Peter's Web Development Blog

Are you watching the new feed?

2006-08-10T19:59:00.000+01:00

There were a few problems with the new site's feed which were causing on some occasions users to be directed to the old feed.

Just in case you were affected - the new feed URL is feeds.feedburner.com/PetersWebDevelopmentBlog.

Wordpress transition complete

2006-06-27T10:55:00.000+01:00

Quick post: as of today I basically consider this blog's transition to Wordpress complete. From today, this old home is only home to the archived dusty posts, which have been copied to the new home anyway.

So please update your bookmarks and feed readers if you haven't - blogging happens on peter.hybridweb.co.uk/blog now

It's official - I'm moving to WordPress

2006-06-21T15:46:00.000+01:00

I've decided that this blog is moving to a more permanent home. The idea was that in time, I have a kind of 'personal homepage' which not only includes/links to my blog, but also links to all my other places where I am on the web. Blogger doesn't really give you the flexibility to do so, and having used the Wordpress admin tool from my blogging experiences at Gizbuzz and liking it, I thought I'd move. WP also gives you a much larger feature set than Blogger and I have the freedom of hosting on a server I control too.

So, from now on, this blog's URL is http://peter.hybridweb.co.uk/blog/. Please update any bookmarks etc. you might have.

Also, the new RSS feed URL is http://peter.hybridweb.co.uk/blog/feed/, so update your feed readers as well.

There are a few teething problems at the moment; not all of the sidebar links etc. have been migrated, but in time, this URL will become deserted, as all new posts will be on the new URL.

So please visit now and wish me luck for success in the final stages of the move!

Fear, uncertainty and doubt about Linux - no longer

2006-06-19T18:00:00.000+01:00

Just found a great page which clears up a lot of myths and untrue allegations made about Linux and the open source software movement in general. If you're unsure about Linux for whatever reason, then read it.

I'm not trying to say 'Linux is for everybody and does everything' here. It's not and it doesn't. However, for a basic web/email/office suite workstation, Linux will suffice. And servers... don't get me started. Linux (or in fact any Unix-based platform) is awesome for servers, in my opinion. But that is only my opinion. Draw your own conclusions.

Vista, exams and GRUB woes

2006-06-15T15:09:00.000+01:00

I've been doing yet more blogging about Vista. I'm going absolutely mad about writing reviews of each and every bit of Vista, and this time I've looked at some of the bundled applications included with the OS. Have a look, you know you want to.

Exams are finally beginning to come towards the end, just three more to go and I'll be able to get on with a bigger project that should contribute significantly to my MacBook. More on that story as it happens...

And finally, to GRUB. So I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 over XP on my main system. You know that much. Well, as I said, Vista very diligently destroyed my previous dual-boot configuration when it installed.

So I needed to run Fedora again so I could reinstall the bootloader and get dual-boot wonderness back and running. So I tried booting from the Fedora disc. It detected the installation, but wouldn't let me boot into it, only upgrade or reinstall.

I tried the SUSE 9.0 disc, which I know lets you boot an existing Linux system, to no avail. I was just left with a blank screen. So I gave up on that and decided I would need to run GRUB manually to kick Fedora into action. I found this tutorial about putting GRUB on a USB stick, but unfortunately it was written for Solaris and I'm not quite geeky enough yet to be bothered to modify it to my needs.

Then I found the official page on how to put GRUB on a CD-R. So I booted a Live Linux distro, followed the instructions and made an .iso, which I saved to a FAT partition. But, being in a Live distro, I couldn't burn the disc, because obviously the OS had to be run from there. And I only have one optical drive...

So I rebooted into Vista. Vista didn't have a built-in option for burning CDs, so I tried the freeware CDBurnerXP (that's free not Free), which didn't like Vista and couldn't detect my DVD-+RW drive.

So eventually, I used another computer to burn the disc. I booted and entered the commands GRUB needed to boot Fedora, and found it wouldn't work. It had some problem and then the kernel refused to continue.

Finally, after some Googling I found that you needed to use a Fedora-specific kernel argument to kick the kernel into action, and I booted in. After which, I had an exam to go to...

And if you're interested, I needed to use:

root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd
boot

Don't be fooled - I symlinked vmlinuz and initrd so you'll probably need to press tab to see the list of possibilities and choose the appropriate and matching kernel and initrd. And don't forget to substitute (hd0,6) with your disk and partition number.

Phew.

My Vista Aero article on Digg

2006-06-13T19:51:00.000+01:00

My Vista article about the Aero user experience is on Digg. Check it out, and Digg it please!

More Vistablogging

2006-06-13T15:51:00.000+01:00

Hey, that should be a new blog-related word. Check out my latest look at the Vista Aero User Interface and all its merits and disadvantages here.

I'll even give you a screenshot.

More Vista Beta experiences

2006-06-13T13:21:00.000+01:00

Today I did something rather rash. Well, actually it wasn't that rash because I backed everything up first. I decided to delete Windows XP from my main computer and install Vista.

Of course, Vista drove right over my dual-boot configuration as usual, so I'm going to have to resurrect that at some point.

The Aero UI is beautiful especially with my Geforce 6600 GT, but I did run into a bit of a problem. My monitor is a CTX VL950 19" CRT. No OS I've yet used automatically recognises the monitor settings, except Fedora Core 5 Linux if you give it some help identifying the model.

For XP, I had to get the monitor drivers from CTX to run at above 60 Hz, which is important on a CRT. Unfortunately, these drivers failed to install on Vista.

To cut a long story short, I needed a way to override the refresh rate for the monitor but I kept being greeted with a greyed-out tickbox to allow override. The solution was this:

Create a shortcut to control.exe on the desktop.
Right-click and choose Run as administrator.
Now browse through Appearance and Personalisation and choose Adjust Screen Resolution.
Choose Advanced Settings and on the Monitor tab you can untick Hide modes... and select your desired refresh rate.

Be warned: If you use this method and choose something your monitor doesn't support, it might stop working, so I accept no responsibility for anything you do here.

Hope this helps someone...

First look at Windows Vista Beta 2

2006-06-12T18:15:00.000+01:00

Just finished a mammoth post about Windows Vista Beta 2. It's kind of a semi-review about my first experiences now that I've got the beta.

Read it now.

World's most expensive cat toy

2006-06-11T11:14:00.000+01:00

This video just made me laugh. I don't know how you could let a MacBook Pro be subjected to this sort of damage. It would also make a very expensive cat toy. The cat's having fun anyway.

[via]

The extension I have been waiting for - Google Browser Sync

2006-06-09T18:49:00.000+01:00

Yes, this is the extension I have been waiting for. Using Firefox on both Windows and Linux daily means I have two sets of bookmarks. Now that is a pain. Of course, I could try and synchronise them manually.

But Google have gone and made a really nice extension called Google Browser Sync. It does exactly what it says on the tin; that is it synchronises your settings between different installations of Firefox.

