Articles
Technical notes and opinions on software development, databases, security and artificial intelligence.
An Evening in the Life
I have used this WordPress blog sporadically over the years, talking about things that interest me. I’ve not used it for software since I stopped writing commercial…
Ai Terminology and Concepts
This document was originally designed to accompany a training course I was giving, however it may be of use to others, so I’ve made it available here for anyone to…
Creating Documentation with AI
AI is great at producing documentation. Point it at a folder of text and images and get it to make sense of the contents and produce documentation, or better yet, as a…
Simple Introduction to Claude Dispatch
Claude Dispatch has been around for a few months now (since March 2026) and has received a fair bit of press. It’s a genuinely useful tool that covers a myriad of use…
Local AI: With LM Studio
Introduction What is a local LLM? When people talk about AI they are often referring to the chatbots such as Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. These chatbots are user…
AI Prompt: The Goal (Eli Goldratt)
Back in the day I purchased the The Goal by Eli Goldratt. I loved his work and read it several times as well as every other book he’s written. Yeh, I am that sad! I was…
Using Claude.ai with your Database (Part 2: MCP)
In an earlier post I talked about how to educate Claude about your ERP system or any other database so that Claude is able to accurately generate SQL queries for you…
Using Claude.ai with your Database (Part 1.1)
For those who messaged me asking for further information on the script that I used to create the database schema extract, I’ve made available below the documentation for…
Using Claude.ai with your Database (Part 1)
AI can answer a lot of questions with varying levels of accuracy, it is even pretty good at creating SQL queries, but if it doesn’t know your database then it’s a very…
AI: Is Society Ready?
It’s interesting that despite the many differences of opinion regarding AI, few people acknowledge the fact that potentially it will turn society on its head, and we are…
Why Xojo?
People sometimes ask what language I use for software development. For many years now my preferred language has been Xojo. The response to this is normally ‘What’s…
Databasics: 1 – Primary Keys
There is an ongoing debate among database experts regarding the design of a Primary Key. A debate that in my opinion should have been done and dusted a long time ago…
Artificial Intelligence: Badly Named?
It’s often said that it’s all in the name. Naming is extremely important whether variable naming in Software Development or naming a particular technology itself…
Cross Platform Development with Xojo
How about a software development environment that lets you create powerful cross platform software for the following platforms: Windows macOS Linux iOS Android Raspberry…
Software Licensing & Piracy: Part 2
Part one of this article finished with the following question: What is it fair to expect your customer to do to license their copy of your product, and so help protect…
Software Licensing & Piracy: Part 1
This is an article I wrote in 2014 and which was later published in Better Software Magazine, September / October 2014 edition. Your favourite piece of software was…