Writing ... or Just Practicing?

Oh dear, could it be that my brief career as a documentation engineer is about to come to an abrupt and unexpected end? Has my recent sin been so dreadful that I will be thoughtlessly cast aside, and once again reduced to wandering aimlessly around conference circuits and local dev shops with all my worldly goods in a shopping cart, trying to scratch a living by talking and writing about enterprise software architecture? Next time you see a sad and lonely figure dressed in a grubby (but geeky) T-shirt and scruffy jeans, clutching the tattered remains of a book on design patterns in one hand and a seriously out-of-date laptop in the other, spare a thought - it might be me. Read More...

I suppose I could try to impress people by telling them how I spent a pleasurable evening at a concert at the Buxton Opera House a week or so ago. But as I don't have any posh friends, and only a few posh colleagues, I guess it's safe to admit that the trip was actually to renew an infatuation from my younger days. No, honestly, it's safe to read on. I promise not to descend into tales of a depraved, wanton, and wasted youth (though I wish I'd had one). Read More...

I love how the Visual Studio Document Explorer (help viewer) has a topic named "Help on Help". I've often wondered whether it should say "Help Upon Help", like there was several layers piled up on top of each other. Or how, if you can't figure out how to use the Help file, a help topic within it would be useful. Still, I suppose it's better than the old days when you had help items such as "The Range property sets or returns the range" and "To close the window, click the Close button". Read More...

Maybe I've been asleep for the last few months, or just head-down working on my current project, but it seems I am the only person in the world who wasn't aware that a new version of Windows was on the way. Well, the only geek anyway. I don't mean the "Mojave" stunt - I mean what is currently referred to only as "Windows 7". And, rather strangely, my first thought when I read about it in a UK computer magazine was "Wow! Has there only been two and nine-tenths other versions since the Windows 3.1 that we all knew and loved? That introduction to millions of the Windows world of GUI seems so long ago now... Read More...