/blog
So, my Q2 resolution is: actually write stuff on this blog.
No, really.
Other stuff I plan to do this quarter:
- Bring about world peace
- Fly to Jupiter
Yes, it's April Fool's day. Yes, I'm too late.
Blog by random pete on Tuesday, 01 April 2008 21:48.
0 comments
Well, quite a few projects have been distinctly more important than this blog for quite a while.
Once I'm through them I'll be doing some more stuff on here; at the moment there's little point in it being here, except to aggregate spam.
So I'm currently figuring out what the best thing to do is. I'll probably just remove the whole blog / projects section, and just leave a pretty bare front page with links to the the RTE source code which is the only thing my site ever gets hit on for! (For those who are interested it can be downloaded
here.)
I've been meaning to post a couple of CSS tutorials / articles since that's where my work the past few months has mostly been taking me. I've also found a pretty unique IE7 bug which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else...
Blog by random pete on Monday, 23 July 2007 17:27.
43 comments
So here I am, staying at my folk's house for a couple of weeks, battling away on a 500 mhz AMD with 128mb RAM and a cracked screen, trying to run Visual Web Developer and POV-RAY to do a little work on a couple of projects! (Luckily there was an old CRT monitor lying around which I could use...)
I've done a little modification to this website, fixing a couple of CSS glitches and reimplementing a couple of options in the Blog system that I accidentally removed when I updated the template. Clearly I'm approaching this site in a far more roughshod manner than I would a production website.
Bringing the topic back to commercial development, I saw an article on A List Apart that might raise a few laughs but the subject matter of which is well worth considering: Paper Prototyping. This is a process I usually go through in the early phases of consultation with a client to help them visualise the end product, as well as generate ideas and ensure we're both happy with the route the project is taking - without consuming any great amounts of time or resources. One of those "well that's kind of obvious but I never really thought of it like that" kind of articles.
Blog by random pete on Friday, 26 January 2007 21:59.
Updated 31 January 2007 09:39.
0 comments
No. Nobody likes spam. Which begs the question, why do they keep sending it, and who would actually buy anything off them?
There's plenty of anti-spam software systems out there, but all too often real emails also get flagged. You have the option of never providing your email address anywhere publicly... but unfortunately sometimes that's not possible and can be very limiting! There might be another way... I've come across WPoison, a system that actually fights back at the spammers by feeding them bogus address! Unfortunately it's written in perl. I might have to convert it to dot.net...
I found this link in a page I was browsing at devnull.net:
This link is SpamBait.
Don't bother following it, it points to a program that generates an endless series of web pages containing randomly generated email addresses (and links back to itself ...) for the benefit of spammers trolling web sites for targets. Check out the Wpoison Homepage for more information.
The link follows to the WPoison setup on the original site (it's actually a series of links, one for each letter of the alphabet). They display a whole list of completely fabricated email addresses and links to further pages containing further lists, the aim being to "trap" the spammer's bot in a maze of pages, flooding their database with unusable (dis)information.
If you own your own website you are encouraged to install this system to keep the email harvesters at bay, or at least link to someone else's installation.
I don't know if it has any chance of working, but for the sake of our own santites we have to hope!
Blog by random pete on Friday, 19 January 2007 10:43.
Updated 23 January 2007 15:00.
5 comments
I've been putting together a much nicer-looking design for the site. I've been poking around with this old layout trying to make it look smarter, then yesterday I decided to completely start over from scratch. I want to use this site more as a portfolio and information site than just my personal ramblings...
Here's a site I've finished recently:
Newstead Treefest Music, Arts & Crafts Festival , a small local not-for-profit family and community event. They previously had a plain website but I've spruced it up with some graphics and used a montage of previous year's festivals to make the surrounding template. Overall I'm happy that it conveys the friendly and family-oriented image that the organisers strive for.
Blog by random pete on Friday, 07 July 2006 15:02.
Updated 19 January 2007 10:35.
