blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/making-coffee.html
There’s not much to fiddle with on a domestic espresso machine, but a surprising amount of things to get wrong. Variables don’t constants aren’t. Pro barista machines (the ones people win competitions. With even the cheapest of espresso makers, the bit the human gets to tinker starts with the portafilter (or handle if you prefer to stick strictly to the technical terms). This is mine:. Sadly the industry marketeers have decided to confuse us all with this one - technically the Senseo/Tassimo/Nespresso-ty...
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/studying-with-the-open-university.html
Studying with the Open University. Lots of people (at least 2! Have asked how it works, what I’ve thought of it, how much it’s cost (although this obviously is a moving target and presents a very different picture since the introduction of tuition fees) and how I’ve found it for IT so I thought I’d gather my thoughts here. Having started conventionally enough by taking an experimental level 1 course to see how I’d get on, I then moved straight to my first level 3 course. It’s ok - I’d been getting paid f...
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/coffee-behavioural-therapy.html
Always have more than one hobby. Getting paid to do your hobby is usually seen as a brilliant thing but life’s seldom that straightforward - grow tired of your work and there’s not much left to take its place. Putting myself through university. While holding down a full-time job, I took the conscious decision to let work, study and hobby to overlap. A coder who can’t code anymore; a problem solver whose brain keeps dropping the puzzle it’s supposed to be turning over to see what it looks like from differ...
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/open-mac-surgery.html
Muahahah, finally the patient is ready for testing! Cough* sorry, been working on this for so long now it’s sent me slightly round the twist. Well, slightly *further* round the You know what I mean! After a prolonged period of intense irritation, the first edition MacBook black. Is now sporting a 64bit Core2 processor, a shiny new motherboard and a few other fiddly things. If you’re squeamish about graphic shots of open cases, look away now. Thankfully this wasn’t necessary.). A fair amount of patience.
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/the-year-of-the-robot.html
The year of the robot. As it seems I’m not the only one missing @robertbrook. On twitter, this little chap might help bridge the gap. Not quite the same thing, but it looks like he’s going to have to do. For now. He’s a much smaller and infinitely dafter version of @robertbrook. Who’s taking a year off. Unlike most of my recent software projects, he’s not going to be open sourced because people have started talking to him and it would spoil the fun. What does he do? But he talks to me!
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/all-your-base-2013.html
All Your Base 2013. The second running of White October. S All Your Base. Conference was held in Oxford last week, boasting another great lineup of industry speakers showcasing the same fascinating mix of product specialists and project implementors that made last year such a great experience. What a difference a year makes. The talks, in brief. In the first of many changes from the advertised programme, Neha Narula. This was followed by the return of Tim Moreton. S CTO to talk about their experiences wi...
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com > sandbox
http://blog.lizconlan.com/sandbox
Hi Apparently I should blog more . Or so Robert Brook says anyway. This has now been superceded by the Real Blog. But as people have been kind enough to link to this, I’ve largely left it alone. If you find any of this useful, hello and welcome! TextMate - Large print edition. Inserting a Couch into OS X. Blogging with Jekyll and Github. Copy 2011 - 2016 Liz Conlan.
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/mmmm-pi.html
Thinking of gifting the geek in your life a Raspberry Pi? Wondering what you actually need to make it go and what would make a cool gift rather than relying on the pre-packaged accessory kits? You’ve come to the right place! Ok, what is it? The Raspberry Pi (aka Pi, rPi or Rpi depending on who’s typing) is a small (really small - roughly the size of a credit card. Computer on a single circuit board made by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It says Model B - are there different models? Is cheap and the rubber ...
blog.lizconlan.com
blog.lizconlan.com
http://blog.lizconlan.com/mongouk-2011.html
As good as the in-depth tech stuff was, one of the most interesting things for me was who was using it, what for, which problems it was solving and why they had chosen it over and above the many other datastore options that are out there. My write-up is accordingly skewed in this direction. The Mongo version of the solution has simplified the structure down to around 30 collections (loosely speaking the Mongo equivalent to database tables) that contain all the attributes of the physical records as well a...
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