Admittedly, at the moment it does take a bit longer to load up Firefox, because it has to check for changes to your profile, but Google say it will get better.

[via] [via]

Corrected first link 15/06/2006.

MacBook Musings

2006-06-05T10:30:00.000+01:00

OK, I haven't posted for some time now. Sorry.

But today I have finally seen a MacBook 'in the flesh'. And it is awesome. It might be quite a small screen, but personally, running at 1280x800, it is very nice.

It's also fast (2x 1.83 GHz cores). The only thing I would complain about is the hard drive size on the £749 model, which is 60 GB.

But, I'm most definitely getting one now...

Main desktop switched to Fedora

2006-05-25T10:34:00.000+01:00

OK, I've finally lost all patience with SUSE Linux, after the fourth time it's attempted to corrupt my partition table. OK, I don't know it was SUSE, it could well be a hardware issue, but I think it's about time I switched. For my main desktop, I need a stable Linux distribution that doesn't delete everything on the hard drive.

So yesterday, I backed up everything on SUSE and installed Fedora. First impressions were good. Now I've used Fedora before on a server machine, but this time I wanted it in a desktop configuration. So I picked KDE (my favourite desktop environment) and after a bit of modification, I've got a nice-looking, stable system.

Of course, Fedora is renowned for cutting-edge technology, so I'm still downloading the 600 MB of updates that have been released. That does seem a bit of a large number of updates, but it does keep me using the latest open source stuff.

I've also got to install Flash Player, Java, RealPlayer, some decent fonts and some of my favourite KDE applications. Wish me luck in Fedora not breaking everything again.

Office 2007 screenshots galore

2006-05-24T14:18:00.000+01:00

Just got my hands on Office 2007 Beta 2 (yes, it's a public beta) and I've got some great screenshots for you all.

Also check out my post at Gizbuzz.

Enjoy playing around with the beta while it lasts, rumours say it will stop working in February 2007. Plenty of time to play around until then...

I'll be back with more.

Gizbuzz moves to gizbuzz.co.uk

2006-05-21T17:39:00.000+01:00

I think the title is fairly self-explanatory here. The brilliant tech news blog I contribute to (read it, it really is great), Gizbuzz, has moved from its old, Blogger-powered home to a new, shiny, Wordpress-powered site.

So visit it, update your bookmarks and check out the new feed URL (you can right-click and use Copy Link Location to update your feed reader).

Now the question I hear you all ask: will I go Wordpress too? Wait and see...

The end of an era

2006-05-19T17:00:00.000+01:00

As my friend Jamie put it:

Well that's it then. Done. Finished.

School, or at least school as we know it, going in every day for lessons has come to an end. Now, just the small matter of exams to attend to. Only two next week, but nevertheless, I can't guarantee frequency of posts (or even whether I'll be doing anything interesting).

But after the 22nd June, I will do some serious web development and do more messing with operating systems. Maybe getting a network connection in OpenSolaris or maybe getting Gentoo to sit there and compile itself for hours. Provided my hard drives don't die.

Wow, that's it. That really is it. No more lessons, not in school anyway. Any of my friends reading this, then whoo, I actually have readers. Anyone else, you probably know the feeling of leaving somewhere that you've been for a long time.

Here's to the future.

Google Notebook

2006-05-18T17:36:00.000+01:00

Here's something quite cool if you haven't discovered it yet, Google Notebook is a great service which allows you to, well, have a notebook to collect information online and then have it with you on any internet-enabled computer.

There's also a neat Firefox extension which you can just right-click and make a new note. Be warned however, apparently it doesn't work on the Mac OS version of Firefox (but I can't confirm this as I don't have a Mac).

It's still a beta project by Google at the moment, but it has a really nice Ajax-driven web interface so you can manipulate notes without ever having to reload the page.

Last ever day of school tomorrow

2006-05-18T17:21:00.000+01:00

The title says it all. Apart from exams, tomorrow will be my last day at school ever. Ever. As in, the final countdown. (No singing please.)

So exams will start next week before a bit of a break, so I'm really not sure about how much web stuff will get done or whatever.

Whatever happens, read the latest tech news - you know you want to, especially since I write some of that.

SUSE 10.1

2006-05-16T18:45:00.000+01:00

OK, so I'm still in the exam season, so updates won't be too frequent at the moment, but I'm just chiming in to say that SUSE 10.1 has been released and is really great.

If you can spare the hacking time, you can get Xgl up and running on SUSE 10.1, which is very sweet, but I haven't really had the time recently and my monitor isn't perfectly supported with the 3D drivers so I'm still working to resolve that.

And I would advise you to be very careful compiling source code with GCC on SUSE 10.1, as I came very close to losing all my data on my first hard drive again (so obviously it was GCC, not PHP).

Proper written exams are from next week, so don't be surprised if updates are a bit scarce for now, rest assured I will get back up to normal frequency as soon as possible. Thanks for reading, by the way.

Why should home users switch to Linux?

2006-05-08T18:07:00.000+01:00

Here's a great article for home PC users who are a bit interested in taking a look at Linux - Mandriva Linux 2006 for home users.

It's accessible to non-geeks, and if you do want to have a look at this whole Linux and free software thing, take a look.

Having said that, Mandriva isn't the only way to go. I'd recommend Ubuntu, SUSE and Fedora for home users (probably in that order).

And, if you find it interesting, please do leave a comment.

Really busy

2006-05-07T16:45:00.000+01:00

I apologise for the lack of updates, but I'm really busy at the moment - the exam season is coming.

Until the exams are over, updates won't be very frequent, but I'm planning to blog about the release of SUSE Linux 10.1 on Thursday. It's going to be grrrr-r-eat.

See you soon.

Wii making waves

2006-04-30T20:34:00.000+01:00

The newly announced name for the Nintendo Revolution - Wii seems to be making some waves within the Nintendo community.

Personally, I don't like it. I can just see kids asking their parents "Can I have a Wii?" and the unsuspecting parents agreeing, not having realised that they meant the Nintendo console.

Why Wii?

2006-04-28T20:58:00.000+01:00

Wii? What kind of a name is that for the Nintendo Revolution? Read up on it now, I'll be back tomorrow to discuss a bit more.

Fedora Core 5 Install Video

2006-04-26T07:13:00.000+01:00

First of all, sorry for the long wait, I've been busy with lots of important stuff recently and haven't had time to post.

Remember that review of Fedora Core 5 Test 3 I promised? Well, I have recorded a little screen demo type thing just to show anyone that hasn't played with Fedora 5 what the installation process is like. I've tried to only cut it where necessary (to keep it in a reasonable timescale). You must also remember that the install's running a bit slow because it is running inside a VMware virtual machine.

Check out the video below, and comment if you like it. I may well do a future video on how to add the cool stuff to Fedora (like Flash Player, MP3 support, Sun Java and Real Player for example) later on, if this one is interesting.

