Dale Roberts' Personal Blog

Testing blogger for iPhone

2012-04-12T13:31:00.001+01:00

Well, it doesn't appear that you can save drafts which is a bit rubbish, I'd certainly want to review my probably badly types blogs on a bigger screen before posting them.

Let's see how photos works. Obviously being a small screen it doesn't let you position them which is another good reason to be able to post drafts so I can reformat a post.

Trying out Blogsy on my iPad

2012-04-07T15:44:00.001+01:00

I'm looking to see if I can replace, or perhaps abandon, my venerable laptop in favour of my iPad. So I started looking for tools to do all the things I normally do on my laptop.

So far I've found a supposedly good SSH and VNC/RDP client called iSSH (of course, it would be), a good enough RSS reader with Google Reader integration, an accessory in the Apple store that lets you connect and transfer photos from a USB camera and now a tool for blogging that is highly rated and works with both Blogger and WordPress. So, this is just a simple post to see how The last tool (Blogsy) works. As you can see it supports Flickr, including uploading photos, hence the picture of yours truly in Canada. I stil need to get another USB keyboard and test using that, probably with Blogsy and with something that lets me edit Google Docs content, or Dropbox content. I'm thinking of trying QuickOffice Pro, but at £13.99, unlike Blogsy's £2.99,

I will have to think twice before buying it. I think once I've got a document application, I should be pretty much sorted bar having to remote connect to a desktop machine at home for the odd few things here and there, which the aforementioned VNC/RDP client should be good enough for. So, here's hoping that going "all iPad" isn't such a tough nut to crack after all. Add in a half decent "pen", as I have big fingers and most rubber nosed styluses are no better, and I'll be a happy man.

My new Sony camera

2011-06-18T22:42:00.001+01:00

Sempervivum, a photo by Mr Dale Roberts on Flickr.

as I think this photo of some Sempervivum shows, the camera does quite a nice job of close up photographs.

First class for free (almost)

2009-12-04T15:19:00.000+00:00

Well, for the first time ever I can reveal I have found a way to travel first class on the train for the cost of a standard ticket. I say first class, it’s more like between first class to be honest. On the plus side I have only a very quiet chap reading his paper and two attractive young ladies for company. So even the proximity to the bins, toilet and doors seems acceptable.

I probably wouldn’t recomend it to anyone with a fear of germs (I am sitting on the floor after all) but on a busy train it’s better than standing near the bins and toilet in “cattle class”.

We’ve even had a train official go past so I know I won’t be hastled for a first class ticket.

All in all something of a result for the less descerning traveller.

Encryption software

2008-01-21T11:11:00.000+00:00

Data Encryption:

If you don't want to join the numerous government departments in loosing personal data (yours and others ... apparently even just full name and address is considered "worth knowing" to identify thieves) then you will want to start encrypting your data. The simplest way to use your data on a Windows PC with the confidence that when you shut down your PC the data is safe is to use "on the fly" encryption software. One "favorite" product for this in many quarters is TrueCrypt. Which lets you create a strongly encrypted file that you mount as a "virtual hard drive" on your PC. Just put your data there and when you logout the drive is unmounted and then when you login again you start TrueCrypt and mount that "file" to get your drive full of data back.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

E-Mail Encryption:

If you want to send people e-mails with interesting information in it, you should encrypt that information as it goes out over the web. There are many ways of doing this using certificates and keys but the two main ways are GPG/PGP and S/MIME. S/MIME is supported by many mail clients but requires you to get a certificate from somewhere. Go to Thawte (https://www.thawte.com/cgi/personal/contents.exe) to get a free e-mail certificate (read the documentation for you mail client on how to get the certificate and key into the mail client for use - many mail clients support this such as Thunderbird and Outlook). GPG/PGP is an arguably more popular free variety of encryption. To use GPG to do encryption (think of GPG as the free version of PGP). Try something like the popular gpg4win (http://www.gpg4win.org/). With GPG you just create a key pair and send out the public version, you don't have to go get a certificate from a certificate authority like Thawte. This is why, until Thawte starting doing free mail certificate, GPG was far more popular. Also, the way GPG works, you can either integrate it with some mail client, or use it separately which includes the ability to encrypt any file you have on your PC (so it's a sensible choice for encrypting data to put on a CD and send to someone who you have a GPG public key for).

