Tip One: Use a Password Manager

I am sure you have heard this before. Create a strong password, Do not use the same password on many sites. The problem then becomes of having so many passwords that you can not remember which one is for which site.

To help people with this problem and to make thinking of new passwords easier. I always recommend using a password manager. Two of the most popular are 1Password or LastPass.

But why? Using a password manager keeps all your passwords in one place. You can access them on your computer or your phone. You do not even have to type in your password. It will enter the password for you if you have stored the password before.

Using a password manager will help you generate strong passwords. These passwords will have a mixture of numbers and symbols. This makes your passwords hard to crack.

Password managers tell you if your password has appeared on the open web from a data breach. It will alert you so you can change your password and update any affected website account.

All you have to do is remember your master password. This is the password you use to unlock the password manager.

The process of using a password manager is very simple and is worth the time adding all your accounts.

Tip Two: Stay Up to Date

Keeping your computer/phone/tablet is important. Bugs and security patches can be released if a bug is found.

To stop hackers or viruses from taking advantage of these old software bugs. Please keep your devices up to date.

Tip Three: Two Factor Authentication

This is the process of when you sign in to your account. A code will be sent to your phone. You then have to enter this code into the login form. This proves that it is you that is logging in to the website.

This is important because if you receive a code and you are not logging into the account. You know someone is trying their luck, so can investigate what is going on. This acts as a second line of defence to your account and data.

If someone has your password they still will not be able to login into your account. This is because they will not know the code which has been sent to you.

Please turn on two-factor authentication on all your accounts where possible.

These are my three little tips to staying a bit safer online. I hope you find them useful.

The post 3 Tips to stay safe online appeared first on Jordanairwave.

This year has been a challenge, to say the least, but let’s hope we can all enjoy a Christmas break and see in the new year.

Oculus Quest 2

The Oculus Quest two by Facebook released in October. Is much improved from the previous version. What makes this VR headset compelling is that you do not need all the extra sensors to placed in your room. You also do not need a powerful PC to run it.

The Oculus Quest can run by itself if you want to or if you want to connect it to the PC you will need the extra link cable. If the geek in your life is thinking about trying with virtual reality this is a great product to buy them.

You can buy it on Amazon here

Logitech MX Master 3

If the geek in your life works and plays on the computer. A mouse becomes a very important tool. The MX Master is a fantastic mouse. It allows you to customise the buttons to perform different functions. This will aid your workflow.

The mouse is also very ergonomic. This will prevent their hand from getting aches and pains in their hand from using the mouse so much.

You can buy it on Amazon here

iFixit Tech Toolkit

If the geek in your life does not have an iFixit kit already, Can they even call themselves a geek?. This tool kit has everything you need to fix all kinds of electronic devices. The geek in your life will not be disappointed.

You can buy it on Amazon here

PS5 / Xbox Series X

The new gaming consoles from Microsoft and Sony are here. After a long wait the geek in your life is sure to want one or even both. Go on get them both, they will love you even more!

Ember Temperature Control Smart Mug 2

Everything is becoming “Smart” nowadays, so it only makes sense that geeks have a smart mug. I know there have been many times where I have made a lovely warm cup of tea. Only to forget about it and then go to drink it and it is cold.

This little gadget solves this.

Buy from Amazon here

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I have seen may other developers building cool things from website tracking infections. To resource website for parents to help with homeschooling.

I wanted to help in some way but with work being so busy I did not have the time.

I discovered Folding @ Home (https://foldingathome.org/). This is a great project in which all you do donate your spare computing power to process data. This will help them fight diseases, including COVID 19.

Folding @ Home is perfectly safe and you control how much of your CPU the programme uses and when it uses it.

All you have to do is go to the Folding @ Home website and download a little bit of software. Install it and you are good to go.

To make it fun, You can Join a team. You can try and beat other teams as you help researchers find cures of many different diseases.

