Spent a few minutes today updating my LinkedIn profile. Realised that I had entered some of the projects that I have worked on, but never really provided any descriptions on. I will spend the next week adding all the projects that I have worked on and providing better descriptions.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-p-doherty/52/616/802
"If you think a professional is expensive, wait until you see how much an amateur costs you."
This is so, so true!
My business phone - a new Galaxy Note 2 became seriously ill yesterday so I took it in to be checked out today. Well, I'm sad to report that it has gone to the big exchange in the sky, but the good news is that the replacement makes an appearance tomorrow. Meanwhile, I've not had my mobile phone number available today…and the lack of online presence, reduced exposure to emails and no telephone number for people to call me has been refreshing!
Anyway, back to the connected world tomorrow.
It's been a busy start to the week, but not necessarily work-wise. However, I have been called by five different agencies to discuss urgent requirements for contract work. It seems that the mad-dash rush to get projects finished by the end of the year/end of the financial year is well underway.
Order for electronic components arrived today, so will start to put together project that I have in mind at the beginning of next week. Will use the Raspberry Pi to provide the microprocessor based controller. Haven't done this in a while…going to be fun!
So received the Raspberry Pi and set it up. The little box was set up with a wireless dongle for WiFi, a wireless keyboard and mouse. Despite reading on the Internet about some of the problems people have had with wireless peripherals…the box works fine. Ran through the initial setup and updated the system software with no problems, but it did take quite a while.
First impressions are favourable…it takes me back to the late 70s/early 80s when I had to build the first computers I owned. The box is a little slow and I need to work out what OS I want to run - I'll check if I can run Commodore Basic, BBC Basic or ZX81 Basic <vbg>. Development application wise, I've never used Scratch before…and played with it for around an hour and was impressed at how simple it is to program sprites…it has possibilities, but I really want to get the box running the Python apps that I've written. I'm waiting for a breakout board and some electronic kit parts to be delivered - to put together a series of circuits to be programmatically controlled.
This is exciting!
Having just changed over the business mobile, I've had to transfer all the contacts and applications that I use…since it is a different platform, I've had to find Android versions of the iOS apps. Seem to have found most of them! Now all up and running.
If the UK price is confirmed as between £560 and £650 then this tablet is interesting…but if the battery lasts only four hours (as rumour has it), then this will be a serious fail in my opinion. Tablet batteries are supposed to last longer than laptop ones. Microsoft have had a real opportunity to create something special but as a result of the various rumours I've heard, the Surface Pro may be DOA in January 2013. We will see if rumour turns out to be true!
Working on a few demo applications using Python. Nothing big at all…just simple programs to see what they can do.
We're investigating the possibilities of using a Raspberry Pi as a control system for a new project. The actual computer seems remarkably powerful and the costs are extremely low. Further reading is needed. (raspberrypi.org)
Work on the new run4charity.net site is continuing. Into the testing phase now - then an step back to check that it meets all our objectives!
Please visit the existing site before it is taken down…run4charity.net
Came back to find one of the desktop machines was having problems with a Airport base station and hard drive…meaning that Time machine hadn't done the backup in over 24 hours. Quick look at the failure: -
'pro.sparsebundle is already in use'
showed that the system thought that the particular backup hard disk was in use. This is the first time I've had this, but one quick reboot of the Airport hub and things started up okay and the backups resumed. Looking on the Internet…it seems that this happens from time to time and rebooting the hub is the current best solution!
All RAIDs have now been successfully built and synched…they took longer than I expected, but in my defence, this is the first time I have done this in three years and the capacities are now measured in Terabytes rather than Gigabytes!
Now to get on with real work!
Working on testing new website across the range of platforms that it could be accessed. Dreamweaver's testing facilities are good, but nothing beats using the actual hardware/software.
So have the site up and running on a Mac, PC (XP, Vista, Win 7 and 8), Blackberry, iPhone, Galaxy Note (Android), Nokia Lumia (Windows 8) and two tablets (Nexus 7 and iPad). Phew! Now to iron out the bugs!
I've set up a QNAP NAS with 8TB of disks and it currently is re-building itself [RAID 10 configured].
