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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