Matt Little's Blog

Cycling

2011-01-10T08:45:00.000Z

Report from my Garmin today tells me that, since late March 2010, I have covered the following whilst cycling:

Distance:    1,574.70 mi
Time:    127:06:56 h:m:s
Elevation Gain:    117,485 ft
Avg Speed:    12.4 mph
Calories:    94,541 Calories

With that many calories burned, it is time for a bacon roll for breakfast ;-)

Programming quotes

2010-12-15T09:42:00.000Z

A list of 50 of the best programming quotes out there.

Check them out, including:

"Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen."

- Edward V Berard

"A C program is like a fast dance on a newly waxed dance floor by people carrying razors."

- Waldi Ravens.

"Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption."

- Keith Bostic

"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live."

- Martin Golding

Genius!

Just not what you want to say

2010-12-07T12:26:00.001Z

Is nobody safe? Profanity struck Radio 4 this morning - Jim Naughtie got Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's name wrong on BBC Radio 4's Today programme today and then struggled to continue despite his "coughing fit".

Well worth a listen here.

While you are at it, have a listen to this one.

Haskell (Geek) Humour

2010-12-02T10:50:00.000Z

A wonderfully witty article on the Haskell programming language (and yes, I am allowed to make fun of it as I spent a semester at Uni coding in it).

You can see the piece here.

Pushing buses

2010-12-01T07:53:00.001Z

We have snow here in Edinburgh. Lots of snow.

I've measured 15 inches in our garden alone and spent an hour digging my parked car my out of a snow drift!

The ultimate though was organising the passengers from my coach home to push the bus up the road after it got stuck.

This weather is unbelievable!

Bleeding Avid Juicy Brakes

2010-11-21T10:15:00.001Z

Following an unfortunate bike servicing "incident" (don't ask), I had to bleed the avid juicys on my bike. I've never done anything like this before but there were lots of posts online about how easy it was if you

a) Have the official bleed kit and
b) Watch this video.

Well, it was dead easy and the video was great - if you are going to do it, just make sure that you have a phone or laptop to hand so that you can play, pause and play your way through the procedure.

My only comment would be that, whilst the bleed kit makes it dead simple, how Avid can justify ~£40 for a kit of pieces that must cost no more than £3 is beyond me. The kit works, it makes it simple to bleed but you'll be fleeced for £40 to make it so straight forward.

Ammyy Scam

2010-11-16T14:23:00.000Z

I got a call today from someone telling me that my computer "was broadcasting errors" and that he as part of the "Windows Support Group" was here to help.

All I had to do was go to a website and when it promoted me to save or run the automatic download I should choose "Run..." and then I would see all the errors on my machine.

I've no idea where these people get your contact details from but there are lots of reports of these calls at the moment, so be on the lookout for them

WebHost4Life - not really for life

2010-10-11T12:47:00.000+01:00

WebHost4Life (WH4L) has gone bad. Really bad.

There once was a time where they had a great platform and great support and they went that extra mile to help you.

Then they got bought out.

Now, having forced a platform upgrade on you and in doing so having broken your website, their advice is..... "pay someone to fix it".

Isn't that what I pay them to do?

Unbelievably, in the process of 'fixing' a small part of my site that wasn't working, they actually screwed up the web.config file and in doing so completely brought down my entire site.

Although their first line support had noted in the support case that they could access my site and see the small number of individual pages that didn't work, the second line guys (whose text editor screwed up the config file) told me that they had found the problem - a malformed config file that prevented all pages from working!!! They suggested that if I fixed my web.config, they could close the support case.

So, second line support creates problems, breaks sites and then asks you to fix them.

Once I had fixed that issue, they then announced that I should play a web designer to fix the original issues with the site. The site that worked until they performed a platform upgrade. A platform upgrade that used a tool to identify 'problem pages' and yes, you've guessed it, the pages that don't work now were identified pre-migration as ones that would require WebHost4Life to address BEFORE migration.

They didn't adress those issues and now parts of the site are broken. And they want me to pay someone (else) to get it fixed. Even Microsoft legend Mike Taulty has issues with WH4L

Chances of me being with them next year? Zero.

Chances of WH4L being here in a couple of years is they keep this up? Just about zero.

Hi there

2010-09-24T08:39:00.000+01:00

After numerous years of having a blog elsewhere, I've found that the time does not justify the cost of hosting. The software that I used to run my blog was woefully out of date and I just couldn't will myself to upgrade it!

So here is my new (free) blog. Hope you enjoy.