A few tasks to do around the house before hitting the keyboard and getting a mail/twitter client link macro written and then moving the new website design along.
Continuing on the new site development in Joomla v3. Wrestling to get some of the modules that worked in previous versions to work in it...or find an upgrade/replacement.
Joomla 3 is quite a bit of a change from the previous versions and I've been having a few problems using it within Chrome and Firefox on the Mac. I've also noted that some of the plug-ins that we rely on in previous versions...aren't working anymore. We're going to have to research some new versions...
We've got a new running total today after another donation to run4charity.net. At this early stage, it is great to be raising so much money! Thank you to everyone concerned.
Kicking off a Joomla project today...need to see if some of the old faithful modules and plug-ins are compatible!
We've had another donation to our charity event...check out our running total at run4charity.net
With migrating data from an older NAS unit to a newer one this week, it has brought to mind the issue of data backups and the progression of technology.
It is essential with any business (and personally) to backup data, but what do you back it up to? In the distant past, I backed up to tape drives, then Zip drives and then back onto tape...but with the progression of technology, reading those backups became more difficult [and in some cases impossible] as operating systems changed and were no longer supported, hardware became obsoleted and/or failed, drivers were no longer supported on new PCs and the media also failed.
With the advent of cheap disk storage, backups have moved onto multiple drives, network attached storage and SANS...but the same issues remain. The hardware gets older and is no longer supported; drivers are not updated for the latest operating systems; encryption methods change and hard drives do fail on a regular basis. With the typical PC being supplied with 500GB to 2TB drives these days, making sure you have a backup of all your files becomes increasing more difficult and expensive.
So the advice is to make sure you do back up your critical files but also to revisit your backup strategy once a year and look at how easy it is to restore your backups. Do you rely on a single machine to restore an older backup because it has a specific operating system on it? Does the backup application only run on a specific operating system and service pack level? Do you know what format your backup is in? Are all your machines able to access the backup files...how easy is it to restore them? What kind of backup have you got...a full, partial or incremental backup? Do you know which machine the backup media was formatted with (different filesystems may not be readable on all your machines). When was the last time you tried to restore the data from the backup media?
Take care...those backups may in time become a conundrum that you cannot solve (access)!
QNAP TS412 four bay NAS delivered today...but I haven't had any time to swap it in for the old one. Will try to get to it tomorrow (or technically later on today).
Started to put together an Applescript script to handle some of the repeated email tasks that I perform...need to complete this and then write an Automator workflow and a Mail rule. Not done this in a while...it's fun trying to remember the syntax and the environment!
Just placed an order for a four drive NAS to replace one that the power supply has failed on. Ordered it around an hour ago and paid for delivery on Monday. Looks like I have another important task to complete when it arrives!
Just added a 3TB hard disk drive to my desktop computer...which takes the total online storage attached to it over the 20 terabyte mark. There are around 15 other drives that are not normally plugged in and act as backups. This is just crazy amounts of storage...considering my very first hard disk drive had a capacity of 10 megabytes and cost more than I would like to commit to writing. That 'huge' drive was to replace one of the dual floppy disk drives on an Apricot XI PC and be home to the operating system, leaving the floppy drive free for applications...what a beautiful machine that was.
I really do need to re-evaluate my current storage requirements and RAID setup on my desktop!
So having set up the Windows 8 laptop...now to make it useable. I've downloaded the Visual Studio Development 2012 application and got it up and running. This particular installation went smoothly. Very pleased at having the laptop all set up and ready to go. Having said that...now back to the Mac, Dreamweaver and a PHP/Javascript web application development!
Just finished the Windows 8 installation on the ThinkPad laptop...and I must say...Microsoft, please look at Apple's OS X installation. Windows 8 install is a bit of a mess! I think that you need to look at the whole install/reboot process again and design from the ground up.
Having said that, my first impressions of the OS on the older test laptop is rather positive. I like the clean look and feel of the new system. I would say that the interface is a little inconsistent when you click through to get to some of the configuration options...if you are going to change the interface radically, then go for it! Don't lose your nerve halfway through.
