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During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces in the UK and around the world. The aim of which is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

Each Mo Bro must begin the 1st of Movember with a clean shaven face. For the entire month each Mo Bro must grow and groom a moustache. There is to be no joining of the mo to the sideburns (that’s considered a beard), there’s to be no joining of the handlebars to the chin (that’s considered a goatee) and each Mo Bro must conduct himself like a true gentleman.

The funds raised in the UK are directed to programmes run directly by Movember, Prostate Cancer UK and the Institute of Cancer Research.

Since its humble beginnings in Melbourne, Australia Movember has grown to become a truly global movement inspiring more than 1.9 Million Mo Bros and Mo Sistas to participate with formal campaigns all over the world. No matter the country or city, Movember will continue to work to change established habits and attitudes men have about their health, to educate men about the health risks they face, and to act on that knowledge, thereby increasing the chances of early detection, diagnosis and effective treatment.
In 2011, over 854,000 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas around the world got on board, raising GBP 79.3 million.

So I am asking you to help support my personal journey by making a donation. The size of which isn't important, every little contribution helps Movember to continue its funding of world class programmes.  If you want to know more about what you'll be helping to fund, you can visit Movember's Program Overview page - http://uk.movember.com/about/funding-overview/

To highlight the importance of what I am doing, take a look at these statistics:

• 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime
• This year 40,000 new cases of the disease will be diagnosed in the UK
• 47% of testicular cancer cases occur in men under 35 years and over 90% occur in men under 55 years

If you'd like to help change these statistics, please donate to me by donating online at: http://mobro.co/6403025

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I’m starting a new job and yesterday was my last day for my current employer. It’s been nearly 2 years working from home and I’ve really enjoyed it, but it’s now time for me to move on. A fantastic opportunity has presented itself and fantastic opportunities don’t grow on trees so when they present themselves only a fool lets them pass by without doing anything.

Working from home has been great, I got into computers years ago because I wanted the flexibility in my life to allow me to work from home, or anywhere for that matter but it isn’t for everyone and it can take time (for the whole family) to adjust to, ideally you need some space at home that is reserved for work – no one wants to sleep in the office! I do think that more and more we’ll see jobs that offer working from home as an option, it benefits employers and employees in so many ways: greater productivity, financial savings and personal flexibility for example. That said being in an office, with your team, also has its advantages: being able to see the people you’re talking to, bouncing ideas off each other, being able to see what other people are doing and sharing ideas. So maybe 4 days at home and 1 day in the office would be a good way to work, time will tell… give it a few years and the internet revolution may change the work place as much as the industrial revolution did, but I digress.

I’ll be doing something a bit different still writing code but obviously with fresh problems to solve, so hope to have more to blog about in the near future. As you might have guessed from what I’ve just said I’ll be office based again, so will benefit from a (short) walk to work in the mornings, a healthy way to start the day and get the blood flowing. There’s a team of people to get to know and the challenge of the new job to keep me on my toes and who knows what else in store, but I know I’ve done a good thing for my career and that’s the key.

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There was an interesting post today Passwords, Password Storage And Password Management in which Derick Bailey makes the bold claim that:

You should not know your password for any website or application that you log in to, with the one and only exception of the password management app or service that you use.

No excuses.

He goes on to explain why he thinks this:

The problem is that most people use the same password (or maybe 2 or 3 passwords) for every site, service and app. When a hacker gets your password, then, they can log in to any system that you have signed up with because they know the one password that you are using. By using a different password for every website and service, you don’t have to worry about this. If (WHEN!) a hacker gets your password for a specific site, they will not be able to do anything other than screw up that one site for you. They won’t be able to log in to any other service because they won’t know your password for the other service.

I agree with the thinking here, having the same password for multiple sites is a risk. When a hacker gets your password they will most likely try it out on other sites to see if it works there as well. So once a hacker has a password of yours they’ll probably try it to login to Amazon and the banks and emails (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc.) it isn’t hard to guess those big sites and see if you’ve used the same password then there’s a lot of information waiting to be looked at. Arguably once they can get into your email they can really do damage as passwords can be reset with access to your emails.

The issue I take with the idea of a password manager is that now you’ve stored all your passwords and their associated websites, so you take the guessing out. Now all an attacker needs is to crack your password for your password manager in order to get all the passwords and websites they go with. If you store that password database online (in dropbox or LastPass (which has an online hosting)) then you’re putting all your eggs in that basket (only the risk is much higher if someone cracks it). I would imagine that the password managers are a subject of interest for hackers, if they can get your password database then they have all the time in the world to crack it on their computer and you’ll never know.

