Paul Grenyer

I've just booked tickets and accommodation for the second Metal Hammer Defenders of the Faith featuring a co-head liners Dimmu Borgir and Lamb of God in Birmingham on Thursday 12 February 2009. I've seen Dimmu Borgir a couple of times before (once recently at Bloodstock ), but I've been desperate to see Lamb of God since I was introduced to thier latest album Sacrament last year. It will be well worth two days holiday and a drive to Brum.

by Richard Murch (ISBN: 978-0130219145 ) Although I have actively, and sometimes passionately, resisted the move into any sort of management beyond team / technical leading for many years, I'm finding recently that I'm becoming more interested in project management. It's a sobering fact that where I am now I have a team and I need to manage them better. Project Management by Richard Murch was (how shall I put it?) strongly recommended and presented to me by my current boss. It's a reasonably sized hardback book at 220 pages, plus appendices. The information on each page is, in most cases, both verbose and spread out, so it could have been a much smaller book. I would have scrubbed the final chapter on the internet altogether until I noticed the publication date of October 2000. It's a book of its time and therefore describes the more traditional project management techniques based around quite lot of documentation and rigid process. As such there is no mention of ...

Until recently I hadn't bought a desktop PC for over five years and in that time I'd only bought one laptop (IBM T60 that I'm still very fond of). When I got the money out of my limited company I decided to get a few things, one of which was a new PC. I wanted something with lots of RAM a fast processor and Windows Vista. Efficient PC was suggested to me and they seemed to have what I was looking for so I ordered an Ori with: Phenom Quad Core 9950 4GB of RAM Nvidia Geforce 8600GT 512MB Netgear 108Mbps Wireless Ubunto Windows Vista What I received was a beautiful black tower and a seriously quick machine even following Windows Vista patching. The setup of the network card was a little problematic, but straight forward once I got the hang of the right configuration utility. The first machine I received did have one major problem. It reset (not rebooted!) itself randomly, even when in use. After getting in contact with Efficient PC they took the machine back and traced the f...

Charlotte and I continued our love affair with Norwich Play House and Comedy last week with Mark Steel . I've heard Mark on the radio on a number of Radio 2 and Radio 4 comedy shows, but I've never realised how political he was. Having said that he made a lot of sense. We sat right in the centre of the front row again, but luckily we were ignored this time. In fact he didn't pick on anyone in the crowd who wasn't either late or didn't heckle on him first. We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Mark was on stage for over two hours, with a interval. Very good value for money and we'll certainly go and see him again.

I have now read all of Alistair Reynolds Revelation spaces books and I loved every one. The Prefect was no different. It took a little while to get into, but once the plot started to emerge it was very addictive. It is set in the Glitter Band before the Melding Plague and takes an interesting look at Demarchist society and how it works. There are plenty of references to the eighty, the Sylvest's and the Shrouders. Along with an explanation of what really happened to one character from the original Revelation Space novel. The only complaint I have about the book is that, like Absolution Gap, it does not really reach a conclusion. It just ends and leaves a lot to the readers imagination. I am hoping that in both book's cases, this is so that Reynolds can pick up the stories and elaborate further in future books. I am now intending to take a brief pause and revisit CS Lewis and read some more Richard Morgan before tackling Reynold's non-Revelation Space based books. (ISBN: 978...

I think the credit crunch is getting everyone. This year's ACCU London Christmas party at Pizza Express was well attended as usual, but a number of the usual suspects were missing. This does of course mean that there were some new faces and even some old ones that don't make it out so often. There was a worrying about of technical discussion. Maybe I'll go back to drinking for next year. A small delegation went to the usual ACCU haunt (Chandos) where the good time continued for a short time. I was staying with friends on Isle of Dogs and thoroughly enjoyed the walk from Trafalgar Square to Westminster to pick up the Jubilee line to Canary Wharf. It was strange seeing the Lehman's building with half the lights out and the illuminated green band missing from the top.

I heard today that my Boiler Plating Database Resource Cleanup proposal has been accepted for the 2009 ACCU Conference . Obviously, I'm very pleased as I was unable to go last year and many people have already asked me if I'll be going in 2009. I can now say that I will be there for at least one day and hopefully the duration. I will also be presenting Boiler Plating Database Resource Cleanup at ACCU London in February. Watch this space for details.