OpenSolaris

2006-04-15T14:44:00.000+01:00

I've been doing a bit of playing about with OpenSolaris Belenix (yet another Unix-based OS, but this time based on Sun's commercial Solaris product). If you're interested, I got it off the cover DVD of the latest edition of Linux Format (Issue 79).

I'd really love to get stuck in to OpenSolaris and do the old Apache, PHP and MySQL compile to get myself acquainted with the system, but at the moment I can't seem to get a network connection. At all.

And that is a shame as it means I can't really run a web server. I'll keep you posted.

RenameIt - my second OSS VB.net app

2006-04-06T11:12:00.000+01:00

First of all, yes, I cross-posted again. I'm sorry, but that story was big and I couldn't be bothered rephrasing it just for this blog.

Now, onto the subject of RenameIt. Now I've been needing to do some batch renaming of photos recently on Windows, so I thought I would build a batch renaming tool. Yes, I could have downloaded one of the many already built freeware ones, but, where's the fun in that??

So I set about using Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition to make a batch renaming application which would be fully open source under the GPL.

And my result can be downloaded, both an installer and the VB source files. Enjoy, and if you like it, post a comment. It does need the .NET Framework 2.0 installed to run. No, it's not cross-platform, but Linux has many open source batch renamers (KRename, for example), and I don't yet have a Mac.

Get the installer here.
Get the source code here.

Apple Boot Camp

2006-04-05T19:40:00.000+01:00

Apple have officially released Boot Camp, a public beta version of a patch to make Intel-powered Macs to run Windows. Yes, you read that correctly, Apple released a patch to run Windows on the Mac.

The patch works a bit like the hacked-up bootloader for Windows XP, developed by some enthusiasts to try and get Windows running on some Macs, which was largely a success. Boot Camp, however, provides a GUI (graphical user interface) for installing Microsoft Windows alongside Mac OS X. From the official Apple press release:

Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac®, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS® X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in 'Leopard', Apple's next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in August.

So in Mac OS X Leopard, you will have a dual boot system built directly into the Mac operating system. Apple go on to say that:

"Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple's superior hardware now that we use Intel processors," said Philip Schiller.

This seems quite a big step to take for Apple, who seem to be embracing the idea that people will switch to Mac if they can run their Windows applications at the same time. Robert Scoble (a Microsoft employee) seems to think that Apple are listening to bloggers, and have made this decision as a direct result of what people want, thinking it might boost Mac sales.

Will it boost Mac sales, and get more people using Macs? Or will people just buy nice-looking hardware to run Windows on? It seems only time will tell what this momentous move by Apple will do for it, or against it. No official word from Microsoft about this yet, but I'll follow up when there's news.

[Cross-post at Gizbuzz]

Mod_rewrite trouble

2006-04-04T08:26:00.000+01:00

OK, this is really starting to irritate me now. I've been playing around trying to get Apache's mod_rewrite to behave and I'm having no luck, I've Googled and visited about every single mod_rewrite tutorial there is, so I'm starting to lose patience now.

I'll get there eventually.

What? Vista blocked in the EU? Not likely

2006-03-29T19:15:00.000+01:00

According to the Unofficial Windows Vista Weblog, the EU aren't happy about some of the new integrated features planned for Windows Vista. You can read that story here (I wrote this one at Gizbuzz), here (the Vista Weblog) and here (Yahoo News).

To be honest, I think that the Vista Weblog have blown this a little out of proportion. I think that it might be likely that Microsoft be forced by the EU to remove some of the new bundled features of Windows Vista (perhaps Windows Defender, their anti-spyware client?) just for Europe. As I mentioned, they were forced to do this before, with Windows Media Player, and 'N' versions of Windows XP were released in Europe without WMP. If anything comes of this story, it will be that Microsoft might have to do the same thing again with the disputed features (probably Windows Defender, or Windows DVD Maker or one of those new programs).

However, the EU might be a little more harsh about it, and say that they must remove the features for all copies of Vista shipped in the EU, and have the bundled products sold separately.

Anyway, it remains to be seen, and this story might still be speculative. So there's your warning, don't rely on these sources to be 100% accurate (I've already said this in my post).

My Firefox Extensions

2006-03-28T19:29:00.000+01:00

Just in case anyone's interested (unlikely, I know), these are the Firefox extensions that I have installed. I've taken this screenshot from my Windows box, but they're also installed (with the exception of IE Tab), on my SUSE and Fedora Core Linux setups.

I'm now going to go through and say what I find useful about each one.

DOM Inspector:

Comes with Firefox I think, so I don't really know about this one.

Firefox Showcase:

This is a really cool extension, a bit like IE7's Quick Tabs that allows you to see and organise all your currently opened tabs/windows with a press of F12. I originally blogged about this here, back in February, but I still think it's cool.

Download here

Talkback

Another one that comes with Firefox, for sending bug reports back to Mozilla. Not too interesting really.

IE Tab

This is useful for those stupid sites that don't work properly in Firefox, and you're forced to use the dreaded IE (just be careful of the security vulnerabilities). It loads the desired page inside a Firefox tab, just using the IE rendering engine. Of course, this one works only on Windows, so it does mean those stupid sites might force me to use a different computer. Grrr. Open standards, people.

Download here

User Agent Switcher

This is the first place to go if a stupid site says "please open this page in Internet Explorer and try again". Grrrrrr. It simply switches the User-agent header sent by Firefox, so it can 'pretend' to be IE, while really still being Firefox. Most stupid sites work when you do this, so that's why it comes first. And cross-platform too.

Download here

Feedview

This is so cool, and really should already be in Firefox. Hopefully something like this will get into Firefox 2.0. What it does is it creates a nice GUI view of an RSS or Atom feed, so that if you view a feed directly (for example peterwebdev.blogspot.com/atom.xml) it will display a nice Safari-esque page with the latest stories ordered by date, rather than the ugly XML source. Go on, try it.

Download here

Google Toolbar for Firefox

Extends on the Firefox search box with PageRank display, convenient access to Google Desktop, Blogger, Gmail etc. and it's looks just a bit cool as well.

Download here

Google Safe Browsing

Now this is very nice. A neat anti-phishing extension from Google, exclusive to Firefox that gives you an alert if you are on a suspected phishing site. I've never needed to use it yet, but it's always good to know you're safe. Privacy people/paranoids, you might want to steer clear as it does have to send the URLs you visit to Google, although they promise they don't keep this information.

Download here

Reveal

Quite cool, it gives you a 'visual history' with screenshots of pages you've visited, for example, hovering over the back button shows a mini-screenshot of what the last page you visited looks like. Very useful if you forget what a site's called, but you know what it looks like. It also has a handy triple-click magnifying glass feature, so you can get closer to your webpage.

Download here

del.icio.us

Finally, the extension for the popular Web 2.0 social bookmarking service del.icio.us. It gives you tagging features built directly into Firefox with a tag button for your toolbar and new menu. Admittedly, I don't use this that much, but it does come in useful from time to time.

