bellanna's former colleague Paul Butcher has written a book all about debugging software. While some of the tips may seem obvious to those with even a few years experience (you do use some form of source control, don't you?), Paul not only helps find bugs after they have occurred but also before with tips about automated testing, the use of asserts, ( Read more... )

Pretty awesome end to Series 4! The cliffhanger last week had almost everyone in the office talking about it - much better than the cliffhanger and finale to Series 3.

We've got a new Cybermen adventure look forward to at Christmas :-)

Sandi won the DVD of El Laberinto del fauno, a bottle of nice Rioja wine and a bag of mild cheese popcorn, and they finally arrived last week! Last night we drank the wine with our steak, watched the DVD between Doctor Who and Pushing Daisies, and ate the popcorn during the film. The popcorn was a bit odd, and the film was excellent ( Read more... )

Straight after Transformers I moved down to a smaller theatre to see The Simpsons Movie. This was a pleasantly shorter presentation, filled with most of the regular characters from the TV series, a plot about environmentalism (An Irritating Truth), and Spider Pig. Great fun ( Read more... )

In the first part of my summer blockbusting movie double bill, I saw Transformers this morning. It was one big, long, advert for American cars, trucks, tanks, planes and helicopters, and their transforming toy counterparts. Michael Bay should have trimmed an hour off the movie, and even more for a wider possibility of a sequel. The special effects ( Read more... )

The choice of in-flight movies on BA leaving the UK this month wasn't very inspiring and after flicking through the channels available in reverse order, I selected Channel 1 - Flushed Away. It was good clean fun and not too taxing on the brain. My favourite two voices were Ian McKellen (as Toad) and Jean Reno (as Le Frog) - the principle bad guys, ( Read more... )

I finished one of my Christmas books from bellanna in the early hours of this morning. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett, is a great story of a con artist given the choice between death for previous crimes, or reviving the Ankh-Morpork post office. Moist von Lipwig chooses the post office of course, otherwise it would be a very short novel. Reading the ( Read more... )

Ho ho ho! You don't need to go into space to find aliens and adventure, apparently. So, they've not been to Cardiff or seen Torchwood.

( Spoilers within ... )

After much build up, and a stern warning from the announcer, I was deeply unimpressed by The Aristocrats on More 4 last night. The central joke soon became boring, even though each re-telling of the joke tries to include something different to shock. It's one in-joke that didn't need to be let out.

bellanna and I gave up a few minutes after the 1st ad ( Read more... )

bellanna and I snuggled up on the sofa last night to watch a DVD for the first time in ages. We picked Le Dîner de Cons, a French farce. The international title is "The Dinner Game", but a more literal translation is The Dinner of Bloody Idiots. The story revolves around a weekly dinner party hosted by a group of rich guys who like to mock the stupid by ( Read more... )