For a detailed explanation and overview of technologies go to the appropriate web page. But basically, you want (for either kind of encryption GPG or S/MIME) a private Key which allows you to decrypt/sign your mails and a a public key or certificate that you send out to people so they can encrypt stuff to send to you safe in the knowledge that only you can decrypt and read it.

Password Storage:

If you want to use good passwords for everything, and not have to worry about remembering them. Then use PasswordSafe. It runs on windows, has some "techy" tools for Linux if every anyone needs to. Several large companies have "verified" it for use via their security departments (VERY BIG companies - in case you worry how safe free software is).

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

Secure Data Erasure:

If you have an old PC, just use DBAN (http://dban.sourceforge.net/) to create a CD that when you boot a PC with it will give you the ability to completely obliterate all your data using up to military grade erasure. A simple random data overwrite is fairly safe and much quicker, but if you dn't mind leaving the machine running overnight clobbering your data then go for the full guttman wipe.

If you just want to be sure files you delete are actually gone from your hard disk then try Eraser (http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/). This is most likely wanted once you have copied all your data to a TrueCrypy volume and now want to delete the old copies from your computer in a way you can be confident can't be recovered.

Some Hints and Notes:
Apple Mac users
i Just use the FileVault in place of TrueCrypt and store your data in your home directory
ii Just use your KeyChain in place of PasswordSafe
iii Just use the Finder's "Secure Empty Trash" function to safely and securely delete your files from your trash folder.
iv Yes, it is that simple thanks to the apple mantra of "it should just work"
v For GPG check out http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/
DATA INTEGRITY
i BACKUP YOUR DATA - Sounds obvious, but too many people miss it and with Encryption you MUST make sure you know your passwords
ii READ THE MANUAL - Backing up some encrypted data isn't as simple as copying a file so make sure you follow instructions on backing up encrypted data.
iii DID YOU REALLY WANT TO BACKUP THE UN-ENCRYPTED DATA - Bear this in mind, you may want to, or may not, but make sure you know which you have done.
iv HAVE A TRANSITION PHASE - You're data has been un-encrypted for ages and your password have been written on a peice of paper for ages right ?. So don't setup passwordsafe and TrueCrypt and immediately delete all your old records and data. Put the old stuff to one side (or on a CD/DVD) and start using passwordsafe and TrueCrypt with the warm comfy knowledge you have a fallback if things go horribly wrong.
Password Choices
i With both products above, all of your security now relies on the quality of just one or two passwords. So make them good.
ii One suggestion is to use a pass phrase not a password. Pick something memorable that isn't too likely o be though of by someone else (i.e. Quotes from Shakespeare as they are easy to verify if you aren't sure, or song lyrics (e.g "Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round")
iii Another suggestion is to make thing a little harder to guess by using some kind of quote or enclosure to your pass phrase. For example, actually include the quotes in the above pass phrase. Or maybe put brackets around your pass phrase or some other random placeholder like zeros (e.g 0Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round0 ). These make any attempt to brute force a pass phrase much harder as you have to get the right quote (there are quote databases available on the web) and the right surrounding place holders.
Chosen Products
i The reason to use the above and not other products, is primarily that they are free open software so if you need to use them on several PCs you don't have to buy more copies. Also, you can encourage friends and colleagues to use them (hey, they're free guys and girls) and then have a common shared pool of experience for using them that's not so dry and boring to use as documentation online or this e-mail (i.e. chat's down the pub or on the golf course).
Mail Encryption
i I actually have and use both S/MIME (Mac supports this out of the box) and GPG via a GPGMail plugin. There is nothing wrong anyone doing this as long as you don't use both S/MIME andn GPG for the same message as it will confuse mail clients and make "signed" e-mails show as "broken". This is because once you have signed the mail with one encryption technology, signing it with the next change the message and so "breaks" the validity o the signature with the first.
ii Some issues can be experienced with problems reading signed mails that are old, and obviously you will need to keep copy of old expired keys to read mails you sent or received in the past. (GPG is slightly better at avoiding this problem than S/MIME is). This is a result of certificates and keys expiring. Generally you can still read the mails but they will show up with an error stating that the certificate or key they were encrypted with is expired.
iii Obviously if you want to mail something to a fellow TrueCrypt user (or old fshioned person if you include the link to the TrueCrypt web site), you could always put the files in a TrueCrypt volume, mail that as an attachment and then phone them with the password (or have an agreed password you "share" for such purposes).