Download here

Whew! Well, there's my Firefox extensions, I'd love to see some comments sharing your favourites too.

Text Editor

2006-03-26T11:21:00.000+01:00

OK, I've been meaning to do this for a while. A while ago I started building a very small project in Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition (for Windows only, I'm afraid). It was basically going to be a Notepad replacement with some really cool features. It has got the really rubbish name of Text Editor, and I've finally decided to release what I've done so far to the community.

So here it is, fully open source and licensed under the GPL.

Get the installer here.
Get the source code here.

Enjoy, and I hope to make it even better soon. Use it at your own risk, though and it does need the .NET Framework 2.0.

Kite

2006-03-25T16:05:00.000Z

I've started work on a new web development project. As ever, details at the moment will be sketchy. All I can tell you is that it's codenamed Kite, and it's going to hopefully be a next-generation instant messaging system (currently only by a web interface), but with an interesting twist.

I'm currently doing preliminary tests on the concepts behind Kite, and have already built a basic 2-user Ajax-powered messaging system, with more to come soon.

Stay tuned for info on Kite...

France, you rule!

2006-03-22T17:38:00.000Z

I know this isn't a new story, but French police are switching their desktops from using Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox. They've also switched from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. Now this is progress; c'est fantastique (sorry). France seem to be the only country in Europe to actually recognise there is an alternative to using Windows, IE and MS Office (hey, a new acronym - WIM). I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using Microsoft solutions, I'm just saying that it's wrong when everyone uses Microsoft solutions. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket, although it's already happened around the world (MS advocates/employees, I'm posting this using Windows and Firefox and have Microsoft Office Outlook open).

Also, the French financial government department are evaluating a move to their desktops to Linux. Considering Microsoft's ad campaigns about "lower TCO with Windows", you'd think financiers among all people would know about TCO, wouldn't you? It remains to be seen what their decision will be.

Also, considering the latest draft law to open up DRM submitted by French MPs (see my previous post), it seems the French know where it's at, and are pushing in the right direction to create open standards.

Before the Microsoft and Apple people start yelling at me again, I'm not against proprietary software. I use proprietary software and open source stuff every day (both willingly). I think there is a place for proprietary and a place for open source. What I don't agree with is when companies lock open source solutions out of new and emerging technologies, by closing their standards and patenting stuff.

Open standards are great. Think about it; the only reason the internet is as popular as it is today is because it is based on open standards. TCP/IP, HTTP and HTML can all be understood and built into by any platform. Imagine what it would be like if one company controlled all these standards with, say, a patent. Open source would immediately be locked out for a start, if a patent was involved, and other companies would end up having to pay fees. People would have to pay this parent company to set up a website, to use their technology. We'd be in a mess, basically.

So make your choice about what solution to use. Choose the solution that is best for the job, whether that be a proprietary solution or an open source solution. But, please, be aware of the alternatives and if you're pushing the next-generation internet, make it an open standard. Thanks, the [open source] community thank you, and it'll probably be more popular too.

French draft law to open DRM

2006-03-21T19:01:00.000Z

I know, I really should have learnt my lesson about cross-posting by now, but this is a quite interesting story that I found and posted, and it will be interesting to see what the response of Microsoft and Apple to this, as I'm sure they won't like it.

As I explained, it's Apple's marketing strategy to lock iTunes to the iPod, and Microsoft's to sell out their standards to hardware manufacturers, but neither will enjoy releasing source code, or whatever it is that the French law advises.

Still, in my opinion it's a good move for the French to take, as there can be nothing wrong with having open standards that all platforms can tap into. Hey, it might even get WMA DRM and iTunes music on Linux...

Fedora Core 5 released

2006-03-20T18:07:00.000Z

It's official - Fedora Core Release 5, also known as Bordeaux, has been released. I have been playing around with Fedora Core 5 Test 3 (the equivalent of the third beta), but now it looks like I'm downloading an additional 3 gigabytes (it comes on one DVD). At the moment there's not enough seeders on the official torrent (yes, there are legal uses for BitTorrent you know), so I'll probably wait until more people have downloaded it, and choose a time to download when there's less people online, like tomorrow morning.

Anyway, can't wait to (not) see the bugs they've fixed. Good work and well done to the community and of course to Red Hat to getting out a great OS.

Yearbook Comment Creator

2006-03-15T16:46:00.000Z

Whew, what a day!

Just rolled out my first web application (PHP/MySQL of course) which was used by more than 100 people in just one hour. Now for all you professional developers (yeah, like professional developers read my blog) out there, that doesn't sound like much, and, well, I suppose it isn't.

But, nevertheless, it was about an 80-90% success, and I'll explain why. It was a simple web app to collect comments to go under people's names in our school yearbook. Well, a problem I didn't anticipate (and really I should have) was that we would have MD5 hash clashes. Not through the algorithm, but the fact that I only generated the hash from a secret word and the current timestamp. That meant that anyone who submitted in the same second as someone else was assigned the same hash, and, needless to say, this caused problems. I should have used microtime() instead of time(), and also used some other unique data to generate the hash. Ah, well, never mind.

That was basically it, that just caused semi-major problems, most of which I could manually deal with. Other than that, the system worked exactly as I planned it to, collecting about 110 comments.

So, learnt my lesson, use microtime() and some other data. I'm off to relax...

PATH_INFO problem fixed

2006-03-14T07:16:00.000Z

Yesterday evening I actually stepped away from gaming for a second to fix a fairly major problem with Project Krystal (which I haven't talked about for so long, I better tell you it's a Website Management System and it renders your website from a MySQL database setup).

The problem was in the way that some pages used data after the .php bit of the URL, for example: http://server/products/chainsaws.php/4. In either PHP 5.x (or our remote server setup), the $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] variable wasn't getting passed to the script, so I devised a slightly messy workaround:


$var = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$pro = strstr($var, strrchr($var, ".php/"));
$pro2 = substr($pro, 5);
// echo $pro2;
// die();
$featureidrq = $pro2;
if (empty($featureidrq)) {
 $featureidrq = "";
}

Again, if anyone can do any better I'd love to see you add a comment with your code.

NFS Most Wanted

2006-03-13T17:18:00.000Z

I haven't posted for a while mainly due to the fact that I got a new game on Friday, Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Naturally I bought it for PC ("Real gamers choose the PC, real geeks choose Linux or *BSD") and on my mid-range gaming system it runs well (i.e. it maintains more than 25fps) at full detail level at 1024x768. If you're interested in my gaming box's spec it's:

Intel Pentium 4 3.00 GHz with Hyper Threading (not Dual Core, though)
1024 MB RAM
256 MB Geforce 6600 GT
19" CRT monitor

So, nothing special, but it does me fine (I don't really get hyped up about the difference between 30 and 75 fps, what human can tell anyway??). I'll attach a screen, but I'm sure you clever people can use Google.

