Journal

Web Developer - South East, UK

2009-05-27T20:22:57+00:00

Things at Nine Four have been going well, so much so in fact that myself, Paul and Jo have decided that we need of an additional pair of hands to join our remote team on a permanent basis. If you don’t already know we’re a small but busy digital media design and development agency made up of 3 permanent staff members and a network of trusted and respected freelancers. We’ve been profitable since our inception back in 2005 and work hard for our clients to provide business led creative and technical solutions to every day business needs. The ideal candidate will be motivated, have some good basic project management skills and match for the most part one of the two possible outlines that we’ve identified below: 1. A web developer with an understanding of the value of design, a good knowledge of PHP/MySQL based development and MVC based application frameworks. You might also tinker with jQuery and have some knowledge of web services, XML etc. 2. A web developer with a bit of creative flair, good knowledge of Flash (ActionScript), XHTML/CSS and a willingness to work with (or learn how to use) content management systems like ExpressionEngine. Despite the home based nature of the position there is a definite requirement to be able to commute to our office here in Bracknell (Berkshire, UK) on a weekly or bi-weekly basis for studio meetings. You will also need to be able to attend meetings with clients based in the South East of the UK every now and then. Salary will be commensurate with your experience and you’ll also benefit from company pension contributions, a decent holiday allowance and ‘very’ flexible hours. Interested? Drop me an email (nathan@ninefour.co.uk) with some relevant work examples and an explanation of what you think you can bring to our team. Not interested but on Twitter? Tweet this and help us find the right person for the job! Update: This position is no longer available.

OS X pet peeves

2009-05-22T21:28:24+00:00

Having lived day to day with a Mac now for a good few years I thought it was about time I documented some of my pet peeves as a one time Windows user. So here they are in the form of a brief wish list for OS X Snow Leopard. This is in the vein hope that Steve Jobs is a regular reader of my blog (pft – yea right!) and that he will do something about these very minor issues. :) Fix the ‘Zoom’ button Seriously what is up with that thing. As a Windows user the expected behavior of a button with a + on it is that it should maximize/zoom the application you are currently running with a single click. With OS X there is no consistency. Clicking + on a finder window reduces it in size (WTF?) and then proceeds to do nothing. Clicking + in iTunes switches between the full and minimal interface. Clicking + suggests to the user that the window will increase in size surely? Make it easier to email files to contacts Perhaps I’m missing something obvious, but there is simply no way to just option/right click a file and select to send it to a email recipient? On windows this is an item in the contextual menu, right click, send to email recipient, default mail client opens a new message and attaches said file. Easy. Ok so I know I can write an automator script carry out said task but that then requires a ridiculous number of clicks to execute (Right click > More > Automator > Email Files…). Show Hidden Files Please give us OS X users a way to have hidden files within specific folders revealed. I need to see hidden files by default on network shares and elsewhere – but not on my desktop. A simple option under Finder Preferences would be a step in the right direction.

Migrating from TXP to EE - Conclusion

2009-03-29T20:55:58+00:00

Ok, so steps 1 through 5 pretty much got us to a conclusion but there was one little fact that really had me bugged about the migration. I wanted to persist the article IDs from Textpattern during the migration to ExpressionEngine because they are used in my permalink URLs. Basically I don’t want to break the internet (or my small part of it) by altering the URL structure in the switch. How did I do it? Open ‘cp.mt_import.php’ form within ‘/system/cp/’ then at line 954 add: $ids = array(); then at about line 1028 add: // IDs Hackif (strpos($parts['0'],'ID') !== false){$ids[$id] = trim(str_replace('ID:','',$first_section[$i]));} At about line number 1765 amend the entry id value to: 'entry_id' => $ids[$id], Now save and upload your amended import script. Back in Textpattern you’ll also need to add one new line to the top of your export script. ID: <txp:article_id /> So your Textpattern export will now include the original article ID and the import process will maintain this (so long as you have deleted all other weblog entries prior to import). So, that’s it. I’m all done… I migrated… now I just have to find the time to finish off the new design and implement it! Happy Migrating!!!

