Jonathan Bullock

JBake v2.5.0 Released

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I'm very pleased to say that JBake v2.5.0 has been released!

The big changes in this release are support for Groovy's MarkupTemplateEngine and Jade4J - both are great if you dislike markup in the your template engines. Watch mode has also been added to the built-in server so JBake will automatically detect any content changes and re-build your output on the fly for you, great for when you're working locally and want to see what the content looks like.

There is also support for running JBake from Cygwin and pagination support for the index page, among a whole bunch of smaller changes and bug fixes. It's the biggest release so far in terms of contributions, pull requests and closed issues.

The release is now available on Maven Central, Bintray, SDKMAN! and Homebrew.

Stephen

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0100

It finally feels right to follow up my last post with a post about Stephen, my son, who turned 1 this month.

I'd like to think it was destiny that Stephen was born just over a year to the date that his sister was.

Another milestone... I've gone from counting how old he is in weeks, to months and now it's years. While the year feels like it's flown by, a lot has happened when I think back. He's changed so, so much in just a year. He's learnt to roll over, to sit up, to crawl and now he's started to pull himself up. Walking is the next big step to look forward to (or maybe not!), now that his first teeth have finally made an appearance.

For his first birthday we took him to Anglesey Sea Zoo, although I think he was more interested in the shiny metal around each of the exhibits than the marine life contained within. Anyway it was an enjoyable family day out.

Being a father has been one of the most challenging, but at the same time, rewarding things I've ever experienced and I cannot wait for whatever happens next.

Jessica

Mon, 16 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0100

I'm writing this while sat in a room called Angel. It's a room I wish, I never knew existed.

Just after 2:30pm on Thursday our life was turned upside down. I will never forget the look on the first sonographers face. The realisation of the situation didn't truly hit me until it was confirmed by the second scan at Ysbyty Gwynedd Hospital, until then I was still clinging on to some hope.

My wife and I were then transferred up to Angel room on Labour ward, where the staff then went through the protocol with us. I felt completely numb. It was like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I didn't know what to do. I didn't even think why, it didn't matter.

It felt like it was the worst moment of my life, but I was wrong, the worst moment was yet to happen. We were told the safest way to deal with the situation was to induce labour. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, what my wife would have to go through, it was crushing. I just wanted to take away all the fear and worry from her, but I knew I couldn't. The process started the following day with a single tablet, we were then sent home before we returned 48 hours later.

The scan on Thursday was only supposed to be a quick one to get a better picture of our baby's heart. It was exactly 2 weeks after the 2nd scan where we found out we were having a girl. It was one of the best days of my life, we had told our family and friends we were having a girl. Now we had to tell them our terrible news. Saying the words out loud, that was the worst part. They never got easier to say. Words you never wanted to say.

After telling those we were able to we tried to keep busy, trying not to think about what was ahead. But news travels fast. We got messages, cards and flowers from everyone. We know everyone meant well but we didn't want to be reminded, we just didn't want to think about what was ahead. It's still not over, we know there will be people who don't know and will ask how the pregnancy is going. We will have to say those words again.

The worst is now over and Helen is doing well, she was absolutely amazing, words cannot describe how proud I am of her. All the staff in the Labour ward at Ysbyty Gywnedd Hospital have been wonderful throughout too.

Our daughter, Jessica, was still-born at 5:47pm on Sunday 15th June 2014.

JBake v2.2.0 Released

Wed, 23 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0100

I'm pleased to announce that JBake v2.2.0 has been released!

The big new feature in this release is support for AsciiDoc formatted content files. Adding support was possible thanks to the excellent Asciidoctor project and their Java Integration library. If you need to create documentation of any kind I highly recommend you have a look at the AsciiDoc format, you can even use it to write books in!

There's also a couple of new command line options. One that creates a sample project structure with some templates and content files all integrated with Bootstrap to get you up and running quickly. The other runs JBake in local server mode allowing you to see what your baked site looks like before deploying or uploading it.

For full details head over and see the updated documentation.

From this release onwards the project will be adopting the Semantic Versioning specification, to help maintain an understandable backwards compatibility strategy

Weekly Links #15

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Here's this weeks collection of humorous links:

Anglo EU Translation Guide - so true!!
RFC for 7XX range of HTTP status codes - Developer Errors - would be great if these were implemented.
Humor: Google Annotations Gallery - an old April fools joke.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Nautilus Location Bar

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Another customisation I make when setting up Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is to switch the location bar in Nautilus from bread crumbs into a text entry box. To do this run the following command in terminal window:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry true

Weekly Links #14

Mon, 8 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Here's this weeks collection of links:

Star Wars story in an animated GIF - sent this link by a co-worker, simply amazing!
360 Panorama of London from BT Tower - you can spend all day browsing round London.
Global Flight Paths - another great visualisation of the global flight paths.
32-way Raspberry Pi cluster - on the cheap!
Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi - another use of the board.

Blog is 5 years old

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

I've just realised that the blog was 5 years old last month. I had planned on posting something on the anniversary but the last couple of months have flown by and I've not had time to post much at all. Oh well here is to the next 5 years of blogging.

Talk at Demo Liverpool

Sat, 22 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

On Thursday last week I did my first bit of public speaking by giving a talk on JBake at the first Demo Liverpool event. I went on second to present and give a demo and thankfully everything went to plan which was a relief. Afterwards I got some really useful feedback as well as being asked some great questions, all of which will go into the roadmap.

Here are the slides from my talk:

link to the presentation

JBake v2.1 Released

Sat, 4 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

I'm happy to announce that JBake v2.1 has been released!

The big change in this release is the standardisation of the data model presented to the templating engine which will mean a slight update to your templates (mainly replacing "posts" with "published_posts" in your index, feed & archive templates - detailed info is available in the docs). Although there is now more data available to the templates including a full collection of posts and pages allowing you to have multiple news/blog listing pages (for example: JBake.org). You also have full access to the configuration so you can build more logic into your templates.

The other major change is the way JBake is distributed and executed. It's no longer just 1 large JAR file and has execution scripts for both Windows & Linux/Unix/Mac platforms. As well as using the excellent args4j library to provide a better CLI experience which will hopefully be expanded further in the future. Thanks goes to mismatch for contributions in this release.

Lots of great new features are already planned out for future releases. If you have any ideas or want to get involved then please get in touch!

Weekly Links #13

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Here's this weeks collection of links:

hub - "makes git better with github"
The Rise and Fall of Languages in 2012 - interesting look back at what happened in 2012.
TIOBE Programming Community Index for April 2013 - latest index for April 2013.
One man's journey from Los Angeles to Real Madrid good-luck charm - Amazing story.
CRaSH - "The shell for the Java Platform"

Weekly Links #12

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Here's this weeks collection of links:

JBehave - Java framework for Behaviour-Driven Development.
International Obfuscated C Code Contest - it's amazing what people can come up with.
Supervisor - A process control system, looks handy for monitoring server processes.
Calais - Semantic functionality toolkit, looks interesting.

Weekly Links #11

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Here's this weeks collection of links:

Foundation - "the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world".
YAML CSS Framework - "A modular CSS framework for truly flexible, accessible and responsive websites".
Ubuntu low-mem install for VMs - very useful to know.
MindMup - Online mind mapping, open source too!

Weekly Links #10

Fri, 5 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Here's this weeks collection of links:

Stop externalising your life - great article about social media use.
Tour de Babel - colourful overview of programming languages, an old post but still worth reading, by the same guy who had a rant about platforms.
JBoss related Desktop Wallpapers - I do like the "Closed Source is Lame" one.
Frameworks Round 2 - Follow up to last weeks post, even though some frameworks have been tuned to the use case of the benchmark they haven't gained a lot compared to the performance of others. The source code behind the benchmark is also available on GitHub.

Weekly Links #9

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

ini4j - "Java API for handling Windows ini file format".
Writing Open Source Software? Make Sure You Know Your Copyright Rights - I'm glad a spent a bit of time investigating the right license to release JBake under.
On Falling Over... - A very honest and moving piece of writing.
Framework Benchmarks - Obviously I'm a fan of Java but even I was shocked by the results.
Neo4j - "is an open source, high performance, enterprise grade NOSQL graph database".
Most popular memory configurations - Interesting to see a snapshot of what others are using for their JVM (the first post is here).

Weekly Links #8

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

Pictures from a developer's life - the first one is far too common!
modern.IE - IE versions (6 to 10) available for download in multiple different virtualisation formats
Virus Venn Diagram - so true!
Git Reference - bit more in depth than a cheat sheet

How this site is made

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from my introduction of JBake here's how I use it to make this site.

I store the content for my site in a private SVN repository and use Eclipse as an editor (the site is a project in Eclipse), overkill I know but it has a decent SVN client plugin that I'm very familar with and a few other useful plugins. Plus the source code of JBake was written using Eclipse so I can quickly tinker with the code and re-generate my site locally within a few clicks.

Once I'm happy with the new content I commit the changes to my SVN repository and that's all I have to do. On my VM I have a cron job that runs every few hours that checks out a new copy from the SVN repo, runs JBake on the checked out copy to generate the output which is then served out directly by Apache HTTPD.

I'm quite happy with my workflow for this site, although you could use Git instead of SVN if you prefer, like I do for jbake.org using GitHub or even Dropbox so you could work on the content using a mobile device.

You can even generate your site locally on your PC/laptop and just rsync/ftp the output up to your web server, the choice is up to you.

Weekly Links #7

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

OfflineImap - Software that sync's multiple IMAP mailboxes
PointHQ DNS - Free (for 5 domains) DNS hosting service
hackurls - Web based aggregator of hacker based news feeds
POPURLS - Web based aggregator of popular links sites like Reddit & Digg

Google Reader Shutting Down

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I logged into Google Reader this morning as I do most mornings and discovered, thanks to a pop-up message, that Google are retiring the product on the 1st July 2013.

I'm gutted. I use the service every day on my phone thanks to their excellent Android app.

There have been lots of rumors floating about over the past few weeks about the future of the product but I never thought the end would be so soon. Time to find an alternative like everyone else. Maybe it's time to re-consider using Feedburner too.

Rhys makes a good point that this is a timely reminder about hosting your own services rather than depending on 3rd parties, something I've always preferred to do.

UPDATE: Just seen this on Twitter by Miguel de Icaza: "Every software programmer today: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3tdh44/" definitely what I've been thinking, especially as I've done something similar recently.

UPDATE 2: Bit of background from a former Google Reader product manager. Magnet.io looks like a possible alternative by Russell Beattie, something he's been working on for himself for a while.

Introducing JBake

Sat, 9 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Last year I came across a number of posts (Development Seed, Tim Bray, Tom Preston-Werner and Tao of Mac) all talking about building static sites from just text files, otherwise known as Baking, and while the technique isn't new it interested me and got me thinking about this site. The idea of working on my posts offline in any editor I fancied using and storing them in a VCS such as SVN or Git really appealed to the developer in me.