1608 comments
Well there isn't really any news. Not been blogging much recently (and frankly what I have been writing has been a bit rubbish...) because I'm not really sure what direction to take this in. I think I'm going to do a big cleanup and delete all the more pointless posts, then start writing more technology-focused articles, as well as making the site more oriented around services I offer like I.T. consultancy ,and web design. First, though, I need to finish building the blog app itself!
Chris (of
Greenbean Design) has put together a nice CSS layout for
Psycle.info (Nottingham Psytrance night). It's a really nice-looking site, with a lightweight CSS layout.
It also uses a single image for the rollover links, rather than a separate one for each link. This is a really nice technique which means that the graphics load all-at-once, rather than slowly piecing together as different images are loaded. Basically, using CSS background image positioning attributes you can slice the image up exactly how you want it. The big advantage of this is that all the rollovers load at once, so less chance of occasional artifacts where a rollover image fails to load. Also it reduces download time as one large image takes less space than 6 smaller ones (due to increased compression), and less actually HTTP requests.
It's also occurred to me that one single big image could just be used for the
entire background; rather than using Photoshop to do the slicing, it can be acheived entirely in CSS...
Blog by random pete on Saturday, 20 May 2006 20:35.
Updated 03 July 2006 13:43.
20 comments
So, Microsoft, being the generous guys they are, are running this competition (
www.madeinexpress.com) based around their Express set of dev tools. Grand prize is $10,000 which, to be honest, could be a lot larger (this is Microsoft we're talking about after all ... I'm sure ol' Bill coulda rooted around in his pocket and pulled out more small change than that ... but anyway). In fact, the contest looks like a bit of a "Geek Big Brother" with all the participants writing up their progress on a blog hosted by Microsoft and, I imagine, the publicity being worth more than the actual prize money...
In any case, I managed to get my idea in last night, about an hour before the submissions deadline. I've been toying with one idea after another trying to think of something unique and cool to submit; I have great ideas all the time, but usually too complex or too geeky for what I felt the contest was looking for. I wanted to think of something really neat, funky and useful - that hadn't been thought of before. My real problem was that anything I thought of that was
too cool, I want to just create for my own purposes. In the end I knocked together an outline of an RPG game drawing together a few different bits and pieces of ideas I've had over the years. Will be a damn cool game :) If I don't get in the contest, I'll sit it on the backburner for a while, and work on it as and when I get the chance.
The judging panel includes Mr. Scoble A.K.A.
Scobleizer.
Blog by random pete on Monday, 01 May 2006 16:07.
Updated 19 January 2007 11:16.
1 comment
My guess is, all that popularity went to their head, and they forgot the reason
why Firefox was so popular - that it was stable, reliable, and
secure. Unforunately I'm feeling a little disillusioned of late, as some others in my network seem to be. Why? The thing keeps jamming up. Sometimes the cursor keys refuse to work for no good reason. Weirdly (and I think this has been a problem for a long time but I always just overlooked it as one of those cute little flaws that make someone close to you seem all the more adorable), half the time when you hit "CTRL-C" it
just doesn't copy. The problem with (fairly regular) freezes seems to get worse with each update, too. It brings my whole computer to a halt and I have to use Task Manager to end the process, which of course brings down all open windows and I lose all my browsing sessions (I usually have 20-30 tabs open in total, in various different windows). Also, it's hellishly slow to start up (that's compared to IE, which is only quick to start up because it's integrated into the operating system, and therefore you have to wait through that startup time on
bootup... however now I'm starting to see why that might be an advantage). What's happened Mozilla? When did the browser we love so much grow old and decrepit all of a sudden?
Blog by random pete on Monday, 01 May 2006 00:02.
Updated 14 June 2006 14:10.
