Brendan McKenzie

My website once was an ASP.NET MVC website that was very full featured. I realised that most of the features weren't actually being used and I wanted to free up some spacing on my webhost.

About a year ago I wrote a post suggesting how one could approach the Repository and Unit of Work patterns when using Entity Framework, at the time I was somewhat new to Entity Framework and it was a shiny new toy that could do everything. Since then I've been involved in quite a few projects and though it is quite a nice framework, I've concluded that it's not the one tool to rule them all. I also realised that the Repository pattern isn't always the best approach to take.

I came across a curious piece of code as I was working my way through the project I work day-in-day-out on; not that curious pieces of code are rare in this project.

I am on a mission to find good coffee using Flat White café in Soho (London, UK) as my benchmark. I thought it was impossible here in Toronto, but I was wrong. Here's my finding from the delightful Te Aro Coffee Roasters on Queens East and Ossington.

You know what grinds my gears? Long URLs, URLs littered with UTM tracking information, and YouTube URLs that contain more than they need - which is just the video ID.

As chaotic as the advertising world is, working at a couple of agencies in London gave me perspective and a lot of insight into the way things should be done; sometimes this was done inversely: I could see what was being done and realised that it wasn't exactly the right way to do it, but it made me realise a way that what was being done could be adapted to a more practical way.

The summit of Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest point in all of Africa at 5,985m above sea level (ASL). One believed origin of the name is derived from the Chaga word 'Kilimankyaro' meaning 'difficult mountain to climb;' had we known that before we climbed, maybe we might have thought it better not to try. Luckily for us - we found out a few days after we started our ascent: far too late to turn around.

I have had Windows 8 installed on my home laptop for a few months now and last week my Surface RT arrived. I thought I'd take this time to list a few things I like and hate about the whole new system.

Whatever the question is, jQuery Mobile is never the right answer. Well, unless you're throwing something together very quickly and have absolutely zero concern for customisability and are targeting only phones with screens 4.5' and smaller.

This is definitely a reminder post for myself. Twice now I have fallen victim to issues working with 32-bit COM libraries running under ASP.NET websites under Windows 64-bit. The main issue in this case was a library used by a legacy app that had to be ported from an older server to a newer one.