I have now been folding since the lockdown began. It is my way of helping the scientists and data analysts researching cures.

I have been encouraging all developers and geeks to help out and to start folding. I would encourage you to go check out Folding @ Home.

Let’s beat these diseases.

The post How developers can help fight virus appeared first on Jordanairwave.

So let’s go back to the start of the year. Last Christmas I had to work over the holiday close down with my digital director as we had two major projects on. The project I was working on was a very big multi WordPress site for a very well paying client and I was the only developer on it. A Challenge I did not mind, but it did mean some late nights.

The other project started well but could only be described as a massive cluster fuck which saw us bin off a Freelancer that had been brought in because he kept going quiet on us. It also pushed a new developer at the time to the limit and made us realise that he probably was not as good as he had led us to believe.

That set the tone for the rest of the year in regards to work. I felt very static this year, I have had a few coding challenges this year, but it had to be said this year had been mainly sorting a lot of shit out and fixing stuff left by our now ex developer and fixing legacy systems from a time where the developers could just run free.

This year as also reinforce my belief that hiring freelancers is the worst idea going and I hate it, It grinds my gears now that we have to hire a freelancer, But hopefully 2020 I can get the changes I want. I know many people disagree with me on this, but I have yet to be convinced.

2019 was the year I started working with Leanne our new front-end developer, Someone near my age (Sorry Leanne) but also has my level of sarcasm. I found that I developed a brilliant working relationship with her and we seem to be on the same page, I look forward to working with her in 2020.

I am also hoping to find 1 or two more developers to bolster our little development team so we can rebuild from the developers that have moved on.

In my personal life, It’s been all go with the kids and helping my oldest learn how he should act in school. If I am honest this takes up most of the weekends with him and also teaching my youngest not to follow him.

We did manage to have a huge family holiday to Egypt this year, which I loved and would love to go back soon. It was my first holiday in over two years and the first plane trip for the kids, it was a very special moment.

2019 has been a very busy year, which has also meant the year has gone very quickly. I did not cross much off on my list this year. I guess I feel that this year was a bit static was because my career progressed very quickly in 2018. So this year was trying to prove myself and implement systems that I know work and also clean up the mess left over.

I am very much looking forward to 2020.

Happy new year folks.

The post 2019 Review appeared first on Jordanairwave.

iRobot Roomba 890 Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Wi-Fi Connectivity, Works with Alexa

As geeks we do not have the time to get the vacuum cleaner out, We are far to busy programming or playing games.  The robot vacuum has improved over the year and although still not perfect it can do the job in the “Geek Den”, plus its controlled by Alexa. The massive downfall is it’s not a cheap gift at £529 from Amazon.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 76042 The SHIELD Helicarrier

There are not many geeks that are not a marvel fan. This SHIELD Helicarrier is gigantic and will make any Marvel fan feel proud to display in their home, it will also keep the geek in your life entertained for a few hours which the build process is happening.  Now again his is not cheap at £460 from Amazon, but think of the smile on your geeks face when they see this.

PlayStation Classic

The older geeks will remember the first Sony PlayStation,  With the huge success of the Nintendo Mini this is a must have for all the older geeks out there. It comes pre loaded with the classic playstation games so they can relive there child hood.  Its not expensive either at £89 from Amazon.

Logitech 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System

Perfect for the living room or geek den. This surround sound speaker system has great reviews for its sound quality at a very good price.  This one is certainly on my Christmas list from my living room, although my wife does not know it yet. This is available on Amazon for £197.

Back to the Future 30th Anniversary Trilogy

An all-time classic that will have a special place in the heart of any geek who loves science. This indelible futuristic science adventure is a geeky essential and will make a great addition to any movie collection, it available on Amazon for only £18.

Thats it from me,  I hope this gives you some ideas to help you buy for your geek.  I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Happy Christmas and hope you enjoy your time with your family.

The post 2018 Top 5 Christmas Gifts for Geeks appeared first on Jordanairwave.