DISCLAIMER

Obviously this is just recommendations of software from the web, use it at your own risk !!!! I don't take responsibility :-).

Why keep a journal

2006-05-22T11:09:00.000+01:00

Well, just the other day I was called by a colleague of my fathers and asked to help out with his ailing Mac G5. So, off I went to pay a visit thinking that I would delete a few cache files, run the Mac OS/X maintenance stuff and what not and be on my way.
What in fact happened is that I ended up taking his hobbling, unhappy Mac and euthanizing the poor thing. So what happened. Well, it boils down to it having a jounaled filesystem and yet still having a very sick filesystem, so much for journaling.
When I arrived I was informed that the system had been occasionally showing the bouncing beach ball of death, and with one particular account, was refusing to empty the trash. Apparently an attempt to run the repair permissions utility had resulted in a few repairs and then the program stopping responding with no errors in sight. So, I delete the trash contents for the rogue account by hand from the command line using a power user account, figuring that whatever program though it used those files would, when the account next logged in, complain or more likely create new cache files. I then ran the disk verify tool - oh dear. This reported problems with nodes and the catalogue. Being the boot volume I obviously couldn't run the repair program on it. So, before taking any action on the filesystem it seemed sensible to backup the all important data to. So we popped in a CD and asked the Mac to dump a load of stuff on it. While this was running I went off to do something a little more interesting. What I cam back to a little while later was an error message and a CD which when put back into the Mac couldn't be mounted. Oddly enough, a later attempt at reading the CD in a windows machine showed that not everything was written to the CD but a fair amount had been, so why the Mac wouldn't read it is anyones guess. Anyway, this made me believe trying to backup the dodgy filesystem was a doomed endeavor (200+Gb of doomed endeavor in fact, so I couldn't even "dd" somewhere as I don't have that much storage space anywhere else).
Well, having failed to backup the data I booted from the install CD and tried the repair program from there. Another oh dear moment ensued as I was informed that the repair tool couldn't salvage the disk. Next, I risked using fsck_hfs in a last ditch attempt and was informed by that program that it couldn't fix the disk either. So, having applecare for the system we phoned apple who confirmed I had taken appropriate action, but recommended using the TechTool Delux CD from the applecare pack which has another disk recovery program. The irony here as I found out is that the TechTool Delux program is no better equipped to repair dodgy filesystems than the apple built in tool, but the company that provide it will sell you a "professional" rather than Delux product that is apparently quite good at repairing such problems. Anyway, having done all these things and concluding that I couldn't fix the disk I decided I may as well go back to trying to backup the data to CD, having at this point found that the CD was readable on an NT machine.This is where I discovered I have euthanized the sickly Mac. You see, having tried and failed to repair the disk, the kindly repair programs had marked the disk as "bad". As a result I could no longer boot into a limping version of Mac OS/X because at each boot attempt the OS would notice and try to fix the "bad" disk which would obviously fail sadly resulting in the Mac switching off.
I then had the slightly embarrassing task of explaining to the Mac owner my attempts to fix his problems appeared to have made things worse. The explanation is that as the disk is journaled, the assumption of the OS is that it can't be bad so there is no point checking it at boot which means the system boots and throws odd errors or behaves strangely when it does try to use the bad bits of filesystem, examples of which would including failing on backups. However, as mentioned before the programs that would normally repair problem, as they had failed, marked the disk as bad thus overriding the OS's normally blaze approach to filesystem integrity at boot-up.
Anyway not wanting to leave the guy in a worse state than when I arrived, I invested in a copy of DiskWarrior which I found recommended in several books and favorably compared against other disk repair tools in web reviews. The use of this tool did solve the filesystem integrity problem, including making the disk now pass DiskUtility verification, meaning we could mount the disk as a firewire target and at least recover some data. The disk still wouldn't boot however.
In order to get the disk to actually boot, I had to then boot from the apple install CD and perform a rather time consuming "archive and install" which installs / re-installs the tiger OS around the user data. After this, and the then obligatory software update to get back up to date, voila. We now had a working system again.
So, what is my conclusion from this. Well, it's simple really, I still don't trust journaled filesystems. This is not limited to journaled HFS+, I have had similar issue with journaled filesystems on Solaris machines and it makes me wonder if journaled filesystems don't in fact not protect your data better but rather simply make machine boot-ups quicker while hiding some rather nasty issues away from you. Let's just hope the ZFS (or whatever it's now called) filesystem from Sun is all it's hyped to be rather than just another evolution of the existing journaling technologies I have had problems with. I'd also like to know why it is fsck_hfs doesn't understand journal files, I mean surely a repair program for a filesystem should understand how to repair all the varieties of that filesystem, rather than being likely to cause additional damage. I hope Sun provide a working fsk_zfs or whatever for their ZFS filesystem. If nothing else it makes people like me a little more comfortable to know you can on-line verify a disk, and if the journaling has let you down, repair it safely and simply.