OK, more webdev news including Hybrid stuff will come soon.

Hybrid is so close...

2006-03-10T21:47:00.000Z

The new Hybrid site is so close now. The domain has been registered, the layout is almost done. Read the news here...

Fedora Core 5 Test 3 Experiences

2006-03-07T19:57:00.000Z

I've just started playing with my newly downloaded copy of Fedora Core 5 Test 3. It's essentially the latest beta version of the popular Fedora Core distribution. I hope that at some point I will be doing a proper review of my experiences with Fedora Core for the first time, which I might submit to a few sites.

In the meantime, have some screenshots.

My Zoomcloud

2006-03-06T21:23:00.000Z

If you read this, you might want to see the ZoomCloud for this blog:

Cool Windows Vista speech recognition video

2006-03-06T21:12:00.000Z

Here's a video of one of the really cool features in the upcoming Windows Vista, speech recognition.

Interestingly this video was filmed using Vista build 5270 (the latest build being 5308), but nevertheless it is interesting to see that the features are quite well developed in this build, including quite a nice UI for the speech recognition panel. It certainly beats the current look if you use Windows XP + Office 2003 recognition, where the somewhat irritating Language Bar becomes even more bloated with buttons.

The original story, with a link to the video is here.

(this is a cross-post at Gizbuzz)

New computer

2006-03-04T08:44:00.000Z

I finally now have a dedicated box I can use as a server. Specs follow:

AMD Sempron 2600+
512 MB RAM
(at the moment) 8 GB HDD (will be upgraded at some point)
SUSE Linux 10 (will be Fedora 5 when it comes out)

It's going to be great to finally be able to test out stuff not on my primary machine and to constantly install and then reinstall Linux distros etc.

Can't wait...

UPDATE: Just upgraded the RAM to 1.5 GB for all those VMware Virtual Machines. See the photos below of the insides.

Linux should be in every school

2006-02-28T20:00:00.000Z

Linux is doomed as a realistic challenger to Windows on the desktop if open source activists (yes, that would include me but I'm still in school) don't get Linux into schools.

With the growing number of desktop-friendly, easy-to-use distributions like Ubuntu, I see no reason why the government shouldn't at least carry out a pilot study into running Linux on the desktop in schools. Think of the money that the taxpayer could save on Windows licences. Yes, OK, getting Linux people to support the networks might cost a bit more, but it is worth looking into this possibility.

I think more home users would be convinced to use operating systems other than the mighty Microsoft Windows, if they knew about them. With the open source community virtually unable to advertise Linux as a desktop platform (we need a corporate sponsor here *cough* Red Hat *cough* Novell), it will be very hard to actually get people to realise that there are alternatives to running Microsoft Windows on their desktop.

Not only do people not know about the alternatives to Microsoft Windows, people in school (speaking from my personal experience) aren't adequately educated about the whole open source movement. ICT (why the extra C?) seems to be all about how to use Microsoft Office, and I understand that using an office suite is an important skill, but who says it can't be OpenOffice? The open source movement just isn't in the curriculum.

I'm not saying Windows should be banished from everywhere. I'm an open source kind of person, but I do believe there is still a place for proprietary software. So before you judge me as a Linux geek with no flexibility of mind, I use both Windows (and not *just* at school) and Linux every day and I think there is a place for both in the world. I just think Windows shouldn't completely dominate it.

Microsoft's answer to bash

2006-02-28T16:24:00.000Z

Sorry, I shouldn't really just post with a link to another post, but this is such a big story to me that I want to:

It's about Microsoft's answer to the Unix-based shell scripting language, bash. It's called MSH (previously Monad).

You can see the post here.

VNC and Stuff

2006-02-26T13:48:00.000Z

Recently I've been playing around once again with VNC remote administration to and from my SUSE Linux box. The really cool thing is that TightVNC, the VNC daemon I am using sets up a mini web server with a Java applet so you can control your computer from any other PC with a web browser and JVM. Does seem a bit ironic then that the version of Firefox I'm using, version 1.5.0.1 which I installed via RPM doesn't for some reason use the Java plugin (despite the fact that the Sun JVM is installed). I seem to have to resort to Konqueror to do that sort of thing. It's probably a misconfiguration on my part, but it seems a bit strange.

Anyway, I hope to be doing some more real web development soon, so there should be some more interesting development news by then.

Oh I wish I had an MSDN subscription...

2006-02-23T18:36:00.000Z

The February CTP of Windows Vista, build 5308, has been released and from the screenshots I've seen, it's looking as awesome as ever. You can read more about the latest build at Gizbuzz.

I really wish I could get a chance to test out Windows Vista, because although I am a Linux geek as well, I still intend to use both the Windows and Linux platforms and remain proficient in both. Yes, Windows is irritating sometimes, but it should also be given a chance to change that; Vista is that chance.

Hybrid site screenshot

2006-02-20T08:00:00.000Z

No, it's not online or live yet, but the new Hybrid site does have a screenshot you can look at. That's all for now, enjoy.

New Name

2006-02-20T07:11:00.000Z

You may notice that I've changed the name of this blog to just Peter's Web Development Blog. I think this not only sounds better, but it reflects the fact that this blog tends to be about my web development, and not a lot else.

Also, after my extended posting at Gizbuzz, I've been accepted as a team member there, so for the latest tech news, there's no better blog than Gizbuzz. Make sure it's in your bookmarks and subscribe to the Atom feed if you haven't already.

New Hybrid site coming

2006-02-19T17:40:00.000Z

A new Hybrid site is coming soon. As yet there's no screeny, but it is an orange-grey themed design with rounded corner tabs for primary navigation and secondary navigation just under that.

I think the site looks awesome, and it shouldn't be long now before it goes live.

The new Hybrid website is coming...

2006-02-18T18:43:00.000Z

Yes, it's true. The new Hybrid website, with a completely revamped design is now under construction. A fairly major problem with the website management system has been fixed, and now it is only a short wait before the new Hybrid site will be released in all its glory (possibly even on a different server).

Stay tuned...

(Cross-post at the Hybrid site)

Office 12 is now Office 2007 - and loads of versions too

2006-02-16T19:56:00.000Z

I've already done a major post at Gizbuzz about this story, so here I'll reflect on my thoughts about it.

First of all, how can they remove Outlook from Home & Student Edition??! I think that is probably the application out of my copy of Office 2003 Student & Teacher Edition that I use the most, it's set up for my primary email account. Does mean I'm locked to Windows to check my mail though.

Most of the editions I mentioned on the post are OEM or Volume Licence jobs, so they're not the shrink-wrapped boxes that you'll see in your local PC World.

I don't like the fact that the UI is only being redone for some of the apps (I think it's Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access). It seems a bit weird to me to have major inconsistencies in the UI across the Office suite. Yes, I appreciate how big a task it is to completely overhaul Microsoft Office's UI, but you get the point, hopefully.

