Three years ago we purchased a used BMX X5, even when we got it the headlights were suffering from the extra UV pounding down through the blue, ozone depleted Melbourne skies. Finally after many complaints and comments about 'new headlamps', an expensive solution with painful wiring options I decided to have a go at refurbishing the original lamps. The original lamp. Lots of haze. The internet, "full of kooks and crooks" the other half ...
Project: BMX…… another bike
So my new job at RealEstate.com means a slightly more arduous commute requiring two trains and then a 2.1km walk to the office. All up time 60 minutes of which 20-25 minutes is walking. I like walking, the trees, the mountains, the odd bird but Richmond is mainly houses. To shorten the commute I tried my trusty longboard. I can't actually skateboard and the rutted streets and pavements of East Richmond meant it was just an accident waiting to ...
Outlook.com
I'm not a manager and hence I don't really do meetings. I've never been a manager and I've never really done meetings. So when there is a meeting planned and I have eight desktops, 30 applications and 54 windows/tabs open is not really surprising that I miss it. So what I need is an email/SMS notification to my phone 5 minutes before the meeting. Outlook being the default enterprise email and calendar solution can't do this. Seriously? ...
Given the propensity for even a sniff of wind here near the bay my outings have reduced. That said upcoming employment has spurred me on to try and master this thing before I head back to 'The Man'. I'll get the breakages count out the way first and its not too lengthy. I've taken to flying the thing without the canopy on as it seems to fly better without it, but the trouble with that is that the main PCB control unit is exposed and thats ...
My days of unemployment haven't all been ones of lazing in the Melbourne summer sun, kayaking the bay and push biking to lunch, oh no. Yes there has been a fair serving of DIY projects around the house and of course toys to play with but I have on occasion been playing with a few courses on udemy.com. One of these was for web scraping, a scenario that I could have used a couple of time in previous employment for gathering data from competit...
Employment.
I've heard many good stories about REA and know that they have adapted their software development significantly over the past five or so years. Having come from a background of larger corporates and a small startup it will be most interesting to see how the team works and also to once again work with other testers. I'm looking forward to starting.
Mayday Mayday
I remember my father saying that his medivac took some setting up and that it didn't like the wind. Mindful of those wise words I spent the first battery charge in the garage getting it all trimmed up. Lots of scooting around on the floor finally managing to get it to stop pulling left and almost hovering before the batteries gave up. Happy that the basics were set up correctly and thinking maybe the oval across the road might be a ...
The downgrade from fully detached to semi detached is underway. House 2.0 is now up and running. Larger front door, comfy bedding, new driveway and all fully secured to the side of the main house. I guess it might be my pommy-ness that makes our local ring-tailed possums such a joy to watch. Most Australians seem to see them as vermin but unlike the brush tailed, our ring-tailed are quite small and mostly pretty quiet with only the occasional ...
Helicopters
When I was a kid my dad was into radio-controlled stuff. At the weekend he would load up the Ford Corsair and we would head the few miles to a field next to the river where we would lug the plane and his specially constructed r/c toolbox that held all the various tools, transmitter, fuel, starter motor etc required to get the machine going. He started with a glider and over the years progressed through 'beginner' planes without ailerons to my ...
I've only scanned a small amount of User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn but I like some bits of this book. You want to keep the user interface out of your stories for as long as possible Stories are about requirements, talk implementation later. Don't number story cards Hopefully that'll mean you won't use Jira The main purpose of the card is as a reminder to talk about the feature Its not to be a mini specification ...