ExpressionEngine Field Frame Field Type: UK Counties Select

2009-03-23T13:02:49+00:00

Having had a play with the wonderful ExpressionEngine Field Frame extension which Brandon Kelly has authored I felt inclined to port my UK Counties Select Plug-in. Once I can get my head round the reasons for GitHub not working as expected I’ll post it there, in the mean time: Download: np.uk_counties_select.ff_fieldtype.zip You might also want to check out the numerous other field frame field types that Brandon is assembling.

Ruby on Rails Developers - Windsor, UK

2009-03-18T11:30:46+00:00

Global Personals Limited / WhiteLabelDating.com are looking for Ruby on Rails Developers to work from their Windsor office here in the UK. If you think you might fit the bill drop Ross Williams a line (rwilliams@globalpersonals.co.uk) and be sure to mention that I sent you. Job details follow: Job Description Global Personals, the company behind WhiteLabelDating.com, has a fantastic opportunity for talented, experienced Rails developers to join our development team. You’ll join 11 developers, designers and project managers focused on creating the best online dating platform in the industry. We’re just beginning a series of new projects in Rails – you’ll be joining right at the start to help influence decisions based on your expert Rails skills and experience. You’ll be based on the top floor of our lovely headquarters at 1 High Street in the middle of Windsor. It’s easily commutable from London (West via Paddington or South-West direct from Waterloo), Reading, Bracknell, Staines or Slough. We give our people the best tools. You’ll get a brand new 24in iMac and a 23in Cinema Display to work on (or a top-end PC if you insist) and you’ll sit at a big desk on a swanky Hermann Miller Aeron chair. We have a free posh coffee machine in our own kitchen, XBox 360, Wii, LCD TVs, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, football table and other toys. Salary will be based on experience, but will likely be in the range of £35k-£60k (negotiable). We pay a £1000 bonus after your three month probation if you’ve come direct to us. Following your successful probation we’ll pay up to 5% of your salary into your company pension, contribute to gym membership, plus other benefits. You’ll need the following skills/attributes: Ruby on Rails – essential to demonstrate your Rails experience MySQL (or equivalent RDBMS) Strong communicator, teamworker and best practice stickler Excellent knowledge of Javascript using Prototype/Scriptaculous Ability to write clean, semantic, well-formed HTML and CSS Proficiency with Linux or Unix Subversion The following are desirables: TDD and/or BDD Experience of Agile working environment Open source projects or blogs you’ve written on Previous dating or social networking projects ColdFusion and PHP Company Description The largest private online dating company in the UK with offices in Windsor, Miami, New York and Sydney.

An open letter to software developers RE Adobe Fireworks

2009-02-16T12:23:16+00:00

Dear software developer. This is an open letter which I am writing as a one time advocate of Adobe Fireworks. Fireworks is still, some 10 years after it’s conception, the only package out there which provides web designers with the tools they need to design for the web. At it’s core, a balanced blend of vector and bitmap tools, live effects and slicing with optimized export. However over the years Adobe have lost their way with this product and it’s become bloated by marketing driven features. Designers carry on using Fireworks only because there is no decent alternative. The latest release – Fireworks CS4 includes a poorly implemented version of the Adobe Type Engine which has brought with it a bug that quite literally effects all users. The bug is as of today (some 5 months after initial release) still not fixed yet it manifests itself in just about every layout a designer works on. Personally I have lost faith in Adobe to deliver on the promise that Fireworks has as a product. They have been distracted by ‘rapid prototyping’ and integration with development tools like ‘Flex’ – nice to have features that have drawn focus away from the now neglected core function of the software. We don’t want another new UI, XHTML and CSS export, a JavaScript pop-up menu generator or a new type engine. We just want a product that is 100% focused on allowing us to put down on the canvas what we are imagining in our heads and then slice up and export that for use in a hand coded layout. That’s it. Right now there seems to be a huge void in the marketplace which developers are not filling. It’s my belief that if someone takes up the gauntlet and comes out with a product that fulfills the basic requirements of a web designer, they will steal a huge slice of business from Adobe. If not then I’m resigned to hoping that Adobe wakes up and takes notice, puts the effort where it’s needed and waits until the software is really finished before unleashing it on it’s customers. Kind regards Nathan Pitman Update: It seems Adobe are working on an updater for Fireworks CS4 to rectify the text shifting bug.