Around the same time I was finding Wordpress (and Apache) would crawl every now and then as this site is running off a relatively small VM provided by Bytemark and I thought it was time for a change.

So after a phase of defining my requirements for such a tool, I set out to build my own. The result of those few nights hacking away has been powering this site since last July and is simply called JBake, thanks to my wife.

The source code is now available on GitHub and is released under a MIT License. Something I've been meaning to do for a while.

UPDATE: Details on how I use JBake.

Restore GRUB after Windows 8 install

Thu, 7 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

After upgrading to Windows 8 Pro 64-bit recently I had to restore GRUB to my MBR so I could boot back into Ubuntu. First off I used the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS install CD to boot into a live session, then from a Terminal session I tried to run:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

However it failed with the following message:

/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?)

Thanks to this post I was able to resolve the problem by first mounting my root partition:

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

Then trying the grub install with an extra parameter:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda --boot-directory=/mnt/boot/

Windows 8 64-bit Upgrade from Vista 32-bit

Wed, 6 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I only had the 32-bit version of Windows Vista installed on my laptop so the Windows 8 upgrade assistant detected this and only downloaded the 32-bit ISO for me, however I wanted to install the 64-bit version. Here's how I did it:

I downloaded a Windows 7 64-bit ISO from this site, and installed it inside a Virtualbox VM (I just clicked next when it asked for a product key and it let me pass). Then I downloaded the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant from within the VM and ran it, it will then detect your running on a 64-bit OS and will download the 64-bit version of the ISO for you. I then burnt the ISO to a DVD and used that to upgrade my copy of Windows Vista.

During the Windows 8 install process I formatted my target drive as I wanted a fresh install and it didn't seem to have a problem with this, I assume it had already detected a valid OS to satisfy the upgrade. If you don't already have a valid OS installed for the upgrade it appears you can still use the upgrade ISO according to this guide.

Android ADB causing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS shutdown to hang

Tue, 5 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Soon after I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS my laptop started to randomly hang when shutting down. After a bit of investigation I discovered it would only happen when I'd ran Eclipse, specifically my Android profile. I then noticed that the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) daemon was still running after I'd shut down Eclipse. If I killed the process manually then Ubuntu would shut down fine.

I'm yet to find a fix for this issue, I've made sure I've got the latest version of the Android SDK Tools installed just in case but the bug still exists. I've also discovered that it happens to a co-worker as well. If your an Android developer and your PC is hanging during shutdown check your ADB daemon isn't still running too.

Weekly Links #6

Sat, 2 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

CloudFlare blows hole in laws of Web physics with Go and Railgun - Interesting new take on speeding up the web.
Free Pascal - Can't believe I've not discovered this before now, I'll have to dig out my old Pascal code.
Lego Hogwarts - Made out of about 400,000 bricks, simply amazing!
ISO 8601 - Set in 1988 yet we're still dealing with confusion over dates, wish more people used the standard.
Perf4J - "Perf4J is to System.currentTimeMillis() as log4j is to System.out.println()".

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Oracle Java JDK Install

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There are lots of ways to install the official Oracle JDK on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, however I prefer to use the following PPA (Ubuntu Personal Package Archive) supplied by WEB UPD8. The beauty of this method is that it sorts out all the update-alternatives commands for you and you get automatic updates as when they are released.

So follow the instructions outlined in this guide to add the PPA. If you haven't got the add-apt-repository command then you can install it using:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

The PPA includes installers for JDK 6, 7 & 8:

user@client:~$ apt-cache search oracle-java
oracle-jdk7-installer - Oracle JDK7 Installer meta package
oracle-java7-installer - Oracle Java(TM) Development Kit (JDK) 7
oracle-java6-installer - Oracle Java(TM) Development Kit (JDK) 6
oracle-java8-installer - Oracle Java(TM) Development Kit (JDK) 8
oracle-java7-set-default - Set Oracle JDK 7 as default Java
oracle-java6-set-default - Set Oracle JDK 6 as default Java
oracle-java8-set-default - Set Oracle JDK 8 as default Java

Just install the version your after and let the package do the rest for you.

Weekly Links #5

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

How Domains Became Backwards - All because of e-mail addresses.
How to Shoot Yourself In the Foot - Another Internet classic, especially the C++ & Java ones.
The History of Hashima, the Island in Bond Film Skyfall - Fascinating story that includes a short documentary, reminds me of Pripyat.
Llandudno hotel voted best in world for service in TripAdvisor awards - Nice to see a local independent hotel win the award.

Weekly Links #4

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

jsoup: Java HTML Parser - Looks exactly what I was looking for a few months back.
ostinato: Packet/Traffic Generator and Analyzer - "aims to be Wireshark in Reverse", looks quite useful.
ODROID-U2 - "Ferrari version of the Raspberry Pi" (via: Tao of Mac).
Hibernate Mapping Cheat Sheet - Useful to have at hand when working with Hibernate.
How to fry an egg using an Athlon - Came across this old link this week while talking about cooling systems and found a copy of the original photos.

Weekly Links #3

Sat, 9 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

Greyhole - Recommended by a co-worker, alternative to Windows Drive Extender.
Writing is hard, so do it - Writing a technical book is a goal I'd like to achieve one day.
Linux on 4KB-sector disks - Worth a read if your interested in storage.
Atlassian switch from SVN to Git - First in a series of articles about Atlassian switching from SVN to Git.
Let's Build an MP3-Decoder - Old article now but still has a lot of great detail about the MP3 format.

SSH Authentication using a Public/Private Key Pair

Wed, 6 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I always have to remind myself how to setup SSH authentication using a public/private key pair when I install a Linux server as it's something I usually setup and forget about until I have to do it again. So this is here as a reminder to myself.

Overview: The public/private key pair is generated on the client, the public key is then copied onto the server. Only a client that has the private key can respond to an auth challenge issued by the server using the public key.

Use the ssh-keygen command to generate the public/private key pair on the client, by default your private key is stored in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa and your public key is stored in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

user@client:~$ ssh-keygen 
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa): 
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
23:2c:5e:45:f9:c5:10:d8:67:6f:b6:45:c7:28:4e:a8 user@client
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|                 |
|                 |
|      . +        |
|o. . o o         |
|+.o o * A        |
| o.=.* .         |
| -oo= -          |
|. Fo -           |
|  . .            |
+-----------------+

Use the ssh-copy-id command to automatically add your public key to /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys on your server. If the file doesn't already exist it will be created using mode 600.

user@client:~$ ssh-copy-id user@server
user@server's password: 
Now try logging into the machine, with "ssh 'user@server'", and check in:

  ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

to make sure we haven't added extra keys that you weren't expecting.

That's it, next time you SSH to your server you should be logged in without having to type in a password.

I should point out it's good security practice to encrypt your key pair with a passphrase, however doing so will mean that you will be required to enter your passphrase each time you try to connect to your server.

Weekly Links #2

Fri, 1 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here's this weeks collection of links:

Tron Legacy - Brilliant post from someone who worked on the special effects for the film. An excellent film with a great sound track.
Premier League team support on Twitter - Great visualisation using data from Twitter.
How to Write an Opening Sentence - Good article to help you start writing.
A Bad Lip Reading of the NFL - Watch it, it's funny!
Learn Windows 8 in 3 minutes - A co-worker pointed me at this, worth watching to get an overview of the new features in Windows 8.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Scrollbars

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One of the first things I did after installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was get rid of the dynamic overlay scrollbars, I'm definitely not a fan of them! You can get rid of them in a couple of ways.

First option is to update the GNOME preference by running the following command in a terminal window:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface ubuntu-overlay-scrollbars false

Or you can remove the overlay libraries themselves again using a terminal window:

sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2-0 liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2-0

Raspberry Pi Slice

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Finally got round to buying a decent case for my Raspberry Pi, called the Slice. You can get them on eBay & Amazon in multiple colours. Mine is now sat by the TV running an instance of Raspbmc (XBMC) acting as my media player. All controlled from my Android tablet running the Yatse remote control.

Weekly Links #1

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I've decided to start posting batches of links on a weekly basis, so here's the first batch:

FatCow Free Web Icons - Set of 3000 free icons.
ownCloud - Setup your own private version of DropBox.
jq - a command line JSON processor.
Favourite Linux Commands - Some useful tips here.
How to take back control of your own social networks - I do prefer to host my own stuff and not rely on 3rd parties.
Iron.io - Hosted Cloud Message Queue, wouldn't mind having a play with this service.
zepto.js - Minimalist JS library with a jQuery compatible API.

49ers Quest for Six

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Finally, after waiting nearly 20 years since the last time, the San Francisco 49ers are heading back to the Super Bowl after a great win over the Atlanta Falcons last night. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole game. After the start the Falcons made I thought it's not our year again, but the team came back and got the job done.

Unfortunately I think last night confirmed that Alex Smith's days are over in San Francisco, it's a shame really as I don't think we saw the best of him due to the multiple different Offensive Coordinators & schemes he had to adapt to each year. He's definitely worthy of a starter QB job somewhere else, the last 18 months should've secured him that, he's a definite upgrade for some teams around the league.

The #QUESTforSIX continues, I'll be staying up for Super Bowl 47 in two weeks time!

Windows 8 Pro Upgrade Pricing

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If your considering moving up to Windows 8 anytime soon then have a look at the Windows 8 Pro upgrade offer Microsoft have got on until the 1st February 2013.

Although Ubuntu Linux is my primary OS even I'd be tempted to upgrade the Vista licence I've got for around £25, still useful to have a copy of Windows for certain software.

Linux df command and missing space

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Late last year I re-installed the home server, a HP ProLiant Microserver running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, to get rid of the original 250GB disk and use the 2 x 2TB Samsung drives I had in a Linux software RAID 1 array. I decided to stay away from using the on-board RAID controller as all my research seemed to suggest that it's a "fake" RAID controller so I wouldn't have gained much if anything over software RAID. Plus I knew I could always take a disk out of the array and mount it on another Linux box if ever needed to (and I have needed to in the past). By using the onboard controller it may not be as easy according to this forum post I found.

After installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on the array I did notice something strange while I was waiting for the array to be synced (monitor it via /proc/mdstat) and file system to be lazily initialised, the "df" command appeared to be reporting more disk space used up than I was expecting? Now I wasn't sure if this was something due to the RAID or file system initialisation so I left it for the time being in case it righted itself. It didn't and it's been bugging me ever since to the point where I did some proper investigation recently.

According to df I had 1859GB in total space with about 789GB used and 977GB free, so I'd lost 93GB somewhere.

me@server:~$ df
Filesystem      1K-blocks      Used  Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0       1949324764 827062456 1024696468  45% /
udev              1000084         4    1000080   1% /dev
tmpfs              403636       396     403240   1% /run
none                 5120         0       5120   0% /run/lock
none              1009084         0    1009084   0% /run/shm

Thanks to this great reply on ServerFault I discovered the reason why using the dumpe2fs command:

me@server:~$ sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/md0
Block size:               4096
...

