Another Level (Website Refresh)

Published on: 5/4/2025

I have been asked to give the website for AnotherLevel a bit of a refresh in readiness for some promotion work they plan to do in the coming year. Here we go.

Trying and Failing to get VMware ESXi 8.x running on a Laptop

Published on: 4/22/2025

Okay, this is not exactly installing it on the laptop, in fact we're going to try and virtualise the virtualiser...

What is a WebCenter Portal?

Published on: 4/6/2025

Continuing my theme of 'what is' articles, in this one I talk a little about what the WbeCenter Portal product does, or can do.

What is a relational database?

Published on: 3/27/2025

I don't really care about the database to be honest, but it is an essential piece of infrastructure.

What did 2025 do to my blog?

Published on: 3/11/2025

If you're a regular visitor, you may have noticed that the blog posts have somewhat slowed. Here is why.

My journey through coding languages

Published on: 2/23/2025

Coding is more than remembering the commands.

Timesheet System - core functionality

Published on: 2/2/2025

A Timesheet System that has core timesheet functionality, that might be a good idea right about now.

Timesheet System - Time Codes and Staff Relationships

Published on: 1/19/2025

We're still working on the Timesheet application, and we're still not ready for timesheets, this week we focus on building blocks like how to link Managers to Team Members and how to manage time codes etc.

Timesheet System - Initial Setup & Authentication

Published on: 1/5/2025

Last week we created a Project Plan for our Timesheet application, this week, we're working on Sprint 1 - Initial Setup & Authentication.

Building a Timesheet system

Published on: 12/22/2024

This is a change to my recent blog posts, this is more about defining and describing a project that will ultimately build a Timesheet system.

Embracing the Terminal!

Published on: 12/8/2024

Know the power and charm of Linux commands—from navigating files to festive terminal tricks. Whether you're new to the CLI or curious about its quirks, this guide blends practical tips, a little of my own computer history and a touch of fun.

Adding Inline YouTube Videos

Published on: 11/24/2024

I recently migrated from Gatsby to Astro, my Gatsby blog had inline YouTube videos which I didn't get working when I first dropped the Astro blog into production, so let's fix that today.

Building a CRUD application with Laravel

Published on: 11/17/2024

For this post we're goign to build a simple CRUD application. CRUD stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete - the four fundamental operations performed on database records in software applications.

A basic introduction to Laravel 11

Published on: 11/11/2024

I love working with PHP and Laravel, in this post we're going to have a look at the directory structure for a Laravel project and build some simple things with Laravel 11.

What does an Insight Analyst do?

Published on: 11/4/2024

I recently applied for and was interviewed for the role of Insight Analyst, it wasn't a role I had directly considered before, but a firend, at the company, suggested I should apply for it for a few reasons. I really like to work with data, so I gladly applied. But what exactly is an Insight Analyst?

Tracking Job Applications

Published on: 10/28/2024

I built several versions of a job application tracking system, to help me figure out how many jobs I have applied for and what the application status is From Spreadsheets, through Kanban boards, Laravel, React, NextJS and most recently, a Flutter app, This post discusses that journey.

Migrating from Gatsby to Astro

Published on: 10/21/2024

Gatsby had been the home of this blog for the last 18 months or so, but it started giving me problems.

Adding Comments, broke this blog!

Published on: 10/13/2024

Gatsby sucks, kinda. And what I'm doing about it

PHP is still cool. Trust me!

Published on: 9/30/2024

Why PHP is Still Cool in 2024.

SharePoint Framework

Published on: 9/23/2024

SharePoint can be more than boring squares next to other boring squares on a boring page.

Beginners Guide to Data Exploration with Python

Published on: 9/16/2024

Using Python for Exploratory Data Analysis - A Beginner's Guide

Lessons from the Flutter Trenches

Published on: 9/9/2024

Lots of emulator testing is not enough!

Building a Pomodoro App in Flutter

Published on: 9/2/2024

I wanted a pomodoro app that doesn't spy on my, charge me, or throw adverts at me, so I built my own...

Building an SEO Personal Portfolio

Published on: 8/26/2024

Search Engine Optimisation, built in!

Playwright - My New Best Mate for Web Testing 🎭

Published on: 8/19/2024

Automating my QA

The Rise of DeFi in Web3 - Your Ticket to Financial Freedom? 🚀💰

Published on: 8/12/2024

Crypto Enthusiast?

Testing 101

Published on: 8/5/2024

Is testing important?

Comparing Blockchains

Published on: 7/29/2024

There are many blockchains...

Building an Amazon Storefront in React

Published on: 7/22/2024

How I rebuilt my Chinese Hotpot project site into an Amazon Associates store front.

Building in Public but Hiding your API Keys

Published on: 7/15/2024

How to build in public, but protect those private API keys...

Building an ERC-20 token.

Published on: 7/4/2024

Understanding WallaceCoin - A Beginner's Guide to ERC-20 Tokens.