Elf Yourself

Ever since I've been thinking about getting a Blackberry I've also been trying to find an MP3 player with a DAB and FM radio, as the Blackberry doesn't have any sort of radio and I do listen to it on the move quite a lot. As soon as I started looking I found several MP3 players with DAB radios, but they all had one draw back or another (funny size, strange shape, odd aerial attachment etc). Then, almost by accident I stumbled on the Cowon iAudio D2 16GB MP3 Player with DAB Digital Radio : Affordable PMP The iAudio D2 does not compromise quality and features for its compact size. Cowon provides the latest innovations in digital multimedia technology to provide incredible video and audio quality. The D2 supports QVGA 320x240, 30fps video files and audio files including the high quality lossless codecs such as FLAC and OGG, along with the usual MP3, WMA and WAV. The D2 also provides a TV output for seamless transfer of your viewing onto the comfort of your living room TV. ...

A development role writing critical web-based business process software using predominantly Java based technologies... Read more .

Had lunch with a friend of mine today. She's writing a book and asked me if I could ask any question of anyone living or dead, real or fictional what would it be and who would I ask? I really had to think about it. My first thought was to ask president Bush if he planned and allowed the attacks on September the 11th. Then I started to think a little less seriously. I'd quite like to ask Freddie Mercury why he wasn't more careful. And of course there are my fantasies about a certain character from a certain science fiction series . Finally I decided that Peter Tägtgren from Hypocrisy and Pain had it right with the song Roswell 47 from 1996's Abducted album . I'd really like to ask Harry Truman what really happened in Roswell in 1947 .

I've just created a new blog for the ACCU Mentored Developers Effective Java Project: http://accu-mentored-ejava.blogspot.com/

Now it's dark so early it's quite exciting rolling past Canary Wharf on the train and seeing all the lights and thinking of Lehman building standing empty. It still fills me with excitement, just like the first time I went there for a job interview. Anyway, I wasn't in London last night to see Canary Wharf. I was there to see Anna-Jayne Metcalfe speak about PC-Lint . Although it pains me to say it and the possibility of a C++ project came up just this week, I don't do C++ any more. The last two years have been a really big change for me in that regard. However, I am more than a little responsible for the fact that Anna is speaking in London tonight, having volunteered her to Allan Kelly when he was looking for a speaker for November, so I went to show my support and take any flack. Anna had a really good turn out. ACCU London meetings usually attract between ten and twenty attendees and Anna had somewhere between ten and fifteen. She was obviously nervous and at time...

This is a modification of my original Boiler Plating Database Resource Cleanup article giving a bit more background, exploring a couple of different ideas and setting the sceane for the second part: The problem is simple. Cleaning up after querying a database in Java is unnecessarily verbose and complex. Plain and simple. I'll start with an example that demonstrates the problem. The system I'm working on currently uses a number of web services. We have a set of web services on the production box, another on the development box and another on our local machines. The system asks the relevant database for the location of the web service based on the services' name: try { Class.forName(driver); Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(connectionString,username,password ); try { PreparedStatement ps = con.prepareStatement("select url from services where name = 'Instruments'"); try { ResultSet rs = ps.executeQuery(); if(rs.next())...

Speaker: Anna-Jayne Metcalfe When: 7:00pm, Thursday 20th November 2008 Cost: Free. Open to non-members. Where: 7city Learning, 4 Chiswell Street, London, EC1Y 4UP Map: http://www.7city.com/pdf/chiswell_street.pdf Registration is required for this event due to limited space and security at 7city. Reserve your place by e-mailing James Slaughter, slaughter@acm.org . About the Talk If used effectively, code analysis tools can make a huge difference to the quality of a codebase and its perceived reliability and maintainability. However, in the C++ world, the one static analysis tool which is most established - PC-Lint from Gimpel Software - is also probably the hardest to configure and use. Consequently, many organisations who have purchased it do not use it effectively (if at all). This session aims to present a practical introduction to PC-Lint from the perspective of how to configure and use it effectively to improve the quality of C and C++ codebases. Using a combinati...

For the Whitby Gothic Weekend this year I stayed with some friends at Amber Cottage . It's a compact, comfortable and utterly delightful little house. It has very good heating, a reasonable shower and Sky (FreeSat) TV! It's ideal for a small family or group like us. The only downsides are that there is very patch mobile coverage (none at all if you're with Vodafone. T-Mobile seems to be fine though) and there's no door between the lounge, the hall and the top bedroom. But I'm really struggling to find anything negative to say about it. I'm hoping to go back. Many times.