Using the correct block size with the df command I discovered I was missing 24391460 4K-blocks:

me@server:~$ df -B 4K
Filesystem     4K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0       487331191 206765616 256174115  45% /
udev              250021         1    250020   1% /dev
tmpfs             100909        99    100810   1% /run
none                1280         0      1280   0% /run/lock
none              252271         0    252271   0% /run/shm

Which was exactly the same number of blocks that was listed under Reserved block count:

me@server:~$ sudo dumpe2fs -h /dev/md0
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Reserved block count:     24391460
Free blocks:              280565614
Free inodes:              121836462
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
...

The next question was, why is 93GB reserved? After a bit more research I discovered the answer, the default on Linux is to reserve 5%, (1859 / 100) * 5 = 92.95 or my missing 93GB, of blocks. This can be tweaked using the tune2fs command but I'm quite happy to leave it as I know where my missing space has gone. If you do want to tweak the setting do some further research first before changing it so you know the what the consequences are.

Good Bug Reports

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If your involved in software development then you'll know how getting good bug reports from users really help. But not everyone knows how to create good bug reports. So if you can help your users by providing them with some guidelines and maybe a few examples they can relate to. Here's some links to help:

How to write good bug reports - Great article describing what you need in a bug report.
How to Report Bugs Effectively - Another good article on reporting bugs well.

Disk & Partition Cloning Tools

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

As I recently switched drives over in my laptop here's some links to disk & partition cloning tools I found handy:

Partclone - Linux command line tool for imaging/cloning a partition. I used this to backup the Dell recovery partition on my original drive as I went for a fresh install on the new drive.
Clonezilla - Co-worker used this to migrate his existing Dell recovery & Windows partitions over to a new drive as is. Comes as a Live CD ISO image and has an enterprise offering too. Very similar to Norton Ghost. Uses Partclone under the hood.
EaseUS Partition Manager - Recommended by a co-worker, has a free version for home users.

Unity Keyboard Shortcuts

Wed, 9 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I'd decided before upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS that I'd give Unity a try even though I was quite happy with the GNOME shell in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. So far it's been fine I've had no major issues with it, however it's not that different to the OS X interface which I've spent a few years using so I've got used to it pretty quickly really.

One thing I've just discovered which may make me love it are the keyboard shortcuts it has. To get an overlay on your screen of them just long press your "Super" key otherwise known as the Windows key!

2012: Year in Review

Sat, 5 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Hello 2013, I hope your just as good as 2012 was! I've not done a year in review before although I've meant to each year, usually by the time I usually get round to doing one it's late on in January and never feels right.

So, 2012 was a big year personally for me, in April I got married to the love of my life Helen. Earlier in January I made my last trip over to Baku, Azerbaijan with work, it was the only work related trip I made last year which was completely different to 2011 when I was pretty much out of the country in every month of the year. Helen and I travelled down to Bath for a short break straight after the wedding which was great despite the rain, and then in June we went to Mexico for our honeymoon, which was lovely and very, very hot!

In March I finally got round to releasing my first Android app: GenPass - a random password generator. However I did release the app first on the Blackberry tablet platform to get a free 16GB PlayBook thanks to their developer relations team which was a nice bonus. Not bad for a mornings work!

Like most people I also spent most of August watching as much of the London 2012 Olympics as I could, I even got to go and watch a couple of football games at Old Trafford, the highlight was watching Brazil beat Korea in the semi-final. The opening ceremony was also spectacular, with Bond escorting the Queen the best clip of all!

Towards the end of the year I started studying for the SCJP exam. It's something I've been meaning to do for a couple of years and hopefully pass sometime in 2013. The rest of 2012 was pretty quiet really, although I did start work on a new project, JBake, a Java based static site generator. I'm sure I'll be posting more about JBake in 2013.

For 2013 I've not really set any major new year's resolutions, the only one I've ever stuck at was quitting smoking back in 2005, and I've read lots of explanations on why we fail at them. So instead for this year, the only task I'm setting myself relating to 2013 is to post on here at least once a week, 52 is not a massive amount of posts. James Whatley achieved this in 2012 and after reading his post I thought yeah I can do that, I'm keeping it simple though just 1 post each week. I usually find something, be it a new library or article, that interests me each week so it should be very achievable! One down 51 to go...

In terms of this site in 2012 the most popular post by far was Software Development KPI's.

Have a good 2013 everyone!

Time for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Just before Christmas I purchased a new hard disk for my aging Dell Studio 15 laptop as a little treat to myself. I went for the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB, which is a hybrid SSD drive, in the hope it would give the old laptop a new lease of life.

I had, originally, been looking at a traditional SSD but a co-worker pointed me in the direction of the Seagate hybrid range. After doing a bit of research to see whether real life measurements matched the marketing hype I took the plunge and ordered the 750GB version (comes with a 8GB SSD built in).

Thanks to the new drive I've taken the opportunity to finally move up to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, I had been waiting until the first point revision had been released but co-workers experiences with Unity made me put off the upgrade a bit longer. So I'll be posting a few tweaks for things in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS that I've come across so far while setting it up.

SCJP: Putting it to good use

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I'm in the middle of studying for what used to be called the Sun Certified Java Programmer for Java SE 6 exam, think it's known as the Oracle Certified Professional for Java SE 6 exam now. I thought I knew Java pretty well but there was so much of the language I've hardly used that I need to know to pass the exam. So to aid in the learning process I'm going to try and put what I've learnt so far to good use by re-writting JBake.

There are a few features I'd like to add to JBake before I release it but I've been meaning to restructure it for a while so now seems as good a time as any.

Oh and I highly recommend the SCJP Java SE 6 Study Guide book by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates. There should be a Java SE 7 version due out in a couple of months too.

99 Life Hacks To Make Your Life Easier

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0100

99 Life Hacks to make your life easier - Some very useful tips here.

Anatomy Of A Hoax

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Anatomy Of A Hoax - A great breakdown of the Sony Nexus hoax, and a reminder why we should not always believe everything we read online or in print. I was reminded of this quite recently when a local paper got a story so unbelievably wrong it still amazes me. They couldn't even get it right when it was provided to them on a plate! Makes you wonder how much more of the "news" you read is accurate at all!

Parsing HTML output in Java

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Recently I needed to parse the HTML output from a 3rd party site so I could use an XPath locator on the source to identify a specific value. I used Apache HttpComponents to make the HTTP request to the site and provide me with the HTML output and thought I could parse the output using Dom4j. This is where I ran into problems, first the HTML output contained an invalid unicode character which caused Dom4j problems but this was easily fixed using Mark McLaren's method to strip out all invalid characters. Then Dom4j started having issues with the HTML structure itself so I hunted around for other solutions to convert HTML output into something more well formed and found HTMLCleaner which did the trick, it also solved the invalid unicode characters too.

I also came across JTidy thanks to Mark's post which was next on my list to try.

Computer Language Benchmark Game

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Computer Language Benchmark Game - I'd forgotten how much slower interpreted languages are compared to compiled languages. This would explain why WordPress felt so sluggish on my small VM.

Here are some other useful sites when considering languages:

Fun with Struts2+REST

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Finally got round to working on my URL shortener hash.to tonight, another of my pet projects. It was throwing a random error relating to my usage of Hibernate for a while and I've not been able to fix it as I've been in the middle of trying to get the Struts2 REST plugin working on the project. Well tonight I rolled back my work in progress and hopefully fixed the bug, if not I've added more debug output to the log files so the root cause should be more easy to identify now.

After that I also had another go of getting the REST plugin to play nicely with normal Struts2 actions and finally made some progress. The plan all along had been to provide a REST based API to the service so now I can crack on with it.

I'll write up how I got the REST plugin working too.

RAID Considerations

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Saw my IT manager from work post a link to this blog post about RAID-5 and a hard disks Unrecoverable Read Error rate the other day. The post definitely opened my eyes to the wider considerations when it comes to storage systems. This got me thinking as I've been looking at getting another 2TB disk for the recently upgraded home server. Thankfully the original 2TB disk I bought, the Samsung 2TB Spinpoint F4 EcoGreen seems to have a URE rate (10^15 bits) that's better than I thought it would be. So I think I'll stick to the same model again.

I'll post more about my storage choices when I've finished the setup.

Perceived Software Complexity

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Perceived Software Complexity - a great visualisation and outline of the perceived complexity you go through on a software development project. Well worth reading before the start of your next project to remind yourself.

Migration Finished

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0100

I got round to completing the migration tonight. All the images should be loading now and code samples should be viewable again.

Also, due to the migration, comments have now gone. It's something I'd been thinking about for a while after reading Matt's post about his decision and the migration forced my hand. I can always use Disqus or something similar like IntenseDebate if I want to.

Next step is to tweak the overall design some more, I'm tempted to start using Twitter Bootstrap as a base but not sure yet. Better spend some more time playing around with FreeMarker templates.

Migration Started

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Just flicked the switch to the new site. Still got some clean up to do, copying images across, replacing WordPress specific markup in posts etc. but the majority of the migration is done. Most of the heavy lifting was done by the exporter I created to dump the content out of the WordPress database in the right format for my site generator to use.

Hopefully all the old links to content still work...

Finally got round to creating my own minimalistic design too!

Bye bye WordPress

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0100

This past week I've been working on my own blog based static site generator and it's got to a state that I'm happy with so I'm going to start migrating this site across. It's only about 500 lines of Java code at the moment but it ticks all the boxes I originally had for it so the time has come for me to start eating my own dog food.

I can't really fault WordPress, it's done the job well for me over the past 4 years but this is about me scratching an itch I've had for quite some time.

I'll post more once I've completed the migration.

iOS: A visual history

Mon, 2 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0100

iOS: A visual history. It's easy to forget how much the platform has been developed over the years.

"Debug certificate expired" error in Eclipse Android plugin

Mon, 2 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0100

"Debug certificate expired" error in Eclipse Android plugin. Ran into this error tonight, must be a year since I first installed my copy of the Android developer tools.

Android: A visual history

Mon, 2 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Android: A visual history. Here's the Android one for comparison. For me the pull down notification window and intents are the best things about the Android UI.

Sauber F1 car cut down the middle

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Youtube - Fascinating video of a Sauber F1 car cut down the middle.

Married man!

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Last month Helen and I got married at Llandudno Registry Office, so I can now officially select "Married" as my marital status on any forms I fill out! We had a low key do afterwards at the Imperial Hotel with family and friends and thankfully everything went to plan, even the weather held off so we could have a few photos outside. It was the perfect day.

You can see some photos of our day on the blog of our wedding photographer and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the photos this weekend to bring back some happy memories.