Dear Adobe Fireworks, it’s not you, it’s me.

2009-02-03T02:18:01+00:00

When we first met it was love at first sight, your combination of vector and bitmap tools, your web layer and slices… I just couldn’t resist. For years we’ve worked hand in hand, side by side… you even changed your name and to begin with everything seemed ok, but then I started to feel like you weren’t really there for me anymore. You started spending a lot of time changing your look, diluting your true self with ‘marketing features’ and half hearted improvements, hiding your real character and charm behind ‘rapid prototyping’ and ‘improved css export’. That’s not who I fell in love with and I just can’t live with it anymore, I need to get out there and find someone who really understands my needs. I’m sorry but it’s over. Update: An open letter to software developers RE Adobe Fireworks

ExpressionEngine Plug-in: US States Select

2009-01-15T11:52:36+00:00

This is just a variation of my UK Counties Select plug-in for ExpressionEngine which as you might expect, returns a list of US states in the drop down rather than UK counties. Usage of the plug-in is as follows: {exp:np_us_states_select name="states"} There are also some additional parameters you can pass that are detailed in the plug-in info page. Download: pi.np_us_states_select.php.zip Obviously let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts on how this can be improved. Enjoy!

ExpressionEngine Plug-in: Add VAT

2009-01-08T21:14:11+00:00

I’ve just written a new ExpressionEngine plug-in called ‘Add VAT‘. This plug-in takes any numeric value and returns the value plus VAT. You also have to specify the VAT rate obviously. Typical usage is as follows: {exp:np_add_vat price="120" rate="15"} I’m using the plug-in on a website I’m developing where I need to be able to display prices inclusive and exclusive of VAT. Currently the Simple Commerce module does not provide a facility to specify VAT or taxes. Download: pi.np_add_vat.php.zip If you have any further ideas as to how the plug-in could be developed do let me know. :)

Whatever you do, don’t buy a Kia Sedona.

