Why Facebook’s Messaging Solution Matters

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Colin Ramsay

This was originally posted on my company blog: “Why Facebook’s Messaging Solution Matters“ This is a pretty straightforward one – Facebook’s messaging solution matters because Facebook matters to its users. Facebook is a compelling platform – keeping in contact with … Continue reading →

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Ruby Method Parameter Default Values – A Shortcut

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Colin Ramsay

Today was one of those moments where I thought to myself: “wouldn’t it be cool if I could”… and it turned out I could. In Ruby, you can give your method parameters default values: def my_method(a = 5) puts a … Continue reading →

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PTOM: Breaking Free from HttpContext

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Colin Ramsay

The System.Web.HttpContext class is a real heavyweight of the .NET Framework. It holds a wealth of information on the current server context, from the details of the current user request to a host of details about the server. It’s accessible … Continue reading →

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Castle MicroKernel Fluent Event Wiring

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Colin Ramsay

The Castle MicroKernel Registration API is also used in Windsor, and both have a facility to allow a components to subscribe to events exposed by each other. Right now, the only way to use the fluent API to configure the … Continue reading →

Posted in c#, microkernel, windsor | 8 Comments

The State of Windows Mobile

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Colin Ramsay

“Have you done any Windows Mobile development?” “A tiny bit. Isn’t it just like Winforms but on a phone?” And from such an innocent beginning, a world of pain did explode into my universe. Just like Winforms on a phone … Continue reading →

Posted in compact framework, windows mobile | 1 Comment

Parsing XML-like Files

Posted on December 7, 2008 by Colin Ramsay

The quantity of data now stored in XML, HTML, and other similar formats must now be absolutely huge. Fetching that data from XML-like files is largely seen as a solved problem on many platforms, but I’m going to look at … Continue reading →

Posted in css, fizzler, html, xml, xpath | Leave a comment

Open Source Documentation

Posted on November 23, 2008 by Colin Ramsay

Recently I’ve set up a network attached storage computer on my home network. As well as providing RAID storage for all the devices in the house, it acts as a central download server for everyone to use. Key to this … Continue reading →

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Common Interfaces for Tool Families

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Colin Ramsay

There are a load of different tool “families” in use in the .NET ecosystem which I’m sure LosTechies readers will take advantage of pretty much every day. IoC containers. Logging infrastructures. URL routing mechanisms. Each of these families operate on … Continue reading →

Posted in softwaredesign | 6 Comments

Application Configuration

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Colin Ramsay

I had cause to recently revisit an old ASP.NET application I’d written way back when I was a development newcomer. Digging around the web.config I found the appSettings section: <appSettings> <add key=”systemEmailAddress” value=”me@me.com” /> <add key=”adminEmailAddress” value=”me@me.com” /> <add key=”templateDirectory” … Continue reading →

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VMWare Optimization

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Colin Ramsay

Further to my earlier post on development enviroments, I wanted to share some ideas on how to work with Visual Studio in VMWare. Remember that running VMWare isn’t cost-free; you need to make sure that you’ve got resources to allocate … Continue reading →

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