XHTML Validation

2006-02-15T11:52:00.000Z

Whew. Just managed to get the index, news and products pages of the latest Project Krystal build (version 0.9 RC1) to validate under the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard. I think it's a very good idea to validate, as it helps to ensure that your site works on as many platforms, browsers and operating systems as possible. I like, use and try to spread Firefox, but that doesn't mean I'm going to lock IE users out of my site or irritate them with a browser-specific popup or something. If they want to use a browser with more holes in it than Swiss cheese, then that's their choice.

This has been cross-posted at the Hybrid site.

Firefox 'Showcase' Extension does IE Quick Tabs

2006-02-13T17:06:00.000Z

How long did it take?

The IE7 Beta's new feature Quick Tabs (see left) has already been done as a Firefox extension. Now that was a lot quicker than I had expected. Granted that it is done by a keyboard shortcut (F12, if you're interested) and not an icon, but it just goes to show how quickly that Internet Explorer's innovative features are taken up by the open source community. And if you dare try and patent it, Microsoft...

The download for Firefox Showcase is here.

Google, Privacy, Gizbuzz and VMware

2006-02-12T10:28:00.000Z

It looks like Google are taking more fire on the privacy front with the new search across computers feature in Google Desktop 3 Beta. See here and here. A bit of a more in-depth post about this will appear on another blog I'm contributing to, Gizbuzz, shortly. ~~I don't know the link yet and it may not even be online yet~~ UPDATE: The permalink is here.

But now more about my experiences with the free VMware Server product. I think it's brilliant. Having now tested both the Windows and Linux versions and I conclude that the Linux server is faster, but slows down your desktop a bit more. That's probably due to the fact that Linux is a more server-oriented system and to really prove this I'd need to conduct studies with different hardware and settings.

Also, Project Krystal has made it to a release candidate now (see story), but unfortunately, as yet, WorldPay integration is not completely finished. Don't ask about my weird versioning either.

School's out and Halo 2

2006-02-09T18:35:00.000Z

School is out for a week. So whoo! Brilliant, super duper.

What is slightly more interesting is this story. What this means for us die hard PC gamers is that, yes, we do get Halo 2. But it also looks like we will have to upgrade to Windows Vista. Now this doesn't really affect me, because I plan to upgrade anyway, but for some people... well, we'll see.

Oh and check out the new version of Google Desktop, it's got some cool new features.

Can't wait to play Halo 2 without buying an Xbox. Sorry, but I don't do consoles.

VMware Server for free!!

2006-02-08T19:13:00.000Z

Whoo! I'm actually very happy because I've just got my sweaty palms on a copy of the new free beta of VMware Server. This could be certainly useful for someone like me who can't afford loads of hardware to run different OSs on (well, who can?) I've grabbed both the Windows and Linux servers and from my tests on both Win and Lin, the Linux server version seems to be a lot faster when installing and running operating systems. So this is basically my chance to play with a hell of a load of different Linux distros, not to mention the Windows Server 2003 trial.

Looking forward also to getting some dedicated hardware anyway though, because it means I will be able to run a semi-permanent Linux web server to get some hosting going on.

So, who's for VMware?

And as for XEN (built-in open source virtualisation for Linux), well, I'm on the side of VMware, considering how easy it was to install.

Anyway...

Latest Updates

2006-02-01T19:13:00.000Z

In the world of PK (Project Krystal) development, we've had some new features. Namely these include various bugfixes for the product basket system (yes, some very important ones) and lots of other stuff too. The main things feature-wise are:

An online discount system (for percentage discounts for buying online) - this involved integrating with all current elements of the basket, so fairly time consuming.
New UI and UX enhancements to do with the basket (losing some of the old debugging buttons).

Well, let's hope I can meet the supposed deadline of this Sunday, although considering the stability and potential for bugs in these new features, I doubt it will be 100% stable by then, even if the features are in there.

This has been cross-posted at the Hybrid site.

No posts for ages

2006-01-28T09:28:00.000Z

Sorry! I haven't posted for ages, and I apologise.

What has been happening is a lot. Project Krystal, my main development arm at the moment is being set up for its first roll-out on the website of a garden machinery company, and that is taking up all my development time. We are currently working in version 0.8, but this branch of Project Krystal is codenamed Freestyle, as it has additional features:

Multiple products categories with sort/search facilities
Ajax-powered product basket with (hopefully) WorldPay purchase integration
A new brilliant looking horizontal navigation bar setup

Due to reasons of the development still being in progress, there is no rolling test version that you can view, or screenies available. But rest assured, there will be soon.

You can also check the Project Krystal target schedule here.

Also, if anyone is reading this at all, visit Linux-noob.com. I've posted about them before, but they are a really good forum for people new to Linux. Everyone is friendly and doesn't mind answering the odd RTFM-type question. So, join up and tell them Hybrid sent you.

Anyway, I hope to post again soon with less of a delay between posts. See you all later. And post a comment if you like reading this, I don't seem to get any.

Long time, no ... blog

2006-01-18T17:52:00.000Z

First, I have at least two apologies to make.

1) I haven't posted in absolutely ages, partly due to a Hybrid contract meaning I can't talk too much about what is going on while things are provisional.

2) The joke in this post title is actually quite shocking.

But anyway, aside from the potential contract that I can't talk about, a few things have happened. I have been given an invite to the Windows Live Messenger Beta (yes, a screeny). At the moment, I have four invites left, and it's first come first served (Blogger users can leave a comment). It's quite cool to get on a beta (finally) and the new interface is quite cool too. Big up to the guy at the Gizbuzz blog for kitting me out with an invite. Incidentally, I've also got a Windows Live Mail account, but in its current state of (IE only, grrr...) development, it's not too impressive. When it does go live (no pun intended), it may well rival Gmail, I would vouch.

So what else do I say, really? I can't talk too much, so I won't. Let's hope my next post will have less of a gap between it and this one.

Keep it real.

I'm back

2006-01-10T18:31:00.000Z

Well, I'm back from my long blog break. No particular reason. Neither, unfortunately can I talk much about what is going on in dev at the moment, more will be revealed later. Sorry, this one is short.

FreeBSD/VB/Windows Server 2003

2005-12-30T17:26:00.000Z

As you can tell if you read the title of this post aloud, this post comes in three parts, and they all rhyme.

I started today by hooking up an ancient Pentium 75 with 16 MB RAM with FreeBSD 4.8 (latest version that will run on that hardware). It worked, up until the point at which I wanted to put Apache on it, and I couldn't mount the CD-R I had burnt with the sources on. So that stopped there.

I then did some Visual Basic.NET programming, with Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition. I started to create a little Text Editor application for Windows. I got fairly far, then VB crashed and I hadn't saved. Grrr. So I have got just beyond that point now, and I will continue another day.

