We need to talk about soft delete.

There are things we just don't talk about, soft delete is one of them. Across the globe, data is being 'deleted' when a user asks for it to be removed, but what is really happening? Soft delete. This is when the data is no longer accessible…

What happens when your blog gets to the top of Hacker News?

It was a quiet Thursday afternoon, in fact I was on holiday in the UK, recharging the batteries before taking the kids to the swimming pool. In a moment of inspiration, I decided to write a blog post, create a brand new hacker news account (I'd always been…

Lowering the bar.

Have you ever fallen into a well? Me either. It would have made a great excuse as to why I haven't written a single blog post in seven years. I'm lowering the bar for myself. Writing should be escapism, expression, writing should be sun drenched mornings…

Total Car Check and Open Data

When I first started Total Car Check [https://totalcarcheck.co.uk/], I knew that data would play a large part in the success of the organisation. There has been a big push over the past few years from this government to try and release as much data as possible in…

Developing a hybrid phone app with Monaca and Phonegap

Background What was the problem? We needed a phone app for our commercial application. Our web stack is built on ASP.net MVC and we use C# on the backend. Xamarin - Not right for us Naturally there has been alot of buzz around Xamarin, so I gave it a…

What is a startup anyway?

I've come to the conclusion that the word/phrase 'Start-up' is now totally without useful meaning. This has probably been true for a while, but I constantly see its use abused, conflated and inverted. Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company] defines it as: >…