Boot time was quick, but this test laptop is SSD based, so it does generally boot quickly anyway. More thoughts to follow on Windows 8.
As a quick aside, I've just gone through around 40GB of downloads for different operating systems this month! Linux, OS X, iOS, Android, Windows XP, 7 and now 8 is starting to take it's toll!
A simple setting in preferences and Ubuntu 12.10 downloaded and installed okay. All up to date...but Windows 8 is released on Friday...so at least one PC to update on that day! All I seem to have done since I've been back in the UK is update various operating systems!
Appears that I missed one of the office laptops in the mass update...an Ubuntu based test machine. It was on 11.04! I was surprised that the built in software update insisted on installing 11.10 and then 12.04 in two steps...refusing to go straight to the latest version. So it was left updating overnight.
This morning, the software updater is refusing to see the latest 12.10 release...so I need to take a look at that and work out why not...that's todays task.
Just found the netbooks that we bought three years ago...two Samsung N110's. Plugged them in, booted them up and pleasantly surprised at the nippy performance from them. However, since they haven't been switched on in just around two years, they are taking forever to download and install the OS updates!
I've noticed that since I've been back, this particular blog has had a lot more non-work related posts! Well...I'll try to keep these to a minimum.
Out taking some photos to publicise the run4charity.net event that will take place next year. Up on the Yorkshire moors, photographing a cross country training run.
Sitting down in front of a computer to start another mini-project. Firing up the new development environment and the old grey matter!
Check out one of our affiliate blogs...Leica Moments. http://leicamoments.tumblr.com/
Uploaded more pictures of Harrogate XI v Bliss Select XI charity football match held on the 30th September 2013. See them here - http://goo.gl/jtuHy
In the past week, Susie Doherty has been accepted into the 2013 London Marathon and has decided to join with our event in raising money for Neuroblastoma Alliance UK and Sands. We would like to wish Susie all the best for her training and the London Marathon. As a result of Susie linking her fundraising to run4charity's...we've now raised over 11% of our total! A big thank you to everyone who has donated to the charities and supported us so far.
If you want to find out more about us, please visit run4charity.net or visit out fundraising page at http://www.justgiving.com/teams/run4charity
Tomorrow I think will be the first real day of working back in the office...need to get some designs put together for a client.
Updated the run4charity.net site to reflect the latest total raised! Thanks to everyone so far for your continued support with this event!
People who know me, know I like Apple products - most of my personal eco-system is built around the Apple platform. I have an iPhone, a 15 inch MBP, a 13 inch MBP, an Air, a 27 inch iMac on my office desk, a Mac Mini, an Apple router, a secondary 20 inch Apple Cinema display, an iPad, two Apple TVs...the list goes on a little bit longer than that, but you get the idea! My wife has her own MBP, iPhone and iPad as well! Ironically, I have spent most of my time developing PC applications and my company has a plethora of Windows PCs and laptops...also some of the critical machines we have run Linux (one of which is being upgraded as I type). But until recently, I had resisted touching any Android devices.
This has changed in the last year with the purchase of first a Samsung Galaxy Note phone and more recently the Nexus 7 tablet. Having used both phablet and tablet...I really like the hardware and software. I still feel that Android is a little too unregulated and things don't always work well together - too many things in my honest opinion (in one case, paid for software was so buggy, it crashed the Galaxy note a few times a day before I uninstalled it). Don't get me wrong, I am not bashing Android or trying to say that this doesn't happen on iOS - it does, but seemingly less frequently. The conclusion I have come to is that, Apple's closely managed control of the platform has some benefits...application stability being one. I will say, I don't like the direction Apple seems to be heading in - a completely closed eco system that they control on all their devices (including their laptops). When the only place you can buy an application for an Apple laptop is on the App Store and nowhere else...then I will be leaving the OS X/iOS universe.
The Android platform [at this time] appears to be more innovative than the Apple iOS platform and I both like this and hate it. But if it keeps evolving over the next couple of years and can work out some of the problems inherent of a more open eco system (compatibility between various pieces of software being primarily one of my main concerns) then it could be my next platform of choice! But for now due primarily to their sexy laptops, I am still on the Apple cart.
