In Training

Most of my projects have reached a natural stopping point. There is still more that could be done to make it even better as there always is in these sorts of projects, but the project is stable the latest design release is integrated so it looks fantastic and there are other projects that need my attention. That is where I am directing myself now, for the next few days I am delving into hibernate, no that's not what bears do in winter (well it is but it is not that type of hibernate I am talking about). "Hibernate is a powerful, high performance object/relational persistence and query service." Their words not mine. Hibernate is as different to traditional programming as object orientated programming is to functional programming, there is a logical leap, a mental bridge to get a cross (sorry for all the euphemisms).

Though for all the differences there are key principles what relate to what I already know, and I can definitely see the power. Especially the speed of development, with this structure up and running we should be able to build a test driven platform (so we can know it won't fail), quickly, reducing duplication of effort, and easily make the resulting code multiplatform. Literally if this works, as the materials I am going through lead me to believe, if we need to develop code for a different type of database or operating system, that would be considerably easier than it is with the current system, just add in a plug-in for the database of choice and away you go.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2010-02-08 10:02:04

Intense Saving mode enabled

Seven months today will be the wedding day and I have started saving intensively, well tell a lie I have been saving constantly for a while but a large whack, pretty much all of that disappeared over Christmas , new year, and booking the honeymoon. So reduced back down to zero savings again it was time to re-assess my savings and start saving intensively, especially as certain key items have to be bought soon. Combine that with buying a house we probably won't be having any holidays for a while, well apart from the honeymoon.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2010-02-08 09:48:21

Great Christmas Dinner

This weekend we went for the company Christmas dinner at the Galgorm Hotel and Spa over Saturday night which was paid for by the company. It was fantastic the dinner was lovely and metaphors of i-Path as a bus were classic, secret Santa's were given out and much merriment was to be had. I also made good use of the Spa facilities were the best I have been to, though I may give the ice shower a miss next time. That will wake you up with a jolt. A very good weekend, great to see everyone together, and a great time to catch up with some of the more far flung members of the i-Path team. The best part of all though must have been that i-Path paid for everyone's partners to come as well so we were able to put faces to names of the wonderful people we had heard about.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2009-11-30 15:06:41

New Twitter Client Feature

I have recently added a new Twitter Client to my website which I can use to add quick updates. It can easily be viewed from the twitter icon on every page or the twitter link on the front page.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2009-11-06 23:33:58

Gift List added to website

As I keep getting asked and I don't know what to tell anyone as most of the things I would like are quite pricey i.e. a car, an Apple Macbook pro, PS3, XBox 360, etc. I have created a gift list page if you follow the Gift Ideas link at the bottom of the page. At the moment it only my amazon wish list but it should be a good start.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2009-11-06 16:22:55

Buying a House

We have now put down a deposit on a new house in Dundonald, it looks fantastic and it is a new build which is even better. Though as it is still under construction we will not be able to move in until next year, but yay us!

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2009-11-06 16:19:59

Wedding Date Set

Heather and I have decided on a date for the wedding. September 8th 2010, we have booked the church and the wedding venue. The venue will be the Tullylagan near Cookstown in Northern Ireland, this means the big things are all ready out of the way just a few more things and we will be set. YAY 323 days to go.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2009-10-20 14:52:35

Webdings

I have just received an email from the Princes Trust which we are working with to raise money for the people they help. At the bottom of the message was a series of unusual images in green. Curious as I am I wondered what these were, I guessed that they were a special type of font as I could select each one individually and they had spaces like words so plugged them into word and changed the format to reveal the text. It was a standard notice that any attachments belong to the Princes Trust, etc.

I was quite pleased this was a standard message which people do not usually take any notice of presented in a new and novel way so users who were not interested just see some funny characters, and those who are can easily read it by changing the font.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2009-10-08 15:55:13