Services, for better or worse

2006-02-09T11:08:00.000+00:00

Having recently installed MySQL on my Mac OS/X Tiger laptop for use with some software I have been testing, I decided to have a look at launchd and get MySQL starting at system startup.
Reading through all the launchd and related documentation I am rather suprised. Why is it that Apple have decided to remove the dependency feature that StartUpItems had. According to Apple:

In the long run, Apple recommends designing daemons to not depend on the order in which they are started. Programs should be robust in the case where a service is unavailable, and in some cases, programs should be automatically spawned when needed instead of requiring programs to wait for them.
Surely only a tiny minority of sysadmins actually write the daemons that they are expected or need to run as a service. So what good is apple encouraging developers to write robust code, when developers are not the main audience for launchd setup.

While I'm expressing my disappointment, why have both Apple and Sun, in pretty close succession, decided to re-implement all the tried and tested *nix service and scheduling stuff in totally different ways. I mean, they both seem to be trying to achieve the same things. And it's not like they haven't both worked towards open systems and on open standards before. Surely if they came together to create something they could both use in their at least partly Open operating systems it would be great for everyone. OK, so Linux might then use the technology, but they could spin that as a "we're so great even Linux uses our code" rather than worrying about it. If everyone does everything differently people are going to try and stick with good old cross-platform daemontools, xinetd, cron and rc.X scripts. After all they still provide fairly configurable and robust services, scheduling and startup too don't they. OK, so they don't use XML to make config verification easy, and they don't provide some things like Apple's WatchPaths but at least everyone knows how to use them and you can use them on any *nix platform. If I wanted to be cynical, I could even suggest that Sun's approach is mostly not for improvement of configurability or reliability, but a way to make it easier for them to bolt their commercial monitoring and "self healing" products onto a system. As to Apple, well you could cynically suggest that they are moving in the same direction, or simply want to be different.