On the plane in Schiphol airport, at the end of the runway and ready to fly out...pilot announces, flight delayed due to rabbit on the runway! I don't think British Rail ever used that as an excuse!
From yesterday, there is a heightened threat alert (Green to Orange) to all American and western nationals here in Iraq due to a combination of 'that' movie and the cartoons published in the French magazine. Those people who produced the movie [I find it difficult to call it a 'movie'...since I am led to believe that it is an amateurishly put together trailer] and published the cartoons should exercise better judgement and more respect to different cultures and religions...and be aware that their actions may result in death or injury to others. I suspect that the paper would not have published the cartoons if the editor and owners were living in the Middle East!
I believe in free speech and the rights of an individual to hold any opinion that they want, but I also believe in exercising religious and cultural understanding. Irrespective of the fact that I disagree with the cartoons being published, I would like to thank the French publication for the exceptionally bad timing and wonder if they will take responsibility for any deaths or injuries that may occur as a result?
I would also like to point out that these sort of actions undermine a lot of the good work being undertaken by western countries for humanitarian reasons in various Islamic nations. It also makes our job so much more difficult [and dangerous].
Back into Flash Builder tonight to knock up some prototype screens and Navicat to put together around 15 database tables. These two tools are brilliant at allowing QAD development. I'm actually glad I put aside my dislike for Flash to buy the development environment for situations just like this! Both integrate well with Dreamweaver as well. Highly recommended.
I've spent the day re-writing a connector to pass data from a MySQL database into a website. The data for the site is stored in a MySQL database and accessed using PHP. But then I needed to pass it into Javascript to be able to display some graphs and a map using Leaflet and Dojo...it is all done now.
To be honest, this is the second re-write of this code in a few weeks and I am still not happy! There must be a better way of doing this...surely? If anyone knows of any modules or pre-written libraries that they can point me in the direction of...I would love to have a clean and simple way of doing this.
It is already September? Can't believe that the year has gone by so fast! My contract has exactly one month to run and then it is back to the UK/Ireland to re-adjust to the real/normal world and work on different projects. It will bring to an end nearly three years of working in Iraq...
But will there be time for another contract after that? Well the end of the world is due on the 21st December 2012...so I might sneak one or two short term contracts in before then! All things considered, the weather hasn't been too bad in the run up to the apocalypse! <vbg>
I know I should have done this a long time ago...but to be honest, I thought about doing it; didn't note it down as a to-do item and then forgot...that is until last night. What is this earth shattering stupid mistake?
I forgot to put a site icon on the various company websites!!! So I quickly put together an favicon.ico and went around posting them!
We've recently set up a new Twitter feed to promote a fundraising event and help raise awareness for two charities. As part of this process, we looked at the various published hints and tips on how to run a Twitter account. So out of all the advice, what has worked or is working for us?
Choose your Twitter name well: Ensuring that your online name is appropriate is probably one of the most important decisions to make. Although it may sound a little 'big business' - branding is important to let people know who you are. Fill out that bio information, post a relevant picture or logo and, if you have one, give a website address. That way people can see who you are and find out more about you.
Settle on a hash tag and use it: To help others find your tweets or related material - choose an appropriate hash tag and use it on all your posts. That way, people can easily find all of your messages by clicking on either your name or hash tag in just one of your tweets!
Update your Twitter feed regularly: Encourage people to want to follow you. Make your comments clear, without profanity, readable, on-topic (mostly - but not a hard and fast rule) and above all...send out updates regularly. It may only be once or twice a day...but keep sending those tweets out.
Engage others: Twitter is about small conversations and passing information. If you see a question that you can answer...answer it! If you've seen an interesting article on the Internet...post a link. If you want to just chat to someone that has an interesting bio...send them a message. It's great to get into conversations on sites such as Twitter with new people...but keep in mind that you don't really know who is on the other side of the conversation. Always be wary of what you are saying and children should not be left unsupervised!
Re-tweet messages: If you see something you like or think others would be interested in, then re-tweet the message. If you forward it on, then others will usually do the same for you. It is a great method to get your messages seen by more people...and a great way of getting new followers. It is also a means of building up a network of people who you regularly talk to and re-tweet for.
