I’m currently working on a project to develop a content management system for a leading publisher, that generates content for a DVD. The system, developed in Ruby on Rails, naturally has a significant amount of background processing to do, with various assets respresented with large, binary files, often requiring server-side processing. For instance, we…

Hubbub is a new deliveries service that rounds up notable local shops and provides a single shop-front for them all, allowing customers to pick from the best grub in their borough. Selected for their repute, their ethical standards and their quality, the Hubbub shops collectively offer an alternative to the homogenised offerings of the…

In my current Ruby on Rails project, I’m learning about Notahat’s machinist testing framework to build object graphs on which to write unit tests. Its a nice improvement on fixtures; using an object-orientated, programmatic approach to creating test data.
In the pursuit of 100% code coverage, I hit on a problem when trying to test…

I today completed a twelve-day stint working with Westfield London in collaboration with Delete London, working on Ruby on Rails development.
The very lovely digital marketing team had some ideas for quick wins to improve the user experience on the London Westfield website, including adding affiliate product data to the retailer pages, and creating an…

The first phase of the Westfield Stratford City website has gone live, designed to attract new leasing business and provide information about the huge shopping complex under construction in Stratford.
I’m pleased to see this site go live, as its easily the most complex Ruby on Rails application that I’ve ever worked on. Building on…

I’m glad to be working on some Rails projects with two cool London-based agencies next month. Starting out with a return to Delete London, followed by a project at Head London. Bring it on!
If you have a project starting in October, please let me know.

I approached the task of undertaking market research for my new music start-up company in the typical programmer way: I made a website. I wonder how many of life’s problems I would approach in this way; but having a website seems like a good start.
I wanted to canvass the opinion of friends and colleagues…

I often use the nifty Google search feature ‘define’ to look-up definitions of dictionary words. There are a few widgets kicking-about on the various desktop environments I use; but none are quicker than firing up my browser and hitting ‘define something’ and receiving a response (apparently something is a single by Lasgo from the…

I haven’t found sufficient reason to listen to my inner sceptisism about the awful writer’s bolemia website, widely known as Twitter. I’m ridiculously proud of my forty-something followers, some of whom are not even real people (I’m referring to websites and places of work, I’m not making a jibe at my own followers- goodness…

A request for an up-to-date copy of my C.V. for a Ruby on Rails contract turned into a top-to-bottom website overhaul, costing the entire day to sort out. I have been operating dangarland.co.uk for over a year, jotting down occasional observations about web development. In that time, I ran the same default installation of…