Adam's photo
I write software, music and technical documentation. I'd like to think I'm a writer of some sort...
  • 30th Apr, 2009

    Access is denied when loading an assembly

    Just solved this issue in .Net, when trying to load an external assembly, an unhelpful error of FileLoadException(Access is denied).

  • 22nd Apr, 2009

    Python, libxslt and custom resolvers

    I recently had a requirement to read in an XSLT file and transform it using Python.

  • 30th Jan, 2009

    Add new user to Subversion

    How to add a new user to Subversion using DAV.

  • 28th Jan, 2009

    Your framework probably sucks

    If you're writing a framework, I recommend you stop. Right now. Go do some sports, read a book, enjoy the world. Come back and then use an existing one, or none at all, just use a programming language.

  • 28th Oct, 2008

    Easy to read log files

    When dealing with a large codebase, or any codebase really, debug log files can get pretty detailed. I made the mistake of not separating my log entries into degrees of importance with a switch in some settings file, so I basically have logging enabled or disabled. When logging is disabled pages render between 8 and 35 ms, when enabled pages can take up to 500 ms.

  • 15th Sep, 2008

    Quick and easy XML creation

    Generating XML is easy to get wrong. Unescaped entities, mismatched tags, Unicode characters create a minefield for a developer. XHTML is a subset of XML so the same rules apply, however I've noticed not many "web frameworks" generate guaranteed pure XHTML.

  • 8th Aug, 2008

    Remove Subversion Directories

    To strip out all Subversion tracking directories (those annoying .svn hidden ones) navigate to the directory in a terminal then type the following:

  • 22nd Jul, 2008

    Use the correct XHTML doctype for your templates.

    If you're working with XSL as a templating system, you'll want it to include the correct DTD.

  • 16th Jun, 2008

    Your database will never be 3rd normal form.

    Databases have incredibly complicated data structures. When working with a large database, the temptation is to over-engineer the layout. A completely normalised database is one particularly useful in production.

  • 31st May, 2008

    Serialise Python objects to XML

    I'm lazy. I like a complete separation of back-end code and front end styling - logic in the back end, styling for front end. There are many templating solutions floating around, but most put code in with markup. Fortunately, we have a templating solution which most web developers already know... XSL.