Despite many months of not posting anything on this blog (OK, nearly a year) I am returning with another post about my on/off project to write a C# library to access the Github REST API. Much like my blogging schedule, which can arguably be said to be none-existent, my pet-project’s suffer from the same cruel lack of… habit.

To recap this particular project, you may like to browse some of the earlier posts on it, wherein I grandly proclaim my intent to write a “Github API in C#”. Which I should really have finished by now. As you will have no doubt realised, I do suffer from a certain amount of laziness. That is a subject for another blog post. To my shame, I can tell you that the amount of Github’s REST API which I’m covering is minimal, limited to a subset of the available User related commands.

Moving swiftly along, with no trace of irony.

In the months since the start of this project, Github has release v3 of their REST API, which contains many updated and/or new methods to access the whole plethora of the functionality available on Github. Indeed, they have even gone as far as to release a desktop client for Mac’s, and for all I know are working on a Windows version, which would then render this effort of mine (because that’s what I’ve always intended) redundant.

So, despite not blogging about it, and despite going months between commits, I have been working on the library. The RestSharp git sub-module is gone (I mean, who likes sub-modules anyway?) in favour of the NuGet package. The authentication has been reworked slightly (still no OAuth yet) and the API is a little more fluenty.

Of course, it still doesn’t actually let you do very much, I mean even after a year, you still can’t perform all of the actions available to a user. This is terrible, and speaks volumes about me, as a person. Procrastination is my enemy.

Whilst I was watching football I had this amazing idea that I was going to write a plugin for Word that would let you write blog posts and publish them onto your blog. I literally had no idea that Word would have this baked in by default.

Obviously I’ve had to test this out immediately.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock

You will have seen, heard and read the buzz about the Apple iPad. What it is, what it does and why you should buy it. This post is not about all that – it’s covered in excruciating detail elsewhere on your favourite tech site. Ever since the iPad was just a rumour, and since it was officially announced, we have been arguing about it at work. Whose going to buy one? Who is an idiot for wanting to buy one? Who is an idiot for not wanting to buy one?

Note: I should mention that I do happen to own an iPhone (via an O2 two year(!) contract), and I think it is probably the best mobile phone I’ve ever owned, however, I will take some convincing to enter into another two year contract again. But I digress. I have a couple of old iPods, nothing else: I am not a fanboy.

The niche that the iPad and devices like it fill is undoubtedly there, or else these products would not be developed. The key thing here is “…and devices like it…”. There isn’t just the iPad to consider.  This is the fantastic thing about our society: we have a huge freedom of choice in our purchasing decisions. We are free to evaluate, consider and weigh all the pros and cons of a particular product before we make the commitment to purchase.

Unless you are an Apple fanboy

In which case, you have already sub-concisiously made the decision to purchase anything with an Apple logo on. Are you an Apple fan boy? You have a Mac of some discription. You bought (and probably still have) a first-gen iPod. You bought an iTouch the day it was release. You were the first in your office to get an iPhone. You were the first to upgrade to an iPhone 3G. You were the first to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS. You hammer F5 on your favourite liveblog of an Apple event. You wouldn’t even consider buying a laptop from Asus, Acer or Dell (or whoever) which as powerful and costs half the price of something which has a fucking Apple logo on it.

Fanboy. Acolyte. Get out. You have already made your choice. You cannot win an arguement with someone who fanatically believes they are right.

Open minded? Continue from here

For those who are prepared to broaden our horizons, there is a bewildering array of choice just around the corner. Rather than rehash other people’s hard work from around the interweb, and because I’m lazy, I refer you to this article on About.com: http://portables.about.com/od/otherdevices/tp/Slate_tablet_roundup.htm, which offers a succinct highlight of varous slate tablet computers. Engadget also has some details of Microsofts offering, the ‘Courier’, which looks promising.

In Conclusion

You do not have to kneel at the alter of the cult of Apple. You have a choice. Use it wisely.

It’s true, New Years resolutions are passé. Every year, you look at what is wrong in your life and triumphantly decide that you are going to resolve these problems by issuing a bold and sweeping set of statements, or edicts.

• Lose weight
• Stop smoking
• Get fit

These are what you want to achieve, chasing that ever elusive dream of making your life better. Can you? Can a simple list of statements help you achieve these goals? I’m not so sure. For some people I’m sure that they don’t even have to write them down, those super motivated people who seem to exude success.

I used to do this, on scraps of easily lost paper, “Stuart’s New Year’s Resolutions!” it would say, with a list of two or three word ambition’s for the year. Lost by February. For the last few years I haven’t even bothered with writing them down, I’d just mouth off to anyone who would listen, “I’m gonna do this, and that, this year, you wait and see”.

Which funnily enough, didn’t get me very far with achieving very much. That said, 2007 was a year I’ll never forget, for a number of reasons (not all of which I want to go into here), and it has led me to believe even more than I did, that it is all well and good to strole through life without a care, thinking everything is fine and dandy. Because it is not. Doing that will get you stuck, trapped in a rut that you can’t get out of, never having made anything of your life.

Thankfully, I’m pretty certain that I’m not in a rut. Trust me, I’ve been there and I know what it is like.

So what to do instead of making ‘New Year’s Resolutions’? It’s simple: Set goals. “But”, I hear you cry, “a goal IS a resolution?!” Which in this sense I suppose they are, however there is a crucial difference. A goal set’s out what you want to do and how you are going to achieve it.

The above list could be re-written like so:

• Lose weight by eating healthily and exercising more to get fit.
• Stop smoking by using patches and will power, giving up completely by Easter.
• Get fit, by joining a gym, running and cycling and lose 2 stone by Easter

These aren’t my goals for this year… Ok, I don’t smoke, but the other two count. I’m not revealing my other goals… yet. I have several though, and I intend to get stuck in and achieve them.