Ludum Dare

Sat, 5 May 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Ludum Dare. Competition to create a game in a weekend. Wouldn't mind joining in when it's next on if I have time.

PHP: a fractal of bad design

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

PHP: a fractal of bad design. Well worth a read, reminds me why I love Java so much.

Lakes and Oceans

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Lakes and Oceans. Shows what a feat of engineering drilling for oil really is.

Robolectric: Unit Test your Android app

Sun, 8 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Robolectric: Unit Test your Android Application. I shall have to try this out very soon.

roboguice

Sun, 8 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

roboguice. Brings Google Guice (dependency injection) to Android.

Football Manager Handheld for Android

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Football Manager Handheld for Android. This app was one of the reasons I replaced my iPod Nano with a Touch late last year. Good to see its being released on Android now.

Edimax EW-7811Un on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

I've recently re-purposed my old desktop PC to be a server running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. As it's an old box it's not exactly quiet so I placed it under the stairs which posed a problem connection wise. In the end I decided to connect it up via wireless rather than run an Ethernet cable to it, so after doing a bit of research I went for the Edimax EW-7811Un nano USB adaptor from Amazon.

According to the Edimax web site Linux drivers were available for it and there were a few posts on the Ubuntu forums & wiki saying that people had got it working:

The USB adaptor uses the RealTek rtl8192cu chip according to this Debian wiki page and the filename of the Edimax driver package.

I tried the Edimax drivers first but I was getting pretty random results so I switched to RealTek's own drivers which seemed a lot more stable, and they seem to update them quite often too.

Active Objects

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Active Objects. Another Java ORM framework, however this one is used by Atlassian in their plugin development platform.

Unity - Game Engine

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Unity - Game Engine. Noticed this logo on both Android & iOS games recently. Looks like an interesting 3d engine that supports multiple platforms and they also offer a free version of the engine!

Facebook shares some secrets on making MySQL scale

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Facebook shares some secrets on making MySQL scale. Some interesting Facebook usage stats and details of their MySQL infrastructure. What we know as MySQL probably bears very little resemblance to what Facebook use.

Have a .com web address? Know the legal risks

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Have a .com web address? Know the legal risks. Something definitely worth remembering if you use a .com domain.

Twitter moving away from hashbang

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Twitter moving away from hashbang - really glad about this. I'm not a fan of hashbangs at all and I hope more companies will follow suit.

The Scale of the Universe 2

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

http://htwins.net/scale2/ - Another great visualisation.

Lego Millennium Falcon Stop Motion Assembly

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

http://vimeo.com/36768371 - some serious time and effort has been put into this. Brings back memories of working at Brandsauce.

Software Development KPI's

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Been doing a bit of research recently on KPI's in relation to software development and the following list of articles I found may be useful for others:

Ironically this Dilbert comic strip also popped up in my feed reader during my research!

In summary implementing the wrong KPI's can have a very dangerous effect on business processes not just software development.

Windows 8: New UI, but old-school Microsoft - RussellBeattie.com

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Windows 8: New UI, but old-school Microsoft - RussellBeattie.com. This is exactly what I thought when I saw the new UI in Windows 8. Just because the UI works on a 4inch or 10inch screen doesn't mean it'll work on a 24inch PC screen. Right tools for the right job springs to mind.

Star Wars: Suggested Viewing Order

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Star Wars: Suggested Viewing Order. A lot of thought has gone into this and the suggestions do make a lot of sense. I'll be going for the "Alternative Suggestion" when I make my soon to be wife watch Star Wars for the first time.

Money Chart

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Money Chart. I love these kind of data visualisations.

Coding Horror: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Coding Horror: Serving at the Pleasure of the King. Great article about the Apple ecosystem. I agree with Jeff as a consumer I love Apple and their products but as a developer I have major issues with the way they control their ecosystem.

Devotion to Apple

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I read Marco's post about the Asus Zenbook and I have a bit of an issue with his view. Is he certain that logic board design was Apple's and not Intel's or a manufacturers like Foxconn? Even if it was Apple's did they not simply copy the overall product design of companies such as Sony, who have had a range of powerful yet portable laptops out for a while, or Dell (with the Latitude X1) with the MacBook Air?

Don't get me wrong I'm a fan of Marc's blog and I'd love a MacBook Pro laptop again but I do have an issue with the blind devotion some Apple users have to the Apple brand sometimes.

Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

Tue, 8 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support (via) - this is a major issue with the Android ecosystem that needs to be resolved. Google/handset manufacturers need to remember consumers are being signed up to 18-24 month contracts.

Google/Amazon Platform Rant

Tue, 8 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Google/Amazon Platform Rant. Pretty interesting read about service platforms at Google & Amazon from Steve Yegge a current Google employee. His follow up post is about working for Jeff Bezos.

JUDCon 2011: London

Mon, 7 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I had the chance, thanks to work, to attend JUDCon 2011 with Matt in London last week. It was a great conference overall, well organised, talks on relevant subjects, held at a great venue, even the complimentary wifi worked well!

The most interesting subjects for me were:

BoxGrinder - A tool for automating the creation of virtual appliances from installing the operating system to downloading and configuring 3rd party software like Apache HTTD.
JBoss Forge - An extensible CLI tool to incrementally add framework support to Java EE projects.
Arquillian - An extensible enterprise test platform that takes your test to the container. It also integrates with Selenium (otherwise known as Arquillian Drone).
JBoss AS7 - The JBoss Application Server completely rewritten from AS6, based on JBoss Modules (OSGi).

Best talk of the conference had to go to the last one we saw from Andrew Lee Rubinger who gave a great overview of JBoss AS7, specifically the re-write, Arquillian and rapid enterprise programming.

Hopefully JUDCon will come back to the UK again next year.

What motivates us

Wed, 2 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My manager sent me the link to this video today, the message of the talk was something I've felt personally for a while but it's good to see research back it up. It's why I code at evenings & weekends on my little side projects such as Twitile. The visualisation of the message is also quite unique.

The author also has a book out on the subject called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Unproductive Day || Joel Bradbury

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Unproductive Day || Joel Bradbury. I love the minimalist design of Joel's site, this is exactly the kind of design I want for this site if I ever get round to it!

HTC Desire 2.3 update begins via DIY install

Sun, 7 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

HTC Desire 2.3 update begins via DIY install. Not too happy about this poor attempt of an update, it was only offered due to the backlash they received. This is the second flagship HTC Android phone I've had that has been abandoned after a year of me having it. This has got to be sorted out if networks are going to offer these phones on 18-24m contracts! I'll be looking at other brands of Android phones next.

Complaint Sent to BBC Regarding F1 Coverage

Sun, 7 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Complaint Sent to BBC Regarding F1 Coverage. - I totally agree. This is terrible news for F1 coverage in the UK.

Coding Horror: Working with the Chaos Monkey

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Coding Horror: Working with the Chaos Monkey. Really good article. There is nothing like a hard to track down bug or configuration issue to make you realise where the faults are in your system.

OSI Model of the Internet circa 2010

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

OSI Model of the Internet circa 2010. Came across this and thought it was quite apt considering I'm doing my CCNA at the moment.

Inside Job

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Inside Job. Caught this documentary on the flight back from Houston and it's absolutely brilliant! I had no idea why AIG needed to be bailed out by the US government as well as the banks. Everyone really needs to see this film.

Tsunami in Japan [HD] 3.11 first person FULL raw footage

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Tsunami in Japan [HD] 3.11 first person FULL raw footage.

Migrate Subversion repository

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I needed to migrate an existing Subversion repository to a new server today, here's how I did it:

1. Dump your existing Subversion repository to a compressed file.

svnadmin dump /path/to/repo | gzip > /tmp/repo.svn.gz

2. Transfer the compressed file to the new server.

scp /tmp/repo.svn.gz user@server:/path/to/

3. Create a new Subversion repository on the new server.

svnadmin create /path/to/repo

4. Decompress the repository dump file and import it into the new Subversion repository.

gzip -cd /path/to/repo.svn.gz | svnadmin load --force-uuid /path/to/repo

Notes:

The dump command will also allow you to switch between BDB or FSFS back end types (link).
The --force-uuid option should allow you to switch any checked out projects to the new Subversion repository location.

Twitile in progress

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Thought I'd post a quick screen shot of the current development progress on Twitile - a web based Twitter client.

More news to come soon.

Announcing hash.to

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Late last year I released the first version of my latest project - http://hash.to - a url shortener written in Java.

It's pretty basic in terms of the functionality on offer at the moment but I decided to release the MVP rather than wait until I'd got round to implementing the rest of the functionality.

I know there are plenty of really good URL shortener services already out there but as a developer I wanted to create my own for a few reasons.

See if it was possible to create one in Java
Learn a different Java web framework along the way
Finally get round to using UrlRewrite in a project
Buy myself a really short URL
Create some web services that other developers can use
Above all else to see if I could!

As I mentioned it's written in Java; Struts 2 is used as the web framework, Hibernate for ORM, UrlRewrite to manage the URL design, MySQL as the database behind the service all running in Apache Tomcat on a VPS from Bytemark.

I'm looking for as many people as possible to test/use the service and provide some feedback and right now you can get yourself some really short URL's!

I've also created a blog on Tumblr for the service which I'll keep up to date with any changes to the service.

The Kindle

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

(Note: I started this post before getting a Kindle for Christmas.)

I'm very intrigued by the Amazon Kindle.

Up until now I hadn't been tempted by any of the ebook readers available, a couple of things put me off. The price of those available in stores such as Waterstones and the doubt in my mind that the experience would be just as good as reading a book. This is quite strange in itself as I usually I don't need much persuasion to want a new gadget!

Reading the reviews of it by Matt & Mark have, ever so slowly, increased the desire to own one. Especially Mark's article, before reading it I was probably guilty of lumping the Kindle & iPad in the same category.

I don't really travel that much compared to others in work but when I do I like to read on the plane, I've never been one for just listening to music. On the last few trips I've found myself struggling to decide which books to take with me, and slowly realised this is the huge benefit of having an ebook reader like the Kindle.

The price of the Kindle is another major selling point, at £109 £111 even if I don't find it as good as reading a normal book it's not a huge lose.

I'm intrigued enough to actually purchase one.

The Force of Typography

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Force of Typography. Very, very cool!

Open Source CMS Dominate the Market

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Open Source CMS Dominate the Market. If your interested in Content Management Systems this is well worth a read, lots of useful information contained in the report. For some reason CMS has always been a software market I've kept tabs on.

On Working Remotely

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

On Working Remotely. Excellent article on working remotely in a development team and how to make it work.

Google and Microsoft Cheat on Slow-Start. Should You?

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Google and Microsoft Cheat on Slow-Start. Should You?. This caught my attention as I'm currently studying towards the CCNA. Some of the most popular sites on the Internet appear to be employing tweaks at the lower layers of the networking stack to speed them up.

wordmark.it

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

wordmark.it. Very useful site that lets you quickly see what fonts you have installed on your current device and what they look like.

