There’s a nasty trend that I’ve seen at a number of sites in recent years. It’s the tendency to try to block and or censor anything that the company thinks could be detected as an issue. Some companies are so concerned about their IP (intellectual property) that they try to stop any potential leak of that property.
While on the surface, that all might seem to make sense, but often it ends up being not sensible and unproductive.
2026-08-28
Have you heard someone recently say Drive Safe ? If you’re my age, I’m sure that grates on you somewhat. In the end, safe is an adjective, but here it’s being used as an adverb. If I’d said that at school, I would have been corrected and told it should have been Drive Safely.
Similarly, today I was watching the UK Lingo TV show . I really like it and generally, I hear quite correct English on it, particularly from the presenter. But I then heard him say He did brilliant. And immediately I had the same guttural reaction to it.
2026-08-22
Many years back, I was invited to chair a course accreditation panel for a local TAFE (Technical and Further Education) course. They had started to offer a computing-related 3-year diploma, and the hope was that it wasn’t too far below the 3-year degrees offered at local universities. One part of that accreditation process involved me discussing the course with the staff members who were teaching it.
After talking to almost all the staff, what struck me was how similar they all were. In the requirements for the course, there was a standard that each staff member needed to meet, but there was also a requirement for the group of staff to be diverse enough to have broad knowledge of the industry. There was no individual staff member that you could identify as not being at the appropriate standard, but almost all of them had exactly the same background, career progression, etc.
2026-08-16
Intrusions into computer systems are happening all the time now. We need to address this issue as an industry, but it’s important to understand that the way we design databases plays a big role in the impacts that occur during intrusions.
If you don’t accept that you could have an intrusion, you are living in La La Land. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_prone_personality )
A bug in any one of the frameworks that you use, the code that you write, the protocols that you use, the operating system or hosting services that you use can potentially expose you to an intrusion.
2026-07-25
If I want accounting advice, it’s unlikely that I’d ask my dentist for that advice.
Many years ago, I created applications for food wholesalers. When the owners of these businesses decided to get a new or better computing system, invariably they’d speak to their accountants. I understand the reasons why that might seem logical to them at first, but what I saw when these clients did this, is that they invariably ended up with the wrong systems.
2026-07-19
Just after I was born, my mother and father called me Gregory. Ever since then, everyone has called me Greg. And that included my parents. To the day she died, my mother called me Greg and so did my dad while he was alive (miss you both).
I have friends who tell me that the only time their mothers used their full names was when they were in trouble for some reason.
2026-07-17
I’ve pointed out in previous blog posts that I’m not a fan of ORMs. What I’m even less of a fan of is code-first design, particularly in combination with an ORM like the Entity Framework.
It might seem cool and shiny and if you are just whipping up a small proof of concept or test app, please feel free to do it, but the minute you think of doing it for enterprise systems, please just don’t. And if you have colleagues wanting to do this, just say no.
2026-07-15
I work with data. I understand that for most organizations, that the data they own is the most valuable asset the company owns.
One thing I’ve learned from working with data is that unlike application software, data generally outlives generations of applications, is often used by many different applications, and typically just morphs from shape to shape over time. It almost never gets totally refreshed.
This is a good thing.
2026-07-09
I’ve ended up with a number of Microsoft figurines over the years. It all started with Nine Guy:
Then it went on to the whole Source Force team:
It was interesting to see how they evolved over the years. Here are the SQL Server ones:
SQL Server 2005 had a demure little lady that was all Red. She morphed into an orange version by SQL Server 2008 (shown in the header with me at TechEd USA) in 2008. Later she took on a Neo look from the Matrix. More recently, there was a guy, the Query Controller.
2026-06-17
When you visit websites, you may or may not have noticed the small icons that appear in the title bar areas. These are called Favicons. Here’s an example of one in Chrome:
In browsers, they appear in several places:
They are only a small visible aspect of your website but they greatly improve how professional the site looks in a browser. In some browsers, they also appear when you open a new page:
2026-06-11
