reduce data.

Posted on By Wade No Comments on Cloudant’s Rather Awesome dbcopy for re-reducing the output of existing map/reduce data.
Programming

I love Cloudant, simple as, their implementation of CouchDB as a DDaaS (as opposed to DBaaS) has no real competitor – as CouchDB develop’s, that may, of course, become a problem as it gives dominance in a market, but for now, we’re good. One of their best features is the dbcopy command, this copies the … Read More “Cloudant’s Rather Awesome dbcopy for re-reducing the output of existing map/reduce data.” »

Country/Currency List for C#, JSON, PHP and HTML select

Posted on By Wade 5 Comments on Country/Currency List for C#, JSON, PHP and HTML select
Programming

So often you find yourself needing a list of countries for use in your software and I keep having to re-use this code so here is a list of countries with their ISO codes in a variety of formats you can simply just use. # C# Dictionary ISO { countrycode, countryname } list new Dictionary<string, … Read More “Country/Currency List for C#, JSON, PHP and HTML select” »

Using Amazon EC2 with C# .net

Posted on By Wade 6 Comments on Using Amazon EC2 with C# .net
Programming

Amazon’s EC2 platform has a very in-depth console which allows you to do a lot, but what if you want to automate some of the processes or handling servers? I’ve been working with EC2 a lot recently and automating server starting/stopping based on parameters of the system we use here at MediaSkunkworks and thought I’d … Read More “Using Amazon EC2 with C# .net” »

PHP5.4.3 Available on Dotdeb.org (Installs fine on Ubuntu)

Posted on By Wade 3 Comments on PHP5.4.3 Available on Dotdeb.org (Installs fine on Ubuntu)
Programming, Software

Dotdeb.org have the PHP 5.4 series available for installation on Debian based OS’s, you can either do it manually or use my installation script I wrote to make the process easier. All you need to do is run: curl https://wade.one/blog/wp-content/uploads/php54.sh | sudo bash And it’ll do the rest for you! Feel free to just download … Read More “PHP5.4.3 Available on Dotdeb.org (Installs fine on Ubuntu)” »

PHP 5.4 Unofficial Ubuntu apt-get available

Posted on By Wade No Comments on PHP 5.4 Unofficial Ubuntu apt-get available
Programming

Ondřej Surý has released apt-get’table packages for PHP 5.4 on Ubuntu.  Instructions and installation are available from https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/php5 . Think I’ll keep custom building for now so I get total control but for the majority of people this is better than waiting until potentially October for it to hit the official channels.