2009-01-01T23:38:01+00:00

15 months ago we purchased a brand spanking new Kia Sedona from our local dealership in Reading. Right from the day we took delivery of the car things have just not been right. Initially it was ill fitted and scratched dashboard panels but after a week we also noticed that there was an intermittent problem with the electric sliding doors. The electric doors simply failed to close correctly on regular occasions. This fault would manifest itself in a number of ways: On attempting to close the door from either the fob, handle or internal controls it would slide to a closed position and then open up fully immediately of it’s own accord. Sometimes it would take up to 18 attempts to get the door to close. So much for the convenience of an electric sliding door (one of the features that attracted us to the car in the first place). On attempting to close the door (as above) it would close fully but then open by about 1 inch of it’s own accord some 5 or 6 seconds later. Giving you just enough time to get in the car and drive off with the children in the seats. The door then ‘flinging’ fully open once in motion. We reported the problems to the Evans Halshaw Kia dealership and arranged for the vehicle to go back in for repair. The fit of the dashboard panels was rectified but the dealership claimed that they could not reproduce the problem with the doors yet for us it persisted. The car was booked in again, again returned without a solution and booked back in again and again and again… we even provided the dealership with video footage of the fault since we felt they simply did not beleive us. On one particular occasion we drove to the dealership to drop the car off and collect a courtesy vehicle with all 3 kids in tow only to discover that the courtesy car had no petrol and a faulty petrol cap, making it impossible for us to fill the vehicle. Again and again we were fobbed off by the Evans Halshaw Kia dealership in Reading. We then discovered upon trying to book the car in one day that they had lost their franchise and that they would no longer be able to deal with the issues we had with the vehicle (Great!). It took us some time to find a new local dealership that could provide a courtesy car. West London Motor Group Kia in High Wycombe in this case. We booked the car in with them to see if perhaps they could resolve the issues with the electric sliding doors. Initially we encountered the same problems, they were unable to reproduce the problem with the doors but did replace a number of parts. Another visit later and still no joy. By now as you can well imagine the situation was no longer in any way amusing. We were having to ferry our children about in a car which we simply no longer felt safe in and were well and truly fed up with the frequent visits to and from the dealership. We decided to contact Kia customer services in the vein hope that they might be able to sort things out for us and let us enjoy the car which we had paid good money for. After applying a fair degree of pressure we eventually convinced Kia customer services to provide us with a like for like replacement vehicle for a period of a week while they had our vehicle in to resolve the issues with the doors. Alas nothing with Kia is simple (or enjoyable)… On dropping our car of at the dealership we realised that the replacement vehicle that they had provided would not accommodate 3 children in car seats. We called Kia and informed them, they claimed that the rental company had contacted us to ask if the car was ok and I had confirmed that it would be fine (a complete lie). I requested that they provide us with a new rental car that would accommodate the children such that we could actually go out as a family in one car (not an unreasonable request when we have purchased a £20k family car from them). They claimed that they could not provide a suitable vehicle (not what I had been told when they promised a like for like replacement in the first place) so I suggested that I could find a suitable rental vehicle myself and they could reimburse us the cost of said vehicle. Whilst this seems like a reasonable suggestion and a logical solution which would leave them with a happy customer they initially refused to cover the costs. A couple of heated phone conversations later they finally did the right thing and agreed to pay for the rental vehicle that we had located. The rental firm that provided us with the unsuitable vehicle (via Kia) tried to sting us for damage to the rental car totaling £150 but that’s another story. By now I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to resolve the issues with the car and have had to take time off work on numerous occasions to deliver the car to the dealership and collect it again. By perhaps what can only be described as a stroke of luck, after having the car for a full week, the dealership managed to fix the problems with the door. Ironically this was the result of following instructions from a technical bulletin that had been issued by Kia regarding the lot from which our car was born… something which we suggested that both dealerships investigate a number of times. You might think that this is the end of the story, alas it is not. Since collecting the car we have discovered that during icy weather the rear sliding doors now often refuse to open at all (again an intermittent issue) and the air conditioning has stopped working completely so we have the car booked in with the garage for ‘another’ visit on the 2nd of January. Today (1st of January) whilst out with the whole family in the car I realised that the engine was not responding as it should, the car was loosing power on hills and struggling to maintain motorway speed. We managed to get off the motorway (not a great place to stop with 3 small children) and pulled up. With a burning smell and smoke emanating from the engine bay we decided not to proceed any further. Thank god we were following friends so they helped us to ferry the children back home and the very nice man from the AA came out to tow the car to the Kia dealership. So the question now is what next… can we really ‘endure’ this car any more. We seem to have a lemon… a car built on a Friday perhaps? In any case the stress associated with this car has us considering our options… even if that means selling the car at a huge loss just to get into something reliable and safe for our family. Kia are unwilling to even consider replacing the vehicle or making any kind of good will payment to alleviate the trouble we have had… apparently all we can expect from them is a free service and I simply don’t think that’s good enough. Whilst dropping the car off at the dealership today with the nice man from the AA I happened across a chap eying some of the cars on the forecourt, he was looking to buy a new Kia Sorento. I advised him strongly against purchasing a Kia and relayed the story of how reliable and well built our Sedona is, he seemed convinced… so that’s about £20,000 I’ve just lost Kia. I’ll continue to relay my story to every person I know and meet until I’ve lost Kia at least £1,000,000 in sales. With 5,000 unique visitors to this blog every month and an extensive social networking contacts list I’m pretty confident in my quest. Update: Join the ‘“I promise to never buy a Kia”:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43198716087’ Facebook group to show your support! Update: I’ve taken it upon myself to write some frank and honest reviews on a number of motoring websites to help warn others off buying Kia. Parkers Kia Sedona Review