1. Amazon Echo Dot

We start with the Amazon Dot, the small smart speaker which is around £40. This is the entry level smart speaker in the Echo family. I have held off buying one as I did not have a need for one and did not see the point. But I have smart lighting and heating systems at home which get used all the time and recently Damon one of the developers I work with got one and said it’s amazing, but does take some getting used to.
I have now decided to try it out. With two kids this could be really handy and convenient without having to pull out my phone all the time to operate the lights and the heating.

2. Nintendo Switch

When the Nintendo Wii came out, I was straight to the shop with my money to buy one. I loved it because it was so different to what was out there at the time and it was cheap. Ok the graphics where not amazing, but that was not the point. It was family friendly and for many Christmas’s was the entertainment after we had stuffed ourselves of food.

I was very excited to see the Nintendo switch when it finally got released. With the TV being taken up by the kids and the wife, I could now play my games still but on the small screen. The controllers are also small enough that the kid’s small hands would be able to hold them with ease.

This console can still be family friendly but this time you get the great graphics so I can’t wait to see if I get one. I am not a fan of the price but that is not going to change anytime soon so will have to accept that and just pay it.

3. AfterShokz Trekz Titanium Bone Conduction headphones

When running I like listening to music but I do not like having in ear headphones on. I find they become uncomfortable very quickly once you get hot and sweaty, I also do not like the fact that it blocks out all other noise. I like to hear what is going on around me mainly for safety especially running next to the road.

I have been following Bone Conductive headphones for a while now and only this year after listening to some reviews have I been convinced now is the time to buy a pair.

A lot of the reviews say the sound is now really good, but it does take some getting used to. The fact you can hear your music and still hear everything around you. I am very much looking forward to getting a pair of these to try out and get back into running.

4. Fitbit Alta HR

I love my Fitbit Flex but it has to be said that is starting to feel old now, I have gone through about 5 straps it takes some persuading to charge up and the charge does not last as long as it used to. As a geek, I can’t be dealing with old tech. So, I am moving up to the Alta HR, Wait!! But why not the Apple watch 3?

Good question and its simple really. I am not a fan and this is coming from an Apple fan boy , I like the fact that so many of my friends own a Fitbit so I find it keeps you motivated seeing how low down you come on the weekly step count list I can end up if I do not exercise. The Alta HR is not even half price of the Apple Watch 3 and does everything I need it to, which is mainly count steps.

5. FOBO Bluetooth Tire Pressure system for cars

The last item on the list is for the car, I am always forgetting to check my tyre pressures. These Bluetooth Tyre pressure caps send the pressure of your tyres to your phone. The app will alert you when your pressure drops below a certain level, just what I need.

They are not cheap, but I look at it as they could save your life by warning you of under inflated tyres.

So, there it is, My little geek Christmas list. It’s not the all-out geek dream list that you see but just a little list of tech that would help me out.

Merry Christmas all.

The post 2017 Top 5 Christmas Gifs appeared first on Jordanairwave.

While developing some new sites at work I noticed that the colours displayed on my screen while using Google Chrome looked washed out compared to other websites.  An example is shown below.

After doing some research online and reading some forum posts, I could see that I was not the only one having this issue.  It turns out that I needed to turn Color Correct Rendering off,  The steps below will show you how do this.

1. Enter chrome://flags in to the address bar and press enter
2. Now search on the page for enable-color-correct-rendering, You should see the screen shot below

3. You need to change default to disable like the screen shot below

You will then need to save and restart Chrome.  You should notice the colours on your website and a lot more brighter now.  Below is a screen shot of the same website header after I turned off enable-color-correct-rendering

I hope this helps a few people out.

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What I want to tell you about today is not the design of a font or anything like that but the way we deliver a font to a website is going to change.