I love going to the Whitby Gothic Weekend and this year was as much fun as it's ever been. I took a friend of mine who had never been before (a Whitby virgin no-less) and she loved it, although I did manage to drink her under the table on the Saturday night. For the first time I didn't do the official Whitby. My friends and did the alternative Whitby which, for us, turned out to be lots of drinking in pubs a brief trip to a "bleepy" goth night, more drinking in pubs and finally Sexy Sunday . I think the highlights were catching up with old friends, the Sunday night in the pub, followed by Sexy Sunday and, of course, Lewis Hamilton winning the formula one divers championship. Although I nearly missed the entire race as I was on the phone to my wife. I seemed to do even more talking than previous years and have made even more new friends. Roll on 2009.

...or at least that's what I thought until just now when I looked them up with google to find a link for this blog post. It appears that Abigail Williams was one of the foremost accusers in the Salem witch trials of 1692. Abigail Williams are also a surprisingly good Black Metal band. I thought I'd passed through my black metal phase a while ago, but these have a bit of an extreme metal edge (think Dark Tranquillity , Arch Enemy ) which is really my thing at the moment. The first mini album Legend is like early Cradle of Filth (when they were good) and the new release, In The Shadow of A Thousand Suns, could not sound much more like Emperor if they tried. I love it. Give it a try.

Download You can download the latest version of the Marauder File Viewer here . I have implemented the following features since the last version: RDF layouts Saving and opening of projects Plugins It is now possible to develop plugins for the Marauder File Viewer by implementing a few small interfaces. If you would like details or have comments, please email me: paul.grenyer@gmail.com . I'm working on searching and layout manipulation for fixed length file layouts next.

Download I've been talking about rewriting the File Viewer application I developed at Communisis back in the early naughties for some time now. It took a while for me to find a solution for opening very large files (>20GB) that I liked and a virtual grid that would allow me to view them. After being (almost) forced to learn Java I thought it might hold the key. It can certainly handle the large files easily enough and JTable is certainly virtual enough to view them. I got quite a long way down the Java route before I decided Swing didn't give me the most aesthetic of GUIs and layout managers were too much like hard work (I've since got to grips with layout managers and changed my mind about them to some extent). I started looking around for a virtual grid for C#. I already knew that C# could handle the file sizes without any problem from the testing I'd done a few years back. It was pointed out to me that the DataGrid has a virtual mode and a little bit of play...

We're made it to one year! It's been interesting a long the way, but we're here and happy! Charlotte and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary this week. As a surprise I booked us into Byfords Posh B&B. Their rooms are very nicely done out, they have a full wet-room bathroom and the food and service are excellent. I'd recommend Byfords to anyone....

I've been using Java for nearly twelve months now and I am finding that I like it. There are only two things that I have discovered so far that make make me wonder what the creators of Java were thinking: exception handling and layout managers. I'll cover layout managers in a later article. Java is a garbage collected language. Which means that, most of the time, you don't have to worry how the memory previously used by dead objects is cleaned up. To me garbage collection has always felt a bit like a knee jerk reaction for people who can't use smart pointers properly in C++ and C programmers who must pay very close attention to the points at which they release memory allocated to the heap. If garbage collection is meant to help you clean up memory, why hasn't something been developed to help objects release resources? Java has finalizers, but as Joshua Bloch points out in Effective Java finalizers cannot be relied upon. Proper cleanup of resources is left to the dev...

We went again yesterday. The manageress was in her usual rude state and refused point blank to give Charlotte a glass of tap water, stating that she'd have to get bottled water and they couldn't give her tap water as they didn't have a tap, despite us spending over £10. Charlotte argued that it's illegal not to give tap water on request and eventually a glass of water did appear. This upset one of their staff so much that she (not the manageress) came up and apologised to us later on, despite the fact it was absolutely no fault of her own. I think this may well be the last nail in the coffin now.

Title: Boiler Plating Database Resource Cleanup Type: Case study Duration: 45 min Speaker: Paul Grenyer Speaker biography: Paul has been programming in one form or another for over 20 years. After several years using C++ and a brief period using C#, Paul has now ended up somewhere he hoped he'd never be, programming in Java, and finding he really quite likes it. After time in industries such as marking machinery, direct mail, mobile phones, investment banking and Internet TV, Paul is currently working for an exciting new insurance industry based startup in Norwich. He has been an ACCU member since 2001, a regular publications contributor (including the new Desert Island Books column), creator of the mentored developers and a committee member for most of that time. When he's not programming or getting used to married life and being a step parent, Paul thoroughly enjoys science fiction, heavy metal and cycling. I've been using Java for nearly twelve months now and I am findin...

