Writing code is much like playing music, or roller derby. When you go into work, it’s like a concert or a bout. Can you imagine what a concert would be like if none of the musicians practiced? Or the carnage at a game if none of the skaters trained? Yet the majority of developers do… Read More Shopping Cart Kata

Inspired by a “Shut up and skate” diagram, I made a “Shut up and Write a Test Diagram”. Due to popular demand on the twitters I’ve posted it up here for all to enjoy! SHUT UP AND TEST

Had an epic day yesterday in London. I was the guest speaker at IT’s not just for the boys. This is an event organised by Target Events and was sponsored by Thoughtworks, Logica, M&G and Bloomberg. Female university students were invited to apply to attend the event. Successful applicants were interviewed and invited to attend.… Read More IT’s not just for the boys

My mummy’s incredibly easy chocolate cake recipe. Dead easy, delicious and works every time! Ingredients 6oz SR flour 6oz Caster sugar 6oz butter/marg 3 large eggs 1 tea spoon baking powder 2 table spoons cocoa powder Method Mix all together until pale and fluffy. Bake at 180 degrees C until risen and springy to the… Read More Chocolate cake

Late on last year, after a very successful Barcamp Blackpool and Magrails, I approached @seanhandley (one of the Magrails organisers) who I’d met at LeedsHack earlier in the year to co-organsise a Hack Day in Manchester. He thought it was an awesome idea and jumped on board. My cousin runs the Park Inn next to… Read More Hack Manchester

Last saturday saw the very first TEDx in Salford, and my brain is still buzzing. The speakers were all* excellent and varied. We had an atronaut, explorers, a biologist, physicists, musicians, even a futurologist! The full bios of the speakers can be found here http://www.tedxsalford.com/event/speakers In all it was well worth the £65 ticket price,… Read More TEDx Salford

It’s a frikkin nightmare. Here’s how I did it: c:\> gem install rails this failed with an error message which said “‘make ‘ is not recognized as an internal or external command” whilst trying to build the native extensions. The native extensions are things that Ruby needs to compile on your native system. It does… Read More Installing Rails on Windows

Last night was the second Coding Dojo in Preston at the Magma Digital offices, run by myself and @phpcodemonkey. This month the focus was TDD using Ruby. We performed the Checkout Kata (I’ll blog this later) with a Randori format for the first half (rotating a pair at the front with code projected at the… Read More Preston Codejo 2

I’ve been at Laterooms for a couple of months now and it’s certainly a challenge, and one I’m really enjoying. It’s a bigger team than any of my last jobs, which means I’m getting the opportunity to work in loads of different areas with a bunch of different people. My voice is heard, I’m involved… Read More Come and work at Late Rooms

Here I am at the work Cirque de Noel, being spun right round. Laterooms Christmas Party – @ruby_gem from hashpointfive on Vimeo.