You’ve probably seen it all over the news but Radianz has been bought! For those that don’t know of it, the Radianz network is an extranet of financial institutions, it provides a fully redundant infrastructure (if you want to join you are required to have dual lines connecting you; each line has to be from a different approved supplier). It’s used for accessing financial applications where the unpredictable nature of the Internet makes it undesirable but the commodity status of it’s applications and protocols make it the best alternative. Read on →

There is an interesting post by Aslak Hellesoy over at CodeHaus regarding simple ruby annotations. While I’ve not really paid much attention to annotations in Java (beyond Ted Newards occasional post on the subject) the simplicity of this unofficial ruby implementation is making me want to dig out my Pickaxe second edition and delve in again… Now if I only had a reason to use annotations ;)

A while ago I wrote a post on the very excellent Yellow Face Technique (unixdaemon post), a slick bit of browser-based UI that made it easier to track changes on the page. The nice (and patient!) people over at i am jack’s design were kind enough to send me a link answering my challenge for usable code. And it seems to work fine! Go and have a look at the Yellow Fade technique – iamjacksdesign version code and demo; it’s worth five minutes of your time and visitors to your site will thank you…

Writing this review was a little awkward. The book covers a topic I needed to know about while not having a huge amount of interest in learning, however it is an excellent book if you actually need to know about FogBugz so I felt it was worth a review. The book is end user focused and could be thought of as a “Missing Manual” for FogBugz. If you need a book to give an overview of what the product can do and introduce you to the basic and a number of the intermediate features then this is as good as it gets. Read on →

Author: Mike Gunderloy ISBN: 159059486X Publisher: Apress Despite the name, FogBugz isn’t just used for tracking bugs. The product covers all the essentials such as streamlined bug submission (if it’s not easy people won’t do it), accepting and replying to email submissions and dividing your workload into different projects and releases (with the aid of a nifty autosorter). Over time FogBugz has grown to include discussion groups, tracking of tasks via RSS and email on the technical side, and due dates and escalation reports on the management front. Read on →

This is seriously off-topic considering the sites usual content so if you’re looking for tech then stop right about… here. If you’d like to see me publicly debug myself then carry right on! At some point over the last few years I seem to have made a couple of bad choices. Firstly I’ve become risk adverse; and not just in the good “the production system is sacrosanct” way. In everything from “lets just go to the conference and see how it goes”, through “I’ll download it and have a play without reading a whole book on it first” up to not telling certain people how I really feel and missing the chance I’ve stopped just doing things. Read on →

I’ve been lucky enough to get a review copy of Painless Project Management with FogBugz (I’m not stalking Mike Gunderloy, honest! :)) and I’ve enjoyed reading through the first four chapters. While I’m not sure I’m the ideal target market, the book seems more for end users just picking up the product, so far I’ve found it extremely well written. My initial thoughts are that it’s accessible, covers all the basic functions and could almost be one of the Missing Manual books from O’Reilly. Read on →

Last weekend I ended up being (just about) well enough to to travel over to FOSDEM in Brussels. I’ve done FOSDEM every year and it’s always excellent. The combination of great talks, friendly atmosphere and getting to meet people you don’t see often enough mixed in with some heavy socialising, good meals and late nights makes it my favourite event each year. I was lucky enough to travel over with a rag-tag group of Linux geeks, Perl people, a RedHat employee and a Debian developer… Not exactly a cohesive group but it seemed to work! Read on →

I’ve been a GLLUG member for a good few years now, I’ve attended meetings, worked on the stall at the London Linux Expos and even given a talk at one of the meetings (I’d like to say sorry for that…) but the March 2005 GLLUG meeting is the first meeting I’ve organised. With the able (and essential) assistance of Bruce “way too deep to have a blog or site for people to link to” Richardson we’ve got a grand total of three speakers and are hosting the meeting at Fotangos offices. Read on →

If you are on some of the more useful security lists like full-disclosure then there is a pretty good chance you’ve seen posts from Billy B. Bilano, a very amusing writer who gets people that should know much better to bite. Have a look at the the Tao of doing it right thread or Possible First Crypto Virus Definitely Discovered!. While both of these emails are tragicly funny some of the responses are every bit as good. Read on →