Let's just hope this isn't the start of a massive divergence of *nix platforms. I'm all for improving things, but part of the beauty of *nix is that once you've used one, you've used them all. And if another system does something differently, you can normally just bring your preferred method of doing it with you. After all Solaris didn't used to have xinetd for ages, but you could always install it yourself. And package management on Linux has lots of guises, but most of them can be used on any old Linux distribution without much fuss. Good grief, you can even make your Windows machine look like *nix with cygwin, including running things like SSHD.

Anyway, now that my rant is over, anyone looking to run MySQL as a service on Tiger should look at my Wiki. It has the plist file I use and some general info around my experience.

The power of PAC man

2006-02-07T11:07:00.000+00:00

Just a quick note really. I have finally got round to starting off my Wiki page on the use of automatic proxy configuration files. I decided to write this mostly so I wouldn't forget in future but also as I found .pac files to be really useful and thought others might want somewhere to start when first implementing them.

The gist of the wiki is that with a .pac file you can implement resiliency, load balancing and complex request routing for next to no money. All you need is more than 1 proxy server (for resilience and load balancing if that's what you're after), somewhere to store the .pac file (either a web server or just a network share) and some basic understanding of JavaScript. Though understanding JavaScript isn't that important as there are plenty of examples out there and doing the basics is really simple from a JavaScript perspective.

So, if you want to make your proxy infrastructure more resilient, or just move those annoying proxy exceptions somewhere other than people's NT profiles, then give a proxy auto configuration script a go. That way if you have to change the exceptions list, all your users have to do is restart their browser to pickup the new settings rather than logout and in again.

If you are feeling really adventurous you can even do things like send users on different network to different proxies, send users to different proxies at different times or route through different proxies based on the protocol of a request. The possibilities are endless.

Running in new shoes

2006-01-31T11:01:00.000+00:00

My old pair of trainers are starting to get a bit worn these days so yesterday I decided to make sure I had a new pair ready to run in when they finally fell apart. Now, I have been told that the best way to buy running shoes is to go to a specialist running shop where they will watch you run on a treadmill, examine and measure your feet and then recommend a small selection of trainers suitable for you. Sadly I'm not aware of any speciality running shops near me.

So instead I went to the local factory outlet "shopping village" to find myself some new trainers at a reasonable price. As with the last time I went looking the selection of trainers was vast. Some are labeled as running shoes and some are labeled as cross trainers and some just aren't labeled beyond their name. All in all this makes picking a new running shoe somewhat difficult if you are serious about getting a good running shoe rather than a fashion accessory. My solution to this, as always, was to try on a whole variety of pairs in different shops. With each pair I checked for comfort, and tried to practice running in the shop without looking like I was trying to do a runner with their trainers. A mildly embarrassing activity I have to admit. Eventually I settled on a pair of Reebok running shoes that seemed to fit the bill. Having now tried them for the first time I'm fairly happy with my choice too.

Anyway, after arriving home I decided to look on the web to see if there were any tips on picking the right running shoes. After all, anything has to be better than running round shoe shops trying not to arouse suspicion from the staff. So I went to google and started searching and quickly found a site for runners that actually describes all about the "hows and whys". It covers how to identify your foot type, then what "type" of trainer you should go for and finally how to identify if a trainer is that "type". So, for anyone who is thinking of buying new running shoes and wants advice on how to pick a good pair I suggest looking through this cool running website. With a bit of luck my days of embarrassing myself picking trainers are over. The site also describes all the various clothing available for runners and what is best for what conditions, how it works etc. There is also some advice on getting started running and building up your running which I found this interesting being a "beginner" myself.

