Category: Software Development

  • Why I prefer self-hosted Git repositories to Github, Bitbucket, etc.

    It’s the year 2018 and it’s impossible for a software developer to have not heard about (or used) Github, or a variant like Bitbucket. Even self-hosted Git evangelist GitLab is a popular choice.

    At the start of February 2018, I provisioned a new Cloud VPS to run my website and other apps. I also chose to migrate all my private Git repositories to it and cancelled my paid Github subscription.

    This article explores the reasons why I went self-hosted.

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  • The Great Big Cloud Hosting Speed Test 2017

    2017 was an exciting year for the bigger players in the cloud hosting arena.

    With all these improvements in cloud hosting, I thought it would be interesting to focus on a key metric of hosting providers that many overlook: network speed.

    Most modern cloud hosting providers give your dedicated server or VPS a 100Mbps or 1Gbps network connection. But how close can you actually get to that speed?

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  • Content Delivery Networks can improve your website’s performance

    Content Delivery Networks were created for one reason: to speed up your websites and web applications. In this article, I explore how you can take advantage of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to improve your website performance for a small cost.

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  • Upload photos to Blue Twilight PHP photo gallery from your new iPhone

    Buying the new iPhone that Apple will announce today? Interested in photography?

    Did you know that you can capture a photo and upload it straight into your Blue Twilight photo gallery directly from your new iPhone or iPad device?

    Read this article to see how to upload photos using the Blue Twilight photo gallery and your iPhone or iPad.

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  • Simply Remind Me: my first SaaS application

    It’s rare for commercial software developers, such as myself, to get to use the software we write. We rely on our users to report problems or suggest new features for the applications we develop.

    Therefore when I read about a PHP development framework (Laravel) that looked so interesting I just had to try it out, I came up with the idea of an application where you tell it all the dates that are important to you, and it will send you e-mail or SMS text messages when those dates are coming up.

    And so… Simply Remind Me was born.

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  • Delegate invocation can be simplified – C#

    When you have worked with the same technology day-in, day-out for almost 15 years, it’s easy to miss some of the “under-the-radar” changes that are made without any fan-fare.

    This, for me, is one of those in C#.

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  • OneDrive storage is no longer unlimited

    … after some people upload too much.

    “Today, storage limits just became a thing of the past with Office 365.”
    Julia White, general manager of Office 365 Technical Product Management. 27th October, 2014

    Fast forward to November 2015 and storage limits have just become present again.

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  • MariaDB 10.1 is Generally Available

    The open-source database fork of MySQL, started by MySQL’s original developer – MariaDB – have certified their latest release of the 10.1 series (10.1.8) as Generally Available.

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  • Microsoft launch Windows 10 developer qualification

    Microsoft Learning today announced a new Windows 10 developer qualification aimed at software developers who want to target the recently-released Windows 10 universal platform.

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  • Migrate an SVN repository to TFS

    It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS.) It is a complete tool for managing an application throughout its lifecycle. However I was bought up (and learnt most of my programming skills) on open-source software. It’s important to me that I don’t forget my roots!

    While TFS is a fantastic tool for commercial application lifecycle management, SVN (Subversion) also has its place in corporates. It’s free and has lower training overhead: perfect for companies that don’t need anything other than source control (or use other tools.)

    In this article I’m going to teach you how to migrate an SVN repository (including all its history) into TFS using a Git repository.

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