I quite like Simon Pegg . I have some fond memories of watching Spaced with a friend of mine in the early hours of the morning following a night out at a club. I've never really been a fanatic though. I haven't watch Shawn of the Dead all the way through yet and I only watched Hot Fuzz recently. It could probably be argued that I don't have a lot to learn from How to Loose Friends and Alienate People , but Charlotte was keen to go and we both enjoyed it. It was dire in places, but for the most part it was very good. The film exposes the vast cultural difference between the US and the UK in a very funny way and Kirsten Dunst always captures my heart in that classic girl next door way (my wife always says that I married the girl next door, even though it was more like the girl one hundred yards up the road, turn left and then fifty yards on the right). With a soppy ending seeing Pegg get the girl he really wants and the dry humour there's something for everyone, even ...

Since we met, my wife and I have been having lunch at Togo's on the rare occasions that we're in the city at lunch time. I really don't know why we keep going back there. Although the food is very good, especially the cheese cake, the prices are unreasonably high, the service is poor, the couple running the White Lion Street branch are obnoxious and the sign dictating the rules for the upper seating area, including no picnicking, respect and no unaccompanied minors, is less than inviting if not arrogant, rude and hostile. It makes me wonder if they've twigged that they're there for the benefit of the customers, rather than the other way around. Maybe that's why it's rarely full and there''s always a spare table. I imagine we'll keep going.

On Friday I went to the Summer's End festival in Lydney. It's a 500 mile round trip from Norwich as was well worth every mile, even though the traffic on the way over was dreadful. Lydney is a nice quiet little place, except for the boy racers, but then every small town has those. The night got off to a good start with a reasonable curry, but then we were left waiting outside the venue for nearly an hour. We got in at 8pm and the organisers were still setting up. At least various members of both bands were wandering around in the crowd and Damian Wilson even came and said hello. Seasons End came on nearly an hour later than originally advertised. I've seen them live twice before and they're always brilliant. It's just a shame it's not reflected on their debut album. They were absolutely incredible on this occasion, especially given the dreadful PA. Their new concept album is out before the end of the year and they played at least two new tracks from it. I'...

I always thought I was genetically programmed not to like Slipknot. I thought they were for kids, all gimmick and, believe it or not, too noisy. I saw them in Birmingham coheadlining with Slayer (I went to see slayer) a few years ago. As preparation I bought Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses and really got into it, especially Duality, but it was pretty much a passing phase, although they were very good with Slayer and I still enjoy listening to the album. A few weeks ago their third album, All Hope Is Gone, came out. It's incredible. A real step forward in maturity and musicianship (yes, I am talking about Slipknot). Not only that, but I really like the songs. Who'd have thought they'd use acoustic guitars and harmonies. It's just shame their London shows have sold out already...

Title: MVC in practice - A Beginners Guide to Model View Controller Type: Case study Duration: 45 min Speaker: Paul Grenyer Speaker biography: Paul has been programming in one form or another for over 20 years. After several years using C++ and a brief period using C#, Paul has now ended up somewhere he hoped he'd never be, programming in Java, and finding he really quite likes it. After time in industries such as marking machinery, direct mail, mobile phones, investment banking and Internet TV, Paul is currently working for an exciting new insurance industry based startup in Norwich. He has been an ACCU member since 2001, a regular publications contributor (including the new Desert Island Books column), creator of the mentored developers and a committee member for most of that time. When he's not programming or getting used to married life and being a step parent, Paul thoroughly enjoys science fiction, heavy metal and cycling. In this session I am going to describe a real pro...

In Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture [PEAA] Martin Fowler tells us that the Model View Controller (MVC) splits user interface interaction into three distinct roles: Model – The model holds and manipulates domain data (sometimes called business logic or the back end). View – A view renders some or all of the data contained within the model. Controller – The controller takes input from the user and uses it to update the model and to determine when to redraw the view(s). MVC is all about separating concerns. The model and views separate the data from the views and the controller and the view separate user input from the views. Another version of the MVC pattern employs the controller as a mediator between the views and model. The controller still takes user input, but now it passes it on to model. It also passes commands from the view to the model and takes events from the model and passes them on to the view. This version provides greater separation as the model and view no...

