“INTPs are always so mentally active that they continually delve into new interests… The interests of an INTP would be enough to occupy him for several lifetimes if that were possible.” — A description of the INTP personality type, Paul James. I’ve been in need of a new hobby for a while now. The mental challenges offered from getting married, changing jobs and moving home have passed, and my free evenings and weekends were becoming prone to bouts of restlessness and sighs of “I’m bored”. This is not a good thing. ...

Having accepted that Returning DataSets from WebServices is the Spawn of Satan and Represents All That Is Truly Evil in the World (or at least, not exactly best practice), I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to instead use lightweight custom objects in my middle tier, to be exposed via web services for use by other applications. I felt sure that some of the new Generic classes in the .NET 2.0 FCL would help me in my quest. Specifically, as I often need to expose simple arrays of Key/Value Pair metadata, I planned to create an instance of the System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection class, containing a bunch of System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair objects. ...

As I mentioned last summer, I do enjoy whiling away a few hours attempting to solve the maths / progamming challenges set on Project Euler. My language of choice for most puzzles is C#, but this hampered me on some of the questions as there is no in-built support for really big integers. However, a little bit of Googling and I came across this excellent BigInteger class on Code Project which does everything I need and more – and it seems bloody fast, too. Thanks to this class, I’ve been able to knock off several more problems this weekend, and now have a rating of “11% Genius” – still some way to go, then… ...

I’ve recently completed a stint of jury service, which lasted a little over two weeks at York Crown Court. For obvious reasons, I can’t blog about the trials I was involved with, but it was a fascinating couple of weeks, and it would be a shame not to share some of the experience with you. Whenever I mentioned my upcoming service to friends and colleagues, their responses fell into one of two camps: either, “Ugh, I’d hate that! I’d really dread doing jury service!” or, “You lucky sod, I’d love to do that, but I’ve never been asked!” The thought of serving on a jury clearly polarises people, and I must confess, I felt a certain dread when I first received my summons. ...

On our first morning in California, we headed out to breakfast, which was preceded by a short session of Breakfast Prep’, courtesy of Jocelyn. It had been a couple of years since I’d last had Breakfast In America, and I’d forgotten how to respond to the awesome number of choices and options that would be flung in my direction by the waitperson. Here’s how you order breakfast in Britain: Diner: “Full English Breakfast, please.” Waitress: “D’you want tea or coffee with that?” Diner: “Tea, please.” Waitress: “OK.” ...

Monday 10th April 2006 The sun was still shining as we touched down at SFO, about 22 hours after we’d woken up.If every day could last that long, I swear I’d get more work done – or maybe I’d just spend more time playing Civilization… We picked up the car – a Pontiac Impala which initially seemed unfeasibly huge compared to our Focus, but it’s funny how quickly you adjust and get used to the size, making use of the available space – then it was off down US 101 on the final leg of our journey.Despite it being rush hour, we had a swift journey due to being able to use the Car Pool lane (by virtue of not being a single-occupant vehicle).I was amazed how under-utilised this lane was, and started wondering how much of an incentive would be needed for more Bay area commuters to start sharing rides – there’s another good question for the economists to ponder. ...

Monday 10th April 2006 Travelling West during the daytime is a blast, especially on a sunny day.Time it right and you can experience daylight for 24 hours, which afforded me time to catch up on some reading.For Christmas Joce had given a book entitled Freakonomics – A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Eveything, and now I finally had time to read through it.I surprised myself by finishing it by the time we reached Chicago – this may be a chunky hardback book on economics, but it’s also really interesting and easy-going. ...

Last month Jocelyn and I took a trip to the States to visit friends and family, attend Teri & Jimmy’s wedding, and take a vacation to Nevada and Arizona. So, there we were, sitting at the departure gate at Manchester Airport on a bright Monday morning, having awoken at 04:30 to make our way across the Pennines.A few seats away were a group of teenagers.They were from Michigan, and they were annoyingly noisy.Thus began our American adventure. ...