So there's five tips already! There are many more that could be given...but these first five are the ones that we would recommend to start off with. The last comment we will make in this blog entry is, if you are promoting a specific charity, event, product or company...don't lose sight of what you are trying to achieve. Try not to lose the core message in loads and loads of non-related tweets...use your judgement on striking the right balance between delivering that message and having fun! Good luck!
For the record our charity fundraising is for: -
Sadie Rose Clifford Appeal: We are raising money in memory of Sadie Rose to support the Neuroblastoma charity and children & families affected by this rare form of cancer. The Neuroblastoma Alliance UK charity provides families financial help for treatment and support as well as funding research.
Sands: In memory of Freya Doherty. The Stillbirth and Neonatal Death charity is an organisation which offers families support when a baby dies during pregnancy or after birth. The death of a baby is a devastating experience. The effects of grief can be overwhelming and parents, their families and friends can be left feeling dazed, disorientated, isolated and exhausted.
If you would like to donate, please visit our site run4charity.net and hit the donate button at the top of the page...the money is given direct to the charities and you can choose which one to support. Any help you give would be gratefully accepted! Our Twitter name is @run4charitynet
I've been spending most of last night and some of today trying to optimise another person's SQL. So many inner joins! Anyway, I think I've got an idea on what they have done wrong. But now I am not sure the returned data is what was intended to be returned!
We've updated our Justgiving.com page. Please take a look http://www.justgiving.com/teams/run4charity/
So I've spent the weekend looking at CSS3 transitions to be able to provide more information within the dashboard that we are developing. The dashboard itself is rather fixed...in that at the moment, a user cannot edit what appears on the dashboard, nor the order in which the existing components appear. It is intended to allow these things to be changed...but as I write...they can't!
As is usual on these things, screen space is at a premium, so have had to look on how to try and keep things clean and uncluttered. I've looked at using CSS3 transitions as they are fairly well adopted now in most browsers. I'm a little frustrated at the way in which they are implemented, but to be honest, we've always had to do the same thing a number of different ways to get older code/CSS to work in different browsers.
So I think I now have the core dashboard created and only need to hook up the data connectors...now that is a whole new bag of worms!
I've just finished coding a new dashboard component using the Leaflet library and jQuery to provide GeoJSON support. Really impressed that with so little code, quite a lot of functionality can be added to a webpage. Need to play with this a bit more, but really pleased with it so far!
We are pleased to announce that payme.co.uk and quicklegalquotes.co.uk have sponsored our charity event - run4charity. Please visit these sites to find out more about our sponsors. Many thanks to both companies for your generous support.
Trying to download it for the third time. A slow internet connection, shared with a house of other consultants and the connection dropping every so often - makes this a very frustrating thing to try and do!
I've found the sourceforge.net site a fascinating place to visit when looking for inspiration. Maybe looking for a pre-written piece of software that can be used to implement a requirement quickly...a place that can let you see what good work is being done by others....or just something to spend some time inspiring me to produce better work.
With the passing of Sadie Rose Clifford, the run4charity.net site was taken down and a simple announcement page put up in its place. Having spoken to Neuroblastoma Alliance UK, who have spoken to the Cliffords...we have updated the main site and brought it back up. We have restarted the drive to collect money for Neuroblastoma and SANDS.
In memory of Sadie Rose and Freya.
So, having started to configure the T61 for testing web based applications...the upgrade bug bit. Going on eBay, I found a hard disk drive caddy and mounting kit for under £25. I bought a second SSD and will be upgrading the machine to two SSDs when the parts arrive. I have been very impressed by the machine and how it runs under Windows 7.
But would I give up my Mac Book Pros? Absolutely not!
I ordered a T61 Thinkpad from Morgan Computers to be used as a cheap test machine for web development. The basic specs of the machine are 1.8ghz core duo processor, 2GB RAM, 100GB hard disc drive and Vista business.
I wasn't expecting much, but I am genuinely impressed by this four or five year old machine. For £175 we have a very usable test machine that can be tailored to the specific setings that we need. I have popped in 4GB of memory already and intend to drop in a 128GB SSD as well. The whole machine zips along nicely.