Using MySQL as a NoSQL

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Using MySQL as a NoSQL. Impressive results by bypassing SQL and using HandlerSocket plugin, maybe RDBMS do have a future in large scale solutions.

Three Mobile-Software Rules

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Three Mobile-Software Rules. For Android but could be applied to more than just the Android platform. Things I have to remember when I eventually get round to developing an app for Android.

The Setup

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Setup. Geek interviews of people and what they use to get the job done. Nice to see what other people use day to day in terms of hardware & software.

The Oracle Lawsuit Will End with Google Owning Java

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Oracle Lawsuit Will End with Google Owning Java. A fairly old article now but it's still a very interesting view on the outcome of the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit. I see this as a positive outcome if it were to happen.

TIME - The Men Who Stole the World

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

TIME - The Men Who Stole the World. Look back at the 4 developers of Napster, DeCSS, WinAmp & BitTorrent and what they are doing now.

Corbett Arms Hotel in Tywyn

Mon, 6 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The reviews on TripAdvisor of the Corbett Arms Hotel in Tywyn are just unbelievable, well worth a read!

Top 15 Blogging Best Practices « Adventures in Technology

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Top 15 Blogging Best Practices « Adventures in Technology. So simple yet I still find it hard to blog on a regular basis.

The Mobile Developer Journey | VisionMobile

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The Mobile Developer Journey | VisionMobile. (via) Excellent information on mobile app development in an infrographic. Very useful as I'm looking to get into this area soon.

Numpty Physics

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Numpty Physics. Simple but highly addictive game, very similar to Angry Birds. Available on a load of platforms as well.

1.0 Is the Loneliest Number - Matt Mullenweg

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

1.0 Is the Loneliest Number — Matt Mullenweg. Different take on the Apple product release strategy and it makes a lot of sense. Makes the Agile methodology more appealing.

Puppygames Ultrabundle

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Puppygames Ultrabundle - bundle of games from an indie developer all for less than £4!! Quite impressed that all the games are written in Java too so they're available on Windows, Linux & Mac.

YouTube - Chaplins Time Traveler

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

YouTube - Chaplins Time Traveler - at the very least the person is mimicking somebody having a conversation on a mobile perfectly.

Switching to FeedBurner

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I'm going to switch the feed on this site over to FeedBurner later tonight. There shouldn't be any need to update any feed readers as I'll make sure there are redirects in place but the new feed will be: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jonbullock

JS1k, 1k Javascript demo contest

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

JS1k, 1k Javascript demo contest. I have a real appreciation for the demoscene. It's really worth checking out some of these demos, it's amazing what you can do in just 1024 bytes of Javascript code!

Icons of the Web

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Icons of the Web. I was shown this by a co-worker while I was in Baku last month. It's a great way to visualise the most popular sites on the Internet.

xkcd: Online Communities 2

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

xkcd: Online Communities 2. Along the same lines as the previous link, just focusing on online communities. You can also view the 1st version for comparison.

Tech clear out

Mon, 4 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Decided to have a clear out at the weekend of various tech gear and listed it all on eBay, here the list of available items:

Testing Wordpress for Android

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Giving the Wordpress client for Android a try on my HTC Desire.

Testing text formatting: bold, italics, underline, ~~strikeout~~ & link.

Blockquote text.

Photo taken from phone.

Obituary for OPK: Wall Street is a Cruel Mistress - Nokia searching for CEO

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Obituary for OPK: Wall Street is a Cruel Mistress - Nokia searching for CEO - a couple of months old now and very long but it's still worth a read if your interested in the mobile industry.

Chancel Repair Liability is Fun

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Chancel Repair Liability is Fun - I came across this while buying our first property last year, I didn't quite believe it at first as it's such an odd situation. Thankfully it didn't affect our property!

Wide Awake Developers: The Future of Software Development

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Wide Awake Developers: The Future of Software Development - this is an example of the negative view on Java I was talking about. As much as I disagree with the comments on Java the rest of the article has some interesting comments on development in general.

Using SVN revision as software version via Ant

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I use Subversion for my personal projects and web sites and for one of my projects I wanted to use the SVN revision value as the version number for the project. As it's a Java based project and I'm using an Ant script to package & deploy it I wanted to retrieve the repository revision in the Ant script and automatically set the version value in the configuration file. After a bit of searching I found this article on how to get the revision value via Ant, all it requires is that the command line version of Subversion is installed.

So I added the following target to my Ant script to retrieve the last changed revision (slightly modified from the original):

<target name="svnrevision">
	<exec executable="svnversion" outputproperty="repository.revision">
		<arg value="-c" />
		<redirector>
			<outputfilterchain>
				<tokenfilter>
					<replaceregex pattern="[0-9]+\:" replace="" />
					<replaceregex pattern="[M]" replace="" />
				</tokenfilter>
			</outputfilterchain>
		</redirector>
	</exec>
        <echo message="Current revision is ${repository.revision}" />
</target>

Then later on in my Ant script I use the extracted variable to set the version value in the version.properties file while copying it:

<copy file="./src/version.properties" tofile="./deploy/version.properties">
	<filterset>
		<filter token="version" value="${repository.revision}" />
	</filterset>
</copy>

The version.properties file simply has the following line in it:

version=@version@

And that's it.

Project Cartoon

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Project Cartoon - makes me smile every time I see this as it's so true. I love the "business consultant" one!

Dev Derby 2010

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Dev Derby 2010 - good to see Team Java won the challenge. Shows that Java can compete with PHP, Ruby & Python as it see to be getting a lot of bad press at the moment.

Creating Shazam in Java

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Creating Shazam in Java - Lots of good information on how to analyse/match music including sample code. Seems to have triggered a legal threat!

Asprox botnet SQL Injection attack

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I stumbled across this article by the The Inquirer the other day on the SQL injection attacks by the Asprox botnet. An old classic ASP site of mine actually got hit back in 2008 by it and it looks like it's still doing the rounds now. Here are some links I found useful at the time including a script I used to help me clean up the infection:

CCNA Semester 1

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Eight years after my first attempt I was back at Llandrillo College tonight to start Semester 1 of the CCNA course. I've been close to starting the course again the past few years but not got round to it for one reason or another. I'm determined to complete the course this time round and looking forward to filling in some of the gaps in my networking knowledge.

It felt good to be back at college again, a lot has changed about the place in the past 12 years since I was first there but some the rooms haven't changed that much and still bring back a lot of good memories.

Android LifeSaver

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Last week I upgraded my mobile from the HTC Magic to the HTC Desire (I might get round to posting a review sometime) direct with Vodafone. While all my contacts, e-mails and calendar entries are stored in the cloud by Google my text messages aren't and these are equally important to me. Thankfully I came across the LifeSaver app by Tim Bray a while ago and it came in very handy!

It backs up your text messages and call log to your MicroSD card which you can transfer to your new phone and restore them from. Very basic app but it does the job perfectly.

Readme Driven Development

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Readme Driven Development - I like this idea a lot! I see a lot of benefit in this approach, forces you to think about the whole software before starting.

Multi-core, Threads & Message Passing

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Multi-core, Threads & Message Passing - very informative article on system architecture. Interesting to see CPU architecture and large scale web architecture are so close.

Baku

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I've not been able to get online properly at all the past week as I've been over in Baku (Azerbaijan) due to work, although I've got access to a pretty decent connection line now I'm staying at a co-workers''s place. Got another week to do before I fly back to the UK.

Baku is an interesting city to say the least, it's helped a lot having a few co-workers who have been living here for the past few months and have shown me about the place. Although I've already been struck down with what the expats call Baku Belly!

Better start sorting through last week's e-mail and feeds now, may try to upload some of the photos I've taken this weekend.

MWUG - Meeting 18th August

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

MWUG - Meeting 18th August. Recently found this WordPress user group. Can't make this meeting but I need to make time to get to some of these events including PHPNW meetings.

Journalism Warning Labels

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Journalism Warning Labels (via) - bloody brilliant! I love the "Journalist does not understand the subject they are writing about" label. My eyes were opened to this kind of thing when the national media got a story about someone I know horribly wrong.

WordPress plugin development links

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

While developing Basic-SEO I've found the following sites very useful for reference purposes:

Wordpress Plugin Repository - http://wp-plugins.org

You can't beat learning by example, here you can browse the source code of all the plugins WordPress.org hosts.

WordPress PHP Documentation - http://phpdoc.wordpress.org/

All the comments from the WordPress source code extracted in HTML format and correctly linked, very useful for looking up functions.

WordPress Hooks Database - http://adambrown.info/p/wp_hooks

Database of all the action & filter hooks that have ever been available in any WordPress release and where it occurs in the source code.

WordPress Codex - http://codex.wordpress.org/

The official documentation for WordPress, has a very useful developer documentation section.

The Pac-Man Dossier

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

The Pac-Man Dossier. (via) Excellent study of the classic game, even if your not a big fan of it it's an interesting read.

Initial Thoughts on Oracle vs Google Patent Lawsuit - Miguel de Icaza

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Initial Thoughts on Oracle vs Google Patent Lawsuit - Miguel de Icaza. Includes some interesting background information. I do hope this gets resolved quickly as I'm a big fan of both Java and Android.

WordPress plugin: Basic-SEO

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

It's time to unveil my first WordPress plugin: Basic-SEO. It's a very, very simple plugin really, it applies a pre-defined set of search engine optimisations to your active theme. It has no configuration options at all at the moment it just achieves the goal I had in mind for it. I thought I'd release it as it is now in case anyone else finds it useful. I've already got a list of features I'd like to add to it but my next step is to get it listed on WordPress Plugins.

If you find the plugin useful or have an feedback then please let me know.

How to generate stats for IIS log files using Webalizer

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

While sorting through some of my many backups of old machines I came across a whole load of IIS log files for an old site of mine so I thought I'd process them and generate some statistics. I've used Webalizer quite a few times before for generating stats on Apache log files and as v2.01 is available via Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu I thought I'd use this.

Unfortunately v2.01 doesn't support support the W3C format that IIS uses, looks like it does now in v2.20 though. However IIS includes a utility called 'convlog' for converting it's logs files to the NCSA common log file format that Webalizer does support. So I fired up my old Windows XP box, installed IIS and used the following command to convert the log files:

convlog -ie ex*.log

Once that had processed all the log files (by default it creates a copy of each log file) I copied them back to my Ubuntu laptop and used 'cat' to combine all the files into one big log file:

cat ex*.nsca > master.log

All that was left to do was create a config file to tell Webalizer what it should do, so I copied the default config file and customised the options to my needs. Then ran 'webalizer' using the customised config file:

./webalizer -c master.conf

Once it's performed it's magic you should have a bunch of detailed reports in the location you specified in the config file!