Back in November 2004, I had the idea of making a “Generic Sorter for Strongly-Typed Collections”, by harnessing the mighty power of reflection. Well, earlier this month somebody anonymously emailed me some code that takes this to a whole different level, enabling sorting on multiple properties and to arbitrary depths within the domain model hierarchy, all by taking a single SQL-like parameter. It’s really very clever indeed, and I’m going to use this method in the future – thanks, anonymous code fairy! ...

The single most popular entry on this blog is, surprisingly enough, this quick post from Summer 2004 where I did a quick experiment to “prove” that in .NET the quickest way of proving that a string is empty is to compare its length to zero. Well, as of .NET 2.0, we have a new static method on the System.String class – IsNullOrEmpty – that allows you to easily test whether a string is, well, null or empty! ...

Hertog Jan Doppio Double is the only one of my twenty-four Advent beers to come in a stone cork-stoppered bottle that weighs more than the drink contained within! At 7.3% ABV, it’s also the second-strongest drink in my selection, and hence has a real kick to it.That said, it also has a gorgeous malty aroma, and strong aftertaste which beer lovers will appreciate.So whilst it’s not quite my personal favourite of the twenty-four beers I’ve had the pleasure of sampling this yuletide, it’s certainly an appropriately worthy and warming drink on which to finish. ...

The penultimate beer on my 2005 advent calendar was Ruby Red from the St. Peter’s Brewery in Suffolk. I’d been looking forward to this 4.3% ABV red ale, which, like all of the beers from St. Peter’s, comes in a distinctive flask-shaped oval bottle, so I was somewhat disappointed by the intense bitterness of the first few mouthfuls. However, I think this was mostly due to the effects of the Mexican dinner laced with Encona sauces that I’d scoffed a few minutes previously. Further into the bottle, the “subtle malt undertones and spicy aroma” became more apparent, and overall I really enjoyed this beer – I’ll definitely be trying some of the others from the range. ...

Fraoch is a 5% ABV Scottish beer that brings back many happy memories of late nights spent in the bar at the Clachaig Inn. “Fraoch” is the Gaelic for heather, so take a guess what this beer is made from? If you’ve never tried it, that might sound a bit weird, but believe me that this is a great beer with “a floral, peaty aroma, full malt body, spicy herbal flavour and a dry wine like finish”. What more could you ask for? Slainte! ...

“Jingle Knockers” isn’t exactly a phrase that inspires confidence, but this 5.5% ABV from Skinner’s Brewery in Cornwall is really good, definitely on a par with the stuff I’ve tried from Hambleton Ales and the Harviestoun Brewery. Smooth and strong, with subtle hints of Christmas pud – mmmm… Oh, and if you’re still confused by that name, the label handily explains all: “Known as the Tin Mine Fairies, the Cornish Knockers used to guide the miners to the rich veins of ore by knocking. With the demise of mining over the years, many knockers have ;returned to grass’ where, in disguise, they help with the brewing of their ales.” ...

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are many great things that have originated from America – not least of all my good lady wife – but I’ve always thought that “American Beer” is something of an anachronism! Let’s face it, most beers from across the Altlantic are sorely lacking in flavour, body, bitterness, or, well, anything remotely beerlike. So, whilst on my search for twenty-four bottled beers for this advent calendar, I was intrigued to find Honker’s Ale from the Goose Island Beer Company in Chicago which describes itself as “a smooth, drinkable English bitter for those drinkers who want more from their beer”. Well, let’s hope they’re not looking for too much more, as it only comes in a 355ml bottle. It tastes OK when compared to the likes of Budweiser and Samuel Adams, but it’s not exactly bold or challenging, and the whole experience was over far too quickly. Not exactly one to savour on a cold winter’s night in Yorkshire, but I can imagine these going down quite well in the sports stadia of Iliinois. ...