Building a simple Number Bonds website

Published on: 7/1/2024

I recently built a simple web site to help my 6 year old master Number Bonds...

Why I think Web3 is the future.

Published on: 6/27/2024

I want to build something cool for the Web3 world. I just don't know what.

What's with all of the JavaScript Frameworks?

Published on: 6/19/2024

The front-end development landscape is constantly evolving, and with it, the tools and frameworks we use. One of the most significant shifts recently has been the move from Create React App (CRA) to Vite.

Mastering Prompt Engineering

Published on: 6/10/2024

In the rapidly evolving world of AI, the ability to generate high-quality outputs from Language Models (LLMs) hinges on one crucial skill; Prompt Engineering.

Using LLMs to Supercharge your Learning

Published on: 6/3/2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way we approach problem-solving, task automation and education.

Building a Snake Game using Prompt Engineering

Published on: 5/7/2024

Using Prompt Engineering to build a simple game.

That New Job

Published on: 4/13/2024

How do you track your job hunting activities?

Is PHP dead?

Published on: 3/22/2024

Why does PHP get so much hate?

Getting to know FlutterFlow

Published on: 2/6/2024

Using FlutterFlow to for 'rapid development' of a Proof of Concept mobile application.

Dart Type System

Published on: 1/4/2024

I'm currently looking at the Dart Language.

Reducers in React

Published on: 12/15/2023

What the heck is a Reducer and why do I need to know about it?

Web3 is always in the news for the wrong reasons!

Published on: 12/14/2023

Why is Web3 always in the news and never for a good reason?

The F1 GOAT Project; What am I trying to acheive?

Published on: 11/30/2023

Can Data help us decide who is the Greatest F1 Driver of all time (aka The GOAT)?

Did the pandemic kill the Surface Duo line?

Published on: 10/3/2023

Microsoft has ditched the Surface Duo, but why?

Building a new website

Published on: 9/5/2023

Today I'm building a simple website, it's for me, it's my own web resource, a landing page of sorts.

Migrating from hosted VPS services to a Public Cloud Provider

Published on: 8/1/2023

Migrating from hosted VPS services to a Public Cloud Provider.

InterPlanetary File System

Published on: 6/18/2023

I recently saw a YouTube video that described much of the Web3 space as nothing more than a scam briefly touching on the IPFS as something that some scam-artist just plucked from thin air. Let's dig in.

Exploratory Data Analysis

Published on: 5/19/2023

Looking at and understanding Data before making any assumption.

AI Superpowers, the new world order

Published on: 4/16/2023

2018 saw the release of Kai-Fu Lee's book 'AI Superpowers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order'.

Response to the question; Why is web3.0 more secure for a voting website than web2.0?

Published on: 3/18/2023

Web 2.0 is centralised, anyone can take control of the web2.0 resource and manipulate it, sometimes in undetectable ways. Web3.0 with a blockchain; this is immutable, the transactions are hashed and recorded onto the blockchain, it is almost impossible to manipulate this data.

Ethereum Virtual Machine

Published on: 2/1/2023

What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine

What is Data Science?

Published on: 9/14/2022

A multidisciplinary field that combines statistics, mathematics, computer science and domain knowledge to extract insights and knowledge from data.

Can you build your own Spam filter?

Published on: 3/31/2022

Short answer is obviously yes. The longer answer depends on lots of things, one of the main ones is Effort vs Benefit.

Data Design Principles

Published on: 3/17/2022

Scalability, Integrity, Consistency.

Agile Maturity

Published on: 2/14/2022

Bringing an Agile Way of Working (WoW) to a new team is a learning experience for everyone involved, including me!

Big Problems or New Ideas?

Published on: 1/10/2022

How do we solve the big problems or trial new ideas?

Controlling a Stage

Published on: 12/18/2021

Controlling a stage is how we ensure deliverables are met by keeping the focus on product delivery. This is a pretty hefty statement for a Project Manager as this is essentially where the Project Manager does most of their work.

Building a Backlog

Published on: 11/17/2021

Once you or your Product Owner has defined what products you need to deliver and what the definition of done would be, you need to break down those products into their component parts. Identifying the components is one way of building a backlog as you essentially list all of the building blocks needed to deliver the end product.

Good Quality Data

Published on: 10/7/2021

Good Data, Right Data, Just In Time Data!

Roles & the Definition of Done

Published on: 9/16/2021

If you’re building a team from scratch, this part is actually quite interesting and I’ll try not to talk too much about maturity of process at this stage as I think that subject is actually worthy of a post of its own.

Creating a Project Plan (part 3 of 3)

Published on: 8/3/2021

Creating a Project Plan (part 3 of 3)

Data Scrubbing

Published on: 7/15/2021

Before you can go away and build your Machine Learning Model you will often find that the source data needs varying levels of manipulation before presenting it to your model. This post will briefly touch on some of the technical processes of refining your data-sets to make them more workable.

