Category: Thoughts

  • Repairing an SGS 50L compressor

    I’ve had this compressor for a couple of years now. I’ve used it to spray paint my workshop, drive die grinders, sanders and nail guns. More recently I got a plasma cutter (which is awesome). however somoewhere along the way the compressor has developed a fault, it started out as an intermittent issue where it…

  • tap tap tap… is this thing on?

    for a while now I’ve had a profile on the fediverse as makergeek@hometech.social which has been fine, a good community that I’m interested in on home automation etc. However, I’ve been aware that in theory it is possible eto connect my wordpress blog with activity pub so that I can appear more properly as @Daniel…

  • A return to blogging?

    A return to blogging?

    Well hello there. It’s been a while. Way way back, before YouTube was much of a thing, before Instagram even existed. I was in the habit of documenting my random makes and mischief on here, my ‘blog’. Of course ‘here’ has changed a few times but the back catalogue of miscellaneous musings is all there.…

  • Orbis Access – A new investment site is born

    I am not a spokesperson for the company, and I should not be looked to for any kind of investment advice. I was however part of the team that brought this new site out into the world. I’m not going to write much about the business because you can read the site for that, I…

  • Touch-to-pay: the wearable killer app

    Touch-to-pay: the wearable killer app

    My wallet is perhaps a little behind the times. My debit cards do not have touch-to-pay, I have a credit card with that feature, but it got rejected a couple of times and I honestly didn’t investigate why, I simply lost faith in using that method to pay. Enter – Barclays bPay band.

  • So I had to remove the safety guard…

    As someone that spends a lot of time in my workshop, using tools and making things, these words echo in my memory: “Well I had to remove the safety guard to get a better angle…” Maybe my memory is unreliable, but that is how I remember my father explaining how he had caught his thumb…

  • Running – beyond 5k

    Running – beyond 5k

    Back in August I wrote about completing an NHS podcast series ‘from couch to 5k’,I found it to be a useful structure for getting myself into running, and up to a reasonable standard. Since then I have carried on running. This morning I completed 16km, the second time I’ve run this distance and I beat…

  • Using SpecFlow for WebDriver user acceptance tests – Pros and Cons

    Recently in my team we have introduced the use of SpecFlow to held create business driven tests. Specifically we’ve been refining the way we work with acceptance criteria for some time, and have been pushing towards the Given, When, Then format.

  • Lessons from QCon Part 2 – Working Distributed

    The team I work on is split over 3 time zones, with an Office in London, Bermuda and Vancouver. Giving us an 8 hour time different to work around.So I was interested by the distributed teams track at QCon and I attended a couple of sessions to pick up some ideas about being effective with…

  • Lessons from QCon: Part 1 – Sympathy with the Machine

    At my recent trip to QCon London I had the opportunity to hear some great talks given by some really good speakers.