20 comments
I delved into the GoogleMap Api, in order to update the MonkeyNuts website with the map to the venue (
link). Whilst signing up and getting my Api Key on the Google website, I noticed the following in somewhere amongst the various legal ramblings:
In addition, the Service may not be used: (a) for or with real time route guidance (including without limitation, turn-by-turn route guidance and other routing that is enabled through the use of a sensor), or (b) for, or in connection with, any systems or functions for automatic or autonomous control of vehicle behavior.
Sounds to me like they're plotting something here... perhaps a move into the automotive industry...
or it could be, with all the recent furore over this issue, they're just making sure no-one's going to hold them responsible if, say, Google Maps directs them over the side of a cliff...
Blog by random pete on Sunday, 30 April 2006 23:51.
Updated 30 April 2006 23:53.
0 comments
I just noticed that Visual Web Developer and the other Express tools
are now permanently free, yet another bizarre move by Mr. Gates. Is he really going soft in his old age? Next thing they'll be giving Windows away free and calling round to mow your lawn...I wholly commend this move; I got into programming as a hobbyist playing around on a ZX Spectrum. The BASIC programming language was included as a part of the operating system (well... it was the operating system) and the (hefty) instruction manual that came with it was mostly about how to program BASIC. Access to these developer tools has been further and further removed from the user with recent versions of Windows, which I've always felt was a shame. Thumbs up to this news!
Blog by random pete on Saturday, 29 April 2006 14:39.
Updated 14 June 2006 14:04.
5 comments
I was emailed a link to a website two days ago, at twelve noon. Here's the link:
http://www.helpwinthisbet.com. It sounds to me like an argument blown out of all proportion. Basically, the author told his girlfriend any idiot could make a website that'd get loads of hits; in the end he made a bet that he could get 2 million hits. On Thursday his hit counter was a little above 500,000 (the website started on March 14 and had only hit 10,000 hits on April 5) ... today I thought I'd take a look to see how fast it was growing -
11,872,313 hits! That's some phenomenal growth... and means he has now won his bet. Wierdly, the site doesn't contain any comment on this.
This is another example of the "critical mass" internet phenomenon we've been seeing lately ... where once something attains a certain level of popularity (or notoriety) within the internet sphere, it suddenly leaps to
everybody knowing about it...
Blog by random pete on Saturday, 29 April 2006 14:25.
Updated 29 April 2006 14:31.
1 comment
It seems the fact that the open source community has been leeching such a large market share from the Big One, is making more and more of an impact. A while ago they
announced they'd be supporting Linux in future releases. That's on top of releasing free (but still extremely powerful) versions of their software development packages. And now ... they've released a whole load of the
source code of the .NET framework 2.0, the framework that
drives their development tools. More information on
Scott Guthrie's weblog. Fantastic stuff, really.
Blog by random pete on Thursday, 27 April 2006 01:13.
4 comments
I'm in a rock band, by the way. I know, everyone's in a band these days, it's not very original anymore, practically a fashion: however here's the link anyway:
Some Great Reward . I write the lyrics and do vocals, and play a little bit of guitar on some songs (altho not on any of the 3 tracks available for download). I also built the website!
Blog by random pete on Monday, 24 April 2006 21:51.
0 comments
Things just move so quickly don't they? Over the last few days I've thought of probably a dozen or so topics to blog about but when I sit in front of the screen either the words seem to just evaporate or my ideas blow up to such huge proportions I give up and go back to coding...
I'm about to release a new website, which will run off a forum system I've been working on for the last few weeks. I'd better get back to it I 'spose!
Blog by random pete on Tuesday, 18 April 2006 22:49.
0 comments
"The Bridge" by
Iain Banks. I'm a big fan of his books, but still haven't read them all, so when I saw this in a sale I couldn't really help myself. Unfortunately it didn't really live up to his usual standards, and judging by some
reviews on Amazon I think others have felt the same. It had some incredibly entertaining and thought-provoking moments, but spent most of the time wallowing in fairly trivial sentimentality, delivered with a complete lack of any emotion. A few times the pace picked itself up, and it would seem like he was working towards one of a typically epic and jaw-dropping conclusion, but then for some reason never really went anywhere.
