Writing ... or Just Practicing?
Random disconnected diatribes of a documentation engineer
A Prolonged Burst of Frenetic Procrastination
Following a discussion last week about how the most successful national clubs and societies have...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 09/22/2012
Load Unbalanced Routing
So when you buy a load balancing router, what do you actually expect it to do? Maybe I just expected...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 09/16/2012
A Relentless Paper Chase (aka Painting Windows Azure)
Here in Britain we always used to refer to a job that was never-ending as "like painting the Forth...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 08/26/2012
You Might Also Be Interested In...
According to Amazon, I'm interested in buying 5kg of peanuts, a multi-purpose screwdriver, some...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 08/12/2012
I Nearly Found Nirvana In The Cloud
So it's been a week of semi-fruitful searching for lots of people. In China there's a team setting...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 07/14/2012
Can I Afford the Cloud?
Like many people I'm trying to evaluate whether I can save money by moving my lightly-loaded,...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 07/07/2012
Web Sites or Cloud Services?
The latest update to the range of Windows Azure services includes a nifty feature called Web Sites...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 07/01/2012
A Bluetooth Headset on Wheels
While my car was in the dealer's workshop having its annual checkup last week I did the usual nerdy...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 06/24/2012
Keep Taking the Tablets
I was quite proud of the fact that I've finally managed to expunge all vestiges of Windows XP from...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 06/17/2012
Hyphenless Decapitalization
According to Readers Digest, there's a dyslexic agnostic insomniac out there somewhere who lies...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 06/10/2012
I Can't Yell Any More
I suppose it just shows how poor my business skills are. If I ran a hugely successful business...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 05/27/2012
Planet Earth Recorded
This week marked the start of a much hyped new BBC TV series called Planet Earth Live. Of course,...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 05/13/2012
Hands-Off Labs
It seems to be a general rule now here at p&p that every guide we produce must have an...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 05/05/2012
Meandering Meanings
I bet you didn't know that the word "Wikipedia" actually means "fast child". And that the towns of...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 04/21/2012
The Rule of "It Depends"
It seems odd that, in order for a rule to be valid, there has to be an exception. According to the...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 03/31/2012
Hybrigation Complete, Feedback Required...
So at last we've finished the Windows Azure hybrid applications guide, and it's out there ready for...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 03/18/2012
So Where Does Stuff Come From?
You regularly hear about the disconnect between real life and people's perceptions of it. For...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 03/10/2012
Prequally Empirical Numeric Confusion
Our son went to the cinema this week to see Star Wars Part 1 in 3D, and I was tempted to go with...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 03/03/2012
Writing? It's Easy...
I've decided that, next time I write a book, I'm going to put everything on page one and make some...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 02/25/2012
Try, Try, and Try Again
There are some seemingly simple phrases that trip so easily off the tongue, but end up leaving you...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 02/11/2012
An Enduring Documentational Experience
Unless you write books or guidance for long-lived technologies, such as assembly code programming or...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 01/28/2012
The (Non-political) Third Way
One of the major advances in politics in recent years has been the evolution of “The Third...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 01/21/2012
That What Was Demonstrated
It's been a long time since I studied particle physics in my spare time at university. However, as...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 01/14/2012
Hands Up If You're Doing Hybrid...
After several months of diligent dappling with documentation, comprehensive confrontations with...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 01/07/2012
How Much Is That Stamp On The Website?
How about we start this week with a short quiz: What do you reckon is the most common thing that...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 12/17/2011
Welshest Wales
One of the nice things about working for a UK company but being on permanent assignment to a US one...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 12/10/2011
It Was Missing When I Opened The Box...
It's becoming clear that creating guidance on cloud computing is great deal more difficult than for...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 11/30/2011
How Much Is It Worth?
I discovered this week that I was severely overcharged when I bought a new TV from our local branch...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 11/26/2011
Happy 60th Birthday, LEO
According to folklore, in 1943 IBM's chairman Thomas J. Watson said that the world would only ever...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 11/19/2011
Optimistic Euphemisms
Buried in a recent issue of my newspaper the other day, squashed into a corner between an advert for...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 11/12/2011
Documentary Evidence
You'd think that, with only a couple of different letters, "documentary" and "documentation" were...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 11/06/2011
Fire(wall)fighting Lync and Service Bus
I once went to a security conference presentation where the speaker explained that blocking ports in...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 10/30/2011
There Is No Good News...
Don't you hate it when someone says "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" and then, when...
Author: Alex Homer Date: 10/22/2011