First Wordpress plugin

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

As I've recently changed the theme I use in Wordpress I've lost all the basic SEO tweaks I'd made. Rather than make the tweaks again to this theme I've decided to convert them into a simple Wordpress plugin, should allow me to get my hands dirty with the inner workings of Wordpress and plugins as well as save a bit of time in the long run. I'm also planning on documenting the development of the plugin here.

While Java is my preferred language of choice I'm sure it won't hurt to stay involved in PHP.

Changing Tack

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I'm going to start posting more technical content on this blog from now on. Ranging from details on any personal development projects I happen to be working on, links to various technologies and frameworks I find interesting to guides on setting up or configuring various systems etc.

I'm hoping this change of tack will help me blog more often here.

Testing 1-2-3

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Hopefully this post should still show up on the old feed link? In future the link to the Atom feed for this site will be: http://jonathanbullock.com/feed/atom/

Changes

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Well 2009 came and went quickly, the majority of it was spent buying and then moving into our first home (more on that another time). I then proceeded to spend the last 6 months thinking about what I want to use this site for and very little time doing anything about it. Yesterday I started to make a few changes, I configured Wordpress as the CMS behind the whole site rather than just being used for a blog. It's not my ideal solution but it's a start in the right direction at the very least. I'm looking for a bliki type solution really along the same lines as Yaki that powers Tao of Mac. But until I find a Java based version that I like it'll do for now, should allow me to focus on the content rather than the mechanism for getting the content online anyway. I've also dropped the "www." from the URL for the site, it was long enough anyway!

I think I've got Wordpress configured correctly just need to go through all the posts and fix any broken links and images due to the mod_rewrite/redirect rules I've put in place. Next thing on the list is to scrap the current theme and go with "Twenty Ten" until I either find a minimalistic theme I like or make my own.

Nokia E71 shortcuts

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I came across this list of shortcuts for the Nokia E71 recently. It has some useful notes especially pressing 'T' to focus the camera, even though Nokia list "autofocus" as a feature of the camera. This improves the quality of the camera somewhat but the images are still nowhere near good enough.

Gordon Ramsay's Playing with Fire

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The first book I've started reading this year, as one of my New Year resolutions, is Gordon Ramsay's Playing with Fire the follow up to his autobiography Humble Pie. Playing with Fire focuses purely on his business ventures and associated events.

Humble Pie was a fascinating read for someone who enjoys watching pretty much all of the TV programmes Gordon Ramsay is involved with. Although I'm quite a fan of autobiographies in general anyway. I'm about half way through this book already and just like the first I'm finding it hard to put down!

Getting Things Done

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I read Getting Things Done by David Allen last summer after owning the book for nearly 3 years and I've been trying to adopt the principles outlined in the book since then, not very well I might add!

As part of my New Year's resolutions I'd like to improve my adoption of the GTD methodology and will no doubt re-read the book (as it suggests) or even grab an audio version of it. I've also become a member of the GTD group on Facebook and started following a couple of GTD focused blogs in the hope these will improve my understanding of the basic principles and provide a few helpful tips along the way.

I came across this video clip the other day (via DIGTD) that helped me visualise some of the items outlined in the GTD book.

Fring - IM & VoIP client

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I needed a Google Talk client on my mobile a while ago and discovered Fring, they provide a Symbian client (as well as other platforms) that allows you to connect to most of the IM networks (Google Talk, MSN, AIM, ICQ, Y! & Skype) as well as providing free VoIP calls to other Fring users at least.

I've been using it on my Nokia E71 quite a bit, it's a pretty good mobile IM client although your friends seem to get ads with every message you send. The VoIP side works pretty well too, even spoke to someone while they were down in South America!

NFL International Series - London 2008 photos

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Bit late with this post seeing as we've just entered 2009 and the regular NFL season is now over but I thought I'd post it anyway! Here are my photos from the NFL International Series 2008 game between the San Diego Chargers & New Orleans Saints at Wembley, my first ever life NFL game.

I was very happy with the result of the game (in case you didn't watch it the Saints won!) it was a great game to watch overall, plenty of high powered offense on show although it was a shame Reggie Bush couldn't make the game due to injury. The atmosphere at the game was excellent, I was bit worried about this but I was proved wrong in the end. The view from our seats was better than I expected too, I wasn't too sure whether we'd be able to follow the game but we could make everything out very well. It's a completely different experience as you get to see how every part of the play develops rather than just following what the TV cameras choose. Having said that I still watched the game again when I got home in case I missed anything!

Apart from it being my first ever live NFL game It was also my first time to Wembley, although it took bloody ages to build it is a fantastic venue! Roll on 2009 and the Patriots v Buccaneers!

Happy New Year 2009!

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year to everyone, hope you all have a great 2009! I've not really thought about any new year resolutions yet so here goes:

Exercise at least once a week - I used to go to the gym at least twice a week!
Read at least 6 books in 2009 - 1 every 2 two months should achievable
Release 1 personal project to the world - service/web app/something!
Improve my adoption of the GTD methodology

What's your resolutions for the new year?

Nokia E71 review

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I've had my Nokia E71 for nearly 3 months now and overall I'm extremely pleased with it.

Looks

First off it looks gorgeous (the black version anyway, the white version looks a bit cheap to me) and feels great in your hand, it has a good solid feel to it.

I'm sad to say this but it really shows how bad the Nokia N95 was when it comes to looks. Although updating the look & feel of the Nseries seems to be Nokia's goal at the moment, the N96 & N85 both sport the same similar design.

Keyboard

It's a decent weight (not to heavy) and has a great texture to the back of it that improves your grip. The QWERTY keyboard looks very small at first but each key has a slightly raised curve to it that makes it surprisingly easy to use.

Theme/Icons

The themes/icons provided are pretty bad really, the first thing you should do is install the Eseries E71 theme - it's the default Eseries theme with the Flahorn Icon Pack included (icons based on those available in S60v3). I know the Eseries is targeted at business users but they can appreciate eye candy too! The default icon pack is bloody awful if you ask me!

GPS

The on board GPS locks on a heck of a lot quicker than my old N95 used, I double checked this against a co-wokers N95 too. The E71 seems to leave the GPS device on after it's first locked on to reduce the time it takes to lock on in future.

Battery

The battery life is absolutely excellent. My E71 is typically used for calls/texts, browsing at home using wifi, e-mail using Nokia's push beta service and occasionally as a data modem for my laptop and it usually lasts 4-5 days without needing a charge. I tend not to use the 3G network as the coverage can be hit and miss up here in North Wales, but it's not a huge drain on the battery life. If what I said about the GPS is correct I assume this is a benefit of the excellent battery the E71 has.

Camera

Camera quality is awful. I really hope they improve the quality with a firmware update as it's pretty much unusable as it is. The poor quality was mentioned in a few reviews I read prior to ordering the phone but I didn't expect it to be as bad as it is, when they said purple they really meant it! While it's a decent 3.2MP camera the quality is actually worse than my old SE W810i 2MP which is nearly 3 years old now!

Signal Strength

Signal strenth is OK but not as good as the N95 when coverage is poor. I've only noticed this as in work coverage is not the best, where as the N95 would have at least 2 bars of signal my E71 struggles to access the network.

UI

The UI is snappy as you'd expect it to be, however it is an improvement when compared to the UI on the N95 but then the N95 UI was pretty slow even with the latest firmware update. Strange considering both the N95 & E71 run the same version of Symbian OS (v9.2) & S60 (FP1)?

Firmware

The quality of the camera and UI speed on the N95 was significantly improved with firmware updates however I had to change the product code to be able to get at those firmware updates from Nokia. My E71 is running firmware 100.07.76 and while there is an update available it's not yet available to Vodafone UK users. I'll probably resort to changing the product code on this device too to benefit from the newer updates rather than wait for Vodafone to get round to releasing it! Having said that the initial firmware supplied with the phone has proven to be quite stable, I haven't come across any major bugs in it myself so far.

Elsewhere

Looking around the Internet the Nokia E71 seems to have had a pretty good year:

Dialaphone have listed the E71 in their 2008 mobile phone highlights.
The Tao of Mac has picked the E71 as his phone of the Year.
Mobile Choice voted the E71 as phone of the year & smartphone of the year.

AVG 8 LinkScanner

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

While I'm on the subject of AVG 8 this one has been bugging me for a while now. If you don't want AVG 8 LinkScanner putting annoying little green stars next to your web search results then you can disable the LinkScanner component in the AVG UI. However this causes AVG to show you a nice big error icon in the systray area.

I spent ages trying to stop it from doing this when AVG 8 first came out but couldn't find an option anywhere. Looks like a recent update has resolved this as you can now right click on the LinkScanner component and select the 'Ignore component state' option to stop AVG reporting the fact that you've disabled it as an error!

AVG 8 - Invalid update control CTF file

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

For a few days now AVG Anti-Virus Free 8 has been complaining about it's database being out of date. When I've tried manually running the update feature I get the following error:

"Invalid Update Control CTF File"

I finally got round to doing something about this yesterday, I did a quick scan for all .CTF files and found a couple in:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\avg8\update\download

I deleted the .CTF files in this folder (I left the .BIN files alone) and tried running the update feature again. Ran without a problem this time and downloaded an definitions update fine.

I've got no idea how AVG got itself into this state but it was simple to fix. I'm running Windows XP by the way, the location of the files may be different on Windows Vista.

Movies I've seen

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from Andrew's list of movies I've marked the ones I've seen. I've seen way over the 85, oops!

( ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(X) Grease
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
(X) Boondock Saints - a must see!
(X) Fight Club - a must see!
(X) Starsky and Hutch
(X) Neverending Story
( ) Blazing Saddles
( ) Airplane
Total: 7

( ) The Princess Bride
(X) AnchorMan
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
(X) Labyrinth
(X) Saw
(X) Saw II
(X) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
(X) Anger Management
( ) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 13

(X) Scream
(X) Scream 2
(X) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
(X) American Pie
(X) American Pie 2
(X) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 19

(X) Harry Potter 1
(X) Harry Potter 2
(X) Harry Potter 3
(X) Harry Potter 4
(X) Harry Potter 5
(X) Resident Evil 1
(X) Resident Evil 2
(X) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
( ) Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 27

(X) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
(X) Signs
( ) The Grinch
(X) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
(X) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30
(X) I, Robot
( ) Robots
Total so far: 32

(X) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(X) Universal Soldier
( ) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
(X) Along Came Polly
( ) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
( ) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
(X) KING KONG
Total so far: 36

( ) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(X) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
(X) Final Destination
(X) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
( ) Halloween
(X) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
(X) Flubber
Total so far: 41

( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
( ) Chicago
(X) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
(X) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
(X) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 44

(X) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child’s Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
(X) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
(X) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
(X) Remember the Titans
(X) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(X) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 50

(X) Bad Boys
(X) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
(X) Lucky Number Slevin
(X) Ocean’s Eleven
(X) Ocean’s Twelve
(X) Bourne Identity
(X) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
( ) Bedazzled
(X) Predator I
(X) Predator II
( ) The Fog
(X) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 60

(X) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(X) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
(X) Maid in Manhattan
( ) War of the Worlds
(X) Rush Hour
(X) Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 65

( ) Best Bet
(X) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She’s All That
( ) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
(X) Mars Attacks
(X) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(X) Wizard of Oz
(X) Forrest Gump
(X) Big Trouble in Little China
(X) The Terminator
(X) The Terminator 2
(X) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 74

(X) X-Men
(X) X-2
(X) X-3
(X) Spider-Man
(X) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
(X) Catch Me If You Can
(X) The Little Mermaid
( ) Freaky Friday
(X) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
(X) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(X) Shrek
(X) Shrek 2
Total so far: 85

(X) Swimfan
( ) Miracle on 34th street
( ) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf’s Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
( ) The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 86

(X) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(X) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(X) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(X) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(X) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(X) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 92

(X) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
( ) Elf
(X) Highlander
(X) Mothman Prophecies
(X) American History X
( ) Three
Total so Far: 96

( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
(X) Monsters Inc.
(X) Titanic
(X) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(X) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard
Total so far: 100

( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
(X) Hulk
(X) Dawn Of the Dead
(X) Hook
( ) Chronicles Of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
(X) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
(X) Waterworld
Total so far: 105

(X) Kill Bill vol 1
(X) Kill Bill vol 2
(X) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
(X) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) The Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
( ) Army of Darkness
Total so far: 109

(X) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(X) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(X) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(X) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(X) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(X) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 115

(X) The Matrix
(X) The Matrix Reloaded
(X) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
(X) Team America: World Police
(X) Red Dragon
(X) Silence of the Lambs
(X) Hannibal
Total so far: 122

Copy the list, and see how many you've seen...

Testing out MaemoWordPy

Thu, 4 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I'm testing out the MaemoWordPy client for Wordpress on the Nokia N800.

Plans to boost the UK housing market

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Details of UK government's plans to boost the housing market came out at the start of September and as someone who's looking to buy their first home at some point soon I was very interested. I was less than impressed when I found out that the "free" five year loan of up to 30% of the property's value for first time buyers is only available in England?! What about those who live in Wales? The plans aren't going to boost the housing market here in Wales if there isn't an equivalent deal and this will have a knock on effect down the line.

Nokia E71

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

After saying back in June that I was going to get an iPhone 3G and then, in August that I was looking at the Nokia N96 instead, I've now gone and got a Nokia E71!

I thought about what I use my mobile for right now and it's mainly used for Internet access while I'm at home and the keypad on my N95 is a right pain when it comes to entering URL's and text. I realised I miss the full QWERTY keyboard that my old Treo 650 had so I started looking at devices with a full keyboard and came across the E71.

It got good reviews by AAS, Joel and a couple of other sites, and all have said pictures don't do the phone any justice when comes it how good it looks and feels in your hand. It runs the same version of S60 & Symbian OS as my N95 which is a major plus point for me (more on S60/Symbian later).

Vodafone were also extremely pro-active in keeping me, they called me out of the blue to advise me that I'm eligible for an upgrade and when I asked them to call me back a couple of days later they did. They offered me an improved contract package (I'm saving £7.50 a month but getting more for my money) without me having to ask along with giving me the E71 for free and all on a 12 month contract.

I've had the device a couple of weeks now so expect a review sometime soon.

Dolgoch Falls photos

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Back in July me and Hel went for a walk round Dolgoch Falls near Abergynolwyn. I've just got round to putting the photos online.

Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor review

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

As promised a few weeks back here's my short review of the Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor I recently purchased.

The first thing I noticed after switching it on for the first time was how much brighter it was compared to my old 19" CRT. I hadn't realised how bad my old monitor had become over the years. The monitor has 4 built in USB 2.0 ports which are a nice touch, makes plugging in memory sticks a bit easier when your PC is under the desk like mine. It comes with a height adjustable stand which was a major selling point for me personally. Due to the height adjustable stand the monitor can also be rotated 90 degrees, while it makes reading a long document slightly easier I haven't really used it at all and I don't see me doing so any time soon.

The resolution is an excellent 1680 x 1050 which is more than adequate for my needs. I had been looking at 22" & 24" monitors originally but the UltraSharp versions of these weren't in my price range and now I've decided I'd rather have 2 of these monitors sat on my desk. It has both DVI & VGA connections allowing me to plug both my PC's into it which is very handy. It also comes with Dell's 3-year Premium Panel Exchange service which gives you peace of mind when it comes to dead pixels.

Overall I'm very impressed with my new purchase and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new monitor.

BBC iPlayer crashing BT HomeHub?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I've just tried to watch 2 clips of events at the Bejing Olympic's through the Flash based version of BBC's iPlayer on my PowerBook. Each time I did I heard my BT HomeHub click to say it's restarting. The first time it did I just assumed it was just a random crash. The second time I thought something was definitely up as I've never had the HomeHub crash twice so quickly, it's been rock solid for the past 10 months. I can't believe a Flash based piece of software could actually crash my HomeHub but it does seem that way. I've watched BBC content via the BTVision box before (while it was free!) and not had a problem?

Nokia N96

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Last week I was told by someone in work that the Nokia N96 should be available via Vodafone UK by mid October. With all the negative feedback I've been seeing on Twitter about the iPhone's battery life & 3G quality I'm looking around at other options at the moment.

I've been really impressed with my Nokia N95 so far and it re-awakened my interest in the Symbian platform. The only things the N95 lacks when compared to the iPhone is a bigger screen, a touch screen and oooh factor in terms of looks. In terms of technology the N95 is far superior, quite surprising when you consider it's been available for over 18 months.

With the recent news that Nokia is going to acquire the rest of Symbian and open source the platform makes a Symbian based phone even more appealing to me. The N96 is looking like the best alternative to the iPhone, improving on the excellent N95.

Think I'll wait to see if the N96 does come out in October and if Apple do anything about the issues affecting the iPhone 3G before I rush out to get one.

WordPress 2.6.1 upgrade

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I finally got round to upgrading the blog to WordPress 2.6.1 last night and it seemed to go without a hitch. It was my first upgrade of WordPress so I checked their site for upgrade instructions before I went through the process, and to my surprise the page had already been upgraded for 2.6.1. The documentation for WordPress is fantastic and proof that an open source project can do it just as well as a commercial offering.

49ers off-season review

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Time for my review of the San Francisco 49ers off-season. I suppose I've got to start with the fact that we've still got Mike Nolan at the helm AND Alex Smith at QB, at the end of last season I didn't expect to be able to say that. I thought one or even both of them would have been moved on. With Nolan declaring an open QB competition this year it worries me that Alex Smith is no longer the QB of the future for the 49ers and we don't seem to have a backup plan. Apart from a few glimpses when Norv Turner was the OC I'm yet to see Alex Smith play like the No. 1 overall pick he is.

However this brings me nicely onto possibly the most interesting acquisition during the off-season.... Mike Martz. He's known as an offensive genius that was partly responsible for the "Greatest Show on Turf" in St. Louis and while the Detriot Lions didn't make much of an impact with him at OC he did improve the production of their offense. Maybe Martz can get the best out of Alex Smith who, to be fair, has now had a fair few OC's in his short NFL career. Hopefully Martz won't do the same as in Detriot, improve the passing game but at the expense of the running game. Our running game has been the one bright spot of the offense the past 2 years and with the addition of Deshaun Foster we have a very capable backup/alternative to Frank Gore. I'm hoping Martz will use Gore like he did with Marshall Faulk in St. Louis as a pass catching RB, Gore definitely showed this was a part of his game last year.

We also acquired Justin Smith, the DE from Cincinnati and signed him to a big contract. I've not seen that much of him really so I'm hoping he lives up to the contract we've given him. Hopefully he'll provide an upgrade to our pass rushing ability. The most recent addition is Takeo Spikes at LB, who seems like a good fit for us. He should hopefully take some of the pressure off Patrick Willis, last years NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.

Last year the defense performed quite well overall, it was just the offense couldn't produce the goods when they had the ball. I'm hoping for an an even better year from the defense with the additions we've made. Any improvement from the offense this year would be very welcome!

I'm not expecting a run into the playoffs this year but I'm looking for some sign the team's moving in the right direction.

Everton pre-season review

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I watched my first live game of the new season at the weekend, Everton v PSV Eindhoven. It was the last pre-season game for Everton and they played pretty well overall, I was suitably impressed with our performance considering PSV are the current Dutch champions and will be playing in the Champions League this season. It also wasn't a full strength team we put out, there were quite a few home grown players on show. Jack Rodwell impressed me the most, he had a solid game considering his age and looks like he could be a long term replacement for Lee Carsley.

The rest of our results in pre-season have been pretty poor really but I don't pay much attention to pre-season results as I see the games as a chance to give the whole squad a run out and to try a few different formations.

Pre-season off the pitch hasn't exactly gone to plan though. We've let quite a few players go and not brought anyone new in, while I was quite happy to let AJ go for the right money it looks like we didn't get as much for him due to a previous injury. Our CEO resigned in mysterious circumstances, David Moyes still hasn't signed a new contract yet and our plans for a new stadium have been called-in by the government. Quite an eventful few weeks. At the moment I'm worried there is something going on behind the scenes at the club and that worries me more than anything else!

Having said that I'm still optimistic about the new season. There is still time to bring in a few new players before the transfer deadline to help us solidify our position as a top 6 six team this year and hopefully all these off the field issues sort themselves out.

Roll on another 9 months of football! :-)

Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

The time has come to retire my Hyundai ImageQuest Q910 and join the world of flat panel monitors! I ordered a Dell UltraSharp 2009WFP monitor yesterday while Dell are offering a 25% discount plus free delivery. The offer runs out on the 30th July so tomorrow is your last chance if your in the market for a new monitor. According to the very weird call I received this afternoon it should arrive tomorrow! It's kind of a birthday present to myself.

I'll post a mini review once it's been used for a while. If anyone (in the North Wales area as it's bloody heavy) wants my old monitor leave a comment.

Tactics used by banks to cross-sell

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

On Monday the local branch of my bank called regarding my account. They queried a direct debit due to go out of my account on Tuesday, my first thought was that there's something wrong with the direct debit. They asked if the payment was for a credit card, which it was. Pretty obvious really as the name on the direct debit is of a very well known credit card company. I was then told that due to the bank account I have I'm guaranteed a credit card and at the moment they are offering a 12 months interest free period on balance transfers. I then asked a few questions about the card such as what the fee was on a balance transfer etc. The woman on the phone was unable to answer any of my questions. She only knew that a. I was entitled to a credit card and b. it has a 12 months interest free period on balance transfers! After being put on hold for a while I finally got some answers. I quickly ended the call at this point as I didn't see much point in it.

