Thursday 7 April 2011 0 comments

Working With Regular Expressions - RegExr Development Tool

Hey All,

So I am currently doing a Devlopment role, and during my day to day coding away I was asked to work with Regular Expressions.Now if you haven't heard of Regular Expressions (Commonly referred to as 'RegEx's') then let me fill you in:

RegEx's are used for pattern matching when searching text and/or strings in an application. They are very useful in various roles where you need to find certain words or group of words but don't want to manually code every possible combination.

For example:
Monday 4 April 2011 0 comments

Expand Your Business Network With Hashable

Hey All,

Just thought I would quickly share a new app that I grabbed on my iPhone which I have found useful, it's called 'Hashable' and it is used for quickly sharing your digital business card with clients/colleagues from your phone.

For example, lets say you are out for dinner and drinks with a group of friends, and one mentions that they are looking for someone to come into their business and streamline their business processes (or some other area you kick ass in). To give them your full business contact details you simply
Wednesday 16 March 2011 0 comments

How To Delegate Mail Access In Lotus Notes

Hey there,

So a colleague at work asked me for help to access another colleague's e-mail as the colleague is going on holiday and for business purposes access was required to both historical and new e-mails (so auto-forwarding wouldn't work).

I looked into it, and figured out how to delegate mail access (along with Calendar access amongst other things). I thought it best to put together a guide on how to do it, as current instructions are a bit shaky from the research I did.

As with previous articles, this was written to help internal IBM'ers but is applicable to other Domino/Lotus Notes Mail setups.

Without further ado, the tutorial:

Tuesday 15 March 2011 0 comments

Always Be Moving Forwards - How To Efficiently Learn From Your Experiences

 Hey All,
Just a short one, but I thought I would pass on a a tip that a mentor shared with me, and some of the lessons I learnt from it.

A few months ago I was just finishing up on my first client engagement for IBM, and over a coffee a mentor shared a great tip on how to cement the lessons learned from an account which I want to share:  
'Write Them Down'

Now I know this sounds simple and even obvious, but go with it.
Whenever you learn something whether it be a quick way to do something, or a lesson learnt from a mistake, Write It Down!

Now. the idea behind it is that this time reflecting on what you learnt can help cement it in your mind. In addition it is handy to have a record of things you've learnt in your own writing style as just reading lessons other people have learnt can have disparity to your experiences, and you can miss points that are clear to other people as they experienced it.

This doesn't have to be a daily activity (I do it around every 3-6 months), but is definitely something you should allow a little time for.

Following this, you can then systematically review these tips/lessons at a later date and remember the experience associated with it.

To illustrate this, here is one of mine that I'll share:
Friday 11 March 2011 0 comments

How To Win That Java/J2EE Interview

Hey All,

So a colleague passed on a copy of this book to me as I'm currently ramping up my J2EE knowledge for work, and I thought it was worth sharing.
It's called Java/J2EE Job Interview Companion By K.Arulkumaran & A.Sivayini
Link US: Java/J2EE Job Interview Companion
Link UK: Java/J2EE Job Interview Companion

It is a Job Interview Companion that in the words of the author will: