iTerm invisible cursor

iTerm invisible cursor

I’m a big fan of the popular Mac OS X terminal application iTerm, but for the first year or so of using it I was irked by a serious problem: my cursor was invisible! [Figure 1] I scoured high and low on the web and found other people reporting this problem but no one offering a solution. I finally found the answer by accident a few months back and thought it was important to get it on the web somewhere so people can find it! If you want to see your cursor in iTerm, for reasons completely unknown to me, you need to set its colours in reverse (that is, set the text colour to the background and the background colour to the foreground)! [Figure 2] That’s all I wanted to say. I’ve never had any problems since. Happy iTerming! Update: My good friend...

Posted by on Jun 23, 2011 in Tech | 1 comment

Agile Manifesto poster

Agile Manifesto poster

As a software engineer & manager, I’m a massive fan of the principles of Agile software development, as embodied in the Agile Manifesto. I really believe software development and the interaction between software development companies and their customers would be radically different if more people adopted these four basic values and twelve basic principles. But, somewhere in recent history, the word Agile has been hijacked by big companies and transformed into a synonym for iterative development. Now, while I’m a great believer in iterative development, it only works if it’s accompanied by the other principles of Agile development. Principles that are often ignored by big-business management include: Build projects around motivated...

Posted by on May 5, 2011 in Tech | 17 comments

Welcome to my new blog

Hello! I’ll keep this opener brief. I have been keeping blogs on and off for almost 9 years, but when I look back over the posts I realize they’re primarily the chronicles of the man I used to be and not of the witty, intelligent, successful man I am today. In 9 years’ time, I will almost certainly look back at this post and say exactly the same thing about these entries. Anyway. It’s been 9 months since I moved back to sunny Yorkshire and I didn’t update the old blog in that whole time, despite having a lot to say. And I’m sick of that bespoke Rails 1.0 application … that time has passed and now I just want to use someone else’s much more awesome software, so hello WordPress! Welcome to my new blog. Hopefully...

Posted by on May 1, 2011 in Personal | 0 comments