A while after the call it occurred to me they must have looked through my account to see what direct debits I have so they knew what services to cross-sell, in this instance it was a credit card. To be honest I'm bit annoyed about this, I feel like my privacy has been invaded. I'm aware that the staff in my local branch have full access to my bank account, they need to, to be able to provide me with customer service. However I don't expect this access to be used to find out what services they may have a better chance in cross-selling to me! Are they allowed to do this? As it seems to me to be an unfair advantage?

Having said that I doubt the bank is going to get very far if their staff don't know anything about the services they are trying to cross-sell!

All of this is on top of the constant badgering I get whenever I go into my local branch about home insurance, financial reviews etc. It's got so far that I actually dislike going into my branch now! I think it's time to start looking for an Internet only bank!

Interest in AJ

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

There are rumours that Wigan & Sunderland are interested in buying Andy Johnson from Everton for about £10 million. If we could get around £12 million for him then I'd be very tempted to sell him. He had a great first year with us but last year was interrupted by injuries however we didn't really miss him with the Yak, Jimmy & Vic all playing well. I also like Timmy playing up front so I don't think we'd miss him and £12 million seems like a good deal for a player we paid for £8.6 million for 2 years ago.

While Moyes has said he's not interested in selling I have a feeling he won't be with Everton by the time the season starts.

F1 British Grand Prix

Wed, 9 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

At the weekend Lewis Hamilton became the first Englishman to win the F1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone since the legendary (in my eyes anyway!) Johnny Herbert back in 1995. It was an excellent race to watch with plenty of eventful moments. I've always thought the races in the wet are much more exciting to watch, there's always more over-taking for a start.

This was the first year that I've not been to the grand prix after going for the past 4 years (my photos are up for 2005, 2006 and 2007) and, of course, it would be the year a British driver wins the race! Bloody typical! Although I enjoyed watching the race on the TV for a change I missed the camping as that was usually the highlight for me, getting away from everything for a while. I didn't miss the weather though!

There was also the news this weekend that the F1 British GP will be moving to Donington from 2010. While it's good that the British GP has been saved for the foreseeable future I, for one, will miss Silverstone. I've enjoyed every year I've been and it's improved a lot from the point of view of the fan since I first went. However I'm not quite sure we've heard the last about this as there seems to be lot of work needed to get Donington up to F1 spec in just under 2 years.

Regardless I'll be back at Silverstone next year!

New York City 2005 photos

Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I've finally uploaded the photos from my trip to New York City back in 2005 after being reminded by Rhys' recent trip to New York. In summary I had a fantastic time and can't believe nearly 3 years have passed already. I can't wait to go back! If you get the chance, go, you won't regret it!

A few of my favourite photos are included below...

Star Wars on DVD

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

A couple of weeks ago we had some friends come and stay and after going out for a meal and having a few drinks we ended up at home with a desire to play Trivial Pursuit. Unfortunately we don't have the original board game version, however, I remembered that I have the Star Wars Saga DVD Edition that was given to me as a Xmas present a while ago. We played it until the early hours and consumed even more alcohol, although by the end only the men had any real interest in playing the women were more interested in talking!

Playing the game and seeing various clips of the fims reminded me that, as a big fan of the films, I don't own them on DVD yet. So last week I put this right and ordered Star Wars: Episode IV, Episode V & Episode VI on DVD. I was quite surprised there was so many versions available of the first trilogy (in terms of release) of films yet only one version of the second trilogy of films. I went for the so called "Limited Edition" which includes the original theatrical version as well as the updated version. Hopefully I'll receive Episode I, Episode II & Episode III for my birthday next month, I think I've dropped enough hints! :-)

I would have thought by now there would a box set of all 6 films as that's what I would have preferred to buy rather than the indiviual films. Come on Lucasfilm your missing a trick here!

iPhone 3G

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Dear Vodafone, unless you can offer me the iPhone 3G in the next 3 months I shall be leaving you after 6 years and joining O2.

The 3G version of the iPhone has been announced by Apple and should be available sometime in July here in the UK. I'm assuming it'll only be available via O2 again. It's been released quicker than I thought, while the rumour sites had been predicting it would be I wasn't so sure.

I upgraded to the Nokia N95 last September in the hope the 3G version of the iPhone would appear sometime this year. I managed to get a 12 month contract out of Vodafone (along with the free upgrade) just in case it was released. I was very tempted to get one last year but couldn't justify the handset cost along with the 18 month contract required, I was also a little disappointed that it wasn't 3G.

I've got to decide whether I go for the 8GB or 16GB version now. Decisions, decisions!

Alternative to iPhoto?

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I'll be retiring my trusty PowerBook G4 very soon and until I decide on what my next laptop will be I'll be moving all my data onto my Windows XP desktop PC for the time being. I've been using iPhoto to manage all my photos so I'm now looking for a Windows based alternative. The first one I thought of was Google Picasa so I'll try that out. Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Set Group ID permission in Linux

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

How to set the default group for files and directories created under a certain directory. By default Linux uses the group of the user account used to create the file, on Debian this is usually users. The following commands should be run under the root account.

First change the group on the directory to the one you want to be used as the default:

chgrp group /path/to/directory

Then set the Group ID permission on the folder:

chmod g+s /path/to/directory

That's all you need to do if the directory is empty, every file or sub directory created underneath this directory will inherit the group value we've set. If you already have sub directories in this directory and you want to set the default group value on those too then you'll need to run the following command:

find /path/to/directory -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;

That's it, job done!

SEO Update

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I've been tweaking my theme recently to make it more search engine friendly and it seems to have worked as I'm getting a few hits direct to posts from Google searches. In case anyone is wondering I've just made sure the HTML meta tags always have values (using the post excerpt & tags) and that the post title comes first in the page title if applicable. I know there are some plugins I could have used to do the same job however I learnt quite a bit about Wordpress themes in achieving my goal. I'm more familiar with Wordpress and themes now than I was before anyway.

Does anyone have any other SEO tips they can suggest?

Vodafone Mobile Internet

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I tried out the Vodafones Mobile Internet bolt-on when I got my Nokia N95 as it was free for the first month. I used the Internet quite a bit, more than I thought I would while trying out the various features of the N95. I cancelled the bolt-on after the free period was up but quickly found I was running up larger than usual bills due to my continued Internet usage. After a few months I signed up for the Mobile Internet pack again (that free month obviously worked Vodafone!). I thought £7.50 for 120MB allowance was pretty poor compared to what other networks were offering at the time but there wasn't a lot I could do about it.

Recently Vodafone upped their limit to 500MB, not quite up to the deal on offer from other networks but a significant step in the right direction! Vodafone have now informed me that their data allowance is 'unlimited', although this is subject to a fair use limit of 500MB! If my understanding of Vodafone's t&c is right they don't mind you occasionally going over 500MB but if you do it continously they may charge you for the amount you go over.

I'm against the term 'unlimited' when it comes to data allowances or transfer limits and when I found out the fair use limit was still 500MB I was disappointed as it's hardly an upgrade at all.

With 500MB though I can actually think of using my mobile's 3G connection with my laptop without worrying about my allowance. One thing having the Nokia N95 has hightlighted to me, is how large some web pages have now become. An eBay listing page is nearly a 1MB alone!

Having said that I do try to use the mobile versions of most sites (Twitter, eBay, Facebook etc.) for their speed more than anything else.

Come on Vodafone get your act together!

Vodafone Mobile Internet Part 2

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I've just seen this article about Vodafone's ad over at The Register. I remember seeing the ad in question a while ago while the limit was still 120MB. I couldn't believe it myself, they were trying to sell a data allowance of 120MB as allowing you to browse any website, any time!

Talk about hyping a service up!

Webmonkey is back!

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

While browsing the blogs on Wired last week I noticed the Compiler blog had moved to the Webmonkey.com domain. While the Compiler blog has become the monkey_bites blog the site is also providing tutorials & reference documents once again.

Hopefully it'll become again the resource it once was for web development, as I learnt so much from it in the late 90's.

Welcome back Webmonkey, you've been missed!

Set service to auto start on Red Hat EL

Sat, 7 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

To set a service to automatically start at boot time on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or CentOS) use the following command:

/sbin/chkconfig --level <level> <service> on
<level> is the runlevel, use 3 as it's the 'Full multi-user text mode' runlevel on Red Hat EL/CentOS.
<service> is the name of service, i.e. the script in /etc/init.d/

Or you can use the ncurses-based /sbin/ntsysv utility.

NFL International Series - London 2008

Sun, 1 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I missed out on tickets for the NFL game in London last year between the Giants & Dolphins but not this year!! I received my e-mail with the ticket PIN code in and rang around to see who wanted to go. On Thursday morning I purchased 4 tickets to this year's NFL game between the Saints & Chargers.

I went for the £55 seats as I couldn't justify paying £100 for seats that meant we couldn't see what was going on in the game. We're in Level 5 at Wembley but should be able to see more of the game from there. My bro, Dave & Jay will be coming along, just need to sort out hotel & travel arrangements now.

Oh and I'll be cheering for the Saints in the game, I'm really a 49ers fan but as a true Brit I'll be cheering on the underdogs going on last season.

Fantasy football 2007/2008 season review

Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Amazingly this was my first season of playing Fantasy Football of any kind, ever! I signed up to the official Premier League version and joined the league operated in work. My team name, Bullock's Ballbags, aptly named considering where I finished up!

I started off slowly learning the rules the hard way by completely changing my team early on in the season and taking a big transfer points deduction on the few points I had gained so far! I didn't know what the "wildcard" was at that point! As you'd expect Everton players formed the backbone of my team throughout the season.

My team slide down the league as did my dedication to the cause. However a few changes to the side at New Year got me moving up the league again . Unfortunately I was too far gone to make any kind of a difference to the top of the table. I finished 19th in the league for work and 546,674th overall. I managed to steal that 19th place from a colleague on the last day of the season!

One thing playing fantasy football did this year was make me take more of an interest in the other games shown on MoTD apart from the Everton games!

Bring on 2008/2009!

The blog is back

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

After a break of nearly 5 years, my blog is back.

I first started blogging back in 2002. I posted about anything and everything that interested me, the blog also allowed me to document my many attempts to quit smoking. The blog only lasted a year due to various reasons however in 2005 I finally quit smoking!

So why have I started again?

Well I'm a web developer without any presence on the Internet which just isn't right. Last year I decided to correct this by creating a personal web site. While deciding what to put on the site the idea of having a blog again came about. Since then I've found myself thinking about things that occur in daily life that I could have blogged about. I finally decided to do something about it and set up a blog so I have an outlet for my rants!

I should also say that the inspriation to get off my arse and actually get this blog up and running was finding out that 2 people I know through "real life" had blogs (hat tip: Rhys & Andrew). I suggest you go and check their blogs out as they are both an excellent read!

I'm still getting to grips with Wordpress so expect changes to the blog fairly often!