Well, July has drawn to a close with the lowest monthly blog totals yet… Sorry.
Sadly, August is likely to produce the same output – lots of offline things to occupy WhyDontYou’s time and the prospect of sunny weather.
We will try to blog whenever possible though and come the autumn things should return to normal.
I have been playing around with some images, trying to generate good effects. I am still not convinced this is “lomo” but it does produce some stunning pictures and can be done in Fireworks, Gimp or Photoshop pretty easily:
Well, as I said before, I actually quite like this effect. I am happy to listen to what others think or if you have done something similar please let me know.
Well, if there had ever been any doubt, I am obviously going soft as I get older. I am starting to like this months .net magazine! Argh.
Before I seem mad, there are the usual bucket loads of things which really annoy (and simple mistakes are high on the list – this new editor hasn’t actually improved anything in that respect). However, their tutorials are getting better.
In the past, the .net tutorials have gone from patronising to rocket science with no in-between step, and generally were uninsteresting and uninspiring. This month they are actually quite good. As an example, the “lomography” tutorial (using photoshop to put lomo effects onto pictures), is quite interesting and pretty inspiring.
I am not for one second saying the output appears properly “lomo,” however it is a good tutorial for adding effects previously not thought of combining (by me at least). You can see the outcome of a lomo practice on some stonehenge pictures:
Stonehenge Lomo,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.
Let me know what you think.
Well, it seems like this site doesnt get “refreshed” on Technorati for at least 26 minutes (that is the fastest I have managed to get a post to show up there.)
Does anyone know if this is normal?
Short one – the summer 2006 copy of .net has an interesting article on how to secure PHP scripts used in e-commerce (and generally to be honest).
While overall the article is very well written there is one glaring thing I think is way off the mark. Given that this is not a beginners topic and that on the third page the Author (Paul Hudson) talks about editing the httpd.conf file to restrict the X-Powered-By header PHP adds, it is strange that the advice about PHP includes is simply to rename them all from .inc to .php.
First oddity, it has been quite some time since the standard for php includes was filename.inc but this is minor. Now Mr Hudson’s concern is that people can access the .inc directly and view it as plain text (if they know the name of your .inc file), which is obviously a problem if all your DB logon data is in one.
Now the solution is massive overkill. If you had a site with (say) ten pages calling the same 10 *.inc files it would be a bit of a pain to change the files to .php and the include() to the new name. Now what if your site was ten times that size? Drama to say the least – even with good old grep.
Surely the simplest, most common sense solution is to (like mentioned on p84) alter the way the server handles the file? In apache this works – AddType x-mapp-php5 .inc as does AddType application/x-httpd-php .inc.
One change and everything is resolved.
Is this easier or am I mad?
Well hubris aside, that is the title of a pull out box in the Summer 2006 .net Magazine (p 11 for the spotters). This pull out box is on the letters page and highlights the happy comments people have submitted.
Now, the .net redesign is pretty good. The content has improved a bit. There are still mountains of typos and some pretty pointless bits but overall it is good.
However, and this is a big however, by the time someone has got to a quarter height box on page 11 of the magazine, they have probably bought it. What value is there to any one who has bought the magazine to know that “Stormfx” says “Best..net.ever. Absolutely love it. Rock on!” (I blame comic book guy for the new writing style….)
Now, I may be mistaken but in things like magazines the space is important. There is only a limited amount and the main priorities are advertisments (to bring in profits and keep prices down) and content (to make people buy copies and sell more advertisments). It is actually quite easy, the hard part is finding the happy medium.
Why on Earth did anyone sanction this use of space to simply say “I like your new style?” (six times)
What is the purpose of printing this sort of message? Is it to convince the casual browser to buy the magazine (in which case, why 1/4 height box on page 11)? Obviously this implies that the casual browser is not going to be tempted by the actual quality or quantity of the “real content” but is going to be swayed by the raves of total strangers.
Is it to convince people who arent’ happy with the new style that they are in a minority? This happens a lot in corporate communications: Often as a result of disgruntled employees causing problems and inefficient managers bringing in PR companies to convince everyone they are happy. It doesnt work. If people aren’t happy, listen to their problems and try to fix them, or at least explain why you cant/wont fix them. Simply telling everyone they are in a minority does not improve worker morale, and does not improve reader satisfaction. (George Orwell has a LOT to answer for).
One, possibly more likely, reason could simply be that in the typical chain of a company telling each other how well you have done is better than doing something (well or otherwise). This could just be the new editor showing his chain of command what a great thing his changes have been.
Personally I think it stinks and the space would have been much better employed with more letters, even an advert would have been better if they have so much space….
I know it has been mentioned before, but why doesn’t technorati update their records when a Ping is sent? WordPress automatically “pings” (informs them there is an update) technorati when each new post is made, yet it seems to take about 12 hours for this to get through. Now, when some one else pings this blog, or posts ping other posts, the update is instant – yet technorati cant seem to manage this.
Does technorati have a system where the most popular blogs get the most frequent updates (or similar)? If so, then this reinforces my opinions about an already two tier internet.
Quick one – sorry about the recent lack of posts. Its is blindingly how and sunny here so, as you can imagine, sitting at a PC is far from anyones mind 🙂
We plan to write more soon.
Well, the year continues to hurtle past. It seems like only yesterday I was discussing the “Latest issue” of .net magazine and its structural overhaul, when all of a sudden the next one lands on my doormat.
