James' Two Cents

Living the dream…

James — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:35:56 +0000

I remember being at primary school some years ago when our head teacher at the time, Mr Francis, announced he was moving on to a place called Pastures New. “What an odd sounding place,” I thought “I wonder where that is?”. Very soon I’m about to find out, for I too will be going there. I [...]

DIY is the road to thrift…

James — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:22:27 +0000

As I’ve written before, I’ve had experience of working in two very different schools. One a staunch supporter of RM and its Community Connect management tool, the other a distinctly ambivalent RM customer preferring the more vanilla approach to network management (the only RM product was SmartCache 2). In the time that I’ve been away from [...]

My HTC Desire & Me (or I…?)

James — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:44:32 +0000

Rather unlike our summer I’m going through a bit of a creative dry spell. In an attempt to kick-start the old creative juices I thought I would write a brief review of my thoughts after a month with my HTC Desire. I have the ‘exclusive’ black version only available in the UK with Orange; however, the [...]

Twitter Etymology

James — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:10:43 +0000

You’d have to be living inside a dark shoebox at the end of the bed of a hermit who lives in a cave under the sea on a planet a million light years away not to have heard of Twitter at least in name over the past few months. With any service like this a [...]

IT – Where do we go from here?

James — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:58:48 +0000

So, the much loathed emergency budget has arrived and as predicted education could suffer cuts of up to 25%; I predict that, with swingeing cuts to be made – and IT (read: network, rather than curricular) not being seen as a frontline department, the IT budget within schools will be far too tempting for [...]

Microsoft Fun, Free Friday!

James — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:55:42 +0000

0530hrs and my alarm goes off with an unwelcome screech – it’s time to get up ready for Microsoft’s Fun, Free Friday event held on it’s campus at Thames Valley Park, Reading. The event was designed to demonstrate some of the technologies Microsoft brings to the education sector including everything from Live@edu through to XNA [...]

Excuse me, I’m British!

James — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:10:14 +0000

The British are good at, and famous for, a great many things. Over the centuries we’ve established ourselves as world leaders in politics, education, tea-drinking, football hooliganism, and Euro-scepticism; however, the one thing we are the very best at – untouchable by any other nation on the planet – is queuing. Yes, that most frustrating, [...]

My thoughts on Foursquare so far

James — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:38:51 +0000

I signed up to Foursquare some time ago, but it was only after reading a fantastic blog post by Katharine Robinson (@thesourceress) that I decided to give it another look, and actually have a proper go at using it. Katharine touched upon the user interface in her post, and this is something that I want [...]

My problem with exams…

James — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:40:03 +0000

I am, amongst other things, a second year IT student at the University of Reading in the UK. This time of year for me, and thousands of other students, is a nightmare as we prepare for the onslaught of exams. Exams are something that have been deemed necessary by the ‘system’ at practically every level [...]

Get Latest Tweet PHP Code

James — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:00:36 +0000

Just under the title heading of this blog is a line displaying my latest tweet, however it doesn’t quite do what I want. I got the code (displayed below) from Joost de Valk’s blog; it will convert mentions into links, but not hashtags and URL links – something I would really like it to [...]