Now I am downloading the official trial version of Windows Server 2003 R2 from Microsoft. If I can find a suitable box to run it on, I hope to see how it compares to Linux when it comes to doing server stuff. Over a 1MB connection, though, this could take some time.

Merry Christmas and a Hybrid New Year

2005-12-24T20:41:00.000Z

Hello everyone, and before I start proper - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all (if anyone does read this, that is). It's Christmas Eve, so don't expect a blog post tomorrow, people.

You may have noticed that in this post's title I have substituted the word 'Happy' for 'Hybrid', and there is a very good reason for this. I have relaunched my Hybrid Web Services site with an all-new look and the latest Project Krystal build, version 0.6a. There's a tiny bit of info on Project Krystal here, along with my RSS Generator (which is in its next version now, having cleared up a few minor issues).

Well, there's not much else dev-wise I've been doing, today I was pretty much just skinning Project Krystal to Hybrid's requirements and making it look integrated with the whole Hybrid look. Well, I did rediscover a gaming classic (and found a patch to make it run on Windows XP) - Worms 2. It rules. See you soon.

Linux working, Windows misbehaving

2005-12-19T19:16:00.000Z

Well, it's certainly taken me a while - I'll grant you that, but at least now SUSE Linux 10 is back online. I've installed Apache 2.0.54 and a PHP 4 version included with SUSE 10, so I avoid compiling myself and once again causing the partition table problem. SUSE 10 works, it works well, and I even found an RPM for Firefox 1.5, so I'm fully upgraded and operational.

Windows, however, is plagued with a choppy sound, plus still the disappearing mouse trouble from my last post. I'm working on a solution with the guys at Linux-noob.com (thanks guys, you rock), but until then it looks like MS Office doesn't work.

Ah well, at least I can continue webdev finally (on Linux, naturally). I am adding a user logon auditing system to Project Krystal. Speaking of which, the build on the Buttons site is now v0.5.2.

Let's hope Windows starts working soon.

PHP and partition tables

2005-12-13T07:43:00.000Z

I had a bit of a major problem recently. Other people disagree (more), but I'm convinced that PHP 5.1.1 deleted my partition table for my first hard drive. I've explained it enough already, so use the link above if you want the story.

So this means that Windows and Linux need to be put back on, in fact I only just managed to save my source code, as I could boot into Windows once and once only. This is a job for the Christmas holidays; only three more days of school to go.

I'm running a temporary build of Windows at the moment, because it is unstable as anything. The mouse stops working periodically (and it's not the cable) and it boots up slower than a snail with a speed limiter.

Various security patches

2005-12-05T18:21:00.000Z

I've done some serious sorting of security on PK recently. The logon security algorithm has been made a lot better, but for obvious reasons I'm not saying why, as the alpha version of PK is still online (somewhere) and it is a potentially hackable thing (it's been taken down by me now).

Also, user permissions have had an MD5 hashing system added as well to make sure people can't just meddle with their session data to gain access to modules they aren't allowed to access.

I've had an idea that I might do a Webdev & Nerd Stuff podcast at some point, if I get round to it, so I'll keep you updated with that and as ever with all my webdev projects.

Project Krystal 0.5.1 Goes Live on Buttons Productions

2005-12-02T19:47:00.000Z

Major news update :

Project Krystal has gone live on the all-new Buttons Productions website (my school's Young Enterprise company). It's been a long time coming having the system this stable (it's approaching Beta quality). I'm really happy because it looks great, works (better than the Alpha builds anyway) and just generally it has been quite an achievement to get to this stage. We're now on version 0.5.1 (approcaching Beta 1).

Whoo!

I'll keep you posted with GPL stuff and PK stuff too.

My First GPL Project (RSS Feed Generator)

2005-11-29T20:56:00.000Z

I've created my first ever open source project, to give back to the open source community who have helped me learn so much (GNU/Linux, PHP, MySQL, Apache, too many things to mention).

It's fairly simple, a basic RSS feed generator. It uses PHP and accepts input from a MySQL database. It's licensed under the GPL, so it's free for anyone to use and make improvements to.

You can get a download of it from my site, located here. A sample bit of code it generates can also be viewed at that page.

Any suggestions or comments, just post a comment here (you will need a Blogger account). Or send me an email, it's strategyoracle=-AT--gmail=---DOT--com.

Well, it's out to you now, so use it if you want and please do give feedback if you like it.

A day off school

2005-11-25T19:32:00.000Z

Yes, today is (well, has been) a day off school for standard teacher training stuff. I'm now about half way through my mock exams, which is fairly good and, well, let's keep off the subject of exams shall we?

Due to the exams (oh no, said it again) Project Krystal has crawled along in progress, making only a few minor adjustments in the last week. The development process should speed up sometime soon, when I get more free time that I can plug into the project.

Well, there's not much more to say other than that I joined a new forum today, http://teendev.com, under my strategyoracle name.

Well, until next time...

Mock exams, language orals and web development

2005-11-19T10:19:00.000Z

As this post finally wins the award for longest post title ever, and longest time between posts, I would like to welcome myself back to writing this blog.

I haven't written for ages for a number of reasons. Firstly, mock exams are about to start, so revision has been heavy recently and secondly, lots of further development has been taking place, so there hasn't really been time to write here.

But anyway, on with today's post, and it's going to be a bit of an essay to make up for all those days I didn't post.

In development, Project Krystal has come on leaps and bounds, but is still most definitely in Alpha stage, as there are major flaws getting it to work. I am kitting out a friend with a copy of the latest 'stable' (I use the term loosely) build to test and find improvements, not only to the code but the web user interface too. He gets a free copy of my website management software to build his website, I get a tester. Symbiosis at its best.

In code, I am now building the final bit of the project, the products page with cataloguing system (fully sortable) and searching for the products. Also, the rich text editing system is officially integrated with the whole admin system, so it is as easy to use as any WYSIWYG word processor.

Christmas is also coming, so that means a new graphics card, the Geforce 6600, hopefully, to replace my current (rubbish) Geforce FX5200.

When will I be finished with Project Krystal? No idea as yet. Once all the features are done, the code will have to be seriously stablised to the point that I consider it something worth(y) of selling.

On the note of Hybrid, which will take over from Buttons Productions after the end of the year, my friend Chris is now on board to deal with the design of the future Hybrid site and our contracts. He's good at building mock designs (albeit in Paint) and making them look good when I convert them to the cool XHTML.

OK, until next time, which I'm not sure when it will be,

Peter the Nerd

Mock exams

2005-11-07T19:53:00.000Z

I hate to say it, but the dreaded Mock Exams will arrive soon (only a couple of weeks now), and so the amount I post to this blog is likely to decrease. If anyone reads this anyway, post a comment, but never mind.

Today I downloaded and installed Squid for my Linux system, and started playing about with it. Still can't work out how to get the ACLs working properly, anyone with a good tutorial should post a comment if they find one. I also have started thinking about the PayPal integration of the Project Krystal Products system and its potential security implications. I don't want to sell a hackable system, do I?