Bread, bread and more bread

2006-01-26T20:55:00.000+00:00

Why a bread maker ?
Well, I think pretty much everyone I know likes fresh bread and that probably explains why everyone over the last few years has bought these new bread-maker devices. When Christmas came around this year, it was also one of the things on my Fathers Christmas list. He was particularly encouraged by the fact that my Brothers Father-in-law has one and occasionally we got to try some of his bread which is delicious. As I was not working at the time I was tasked with checking on prices and models to see what was best. We had heard that the Panasonic that the aforementioned father-in-law had was good but as he'd had it a while we decided to see if there was anything "new and improved" on the market.
Which bread maker ?
Obviously, the best places to start were the web and the local shops in Colchester. All I can say about the shops is that as you would expect the proprietors had not tried every machine and so could not give great advice. Also, just looking at a machine only really gives you a vague feel for size and possibly build quality. So I pretty quickly gave up on that approach.
The web as always had far more information than I could possibly sift through easily. However, directing my searching and using as many comparison sites as possible I started to narrow the field. As it turned out there were 2 competitors in the running. The first was the originally suggested panasonic and the second was not. It took some time investigating as even on the web, hardly anyone had used both models and so so there was little in the way of comparisons, only recommendations. However diligent searching eventually turned up someone who had used both and highly recommended them both. The crucial point, as one was around £45 and the other around £60 was that although the person recommended both he strongly suggested getting the panasonic. The reason being he had loved the first model he used, but had, when it broke, bought a panasonic and considered it well worth the extra few pounds. So we bought the aforementioned model from amazon for my fathers Christmas present. For those interested, here is the link for the Panasonic SD 252 available on amazon.
The Verdict
Well, the only verdict we can come up with here is that it's brilliant. If my father, who normally only ever cooks pizza and ready meals in the Aga or does barbecues, can make such fabulous bread then anyone can. I haven't tried making bread myself yet, but it would appear to be a simply case of selecting the right program, stuffing all the ingredients and some liquid into the machine, hitting the "go" button and then waiting for the beep. So far we have had all sorts of bread including, white, granary, brown, whole-meal and fruit loaf. All of them are great, and even better when they are fresh.
Some advice
Making better bread
Luckily, my father happens to know a few people in the brewery industry. Obviously this has always been a good thing what with samples, but now it's even better. The reason is that yeast is used in both brewing and bread making and so he has been given these bits of useful advice. Firstly, he was advised to store yeast in the freezer and when using it to add about 50% more than recommended from the frozen batch. The reason for this is that some of the yeast is "killed" by being frozen, but the advantage is that the yeast then keeps for years (well, maybe not actual years, but a long long time). The second piece of advice was to use "bread improver". According to a web site I read improvers "are formulated to give maximum dough stability, optimum water absorption and excellent tolerance when processed on particular mixers and automatic equipment." Now I don't know about that, but it certainly makes the loaves bigger and "lighter" which is particularly good for the heavy whole-meal breads. So if you can try some then I would suggest you do and decide for yourselves if it's an improvement.
Bread mixes
Well, if you think the prospect of having to measure out your various ingredients is still too much like hard work there is good news. You can buy a variety of bread mixes. These are basically appropriately mixed proportions of ingredients for different types of loaves that mean all you have to do is add liquid to the right amount in your bread machine and switch it on. No more of this presumably troublesome fiasco of having to measure 3 or 4 ingredients yourself. Though I suppose in reality it's to save the problem you have with any cooking of having bits of various ingredients left over everywhere because you can only buy significantly more than you need of some ingredients like mustard powder or seed to sprinkle.

Bank Safes not Safe Banks ?