All that said I really like the notion of having a tool that remembers your passwords for you and can supply them on request, I’m just concerned… Does anyone have any experience with the tools or know if they’ve been compromised yet?

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My job means I have to sit at my computer all day, 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 46 weeks a year. That’s 1610 hours a year and 1/3 of my whole day (given that I also sleep about 8 hours so am not conscious I’m in my chair A LOT). This post follows on from my previous post Agonising over a replacement work chair.

I work from home which is great as it means I can get up and do back stretches every hour or so and not get strange looks when I start rolling around on the floor. Working from home also gives me some freedom in terms of what my workstation looks like and up until now I’ve taken the traditional route of office desk and standard office chair. However the chair broke this week and so now I need to replace it and wondered what you would recommend. I currently have a few ideas:

1. Standard chair - This is the 'safe' choice, it's "just a chair", I'm not suggesting that particular chair, but just something like it. The chair I am replacing is similar to this one and I'm pretty sure that sitting in it for as long as I do has given me the occasional lower back pain and stiff shoulder that I get. I have seen an osteopath a few times and he also said he thought the chair was to blame.
2. Fancy chair - I quite like the look of a non-standard chair, something that supports me and allows me to move properly. The trouble here is that these kind of chairs cost more than the standard. I know that paying for an osteopath to fix problems after they’ve happened rather than spending the money to get a better chair that meant I wouldn't need to see the osteopath is daft... but a decent ergonomic chair is hundreds and I just don’t have that lying around spare.
3. Ball Chair - If I went this route I could use the 35 hours a week as exercise time and strengthen my core muscles. It would make it hard to slouch or chill out in the chair while reading documentation though and I'm not sure I could easily transition to something as radical as this. I have talked to people who use these and they’ve said that a few hours at a time is fine, but not a full day. So if I were to get up every hour and move around this is still maybe an option.
4. Poang This would be unusual and I would need to get a new desk to keep things at the right level. But it would be a comfy chair, all my joints would be 'open', greater than 90 degrees. Plus I already have a spare Poang. Given that I work from home why not make myself comfy and sitting upright all day is not how I’d spend a day if I wasn’t working. Getting rid of my desk and going a bit minimalist might be good.

My employer has said they would pay £100 for a chair but I cannot top that up with my own money as it blurs the question of ownership and complicates things for tax. Sadly £100 doesn't go very far, I can just about get a 'standard' chair for that money, the Ball chair is also within budget. I own a spare Poang... so really it the comes down to the question of whether I want to spend £150 - £600 of my own money on a chair that I'll use for work.

Looking into quality chairs I quickly ran into the Herman Miller chairs, these have been highlighted in Investing in a Quality Programming Chair and in The Real Pain of Software Development [part 2] Phil Haack says that he likes the Neutral Posture chair – again not cheap options.

Of course most of this assumes the traditional desk and chair what about Wild Workstations for Telecommuters? With my Poang I’m getting close to the SurfChair, it’s not quite as luxurious as a La-Z Boy but it looks very comfy and like my posture is being considered which, long term, is very important. I asked this question on the RMAX forums, there are some responses with interesting links

Is anyone else using an unusual workstation set up?

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I need to replace my chair at work; after nearly a decade it has finally had enough of bearing my weight and is now only used to dump piles of washing on. Many years ago I watched a work colleague be carried out of the office by 3 people because his back had gone. I quickly invested in a fairly decent chair for myself at home but getting one for the office has always been another story. But the point I want to make in this post is that a quality chair can really make a difference.

Waay way back in 2004 I had my first bout of back pain and it was caused by poor posture, mostly my posture at work. Sitting in a chair is not a natural thing to do and anything that we do repeatedly we train our bodies to adapt to, so sitting in my chair 8 hours a day trains me into a chair shaped person. There are some good exercises to help me beat the Office Worker Hunch, and I try to do them every day but prevention is better than cure…

Back in 2008 Jeff Atwood described how investing in a quality programming chair may be one of the smartest investments you can make as a software developer, which I have to agree with. If you follow the math in Brain, Bytes, Back, Buns – The Programmer’s Priorities Scott Hanselman breaks down the hourly cost of a US$700 chair to 19cents an hour for a comfortable butt and urges us to “Invest in your own ass”.