Title: Extending Liquid Office: A Quick Guide to Java Mocking, JavaScript, AXIS, SOAP and Testing Type: Case study Duration: 90 min Speaker: Paul Grenyer Speaker biography: Paul has been programming in one form or another for over 20 years. After several years using C++ and a brief period using C#, Paul has now ended up somewhere he hoped he'd never be, programming in Java, and finding he really quite likes it. After time in industries such as marking machinery, direct mail, mobile phones, investment banking and Internet TV, Paul is currently working for an exciting new insurance industry based startup in Norwich. He has been an ACCU member since 2001, a regular publications contributor (including the new Desert Island Books column), creator of the mentored developers and a committee member for most of that time. When he's not programming or getting used to married life and being a step parent, Paul thoroughly enjoys science fiction, heavy metal and cycling. Liquid Office is a ...

Last night I attended a Skills Matter "In the Brain" session on Gant given by Russel Winder at their offices in London: "I will be doing an "In the Brain" session on Gant (The Groovy way of scripting Ant tasks) on Thursday 2008-08-21 18:30. This will happen at Skills Matter, 1 Seckford Street, London EC1R 0BE, UK. The Skills Matter announcement is here. "As part of this session I am going to undertake "The Gant Challenge". The idea is for people to bring small examples of Ant (or other) builds that really irritate them so we can create the Gant version live and show that Gant can do the business where Ant often cannot. "If you are in the area then, feel free to drop by -- though you need to register beforehand so some forethought is needed. This is planned as a 90min session after which things move to a local hostelry. " 90 minutes soon became 120, but it was very informative and very interesting. The basic gist is that, although Ant...

See also: http://ws.apache.org/axis/java/install.html . Installation 1. Download and install Tomcat and verify it works ( http://localhost:8080 ) 2. Download and unpack Axis to C:\tools. 3. Copy the directory $AXISDIR\ webapps\axis in $CATALINA_HOME/webapps. 4. Download xerces and extract xercesImpl.jar and xml-apis.jar to $AXISDIR\lib. 5. Downalod JavaBeans Activation Framework and extract activation.jar to $CATALINA_HOME\webapps\axis\WEB-INF\lib and to $AXISDIR\lib. 6. Download JavaMail and extract mail.jar to $CATALINA_HOME \webapps\axis\WEB-INF\lib and to $AXISDIR\lib. 7. Copy tools.jar (from $JAVA_SDK\lib) to $CATALINA_HOME\lib. 8. Set the following environment variables: AXIS_HOME = $AXISDIR XIS_LIB = %AXIS_HOME%\lib AXISCLASSPATH = %AXIS_LIB%;%AXIS_LIB%\axis.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\commons-discovery-0.2.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\commons-logging-1.0.4.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\jaxrpc.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\saaj.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\log4j-1.2.8.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\xml-apis.jar;%AXIS_LIB%\xercesImpl.jar;%AXIS_HOME%...

Continuing our love of live Comedy, Charlotte and I went to see Double Header at the Norwich Play House last night: "Hattie Hayridge and Norman Lovett both starred as the face of the computer in the incredibly popular and cult TV series Red Dwarf. "2008 is the twentieth anniversary of the program hitting the UK television screens; in celebration of this Hattie and Norman come together on stage for the very first time, creating a unique comedy evening. Although the show will feature their own inimitable stand up routines, they will also discuss their association with the poplar TV show, and fans will be able to ask them questions related everything that is Red Dwarf." With the exception of a few brief moments, neither comic actually had anything funny to say individually. Normal Lovett was obsessed with Football, that turned off at least half the audience, and polythene bags. It got a lot better when they were both on stage together, although Norman did dominate rath...

I've been a Queensryche fan since 1991 when a pen pal of mine from the Netherlands sent me a tape of Empire . Back then all the bands for me that came from Seatle were either Heart or Grunge , but I loved Empire. I read Raw Magazine back in those days before it went all Indie and all but disappeared. It spoke of the amazing Operation Mindcrime concept album and I finally found a pen pal with it and received another tape. I loved it! I quickly collected all of Queensryche's albums and have bought them all (with the exception of live albums and greatest hits) since. It's just a shame they haven't done a decent album since the follow up to Empire, Promised Land . In 1995 I was seeing a girl in Bradford and much to my dismay, Queensryche played the week before I went to visit her, so I missed them. I finally got to see them on either the Q2K or Tribe tour, I can't remember which. I was quite disappointed with the run of poor albums, but wanted to see them anyway. ...

