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18 Articles
Posted by Dave on

Rewilding Britain

Rewilding Britain

i wrote a blog article, which was a news piece on the reintroduction of bison to the UK, in Kent of all places. Last week, India Bourke wrote an article in the New Statesman, called “Why rewilding isn’t just for toffs“. She argues, that, “Small-scale farmers can play their part in conservation – Monty Don risks putting them off.” The article talks about set-aside subsidy and Monty Don’s criticism of such programmes. This piqued my interest; here are my notes.

Posted by Dave on

America’s Cup 2020-21

America’s Cup 2020-21

I thought I’d write something about the America’s cup, due to start later this month. It’s the epitome of Michael Green’s comment in Coarse Sailing, “the only sport where you don’t congratulate the winner when losing, but run into the committee room to complain and get them disqualified”. I was much more interested in the turn of the decade when I visited Valencia but it’s a competition of high drama at sea and in the court room. Here my notes for 2020.

Posted by Dave on

Guaranteed minimum notice

Guaranteed minimum notice

I am surprised to learn of a minimum statutory notice period in employment law, defined by the Employment Rights Act 1996 §86; it’s one week/year subject to a 12 week cap, if you’ve worked for them for over two years. This may not be over-ridden by the contract of employment and will apply if the reason for termination/dismissal is redundancy. For more, press the “Read More” button.

Posted by Dave on

Technical Debt

Technical Debt

When I first heard the phrase “Technical Debt”, I nearly fell of my chair, but recently, a couple of articles have passed me by and I thought I’d have look and think about if it helps address the intractable problem of maintaining legacy technology, but particularly applications code. The problem is that to make changes, one often has to amend code that’s already in use. This increases the cost of the project. The increase in cost to new projects is part of the “Technical Debt”, however, it’s basically a metaphor. Is the problem one that financial management tools, can be used to improve the understanding of? Does this apply better to code that one has development rights to, rather than packages or infrastructure? Here as every are my notes and links.

Posted by Dave on

The mooning emoticon

The mooning emoticon

I was always disappointed when Microsoft removed some of the emoji’s from the skype set, I particularly liked the smoking, lalala and mooning icons, here is the mooning icon.

mooning

I might look for the other two another time.