Creating a Project Plan (part 2 of 3)

Published on: 6/28/2021

Creating a Project Plan (part 2 of 3)

Creating a Project Plan (part 1 of 3)

Published on: 5/6/2021

Creating a Project Plan (part 1 of 3)

The difficulties of collecting good data

Published on: 4/27/2021

Working with data is hard!

Building an Xbox – the Kanban way

Published on: 3/9/2021

Building an Xbox – the Kanban way

The Kanban Agenda

Published on: 1/23/2021

Have you ever wanted to deliver your meeting a little differently? Perhaps bored with the same old PowerPoint slides and the usual structure of one person talking and clicking and everyone else watching?

How to introduce Kanban to a new team

Published on: 10/30/2020

Bringing an Agile Way of Working (WoW) to a new team is a learning experience for everyone involved, including me!

Is it time for a Sprint?

Published on: 9/6/2020

Sprints in Project Management

So NFTs are a bit more popular than I thought they would be

Published on: 8/29/2020

I wrote earlier this year about Ethereum and I mentioned that I thought NFTs were a bit of a side thing... I may have been wrong.

Hello World and the MNIST Database

Published on: 5/25/2020

The MNSIT (Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology) database is a large collection of handwritten numbers used for training Image Processing systems. This is, in short, the hello world of machine learning.

Assumptions of Linear Regression

Published on: 3/5/2020

Linear Regression is an approach to modelling the relationship between a dependent variable and one or many independent variables.

Where is the Passion? (Project Management)

Published on: 2/14/2020

Our valentines day special - where is the Project Management Passion?

Ethereum, the new money

Published on: 1/12/2020

How is Ethereum different from BitCoin?

Support Vector Machines

Published on: 11/4/2019

SVM‘s are a key part of the Machine Learning History, it is fair to say that early interest in SVM’s and the realisation that they couldn’t deliver on early promises actually set the field of Machine Learning back a little.

The Importance of Project Controls

Published on: 9/14/2019

The Importance of Project Controls

What makes a Project different?

Published on: 8/16/2019

Projects are the means by which we introduce change into an organisation, this change could be anything from a new process, an office move, a new division, a business merger or a new product, or anything else that substantially shifts focus away from normal business as usual activities.

Risk Register

Published on: 7/12/2019

A Risk Register is another fairly simple, but essential, tool. Make no mistake here; Risk Management is one of the main reasons that Project Managers get paid.

Jenny from the Block (chain)

Published on: 6/18/2019

This was originally posted on my Blog back in 2019 and then swiftly archived due to the vast amount of spam it provoked via the wordpess comments system that I was using at the time. Re-posted in April 2023 (comments have since been disabled because I haven't figured out how to get a nice commenting system in Gatsby yet....).

Project Initiation

Published on: 5/14/2019

Project Initiation is all about the ground work. Not the Planning, that’s something different, that has its own stage. This is about lining up your ducks, getting things ready so that you can start the Planning activities.

PMO; Principles & Governance

Published on: 4/14/2019

A visual comparison of PRINCE2 vs PMP (light-touch)

SalesLoft and the Tracking Pixel

Published on: 3/16/2019

Tracking sales emails with no regard for the recipients privacy.

The Cisco Meraki Experience

Published on: 2/14/2019

Our awesome experience with Cisco Meraki

Type i and Type ii errors

Published on: 1/15/2019

Machine Learning systems learn how to review data inputs so that never before seen data can be predicted against results of known data.

The holy trinity of Email Security

Published on: 12/9/2018

Combining SPF, DKIM & DMARC to prevent Email Spoofing.

Project Action Tracker

Published on: 11/11/2018

An Action Tracker is a fairly simple tool, so simple in fact, you may often feel quite comfortable in over-looking it completely. However, the more complex a project, the more these simple tools can really help keep things ‘on track’.

Comparing PRINCE2 vs PMP

Published on: 10/10/2018

A visual comparison of PRINCE2 vs PMP (light-touch)

Machine Learning or Deep Learning?

Published on: 9/19/2018

If AI is the tree, then Machine Learning and Deep Learning are some of the branches that make that tree.

Using a MacMini as a local Server

Published on: 9/17/2018

I have a spare MacMini sitting around, what can I do with it?

What is the point in MacOS Server?

Published on: 8/1/2018

I have a MacMini with MacOS Server (an application) installed and we are ready to go. But what does it actually do?

Project Management is just Common Sense

Published on: 7/14/2018

I have a little advice for the budding Project Managers out there to get you started right away!

Ever wondered how a Machine Learns?

Published on: 6/25/2018

Machine Learning systems learn how to review data inputs so that never before seen data can be predicted against results of known data.

Microsoft doesn't care about small businesses

Published on: 5/26/2018

Companies like Microsoft will not speak to you (as a business) unless you are spending vast sums of money with them.

Cognitive Diversity

Published on: 4/29/2018

Back in 2017 I saw a presentation by Michael Davis (MBA, MAPM) on a subject known as Cognitive Diversity.