I think both these 2 giants have a very valid point, as a developer I spend a great deal of my day sitting on my ass so I should take steps to ensure that I am as comfortable as possible, that I am not putting my health at risk or storing up future health problems through poor posture and a bad working environment. However I disagree that it is the employee’s responsibility to invest in this themselves. Sure I should do my best to look after myself but I believe an employer also has a responsibility to look after their employees. Going back to The Programmer’s Bill of Rights Jeff says

It’s unbelievable to me that a company would pay a developer $60-$100k in salary, yet cripple him or her with terrible working conditions and crusty hand-me-down hardware. This makes no business sense whatsoever. And yet I see it all the time. It's shocking how many companies still don't provide software developers with the essential things they need to succeed.

Point 4 in the bill is “Every programmer shall have a comfortable chair”!

When my work chair broke this week I asked my boss if the company would pay for a new one. I work from home, I’m not self employed but all employees for the company I work for are home based, however if I were to work in an office and my chair broke then I would expect the company to replace it / buy me a new one. I was rather disappointed to be told it wasn’t company policy to provide desks and chairs (something I will definitely ask about next time I’m interviewing for a teleworking / work from home job). An olive branch was offered, the company will, as a one-off, buy a chair for me for up to £100. However I cannot top that up and get a slightly more expensive chair as it makes matters complicated with the tax man.

I’ve spent ages looking around for a chair that I think will provide me with decent all day support that comes in under £100. I know I could stump up my own money and buy something really decent… but, well… times are tight amigo and I don’t have a few hundred quid lying around, which is why I’m agonising over a replacement work chair at 1AM when I should be sleeping. It seems unbelievable to me that any company would seriously quibble over a few hundred quid for ensuring their workers are well looked after and happy. After all a happy employee works hard (and probably doesn’t need to take time off with back aches).

Of course maybe I should go to a bricks and mortar shop and actually sit in any chair I’m thinking of buying rather than looking up the reviews on Amazon what’s comfy to one person is not to another. It would be great if I could try out some chairs for a day each and then make up my mind… maybe there’s an idea for a business, a real try-before-you-buy venture… or maybe I should quit moaning and put my money where my mouth is, or maybe yet again I should just go to bed.

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I like using the keyboard as much as possible, and not needing to reach for the mouse when I don’t need to, to that end I’m trying to get better with keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts in this post are all to do with navigating around my open programs and I’m posting them so I don’t forget what they are.

• Shift+Windows+Left Arrow (or Right Arrow) – moves the active window to the next monitor. Very handy for me as I have 2 screens
• Alt+F4 (obvious) – closes the active window
• Alt+Spacebar+X – maximises the active window
• Alt+Spacebar+N - minimises the active window
• Alt+Spacebar+R – restores the active window, so if you’ve maximised it this will return it to the windowed size

Personally I find the Alt+Spacebar combination awkward and get lots of pinging noises coming from the computer as I struggle to get the combination right. If anyone knows how to remap these shortcuts please let me know.

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I think the title of this post says it all; why doesn’t Hotmail have an rss reader?

Not too long ago I mostly migrated from services provided by my ISP to Hotmail; the advantages to me in making that change were that if I needed to change providers I wouldn’t lose any services. As it happened I had to change providers, I had been very happy with my btinternet account – I got a free flickr pro account with it after all, but I needed a fixed IP for work and so had to change. So I created a Hotmail account, well Windows Live account, migrated my contacts, historic emails and everything else and I have been very happy.

Fast forward to last weekend and something changed. See what I didn’t say before was that I use Outlook to connect to my emails, ok it needs the Outlook Hotmail Connector 64-bit but that’s fine. I have used Outlook for ages and I like it, I can get emails from my other accounts there, share a calendar with my wife and (integral to this post) get my rss feeds. Now really I’d be quite happy just using the Windows Live / Hotmail site to get my emails if only I could also get my rss feeds there – I really don’t want to have to go to other sites just to get my rss fix. My old btinternet / yahoo account could get my rss, I’m pretty certain Google Mail does… so why is this feature missing in Hotmail?

I think I’m going to give Windows Live Mail a try – it looks pretty decent, can connect to multiple email accounts and get rss feeds. Of course it means having another bit of software installed and it doesn’t really solve the problem of being able to access my emails / feeds from anywhere (rather than just my home pc).

Hopefully my Nokia phone will be able to sync with Live Mail. I like having my contacts and calendar while I’m mobile, I have no interest in accessing emails on my phone and don’t have any kind of data plan, so I’m ok with plugging a cable in once a week to sync up – it charges up the phone too.

