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Neil Taylor

Nye - Visualise and Enunciate

Nye is the story of Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan, the UK Government Minister for Health who setup the National Health Service (NHS) on the 5th July 1948. Written by Tim Price and starring Michael Sheen, I thoroughly enjoyed this National Theatre production. Aneurin Bevan grew up in Monmouthshire and became the

Updating Path in PowerShell

To view the path in the PowerShell. $env:Path This will display a long string, where each path element is separated by semicolon characters (;). Also, a lowercase p works for path. To add to the path, you can do the following: $env:Path += ";C:\Some\Different\Path" The

SwiftUI Text

At iOSDevUK in 2022, Natalia Panferova (Nil Coalesing) presented the talk Mysteries of SwiftUI Text View. The talk is available on YouTube. It is a great talk that covers a lot of topics for SwiftUI Text views, including use of localised strings for rich text and markdown display as well

Signing existing git commits to allow a pull request to be merged

This is a short note with some references to an issue that I needed to solve. I had forked a project, created a feature branch, made commits and then made a pull request for those commits on GitHub. The problem was that the source repository requires verified commits. Without verification,

Configuring JSONEncoder output in Swift

When using JSONEncoder with a Codable object in Swift, you may have slashes in one of the data values, e.g. a URL. This article shows how you can modify the default format for the slashes. The following code shows a way to use JSONEncoder to produce a JSON string

Session State in ASP.NET Core, .NET 5

This article describes some key steps needed to make use of Session state on the ASP.NET Core platform. Microsoft has a good article on Session and state management in ASP.NET Core [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/app-state?view=aspnetcore-5.0] . The Microsoft article covers wider

Azure's Immersive Reader 💬

Azure's Immersive Reader 💬

This article discusses a basic setup for Microsoft's Immersive Reader [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/immersive-reader/#overview] , which is part of the Cognitive Services in Azure. The reader provides a full screen reader that will speak a given block of text and offers a number of

Npgsql, Entity Framework Core and PostgreSQL 9

Npgsql, Entity Framework Core and PostgreSQL 9

This post looks at the use of Npgsql [https://www.npgsql.org/index.html] for Entity Framework Core (EF Core) [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ef/core/], with an older version of PostgreSQL [https://www.postgresql.org]. I am writing an application that will use EF Core in .NET [https:

Notes about JUnit 5

Notes about JUnit 5

JUnit 5 [https://junit.org/junit5/] offers a useful framework for developing unit tests in the Java language. It is an example of a Test Driver - something that can take a set of test cases and run them and collect the results. Whilst JUnit name suggests that this is

Using Panopto for student assignments

Using Panopto for student assignments

An interesting feature has been added to Aberystwyth's Panopto installation that offers a new way to accept videos and audio files as assessment items. For staff, this offers an alternative to asking students to upload a file to a Blackboard assignment and then downloading each one to be

Is it time to stop using lectures?

Is it time to stop using lectures?

At the Aberystwyth University Learning and Teaching Conference 2017 (AUTEL 2017 [http://xwikinexus.aber.ac.uk/xwiki/bin/view/AUTEL2017]), I will be leading a workshop entitled Is it time to stop using lectures? The abstract for the session is available on Aberystwyth's nexus website [http://nexus.aber.

Using a teleprompter when recording video

In the post on creating video with Cadarn resources [https://digidol.ghost.io/creating-video-cadarn/], I mentioned that I had used a teleprompter the recordings. In the first video I created, I had a screen off to the side of the camcorder. When I wanted to refresh my mind on what

Creating video content with Cadarn Resources

Creating video content with Cadarn Resources

The Cadarn [https://www.cadarn.ac.uk] Learning Portal has different equipment available to help create videos. This equipment can be loaned from the Hugh Owen library. This article talks about the following items: * Canon Legria Mini digital camera; * Zoom H2n audio recorder; * Røde Lavalier Microphone. Other resources are available,

Adding Images into the iOS Simulator

If you are writing an app that allows the user to select images, it is easy to setup your application to use either the Camera or the Photo Library. The Camera is a great way to get new images into your application. Unfortunately, the Camera is not available in the

Linking to iOS Settings

iOS Apps use settings as one way to hold different values that can be used to configure the use of an application. The Settings are provided centrally and are accessed through the Settings app from Apple. As of iOS 8, there is a way to open the Settings app linked

Accessing the Document directory on iOS

The Documents directory in which an App can store information that should be available at a future point. It can be used to store documents of any data type. One challenge can be the way that you refer to the location of the Documents directory in your App's

Error in the UICollectionView template code

I have just been refreshing my memory on the use of the UICollectionView in iOS 9. This view is used to display a grid of items on the screen, such as you would see in the Photos app. Dragging the UICollectionView onto the screen, I thought I would be a