Ross Hawkins - July 2009 Entries

July 2009 Entries

Nokia E72

The Nokia E71 has always been a phone I’ve had my eye on. It’s never had the style appeal of a device such as an iPhone, but it’s always felt incredibly easy to use and offered good connectivity options – very ‘corporate’, if a little boring. The Nokia E72 looks like more of the same, but with a few important improvements. The ones I’m interested in: The camera has been upgraded to 5mp from 3.2mpx in the E71. Standard 3.5mm audio jack compared to the 2.5mm one previously. Seriously, how long...

posted @ Thursday, July 30, 2009 9:01 PM | Feedback (0)

Accessing CouchDB from .NET code

CouchDB in the Cloud - Persisting From .NET Code is a basic example of how to integrate .NET with CouchDB using JSON and REST.

posted @ Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:37 PM | Feedback (9)

A couple of quick positive stories

It seems that it’s more often the negative experiences which serve as motivation for me to write about my customer service stories here. So it’s with pleasure that I sit down now to quickly write about a couple of positive ones instead. The first was with Microsoft. I was contacting them on behalf of a customer who was looking to do something which they were technically allowed to do (use their license for Windows Server 2003 32bit in a 64bit installation instead), but which they didn’t have the correct media / key combination for. After a bit of jumping...

posted @ Tuesday, July 28, 2009 10:48 PM | Feedback (0)

Notes/Domino 8.5 FP1

Fixpack 1 for IBM Notes/Domino 8.5 is out now, and fixes a fair few issues which might take the pressure off any administrators who are anxiously waiting for 8.5.1. Some links: 8.5 FP1 Download (requires an IBM ID) 8.5 FP1 Preliminary Fix List (some of those items look “interesting”, and not in a good way) Tags: Lotus,Notes,Domino

posted @ Monday, July 27, 2009 6:21 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

JSONView

JSONView is a Firefox extension which does pretty much what it’s title implies – it allows you to view JSON data in the browser, with some basic formatting to greatly improve readability. With the use of JSON on the rise, I was a bit surprised at how few text editors I found which supported JSON, and so using JSONView for debugging was the next best thing. If there’s any obvious editors out there which I’ve missed (for either PC or Mac) then I’d love to know about them.

posted @ Sunday, July 26, 2009 11:32 PM | Feedback (0)

Quick access to your Windows Home Server

It’s one of those things which is pretty obvious, but incredibly handy – Add a link to your server in 'My Computer'. That’s your My Computer of course, not My My Computer, because the latter would be silly. Tags: Windows Home Server

posted @ Sunday, July 19, 2009 9:39 PM | Feedback (0)

Where do developers care about software quality?

Where do developers care for Software Quality provides an interesting look at the visits to the NDepend website based on the visitor’s country of origin compared to that countries population size . Looks like the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, and Ireland come out on top. Obviously there’s a lot of variables not taken into account there (popularity of the languages for which NDepend is relevant being a notable one), but the stats are still interesting none the less. Med Venlig Hilsen! Tags: NDepend

posted @ Wednesday, July 08, 2009 12:24 PM | Feedback (0)

About me

My name is Ross Hawkins and I'm a developer, consultant, business owner and writer based in Auckland, New Zealand (pictured below!). My current work revolves around ASP.NET, C#, jQuery, Ajax, SQL Server, and a mix of other Microsoft development technologies.

I also have about 15 years of experience with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and associated technologies. While Notes/Domino is no longer my primary focus I still like to dabble and keep my skills up to date.

I own and run 2 businesses - Hawkins Consulting Services, and Ignition Development.

Bethells Beach, located in sunny West Auckland, New Zealand

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