Webstock 2016 - The Manifestations of Mindfulness
06 Mar, 2016
This year I was fortunate to be able to attend the Webstock conference for the sixth time. For each of these successive years since 2011, something about it has drawn me back - more than the intriguin…
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The Making of Hex-An
25 May, 2015
On 25 February, Pebble (the company) announced the Pebble Time smartwatch on Kickstarter. This showed a refined aesthetic design, along with a 64-colour screen, which sparked a surge of creativity for…
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A Christmas Chocolate Tradition
14 Feb, 2015
With Christmas becoming a distant memory and Hot Cross Buns on sale in supermarkets since January, I've come to realise that it's become a tradition for me to make chocolates as Christmas gifts for fa…
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An HTML5-based audio player with React.js
11 Jul, 2014
One of the motivations for me to move this site away from Blogger to a different platform was so I could add a set of pages dedicated to my music, with an audio player embedded on each page. Even bett…
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New Site, New Look
05 May, 2014
There's an interesting phenomenon where something good comes from motivation caused by enduring something that could be improved significantly. A while ago I became frustrated with the old Blogger sit…
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Hardware Test
07 Oct, 2012
As a bit of an early demo, I've put together a video showing a proof-of-concept that uses hardware integration.
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eConcerto: The Vision
11 Feb, 2012
It all started when I discovered some of Mozart's piano concerti in MIDI format; I took a liking to No. 20 (K466) and started learning the first two movements. One thing struck me, which I hadn't prev…
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Wellywood Controversy
08 Nov, 2011
For those who haven't been in touch with local Wellington news, part of the 'talk of the town' is the controversial 'Wellywood' sign, inspired by the well-known 'Hollywood' sign in L.A. (just switch '…
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Regular Expressions: From Zero to Regex Hero
09 Mar, 2010
Last week I presented this session on Regular Expressions at the Wellington .NET User Group. It was nice to get such a great reception from the audience, and I hope they were able to follow along with…
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Visual Art Meets Maths / Computer Science
04 Feb, 2010
Recently our Auckland office had a new art installation on the wall of one of its meeting rooms. Being a technology company, it was quite apt to make it an array of dots that predictably spelt 'Interg…
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Now Certified in WPF (plus a binding tip)
03 Feb, 2010
As the title says, I'm now certified with an MCTS in Windows Presentation Foundation applications, having passed the 70-502 exam. (I've heard it's a tough one.) There were 50 multiple-choice questions…
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A New Website - Featuring EPiServer Composer
23 Jan, 2010
This week had quite a noteworthy event - the Go-Live of Intergen's new public website, which I was significantly involved with in terms of development. What made this particularly unique was that it w…
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Multilingual WPF Applications - on CodeProject
08 Aug, 2009
Well it seems that multilingual WPF applications is a hot topic, at least according to my most visited posts and a few questions posted on CodeProject. That has kick-started me into writing an article…
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Building Multilingual WPF applications - Part 3
19 Jul, 2009
Since Part 2 on building Multilingual WPF applications, one unresolved issue has grabbed my attention as the proverbial stone in one's shoe - that of not getting the custom markup extension working co…
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Backstage Behind the Scenes
14 Jul, 2009
Today marks the launch of Office 2010's technical preview, accompanied by a new site showcasing the work that Microsoft has been putting in to deliver Office 2010 - http://www.office2010themovie.com/.…
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Another Step for Silverlight...
10 Jul, 2009
Hooray - Silverlight 3.0 has just been released today, bringing it another step forward (and a little bit closer to WPF - at least in .NET 3.5). I have had the fortune of working on a few Silverlight-…
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Multilingual WPF Applications: Part 2
05 Jul, 2009
In a previous post, I set up a way to bind a WPF interface to a class containing localised strings, so that the language of the entire application can be dynamically switched at runtime. This is unlik…
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Sprint vs Marathon
20 Jun, 2009
This week I have had to make a tough decision - to pull out of submitting my latest composition for consideration for an upcoming music festival. It is not a decision I have taken lightly, given how m…
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Accelerating the Creative Process
06 Jun, 2009
Probably the trickiest thing about composing music is bridging the gaps between different sections or melodic themes in the piece. You start out with a few basic ideas and rough plan of how the music …
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MVP in Action
09 Feb, 2009
Back in August-September 2007 the concept of the MVP (Model-View-Presenter) pattern had finally 'clicked' with me, since attending Ron Jacobs' session at TechEd 2007 and reading related literature onl…
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The Cost of Open Source
04 Feb, 2009
As a bit of background, I have composed a number of musical pieces in recent years, two of which have been submitted to competitions where selected works were performed by an affiliated orchestra. Obv…
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Building Multilingual WPF Applications
18 Dec, 2008
We've heard of the virtues of following the best practice of designing software to be as flexible as possible, namely ease of understanding and agility where maintenance is concerned. One dimension of…
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Building Software With Smarts
12 Sep, 2008
Two of the things I enjoy most about software development are problem-solving and adding value. The problem-solving aspect gives me the mental stimulation that I enjoy, as well as the buzz of being in…
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Where have I been?
11 Sep, 2008
It's been a while since my previous post, so this is a general recollection of many of the things I've been occupied with since then.
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Crysis below minimum specs - Will It Play?
24 Nov, 2007
The waiting is over - Crysis has finally been released here in NZ. Having played and really enjoying Far Cry, I couldn't resist getting the Special Edition of Crysis (for the same cost as the standard…
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Reflections on Tech-Ed 2007 - Part 5
08 Sep, 2007
This is the last post in the series on the Tech-Ed 2007 highlights, covering the remaining two technical sessions.
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Reflections on Tech-Ed 2007 - Part 4
02 Sep, 2007
The previous posts in the series have covered highlights of the Tech-Ed sessions. This post continues the series with the discussion of a more technical session.
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Reflections on Tech-Ed 2007 - Part 3
27 Aug, 2007
In the previous post I listed what I found to be highlights out of the sessions I attended. This post continues the discussion of these session highlights.
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Reflections on Tech-Ed 2007 - Part 2
26 Aug, 2007
There was obviously more to Tech-Ed than the excellent keynote mentioned in the previous post. As I stated earlier, the sessions made up bulk of the conference, and there were some definite highlights…
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Reflections on Tech-Ed 2007 - Part 1
21 Aug, 2007
Last week I was at the Tech-Ed 2007 conference, held in Auckland at the SkyCity Convention Centre. It was a great opportunity to be there attending the sessions, exploring the Marketplace and supervis…
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First post
07 Jul, 2007
After quite a bit of encouragement by peers at work, I've finally decided to start up a blog, so here it is. This will include a variety of items ranging from technical tidbits (mainly relating to sof…
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