Currently the way a font is delivered to a website is in multiple files. So for example you could have a font file for normal weight, a font file for bold weight and a font file for italic styling. 3 files are needed to deliver 3 variations of a certain font.

With so many font files needed, this added to page weight on a website which in turn slows down a site if you have many custom font in use.

Back in September 2016 it was presentated to the world that for the past year the companies of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Adobe have been working together on a new OpenType format called variable font.

Type designers can now use only 1 file to hold all the information needed for a font, This is instead of having multiple files for each different variant on the font. From a web developer point of view this is brilliant, 1 file for 1 font and then you can use any type of styling you wish. Serving less files is always a good thing in modern web development as our quest for speed goes on.

Today you can play with variable fonts here: http://www.axis-praxis.org/

This is already in the development builds of browsers, but is not fully supported as of yet. With Apple, Microsoft, Google and Adobe all working on this there is an expectation that this variable font format will make its way in to the operating systems for Mac and Windows based PC’s. But only time will tell on this.

Variable fonts is still really new but is progressing at a very fast rate, Its worth following this as in web development we could be using this within the next two years.

The post Variable Fonts appeared first on Jordanairwave.

HTTP explained

HTTP is the current protocol we have now, it has been around since the start of the web and the version of HTTP we have now HTTP 1.1 came out in 1999.

Websites in 1999 looked a lot different from the websites we have today. There was of course no responsive design, There was very little CSS and JS. A website back in 1999 was just plain HTML and some images, The size of a website was also a lot smaller.

When you request a website from your browser in the current HTTP protocol, each resource which by this I mean, every image file, every CSS file, every JS file is requested 1 at a time. This means that if you have a large image file this will slow down the loading of the other files which in turn slows down the loading of the website.

Websites over the years have gotten bigger and now need to do a lot more which means that the old HTTP protocol is not very efficient in delivering websites.

HTTP 2 explained

In 2009 Google posted about a research project they had been working on named SPDY (Speedy). SPDY was not a new protocol is just modified the way existing HTTP requests and responses are sent.

SPDY addressed some of HTTP short comings with modern websites, These where:

• allow multiplexing – This means that multiply files can be downloaded at the same time which will in turn speed up your website;
• allow browsers to prioritize assets so that resources vital to the display of a page could be sent by the server first;
• compress and reduce HTTP headers – This speeds up how fast your website is downloaded to the users browser.
• implement server push, whereby a server can push vital resources to the browser before being asked for them.

SPDY was successful and became HTTP 2 which is built upon this success and in February 2015 the final spec was approved with browser support a year on being excellent , so you can start using it right now. Please remember that HTTP2 is browser and server side, This means that it is best to check with your hosting provider that they support HTTP2.

Google Benefits

HTTP2 is what all websites should be using and this fact is backed up with Google pushing all sites to become faster and use HTTPS. If your site uses HTTPS today then you will more then likely be using HTTP2, To test this you can use the following website: https://tools.keycdn.com/http2-test

So what you waiting for, Go us HTTP2 now and speed up your website.

The post What is this HTTP2 you speak of appeared first on Jordanairwave.

In 2016 I actually got as far as making a photoshop document of the site I wanted after going through the site map process and all the wireframing, but the coding part of the job did not happen. This was mainly because of another bundle of joy coming into my life with the birth of my daughter.

Now my son is going to bed much easier in the evening, I now find I have a few hours in the evening where I can do little bits of work. So in 2017 I have made it my goal to redesign and sort out my site.

The theme currently running on it is 5 years old, it looks outdated and the responsive does not work that well.

I have been working on a new responsive WordPress theme which I use as my base files so want to use this. I will also be sorting out the structure to separate out the podcast posts as I would like to start mixing again now I have the chance.

I also want to include the ability to play the podcast from the site and sort out some of the coding examples that I have given in the past which do not look that great now.

I plan to blog the process of my redesign as I go through the process. This way it will keep me on track.

The post 2017 a new look appeared first on Jordanairwave.