scrumpyjack

So it's a fine new year. I have set myself some ambitious challenges for 2010. Let's compare notes and help each other out...

I'm hugely excited by certain trends that are appearing lately. Ultimately it all comes down to how successful the goal of moving everything onto "the cloud" is becoming. It all started a few years ago when the big software companies realised the potential of the web to take over the desktop. They put into place strategies which are now starting to see some fulfilment. I've hidden the rest of this post away for a change. Go find it

Now I know you disagree... all you have to do is become exposed to gamma radiation and get real angry, right? Wrong. You are not Bruce Banner, and you'll never turn into the Incredible Hulk. Plus you don't play with gamma radiation do you? Be honest now... That's not the kind of green I'm talking about. It seems for the past couple of years a lot of people have gone crazy about being eco-friendly, saving the planet, greenhouse gases and whatnot. Here in the UK, the government has set up and continues to fund the Carbon Trust and various green initiatives (which we should have been doing years ago). For most consumers this means changing lightbulbs from incandescent to fluorescent, with obvious benefits all round. But there's an even better solution to CFLs: LEDs. That's right, those little plastic light bulbs you messed about with at school! A lot of research and development has been put into manufacturing LED lamps that match the usefulness of fluorescent bulbs...

If you follow the link embedded in the title to this article you will be taken to a BBC report with a video on it about some of the latest trends in modern computing. Have a watch and come back here when you're done. Now, I'm no Apple fanboy... they have their faults (oh yes!), but you have to appreciate the thought and conviction they show when you compare their products to the ones being strutted about on this video. Let's break it down: First off, the netbooks. Apple has yet to show any competition in this market and a lot of analysts are wondering why they don't want a slice of this low-end pie. In my view the answer was always obvious: netbooks came and went years ago. The only reason for their return to fashion is the lower cost to the consumer. However, it's a false economy as consumers want more power from these tardy devices and still have to resort to a "proper notebook" after all. Apple's answer: the MacBook. Then there's the touch-scree...

Does it make any sense to you? It didn't make any sense to me either a few years ago. But this little snippet from Wikipedia makes it all very clear: LTE provides up to 326.4 Mbit/s for downlink and 86.4 Mbit/s for uplink. LTE-Advanced, in development as a minor update to LTE networks, supports maximum download rates of over 1 Gbit/s. Basically, I want LTE-Advanced now. Interesting that it's only a "minor update" to existing LTE networks. Apparently there's only one of these planned and in production at the moment... in Oslo. I'm moving to Norway, b'bye!

I've just been on the phone with a potential client. From our brief chat it's clear that they have experienced problems with "web" people before now. This has affected their view of our services at FlipStorm, even though they know nothing about us. So, how do you overcome that kind of prejudice? You could turn to the salesman's pitch... tell them all the guff they either already know or don't want to know and spin it to make it sound like you're the best. If they buy in, they've got to spend some more money and they might just get lucky. If they are smart though (and your client is always smart , no matter how stupid they are!), they won't go for any of that. So you need to toss them a bone. Prove to them that you are prepared to go that extra mile. Give them something for nothing... a favour! Some of you may see this as flaring up the spec work debate , but before I start a urinating competition, I'd like to mention that there are absolutely n...

Well it's coming to the end of 2008 and there's nothing left to say, but: Why Are CMSs Not Included In The "Web Apps" Balloon? There was a time when going up into the sky was every boys (and some girls) dream. To be like a bird, fluttering at high altitudes in the cold, thin air... so naive... Sorry... rambling again. My point is that mankind poured decades of research into flight, spanning many centuries. IMO, one of the greatest achievements in the field is the hot air balloon (although I've never been in one). As I see it, the hot air balloon is a brilliant and exhilarating contraption. But to ride one with any sense of control (and I am a control freak) takes an awful lot of know how. You have to be a pretty cool kid to guide a hot air balloon with any safety. The same is true with web apps. They're a wild giant canvas filled with the piping hot air of incidence and popularity, warily directed by the most aimless sense of direction conceived (in some cases...

I am loving my Mac. I'm no fanboy, mind. I appreciate the simplicity and extra thought that make up its better parts. There are still some things I may find to do in Windows. I will be installing Windows as a matter of cause (and no doubt it will run blindingly fast!) However, the Mac environment has quickly become my preferred one. Its uncomplicated integration and neat up-sleeve tricks make it fun to use as well as functional. Over the past two weeks though I have had one stumbling block: Ximeta, Inc's NDAS software. I own a Freecom MediaPlayer 350WLAN HDD enclosure. Freecom have always supported the Mac platform, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work. My initial findings suggested it was probably because I was trying to connect to an NTFS formatted drive. That was easily remedied by a couple of packages that were freely available: MacFUSE and NTFS-3g. These two enable full read-write access to any drive that is formatted using Microsoft's NTFS. The problem re...

Again I find my blog post titles not really resembling any coherence... if you follow the TWiT podcast you'll notice my titles are starting to follow the ethos: it's more a summary of what's covered than an introduction... Still it works for now. I haven't posted in an age and three-quarters because I went away to Scotland for a week during September. I've had difficulty keeping up with all the stuff that's happening in the world of late. It seems that financial markets are going to pot. So for the time being I will be keeping my head down trying to secure my very bleak future. I suggest you do the same. In slightly lighter news, Zend released Framework 1.6 and Studio 6.1. Also I noticed that my favourite, open-source, JavaScript-based WYSIWYG editor, TinyMCE, has recently been updated. Back to work!

But I'm desperately working away... While at it though I just wanted to mention that I am now immortalised in boagworld.com fame. Check out Podcast 131 and their feature article on Version Control , all of which was sparked off by little me. I feel somewhat vindicated by Ryan and Paul (Stanton). My real question was for the professional opinion. It appears that there are quite a few pros that have yet to implement version control. But is it really worth it? On our team we very rarely cross projects. We backup regularly. As long as we maintain the rules of version management we're fine aren't we? I guess the main issue is with the degree of versioning. At present our versioning "system" relies upon new job requests. All of the code from the previous job is copied into a new job folder and worked on as the next iteration. The previous job folder is archived. There's no real problem with this except that there's no record of what changes have taken place. To...

I love El Reg. Not the kind of love that a man has for his dog, but a love nonetheless. It really comes to the fore when I read articles like the one I have linked to this post. The over-ambitious use of words and undeniable cynicism all win it for me. Of course the heated opinions of all those loyal readers who can't think past their own vents of rage are also a plus. A real rarity though is the unfortunate (almost) spelling mistake I spotted in this article, if it wasn't for a well-placed apostrophe. Viva el Reg!

I got obsessed with the idea that I could come up with something huge. I felt I could be the one to produce the next big thing . But as time has passed and brain-ache has set in, I've come to the conclusion that I simply don't have the necessary time, resources, and inspiration. I got close though. A good friend of mine told me that the best way to find inspiration for a new and unthought of idea is to take two very unique and disparate concepts and form a path between them. In essence, this path would be the genius idea that has never been thought of before... and what will ultimately make you rich... supposedly. Therefore I've sort of given up. I found that the last idea I formulated had already been realised (if only a matter of weeks before). I was annoyed because I thought "noone will have done this yet," but at the same time I figured that I only missed the boat by a few weeks... which is not bad for a first attempt! I'm not just rambling on about my fai...