Come on Microsoft – Hotmail really needs an rss reader, just buy one and bolt it on!

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My new pc is alive, for some time now I’ve been trying to work with a computer that blue screened about 3 or 4 times a month. Clearly this wasn’t much fun as work kept getting lost and I kept getting angry, so after nearly 5 years I managed to upgrade and I’m pleased with the results.

I don’t mean to brag, but I am quite pleased with my new set up and wanted to share it with you. My goals were to upgrade for about £600 and to get a powerful system. I decided to keep my Antec P160 case, Zotac 9600GSO graphics card, DVD Writer and power supply unit – they all work fine (though the case is a bit of a monster!) So now I have an Intel i7 950 (with just a stock cooler), 12GB Corsair vengeance DDR3 ram, a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2E SSD and 2x 1TB HDDs running on a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard. I had some issues with a lesser known brand of ram but when I ran into problems was fortunate enough to be able to get a full refund and then went for the corsair that I know and trust. Also one of my HDDs was DOA, so that quickly got RMA’d.

With the new parts installed in my case, which was pretty straightforward and only took 2 hours, I was ready to set up. Previously I had a Western Digital Raptor (36GB) for the OS but found that it was a bit too small but the principle was sound. A fast drive that has the OS and standard drives for data; SSD seem to be fast and from my past experience 60GB should be enough. The 2 HDD I strapped together in RAID1 (mirroring) using the motherboard controller. All my data, mp3s, videos, photos etc. sit here, because the drives are mirrored if one fails the other should be able to continue until I can get a replacement installed and that way I can guard against loosing precious family / baby photos that I would be gutted if they were lost.

The first thing I did after installing the OS was to move the Users directory, this is where the vast bulk of my drive space is used and I wanted to move the folder while it was still empty. It wasn’t particularly hard, just follow along with the instructions in the post to move the folder and set up a permanent symlink meaning that anything that points to C:\Users is mapped through to D:\Users (where I have loads of space). Then I copied the data from my old drive into my profile and was very pleased to see the D: start to fill up a bit, the C: was only about 1/2 full – perfect. I would like to also move the hidden C:\ProgramData folder – but… meh! I also wanted to get on with things.

Something else that was handy was moving the inetpub directory off my C: and onto my D: (again keeping the C: for only installs and D: for data). Using the above link this was also really very easy.

After doing that I simply set up the rest of my software, Visual Studio, SSMS, Office, Live Sync etc. and was back in business.

I have read that SSD are prone to failure so I wanted to set up a weekly System Image which I did using Windows Backup – once a week a full image is made of my OS (currently 29GB – which isn’t much space on 1TB) and should / when the SSD fails I will be able to swap in a replacement and restore from my image and be back up and running very quickly. With all my data on the RAID I’m not worried at all about the OS drive.

Now I have a pretty powerful system, it hasn’t thrown any errors, my OS drive is nice and lightweight and it’s FAST. Also there should be room for me to grow, I shouldn’t run out of space or processing power for a while yet. All in all I’m happy with this, now I just have to persuade work to buy me something to replace what I’ve got and that’ll be good too.

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This post is borne of frustration and despair; my work computer is painfully slow. This isn’t a rant or me ‘throwing my toys out of the pram’, more an observation.

On a daily basis I am losing between 30 and 60 minutes of productive work because I’m waiting for my computer. Not in the usual ‘oh it takes a minute for Visual Studio to fire up’ but in the sense that my entire pc becomes totally unusable for 5-10 minutes. I’ll restore a copy of Visual Studio and select the active document, ready to start typing and the IDE just goes black and stays that way for minutes at a time, eventually my code re-appears and so I start typing and the screen goes black for another few minutes. While that happens I figure I’ll check my emails and then Outlook stops responding – I do realise I’m probably making things worse by trying to multi-task, but honestly I feel bad just sitting here looking at a screen doing nothing.

I have been told a new computer is on the cards, but I’ll have to wait… Which got me thinking – how much would a nice system cost? I took a look on Dell and spec’d up a reasonably nice i5 with 8GB ram and a nice big HDD and it came out at £799. Not pocket change, but certainly not bad and if it costs £20 per hour to employ me (wages, tax contributions, software maintenance, internet etc.) how long would it take before my regained time would pay for the computer… well at £20 per hour that’s a total of 40 hours and at 1 hour a day, that’s 8 weeks. Now I know this is a bit rough and ready but it does show that a hardware is cheap, developers time is not and there’s really no good reason to skimp and hold on to the purse strings when it comes to making your team productive.

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