Pliant AllianceSoftware development notes & tools

Journal

TitleDateExcerpt
Reading the Noise: Regular Expressions for Log AnalysisWhen a service misbehaves in the small hours and a developer is paged from a Brisbane NOC or a Canberra-based operations team, the first instinct is rarely to…
Build a Bootable USB Drive for Reliable System RecoveryA bootable USB drive gives a computer a recovery environment that starts before the installed operating system. It is useful when Windows will not launch,…
Setting up a dual-boot system with Windows and UbuntuRunning two operating systems on a single machine has long appealed to tinkerers, students, and professionals who want the strengths of both ecosystems. A…
Norton AntiVirus 2005 Reviewed From an Australian DeskAround 2005, Australian home offices and small studios relied on a fairly narrow menu of security tools. Broadband in Melbourne and Sydney was still settling…
The Benefits of Continuous Integration with CruiseControlSoftware teams once treated a build as a private ritual performed by a developer before a release. Source files were copied, libraries were checked by hand,…
Building A Simple RSS Aggregator In PHPAn RSS aggregator gathers headlines and article summaries from several websites, then presents them in one readable stream. The idea is modest, yet it…
Comparing Windows Task Manager alternativesWindows Task Manager remains the quickest way to check whether an application has frozen, a process is consuming too much memory, or the system is under…
Using SSH tunnels to secure remote connectionsRemote administration often requires access to a service that should never be exposed directly to the public internet. A database, internal web panel, file…
Understanding aspect-oriented programming for cleaner modular codeIn most software teams across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, the standard answer to a tangled requirement is another class, another layer, another framework.…
Pokies slot tournaments versus cash play for Australian readersSlot players usually choose between two familiar formats: spinning for direct monetary returns or entering a tournament where performance is measured against…