I was introduced to Richard Morgan by my boss, who is another Alistair Reynolds fan. Altered Carbon is part hard sci-fi and part detective novel. I was initially quite surprised at the amount of graphic sex and violence and the crude style took some real getting used to. The story is entirely linear and entirely from the point of view of the main character, Kovacs. What makes it a real page turner is that there is so much going on and very little explained until the end where all the events are slotted together. If you hate not knowing things, this book will keep you going to find out. The core sci-fi concept that the book relies on is the idea that a stack embedded in the back of your neck allows you to be downloaded into a new body, called a sleeve, if you die. Once I did get used to the style I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I would recommend it and I am intending to read other books by Richard Morgan, but not before I've reread some Alistair Reynolds.

Java. I spent years avoiding it. I felt it was inferior to the power of C++. I thought it was slow, clunky, the GUI was rubbish and that garbage collection was for wimps who did not know how to clean up after themselves or use smart pointers. Ok, so we all know I was wrong. And life being the way it is, being so out spoken about Java was sure to come and bite me and it did. Since December I have been writing Java as part of my day job and I found I liked it so much I've even started using it for some of my own projects. I do not even miss Microsoft's visual studio. I have become very attached to Eclipse and having code checked in real time, therefore negating a build stage, is very useful. I have been so busy writing Java (and editing my new CVu column Desert Island Books) that I have not written an article on anything else for quite some time. The editor of Overload has been nagging me for material, as has the new publications officer. I have also seen a few comments here and ...

Last night Charlotte and I had another very pleasant meal at Pizza express in Norwich followed by the first of two Norwich Play House comedy evenings we have booked. A few months ago I took a risk and dragged Charlotte along to see Lucy Porter . I've seen and loved Lucy Porter before, but I wasn't sure if Charlotte would like it. She loved it and said she wanted to do more comedy. That suited me just fine. When I read about Shappi Khorsandi (this website, quoted on the flyer, doesn't appear to be there yet) in the Norwich Play House what's on guide a female, Iranian comedian who was a bit of a looker really appealed. So we both decided to take a chance. She was supported by her husband Kristian Riemer. Both were hilarious and more than a little risqué! The quote from Shappi that sticks in my head is “American's still don't know the difference between Iran and Iraq. We're the ones with weapons of mass destruction.” Shappi also appears on Radio 4 comedy show...

Music is a very personal thing. It's so personal and people feel so strongly about it that I'm surprised it hasn't started wars. To me it's way more important than any religion, but not worth fighting over. Most people seem to have me down as either a heavy metal nut or goth . And I'd be lying if I said I didn't adore heavy metal, especially progressive metal at the moment. I'd also be lying if I said I didn't like a lot of goth music. I like the clothes too and regularly attend the October Whitby Gothic Weekend . People seem keaner to latch on to the idea I may be a goth, probably because goths appear more interesting than metallers, are perceived as being weird and people generally understand them less. People also seem to have the impression that people who like heavy metal only listen to the really heavy stuff, always listen to it very loudly and never listen to anything else. This of course is a long way from being true. My passion is rock music ...

I’ve finally done what I’ve been saying I’d do since I moved to London in September 2006. I am cycling to work! My trip to work in Norwich is somewhat further than it would have been from my flat in Wapping to Canary Wharf . One of the guys from work lives near me and also cycles in with me. The route via has house is about 5km and has quite a few steep ups and downs. The route direct from mine is slightly further but much steadier. So either way I’m doing about 50km (31 miles) a week. It’s meant to get easier and make me feel better, but I think I’m just getting quicker and I’m really glad I bought the wet weather gear! Now I just need to weight loss…..

I didn't make the ACCU Conference this year for the first time since 2002. It appears that there has been some speculation as to my real reasons for not attending. As must as I would love to fuel the conspiracies, I'm afraid there's no big secret. I got married in October and shortly after moved from contracting in London back to a permanent job in Norwich. I love my wife very much and am loathed to leave her at the best of times. Also I took a sixty percent pay cut to come back to Norwich, which means things are more difficult than they were. These two factors meant that I was unable to attend. Things should be brighter next year and I hope to attend again.