The premise is that the main character, remaining nameless throughout, has been washed up at the bridge with no memory whatsoever of his past. The bridge is a mammoth construction, stretching impossibly far in both ends, so that nobody who lives on it has ever travelled so far as to reach land. This is, in fact, a coma-induced dream world created purely in the mind of our main character. It's certainly an interesting concept. Almost every person, situation and happening is somehow related to an element of the character's past life, which is revealed through painstakingly detailed flashbacks. This is where, in my opinion, the narrative fails; rather than leaving anything for the reader to guess at, it is all far too obvious right from the start (partly the fault of the publishers for revealing too much on the back cover).
There are, however, some truly excellent moments that still make it compelling reading; occasional outbursts of rabid dreamworld narrative rant had me genuinely laughing out loud, at times twisting fantasy and sci-fi into one. If only those sections had been more heavily tied into the plot and the conclusion, I wouldn't have been left feeling ... somehow cheated ... like there's something ... not quite right with the world ... almost like ... it was all a strange dream ... that I've only just woken up from ...
So perhaps that was his desired effect. Even so, if you've never read Banks, I'd warn against picking this one to start with. Try some of his sci-fi, which he writes as Iain
M. Banks, mostly revolving around a civilisation of humanoids and hyperintelligent machines known as the Culture. I'd recommend
Use Of Weapons or
Excession to break into the series. It doesn't really matter what order you read them in but
Look To Windward you should save for last; it's by far my favourite but it's the only one that refers to previous books in any significant way.
Oh, there's also an essay he's written about the Culture, at this address:
A Few Notes On The Culture.
Happy reading!
Blog by random pete on Wednesday, 12 April 2006 07:18.
Updated 12 April 2006 08:28.
10 comments
Well I can
tell you it scared the life outta me, seeing (out of the corner of my
eye) a small hovering box of text crawl steadily across my screen
apparently of its own free will... Then I realised the sleeve of my
jumper was resting on the spacebar, causing a steady stream of
whitespace to be inserted, pushing what I now realise was an
intellisense dropdown box across the page.
I
know I've stayed up too late when stuff like that starts happening...
Blog by random pete on Wednesday, 12 April 2006 07:07.
17 comments
Getting it right will be a slow tweaking process, whenever
I removed the 'Articles' section as I realised (at least until I've written a bit more content!) there wasn't a great distinction between that and 'Projects', and there will still be some overlap in the blog. I also changed some font sizes, made some dates/times display more legibly, and made comments display in ascending order instead of descending...
Still To Do
- The page layout needs a lot of smartening up
- The logo is an old one, from when I was thinking .randomDev rather than ~/randomDev ...
- Clicking dates on the calendar shows links to articles on that date, but this looks messy
- RSS and TrackBacks
- Oh and I've half-finished a tagging system for categorising my ramblings ...
Blog by random pete on Wednesday, 12 April 2006 07:02.
Updated 12 April 2006 07:09.
0 comments
Here, at last, is my little corner of the web! I registered this domain a couple of months ago but have been a little too busy to do anything with it... For now, at least, I'll be using it to publish random thoughts or ideas I have, highlight some projects I'm work on, and release a tutorial or two that might help other developers to avoid some headaches I've had to work through the hard way...
I suppose, being a geek and a programmer and all that, I should have had a blog ages ago. In fact I did, on BlogSpot; I only ever wrote two articles and never really felt inspired after that. Perhaps I chose the wrong name. Perhaps it was the wrong time and place. Maybe I've got more I want to write about now.
This blog system I've built myself in C#. Currently it's the first possible version that would actually work and be vaguely navigable, and hence it's a bit rough around the edges and it's not the prettiest thing. I'll release it as a free library once it comes together a bit more.
Blog by random pete on Monday, 10 April 2006 23:59.
Updated 11 April 2006 01:11.
7 comments