Loathe though I am to admit it, things are getting better. Miraculously, .net has dragged itself out of the slump it has been living in over the last few months and is once more a good, readable, magazine.
Still…. nothing is perfect…. 🙂
THe Register points out that passport fees are going up by a third in october. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/24/passport_fees/. Supposedly the extra charge is “provides enhanced security and reassurance for the holders” according to at the Home Office. Oh, that’s OK then.
The Home Office also announced it was pressing ahead with the hated ID system, according to the Register 11 July.
I feel more secure already…………….
A system that is going to cost £6.2 billion plus “local costs” had better be good. That’s what the NHS compuerisation is supposed to cost. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5118538.stm on 26 June 2006)
Assuming the UK population is 60,609,153 (July 2006 est.) on https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/uk.html and that the mentioned billion is the US billion (thousand million) that makes the cost £102.29 for every person in the UK or £153.22 for every person of working age (16 to 65, based on the same webpage)
I suspect that’s quite a bit more than GP gets for a year’s care. What are we getting for this? Was there seriously some problem with patients’ getting the wrong records? On a scale that would justify this expnditure? Seems more than unlikely to me.
There are plenty of news items about cutbacks in nursing and other staff, of NHS trust hospitals going bankrupt and so on. Could this £153 not be spent on doctors and nurses and paramedics and dentists and ambulance drivers and cleaners and radiographers?
In my GP’s surgery, the problem is getting an appointment – working your way round impenetrable arrangements that change every few weeks. Attempt to find an NHS dentist and even achieving the much-mocked British teeth become a distant dream. For all the complaints about the Health Service, I have yet to hear of anyone whose records have been lost. So what purpose will it serve?
I am probably a lot more computer-oriented as the next person and it’s always good to see jobs in IT. However, if I break my leg, I wont be yelling for a database technician.
Pretty good grin if you have anything to do with web things.
http://www.6footdesign.com/article/web20alizr
Well, as it has been inordinately sunny here over the last few weeks, getting time to type up blog entries has been thin on the ground.
That notwithstanding it is shocking how fast the time is passing – it only seems like yesterday I was complaining about how pants Personal Computer World magazine was, and planning to cancel the subscription, when the latest copy arrived in the post today. I had intended to cancel, honest.
This month (again) I wish I had. To stop the rants taking over I am planning to address each issue I have with the magazine in separate stages.
Despite my annoyance, there are some postive points. The cover disk (“more than 8GB of great software” and “9 full products worth £176”) is reasonable. Unusually for something which heavily relies on its “value” as a Unique Selling Point, this disk is crammed full of open source software – which could reasonably be downloaded by anyone with a faster than dial up connection. The brunt of the disk space is taken up with Star Office 7 (brilliant), SuSE 10.1 Live DVD (good – but you will have to burn this to a disk before you use it, and then download a better version to install it), Knoppix 5.01 (not bad – live CDs of this distro turn up everywhere though) and the ever present Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake (This gets everywhere, I suspect there are more copies of this floating around on disk than there are people in the world). It is good to see PCW head down the open source route some more.
This leads me nicely on to a hatstand comment in the Letter pages (p 25 for the pedantic). Tom Callway from the Open Source Consortium quite rightly chastises PCW for their comments about OS software in the July issue. The reply is bordering on the nonsensical. It somewhat resembles a Microsoft or Adobe press release…
Alan Stevens replies that while the software may be free, it might not be a good choice for small businesses to use it on the desktop. He explains that the lack of familiarity is the key problem thinking that “most people know how windows and windows applications work.” He states that this may affect productivity and make it harder to recruit / retain staff.
Some good old FUD there…. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt for the newbies).
He finishes off with how it can be difficult and expensive when things go wrong because specialist help is needed.
This was obviously written by someone who has not stepped outside a Windows (and old Mac) dominated corporate environment for quite some time. Of the people I know who interact with Windows based software on a daily basis I would say less than 2% are actually aware of any of its underlying properties. Less know how the OS itself does things.
IT support for Windows based PCs is big business and can cost phenomenal amounts of money. There is a reason for this…. It is not because every user is a Windows expert…..
To further highlight the idiocy of the comment, Linux applications are nearly all identical in “look and feel” to their windows based versions – it takes a fraction of a second to learn where the file menu is etc. Most Open Source office packages are close enough to (for example) Windows that the transition is totally painless. Less hassle than (for example) switching from Word Perfect to Word. I am sure any one uses Lotus Notes at work, but not at home will be aware how easy it is to learn new ways of doing things. The implict statement in PCW’s reply is that business have to use Windows because that is what the staff have on their home PCs.
Pure madness.
How hard is it to use Firefox? (Open source is not just linux!!!!)
What learning curve is there for someone moving to (eg) SugarCRM from MSCRM? If you know how to use the MS package, you can use the OS equivalents with just as much ease. For hardened experts it may be different – but the reply is talking about general-skilled staff.
Things will get funnier when (if) Vista, Office 2007 et al., are launched. What argument can there be then for staying with closed source software? When most home users use Works, why do companies use Word? They are similar, but so is star office (even more similar IMHO).
Shame on you PCW. Very poor reply.
Sorry for the recent hiatus. We hope to resume normal service soon.
For now, here are some interesting links we have been looking at recently:
More to follow.