So the Stone Gods EP "Burn The Witch" is now out. It’s a lot like their live performance. The first track, Burn The Witch, is excellent. The rest is just filler. A poor imitation of what the darkness were. I think a lot of the irony is gone and things are far more serious now. Still this is only four tracks and the band need to find their feet. I hated Black Shuck and Get Your Hands Off My Woman the first time I heard them, but kept on listening as Growing On Me, I Believe In A Thing Called Love and Love IS Only A Feeling are excellent tracks. I really do like the song Burn The Witch. The first half of the song is all original, but the second half rips off a few Metallica and Megadeth riffs. Still very good. And the idea of singing about burning witches in 2008 is just brilliant.

I’ve been a big Darkness fan since a friend of mine told me how good Permission to Land was and I went out and bought it. I was lucky enough to see them at the Manchester Evening News Arena in February 2006 just after their second album One Way Ticket to Hell came out. Then Justin Hawkins decided he couldn’t handle the Rock ‘n’ Roll lifestyle anymore and left the band. Strictly speaking the Darkness don’t exist anymore. The remaining members got a new bassist (as the bassist took on singing and guitar duties) and they’re now called the Stone Gods . I couldn’t believe my luck when I discovered they were playing the Norwich waterfront and there were still tickets available. So we went hoping for a few darkness numbers. We didn’t even get one. In fact the best song all night was probably the one they opened with. So all rather disappointing. As a band they played well and the songs showed promise. I just didn’t get the Darkness songs I wanted. The Stone Gods have got an EP coming out in F...

Charlotte and I went to see Sweeney Todd a couple 0f weeks ago. It was Charlotte’s first time in the Gallery and she loved it. It’s expensive, but I like the better level of service and not having to fight with the masses. She also loved the movie. I, however, am not a fan of musicals, with the exception of the Sound of Music and Moulin Rouge , and didn’t enjoy it half as much. I like a good horror and the gore was excellent. Looking at Helena Bonham Carter for a few hours did go some way towards making up for it though. If you like musicals it’s a great film. If not, I wouldn’t bother….

Charlotte and I went to see the new St Trinian's film at the Hollywood cinema at Anglia Square in Norwich on Wednesday night. The last time I was there it had just become a multiscreen cinema and was owned by Odeon . I can’t remember what I went to see but I have a distinct memory of someone saying Reservoir Dogs was on in one of the other screens and there was a bloody torture scene. From what we saw the Hollywood cinema is a hole. We were in the tiny screen 4. It was cold and there appeared to be no surround sound . I’d like to say the film was good clean fun, but there was nothing clean about it. It was a lot of fun and obviously shouldn’t be taken seriously. I was particularly amused by a group of goth girls who preferred to be called Emo , but there’s no accounting for taste!

Desert Island Books is a new series I'm writing for the ACCU : Desert Island Disks ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs.shtml ) is one of Radio 4 's most popular and enduring programmes. The format is simple: each week a guest is invited to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. I've been thinking for a while that it would be entertaining to get ACCU members to choose their Desert Island Books. The format will be slightly different from the Radio 4 show. Members will choose about 5 books, one of which must be a novel, and up to two albums. The programming books must have made a big impact on their programming life or be ones that they would take to a desert island. The inclusion of a novel and a couple albums will also help us to learn a little more about the person. The ACCU has some amazing personalities and I'm sure we only scratch the surface most of the time. Each issue of CVu will have someone different. If you ...

Embracing Agile I started eXtreme programming back in 2003 with the usual manager skepticism, but I had a small team and we demonstrated results very quickly and were allowed to continue. After I left Communisis I didn’t have much of an opportunity practice eXtreme techniques again until I worked with Allan Kelly (Allan's blog ) in the summer of 2007. Allan is a bit of an Agile nut and I expected to feel a lot like Trent Reznor learning my trade under the watchful eye of Al Jourgensen . Unfortunalty I only got to work with Allan for a few weeks. However, in that time I got up to speed by reading Lean Software Practices and watching Allen in action. At the end I felt like Reznor ready to take on the (industrial) world. It is now early 2008 and I have joined another company and had no trouble convincing my new boss of the advantages of agile development. In fact he has fully embraced the idea of stories and cards. We have our first stories and a set of blue-white-red cards pin...