http://blog.damianbrady.com.au ramblings of a late 20s IT nerd / volleyball junkie / semi-professional drinker Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:19:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I don't often write about anything non-tech related, but I thought this was worth the detour. Triple J is taking votes for their Hottest 100 of all time. It's incredibly hard to choose. If you're anything like me, you'll find yourself with a shortlist of about 30 before you ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2009/06/19/offtopic-triple-j-hottest-100-of-all-time/ I solved a problem the other day.  It was a terrible solution. It works, but it's difficult to be proud of how I solved it. The problem was with MSMQ, but let me describe the problem with a needlessly overwrought metaphor. Every week for the last 5 years, you've been sending a ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2009/06/15/pride-in-bad-solutions/ So I finally joined the dark side and I got myself an iPhone. Now, if you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that often it's the little things that interest me.  Small bits of functionality and the tiniest ideas sometimes make the biggest impression. With that in mind, here ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2009/05/06/iphone-and-the-small-things/ So my keyboard at work just broke.  Doesn't happen often, but one of the keys just stopped y'know... putting it's letter on the screen. So I got given a replacement from somewhere. Here's the thing - the layout is different.  Any programmer or techie or otherwise-nerd will know what I mean when ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2009/04/06/on-keyboards/ I'm positive I've ranted about maintaining legacy code before, but I going to do it again.  At least this time I'm just reading the code so I can understand it and rewrite it rather than having to apply more bandaids. Oh yes, and I've jumped on the "Top X List!" bandwagon. ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2009/03/02/things-i-hate-seeing-in-legacy-code/ My last post talked about how I wasn't getting anywhere with my project.  Well now I am. I might have mentioned that I'm using php and while it's pretty easy to do stuff, I sometimes feel uncomfortable with the looseness of it all.  If you've used php in addition to a ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2009/02/12/getting-somewhere/ So I have this project that I'm doing for my own interest and I constantly find myself getting nowhere with it.  I've done plenty of design work and I have my schemas and stories sketched all over the pages of a notebook, but there's nothing really tangible electronically yet. The most ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2009/01/20/time-or-motivation-poor/ So when I wrote that post yesterday, to my surprise I found three other draft posts of varying ages.  I know myself well enough to know that I probably won't go back and revisit them, so here's what they were about: Salling Clicker That's all that was in this one - just the title. ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2008/12/10/long-term-drafts/ I stumbled across this Slashdot post the other day which talks about the potential for mobile phones to generate enough power to run by using piezoelectric materials.  In short, the vibrations you and those around you make when you talk could generate enough electricity to keep your phone going. Now here's ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2008/12/09/free-electricity/ So it's been a long time since posts but I have an excuse.  Every time I thought about throwing up a new post, it occured to me that there's only one thing I really want to write about, and I couldn't.  Until now. I'm moving on from my current job. I won't ... http://blog.damianbrady.com.au/2008/11/18/news/