I'll write again sometime.

Making Of Movie

2005-11-03T19:36:00.000Z

Sorry I haven't posted for ages, I've actually been quite busy.

I've now sold 8 copies of the Making Of (don't ask if you don't know), at £2 each, so I have finally made a profit from buying all those DVD+Rs.

Anyway, Young Enterprise was busy again, despite more than half of the people not being there. Project Krystal is going places, with a rich text editor being implemented now, to replace ageing and frankly clunky BBcode. Should be good, just the integration of that with my current PHP app to do.

Hopefully write again soon,

Peter

Linux-noob.com

2005-10-29T20:07:00.000+01:00

I think it's about time I introduced you to a great forum and community for those less experienced in Linux (and even Windows). Linux-noob.com is a community run by anyweb, and it is really friendly to newbies to Linux. These guys will help you through anything, either on the forums or on their IRC channel, #linux-noob on EFNET.

In my news, did some work today, but no more dev for the moment. I'm going to write a SUSE 10 review for Linux-noob.com now.

Milestones

2005-10-28T15:21:00.000+01:00

I'm back and I have got very far with Project Krystal. I have got through two major development milestones and, well, let me just show you the URL to the rolling, working preview.

www.aurora.co.nr/pkalpha

The backend is about halfway there in terms of dev, but the frontend sucks right now. You didn't need me to tell you that, but it does. If this system gets sold, though, it will obviously have a properly professional looking frontend to go with it.

Also, I better mention that I did all the dev up to Milestone 2 on my new SUSE 10 system. KDE 3.4 looks great, amazing what changes in 3 minor versions! It even has a K menu search system (like Vista's upcoming Start Menu search). KDE's is a bit clunky, but it shows the power of open source off a bit. Not too impressed with GNOME in SUSE 10, not that it's bad, but SUSE haven't bundled the good window themes and icon sets, so it doesn't look as polished as KDE.

Oh no, the holiday appears to be escaping....

Krystal Progress

2005-10-24T09:30:00.000+01:00

Project Krystal is coming on and making very good progress. We now have a homepage system, a news system with image upload features (now that is pretty cool) and soon to be a product inventory system and feature page system.

This project is finally going somewhere - I just wish that I could be more sure of what the final design will look like than the current 'retro' look I put together for the Alpha build, while I build. I might build a better UI for the Beta, but for now, it has to look pretty terrible.

I will be away from Tuesday - Thursday this week, so there will be no more blog entries for a while , but I'll keep you posted (no pun intended) with the dev news as soon as I get back.

And I'm downloading the 5^th and final CD of SUSE 10 right now, so I should be able to do that too. I booted into YaST just to have a look, and it looks great.

First day of the holiday

2005-10-22T21:14:00.000+01:00

Today was the first day of the holiday, and I have used it to mainly be geeky and do work on Project Krystal, which I'm sure you've heard about. I now have a dynamic homepage system and news features. All driven by a MySQL database backend and PHP. It's going to be one of the biggest projects yet, especially getting the file uploading to work to have images for the news stories and online product inventory.

Well, see you tomorrow.

Half term

2005-10-21T17:40:00.000+01:00

First of all, sorry about yesterday - I was very busy. A new major project has been unveiled for Buttons Productions, currently named Project Krystal, a competely dynamic website management system with loads of cool stuff. It will surely keep me occupied over this half term. Read the official Buttons news story here.

In other news, of course, school is now out for a week which is great news. Do have to do quite a lot of work, though. Should be good.

And I'm also starting to download OpenSUSE 10 (I'm currently running SUSE 9.0). Five CDs will take a while even on this connection. Glad I don't still have 56k....

Careers Fair

2005-10-19T18:14:00.000+01:00

After colleges yesterday, careers fair today.

Was OK, saw all the college candidates and got prospectuses and stuff. Not made a decision yet.

Bit busy with YE stuff, so see you tomorrow.

Colleges

2005-10-18T19:42:00.000+01:00

Just had a look around a local college at the computing facilites. Was initially a bit worried I would be Microsoft-boxed-up in a Windows world, but there were mentions of FCR4, Solaris, all the big Unix players and some server OSs that even I (just kidding) hadn't heard about.

Yeah, so it's now to look around the other ones and make a decision. And whether to do something else as well.......................

Back to school

2005-10-17T18:27:00.000+01:00

Back to school today. Oh goody.

I've started mirroring my Windows Apache installation to my Linux one (I dual boot), because Linux is so much better as a server platform than Windows XP. To be fair, I haven't used Windows Server 2003/IIS as a web server, basically because I can't afford it (take note Microsoft: young people are going Apache because they can). So, hopefully I can build a better platform for my test web server. I do like the extra Unix-based security and the ability to do cool stuff like sendmail and easily use Perl (I tried and failed to install ActivePerl for Windows - hey an occasion where Linux has been an easier platform to install something on than Windows).

Another note to Microsoft: ASP(X) is not an easy platform for young people to experiment with, because of its cost to setup. I don't have the money to buy Win Server 2K3 and therefore I can't use ASP(X) (unless I jump through hoops like installing mod_perl for Apache, then do this and that - it's more effort than it's worth).

Wow, what an essay. See you all tomorrow.

PS: My Linux uptime (it sucks, I know).

Hi again

2005-10-16T10:20:00.000+01:00

Hi.

Feeling less work-stressed now that I have made a bit more progress with French and Media Studies. Bit of a drama this morning, the gateway's reset button might have been pressed, so all the internet settings were gone, so had to scramble for a backup of them. Found the backup and restored it, thankfully.

Had a response to my question on the Dhost forums, and now I can start building the photo uploading application next week. Also, installed the Uptime Project last night, so you can see how long my XP installation is running.

My themed XP

2005-10-15T20:00:00.000+01:00

Forgot to post this: take a look at my themed XP box with Longhorn and Tiger themes:

Longhorn

Tiger

Pretty cool, huh?

Given up on work

2005-10-15T17:31:00.000+01:00

I have given up on work after churning out about 200 words in 4 hours (yes, that bad). Neither am I going to do any dev projects, I don't have the brainpower left. I might get onto the Buttons improvements next week (it is half term), but don't expect any major improvements for next week.

Hi and welcome to the blog

2005-10-15T10:18:00.000+01:00

Wow, I don't know why I haven't played with blogs before, but here I am now. Being a webnerd should mean I should be the first to play with these new technologies. Anyway...

It's Saturday, I have loads of work to do and I want to also do some more stuff on my latest project, our Young Enterprise company site www.buttons.co.nr, but I have too much work to do.

In case you're wondering, it's French, German and Media Studies this weekend.

I haven't had a chance to update my main site www.hybridweb.co.nr, so it's still using my old non-MySQL news system which, frankly, sucks compared to the Buttons system.

Well, hope to see you again soon, on Peter's Webdev Blog.