Pete White - 'World Famous' ImAFish 10.3 Kipper - Blog, Articles, Media, Forum! -

Bonfire Night - Weston Park Photos

Pete — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:42:17 +0000

Here are some of my photos from Bonfire night at Weston Park. (Click to enlarge)

AGRAHHH SPIDER

Pete — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:22:40 +0000

I found this little nasty in my garden!

Time Machine Saves the Day

Pete — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:00:25 +0000

On Sunday disaster struck, my hard drive corrupted and OS X wouldn't boot. I feared the worst but had been backing up for the past two years using OS X Time Machine. Could it be as simple as restoring from backup to a new drive?

My first job was to install a new hard drive, this is easier said then done in the all in one iMac. Fortunately this video from camodesto went through step by step, first removing the glass front, then the aluminium case and then the screen. Finally you can replace the hard drive, I opted for an upgrade to a 1TB drive.

After booting from the Snow Leopard DVD I created a partition on the new hard drive then restored from Time Machine. The process took around seven hours to copy my 300gig of data from the External drive.

When I rebooted my Mac had been restored to 5pm on Sunday, 90mins before it had died. All my files were restored, even my Firefox tabs were saved.

Targetted Facebook Updates

Pete — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:06:38 +0000

With the changes Facebook have made over the last week its more important than ever to write targetted updates to reach your friends. The members home page is changing from its Twitter style display everything feed to a news feed that shows more relevant and popular posts.

A range of metrics are being used to determine popular posts including number of comments, number of 'likes' and how much you interact with a given member. Its almost Facebook trying to become more like Digg for your friends (you could become your own MrBabyMan). The idea hopefully is to get away from a news feed full of farmville updates and desperate crys for attention.

This does mean that when writing status updates for them to be noticed they need to be well constructed and targetted to your friends. Could this mean people post less status updates? It's unlikely however your more likely to see relevant posts.

The ImAFish Facebook page has been a huge success though it is more important than ever to add content that its fans will want to read.

Shopinsky - Direct Local Marketing

Pete — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:38:26 +0000

For the past four months I have been developing a new service called Shopinsky. I've been excited to talk about the site (and may have let slip a day early by joining the Facebook group) however had to wait until launch before I could blog about it.

The idea is simple, each town in the country has a Shopinsky Page, businesses can join Shopinsky to be part of their local town. They can post messages via the website or sms that are distributed on the site, to the local Twitter account, a RSS feed and a daily mailing list.

For businesses Shopinsky offers a great way to connect to local consumers through social networking services. Building up a following on sites such as Twitter or your own blog is a lot of work, the idea with Shopinsky is that audience is already there for you, all you have to do is send your updates/offers.

For shoppers the site offers a great way to find out about local businesses, offers and freebies. We have made it as easy as possible to interact with Shopinsky and understand that people want content delivered to them rather than having to search for it. Therefore people can bookmark their towns page, subscribe to the RSS feed in their news reader, follow the local town on Twitter or subscribe to a daily email.

Shopinsky is also great for tourists who want to find out what is on offer before visiting a town, they can easily see local restaurants, shops and services all from the towns page.

The site is based on Drupal 6x and heavily uses CCK, Imagecache, Views and a number of custom made modules. Where possible I've tried to keep to the Drupal api's and systems. For example messaging uses the Drupal comments system, categories uses Drupal Taxonomy and profiles are built from content types and custom fields.

By using Drupal as the starting blocks we have managed to save months (if not years) of development and adding new functionality is a much easier process.

Find out more on www.shopinsky.co.uk

Liverpool Photos

Pete — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:21:36 +0000

Here are some photos from my recent trip to Liverpool.

The Albert dock, restored as a tourist attraction in the 80s.

The albert dock is on the bank of the mersey.

Boat trip around the dock.

Construction work in Liverpool with (what I think) is the Royal Liver building in the background.

Liverpool Cathedral in the distance.

The Liverpool One shopping center.

The address reads: Everton Two, Liverpool One

Full set of pictures on Flickr.

Bergamo Photos

Pete — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:47:14 +0000

Part three of my trip to Italy shows some of my photos in and around Bergamo. Part 1 - the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Part 2 - Milan.

Properties in the old town start from around 2 Million Euros.

My full Italy set can be seen on Flickr.

Milan Photos

Pete — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:02:22 +0000

Here are some of my photos of Milan from my recent Italy trip. Read about the Formula 1 here.

The Duomo (Cathedral) in Milan. The outside is surrounded by shopping centres.

The side of the Duomo.

Inside the Duomo, the detail in the sculptures and artwork is amazing.

A priest at work.

The artwork including the flooring was very detailed.

This is one of the statues. There were a number like this including statues of people being hung, I don't think there were age restrictions on entrance but the place certainly had a lot of unsuitable sculptures for children.

This one looks to have inspired Star Wars.

A very grand roof of a shopping centre.

Leonardo da Vinci

More amazing Architecture.

See all the pictures of my Italy trip on Flickr.

Also check out my Florence trip.

Formula 1 Monza - The Italian Grand Prix

Pete — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:13:06 +0000

We choose Monza as our first grand prix and what an amazing weekend it was! We had general admission tickets and found a good view from the Lesmo corner though it was a long walk from the F1 Village.

We paid extra for parking (about £60) however it got us very close to the track and saved getting a bus. Traffic wasn't too bad on Saturday or Sunday, we were staying in Bergamo and it took about an hour in our fiat panda. Roads around the track are closed on the day however our parking pass got us through.

Flights into Milan (Bergamo) from Ryanair are cheap but Bergamo is still 50km from Milan. The toll road between Bergamo and Milan is fast and not too expensive.

Here are some of my pictures from the day:

The F1 village had stands from each team to buy merchandise.

The McLaren car.

Close up of the McLaren.

Kimi had a lot of fans.

Italian passion (and alcohol).

Lewis Hamilton going past at 190km/h.

Jenson's bike (we think).

Where we watched the race from.

The safety car.

Jenson fans!

Mark Webber after spinning out in front of us.

An autograph Mark?

The same Kimi fans on another day.

We had good view of a screen and the track.

Me on track.

The old track still loops around the new track - you can see how steep it is here.

Track walk after the race.

Parts of the pit wall after the race.

The only way I'm going to get up here is in photoshop....

The start/finish line.

Another view of the old track.

Full set of photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pwhite/sets/72157622265561939/

New web service to advise on best products online

Pete — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:13:30 +0000

An exciting new web service has been launched this month for Internet shoppers allowing them to ask an expert about a product or service. Product Recommend then emails a recommendation, if its not what you're looking for simply reply and they will refine your search. Product Recommend was started with one aim in mind, to bring the personal experience of shopping in a physical store to the Internet.

Many sites already offer automated comparison features but you can never replace the sound advice you get from local retail stores. Product Recommend hopes to bridge this gap by offering their retail and web experience to anyone with a question about a product or service. The site is very simple yet remarkably powerful, designed to be used by people of all ages, without having to register and it’s free to use.

The concept was dreamed up by two graduates in the West Midlands and has been designed to work with popular social networking sites such as Twitter (@productrec) and Facebook.

Co-founder, Peter White, describes the idea behind the site; “We wanted to replicate the personal and friendly in-store experience online, you can ask for anything from a gift idea for your grandmother to the best digital camera within your budget".

Price comparison services have had a meteoric rise in popularity in recent years, however only provide automated 'price comparisons' for a specific product or services: Where as Product Recommend has the added benefit of personal advice.

The service was launched in the UK during September and can be found at www.productrecommend.co.uk