2006-01-17T20:54:00.000+00:00

Today I received my regular motley fool newsletter e-mail. For those of you not familiar with them please do check out their link on my links page if you are interested in free, generic financial advice. They have advice on how to save money, how not to spend too much of it and most things in between.
The bit that caught my attention in this particular e-mail was their usual list of "savings accounts". For the first time I can remember, not only did the list not include good old Cahoot, but it included a bank I hadn't seen before by the name of ICICI. As they were offering a really good interest rate I decided to take a look. It turns out this is a bank originating from India. Now without wanting to sound dubious about foreign country regulations, this made me wonder how safe using them might be. Anyone wondering why I thought this should look into to news reports such as The Sun newspaper buying account details from IT staff in India, an Indian company threatening to release patient details belonging to a US hospital in a payment dispute and the like. Now I'm am in NO WAY trying to suggest anything negative about India or it's wonderful people. The question is valid for all countries outside your own, or in this case my own. I am actually raising the question of differences in international laws and regulations as I hope people will appreciate.
Being a reasonably sensible person I looked on the ICICI web site and found an answer to my question of "security" of any money I might place with them. What shocked me was not what it said, but what, as a result of asking the helpful people at Motley Fool I found out about ALL UK bank accounts. So, what is this nugget of scary information ?. Well, it is the fact that even if you use a bank that is registered with the UK FSA which "means it is reputable", you are still only protected for roughly 100% of the first £2K 90% of the first £33K held there. Obviously the FSA web site holds accurate details at http://www.fscs.org.uk/consumer/key_facts/ for anyone interested.
I would like to think that this is not a scary piece of information but when you consider what happened to companies such as Enron and Barings Bank it makes you wonder. Hopefully we can all feel safe that we are protected by such things as the Sarbanes Oxley Act and other regulations on operations of financial institutions. But quite how these apply to foreign finance houses is probably going to remain something of a mystery to the average bank account holder like myself.
Sorry I don't have an answer to this question. Hopefully the people at Motley Fool will continue to help us keep our heads above water in such respects. In lieu of anything else then maybe just remember the old saying "as safe as houses" and stick to the property market if you have enough money to be concerned by the approximately £30K limit of protection (subsidence, ocean rises as a result of global warming and late 1980s style market crashes not withstanding).

CSS Site Design

2006-01-13T20:52:00.000+00:00

Just a quick note really. Anyone out there who hasn't yet been converted to the wonders of CSS please visit the CSS Zen garden. It is an brilliant example of what CSS is all about.
Once you have been persuaded by the site above to use CSS I would suggest a good starting point for learning it is W3Schools.

Building Websites

2006-01-11T20:50:00.000+00:00

Well, having spent some time learning the art of web site design with XHTML and CSS I decided to try and find a specialist tool for building web sites. Having found one, I thought it might be helpful to others to share what tool I chose and mention some I tried along the way. I should point out at this point that I am currently using a powerbook G4 so I went looking for Mac only applications not windows ones.
Tools I tried along the way include vim,TextWrangler, SEEdit mini and Style Master. All of these I found to have things about them that were useful and made them stand out from the other tools I tried. One that warrants particular mention is Style Master. It is a CSS specific tool rather than a web site building tool so it wasn't really a candidate for my final choice. But for building style sheets it's brilliant and I may use it for just that at some point.
My final choice was RapidWeaver from realmacsoftware. It makes creating web sites so easy it's depressing when you have, as I did, just created one "by hand" using vim. It's really good on price at a measly $35 and it's worth every penny. It makes creating site, even including blogs, simple and can even do podcast if you want. It has plenty of themes built in and you can either buy more or build you own if you want something different. The later of which I did for one web site, which shows how easy it is to do, just involving a simple XHTML template document and corresponding CSS style sheet. I accept that it might not be ideal for more complex web sites, but with the ability to use it for PHP or ASP pages as well as HTML or text pages it's certainly capable of building fairly complex web sites.

First Blog Entry

2006-01-09T20:48:00.000+00:00

Well, if I have a web presence I may as well have a blog too right ?. So here it is. I will try to use this space to just throw anything I think is a bit free form for an actual page but might be of interest to people. I don't really expect to get much, if any traffic from other people, it's as much a place for me to see how blogs works as much as anything else. If however you are listening / reading out there, then welcome to my blog and I hope I don't bore you too much.