Archive for August, 2008

Another day another Blackberry

// August 16th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

I’m a blackberry user – I make no apologies for it. I’m not a Crackberry Head and fairly frequently use the Phone Only setting or even turn it off completely but, as it stands, I am a blackberry user. I’m also a tech head and am very, very demanding of my phones. They have to do an awful lot of heavy lifting and they have to do it well, fast and generally keep my happy. I mean look at the history? I spent an entire weekend getting a phone to sync via bluetooth.

(more…)

We’re all going on a …

// August 14th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

really fucking long drive actually.

The summer holiday is more or less upon us and this year the GGF and I are off across Europe in a big wobbly mess of countries that would make Indiana Jones blush with shame and reach for his passport.

Don’t believe me? Check out the route

In brief we are attending 2 events of note. The first being a party at a friend’s place in Cornwall … which I have now been invited to for the past 5 years but haven’t managed to attend :-)

The second is the wedding of GGF’s brother to his lovely fiance … which is in Poland.

Hence the running around.

More on both as I have it.

Rob

Choosing a CMS Part 3 – Wordpress

// August 13th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

Wordpress (in this example Wordpress >= 2.5) is now well known as the number 1 hosted and self installable blog platform in the world. Based on PHP and MySQL (a trend you’ll see continuing as we move through the other apps) the Wordpress application is solid, moderately fast and reasonably customisable.

I’m not the first to write about the possibility of using Wordpress as a CMS, A quick Google will return a couple of hundred tutorials which will walk you through the finer points of customising this platform and creating your site.

Rather than look at specific implementations, let’s consider the features the Wordpress offers that make it suitable for managing an entire site:

(more…)

Lock down your PC

// August 12th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

A quick one for all those who are wondering where they can get free security software for their PCs:

30+ Free Security, Encryption Firewall and Antivirus Apps for Windows

My recomendations?

Antivirus – AVG 8 (but disable the link scanner)

Firewall – Zone Alarm

Encryption – Truecrypt

Digital Signing and Encryption – GnuPG

Although you know what my ultimate recomendation would be right?

Choosing a CMS – Part 2 – Requirements

// August 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

Before I head into platform specific notes, there are a couple of things that should be cleared up in terms of requirements from a CMS.

In it’s most basic form, and Online CMS should provide:

  • The facility to manage pages of content from within the user’s browser
  • The ability to generate and apply a template or theme to the site
  • Dynamically generated menus and navigation elements
  • Search
  • User registration
  • Blog capabilities including commenting

Nice to have features include:

  • RSS Syndication
  • Categorisation / Tagging for entries
  • Theme overrides per page or category
  • Plug in Structure for expansion

Of course the feature set provided by CMSs is as wide in scope as you could possibly ask for. Everything from Rich Text Editors to Approval Structures, image management and email notification is available from some of the systems but at their core, these requirements are all you need from a basic CMS.

So let’s take a look at our first contender: Wordpress

View the rest of this series:
Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Requirements
Part 3 – Wordpress

I think I won the storage competition.

// August 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

A certain Mr Baker and I had (some time ago) a bit of friendly competiton running to see who could amass the most disk storage. I think I just won as it’s not very often you see this much free disk space on a laptop:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3              28G  6.9G   22G  25% /
varrun                2.0G  204K  2.0G   1% /var/run
varlock               2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /var/lock
udev                  2.0G  120K  2.0G   1% /dev
devshm                2.0G  624K  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
lrm                   2.0G   44M  1.9G   3% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile
/dev/sda1              95M   69M   26M  73% /boot
/dev/sdb2              87G   11G   77G  12% /media/disk
/dev/sdb1             146G   89G   50G  64% /media/passport_
/dev/sdc1              75G   52G   23G  70% /media/ROB'S IPOD
/dev/sdd1              21T  5.1M   21T   1% /media/iscsitest

And for those who like there bytes to be bytes:

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3             29285564   7232512  22053052  25% /
varrun                 2028576       204   2028372   1% /var/run
varlock                2028576         0   2028576   0% /var/lock
udev                   2028576       120   2028456   1% /dev
devshm                 2028576       624   2027952   1% /dev/shm
lrm                    2028576     45040   1983536   3% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile
/dev/sda1                96312     69704     26608  73% /boot
/dev/sdb2             90554320  10791040  79763280  12% /media/disk
/dev/sdb1            152387268  92597084  52110316  64% /media/passport_
/dev/sdc1             77915440  54512064  23403376  70% /media/ROB'S IPOD
/dev/sdd1            21484243840      5152 21484238688   1% /media/iscsitest

This amazing large number comes from one of our new SAN boxes. To put it in context, 21TB (Terrabytes) is enough to store the entire human memory of 14 people, the contents of 3,072 DVD quality movies or 4,404,019 MP3 files.

Oh and Greg? Just in case you think you might be able to come close bear in mind the following:

  • This is one of 2 units we have available providing a total of 42TB
  • Each unit has only been partitioned to 60%
  • Each unit has 30% drive capacity still available

All in all, that’s a lot of pron :-D

Wii Game Reviews – Mariokart Wii

// August 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Since getting a Wii back in December* I’ve we’ve built up a not too shabby catalogue of games and accessories which have reaffirmed my belief that I made the right choice of console.

I plan to run through the games over the next couple of weeks with varying degrees of detail depending on how much the game has impressed me. I’m not planning to break any new ground with these reviews but rather to get my thoughts down on paper screen for future reference. Please feel free to challenge my opinions in the comments but bear in mind any fan boy esque behaviour will result in an instant ban and my sending the boyz round … we know where you live!!!

This first review is going to be a biggy and is the one game I was desperate for Nintendo to get right on the Wii in light of their hiccups on other platforms…

Mariokart Wii

(more…)

Choosing a CMS – Part 1

// August 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

A simple enough topic for a post but one that has a fairly hefty scope and, as such, may well be split over a number of parts.

CMS = Content Management System or a program that allows you to administer the content of your website.

There are a couple of groupings that will become apparent as we move through this series but one of the most important is the offline / vs online grouping.

Offline CMSs are dedicated programs that you install on your computer and then upload the files to your webserver over FTP or SFTP. For example, traditional web design applications such as Dreamweaver and thin client apps such as Contribute constitute an offline CMS. IN it’s simplest form, Notepad and FTP are all you need :-) but this setup lacks a lot of the template tools and site management options that add the M to CMS.

Online CMSs are those that are actually web applications, normally installed on the server hosting the website you wish to manage and allow the majority of the management to take place via your web browser. Wordpress, Blogger, Joomla, Drupal and about a million more apps are available for Online CM.

Specifically in this series, I will be covering Online CMSs with a focus on traditional, single web master maintenance rather than the more communitry driven forum or Wiki systems. Specifically, I’ll be looking at:

  • Wordpress
  • Expression Engine
  • Joomla
  • Drupal

If anyone has an app they’d like added to that list then please let me know.

More soon.

Rob

View the rest of this series:
Part 1 – Intro
Part 2 – Requirements
Part 3 – Wordpress