I've purchased from Morgan Computers for many years and I highly recommend them for nearly new equipment.
So having paid for a licence...time to start coding with Flash Builder in anger. The first project has come along that I think will suit this development environment and framework perfectly. Nothing quite like learning on the job...a job with deadlines!
So, despite it being a day off...I've managed to knock out another draft Joomla! site for one of the components on the project. I had the core categories and menus defined already...but I sat down and rewrote the whole site from the template up today. It isn't anything revolutionary, but it is a solid business site template. Email now sent and ready to chat with the business users on Sunday [first business day of the week here in the middle east].
It is 23:39...time to take a break!
Built a new web application server this past week. Put in place Apache, MySQL, PHP and SendMail. It replaced a server built by one of the guys in the IT Department for the company that I am working on contract with. They put a Windows XP box together and popped Xampp on it. It ran...with no emails and was very slow.
New server has the applications running as services and mail is up and running now. The new box is serving pages much more quickly and I am pleased with the work done to transfer across the hosted sites as well. This was well worth the time taken!
So spent a few hours playing with Adobe Flash builder and I think this could make a great dashboard builder. The only thing that I have a concern about is the fact that it runs within Flash player...I've never liked having applications running inside things like that. However, having gone through the build your first application within an hour - it does seem an easy tool to use and it has some good capabilities.
I think this is one package to continue playing with!
Can anyone explain how to convert ESRI Shapefiles to JSON files to me? No really can anyone! I am struggling [in the given work schedule timescale] to work out how to do it and also understand the relationship between GeoJSON and JSON [if there is one]...too many pieces of information, no concise guides and too little time to read up on the subject properly!
We are pleased to announce the launch of run4charity.net - a site dedicated to raising money for the Sadie-Rose Clifford Appeal and SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death) Charity.
Please visit the site and read about the challenge, the charities and see how you can help!
I'll be honest; I've never really developed for Android browsers over the past few years. I think I've blanked them pretty much as we haven't had access to any devices (phones or tablets). Since getting a Galaxy Note, I've been busy learning the interface and how to develop for it...and realise that I now have to add some web browser routines for the sites that we develop to work correctly in that environment. So yet another steep learning curve!
I've spent some of the day fixing little bugs for a few websites on a whole bunch of browsers...I think I will need to write my own routine library to use on the various platforms and provide it as a single file. I was amazed to see how many times I written some of these workarounds, but never put them in one place! Another task to put on my to-do list!
Current website development is nearing completion, but having done the first test, I realise that the iPad Safari browser is going to prove a difficult customer to work with! I don't have an iPad with me at the moment, so can't test the site out with it...but there are a couple of reported issues from the client! So how do I fix this? Well, first I need to optimise the site to see if they are memory issues; then I have to determine if some of the multi-layer stuff that's going on is compatible with the iPad...in particular...if the JQuery stuff needs some re-coding.
This is going to be tough to fix! I wonder if I can get my hands on an iPad from one of the other consultants here?
I've been coding using JQuery for a site yesterday and today. I was looking for a tooltip library and to be honest, have been rather disappointed with the offerings out there. Due to time, I've had to write a tiny bit of CSS to get the tooltips working the way I want, but I'm not overly happy with the results. If I can spend sometime later on this week - I will revisit and write my own.
I've been working on a web-based dashboard today and using the Dojo toolkit for the first time in real anger. I must admit to being pleasantly pleased with how easy it has been to work with this framework. I will look at working this into the usual frameworks that I use for this kind of work!
We've been working on configuring Zend Studio v9, but haven't been able to spend much time setting up a complete development environment with it as we've also been distracted with training on multilingual site development. Any pointers/comments for deploying this tool would be appreciated!
To be honest, I don't really want a new blog to have to maintain...but the company has recently set up a Google+ account and we're exploring the many different ways to make that social media site more useful.
The obvious things are attached such as photos...but we're looking at the other benefits of being a Google+ member.
This blog will hopefully contain reviews of software that we use, tutorials of how to configure or use various bits of IT and to be honest, anything else we think may be useful to keep track of in one place!
We hope you enjoy!
