Tom
Cybernetic Cypher
We have a cool new cat accessory. It’s a battery powered microchip activated cat flap. It works extremely well and I like knowing that other cats can’t get in and eat Cypher’s food. Actually, you are wrong – The internet does need another cat picture.
Furnished Dining Room
We got some furniture for our Dining room. We now have a drinks cabinet (and a table, sideboard and book shelves): Before: After: Although, it’s more of an office than a dining room now.
Frog Woes
The sight of a frog makes me feel sick so Kix found it funny that we had to edit a blog post that contained a real frog photo for a client of ours. Good phobia therapy?
Introducing Butterfree
I have a new machine. He’s called “Butterfree”, he’s German and I rent him for £45 per month from http://www.hetzner.de/en: Specs: CPU: Intel i7-920 Quadcore incl. Hyper-Threading Technology. RAM: 8 GB DDR3. Disk: 2 x 750 GB SATA II (Software-RAID 1). Features: LAMP – Full root access. 24h Reset service via Webinterface – I already [...]
Finished First “for-pay” website
Our first site as freelancers is more-or-less finished. It should hopefully look clean and simple?
My new company – Bitvolution Limited
Bitvolution is a company I set up to provide freelance web development and consultancy. I have got the website up and running: Let’s see how it goes…
Finished Hallway
We finished the hallway (i.e. finally got round to doing the skirting board). Before: After:
Stop websites turning off the “remember password” browser feature
I’m currently in the process of incorporating a company and http://www.businesslink.gov.uk is my friend, especially the “Business start-up organiser” which is the ultimate “to do” list of things that need to be done. However, I found the site was annoying in that it kept logging me out if I went away for 5 minutes and [...]
The Three Peaks Challenge
The three peaks challenge involves walking 25 miles while climbing 2940m and driving 466 miles in 24 hours. The 3 peaks are the tallest in Scotland (Ben Nevis), England (Scarfell Pike) and Wales (Snowdon). We did it as a group of 10 including a very kind driver who didn’t walk. My legs have never been [...]
Building a MythTV Box
We have quite a good Freeview box which does scheduled recordings including series-record but it could be better because it is missing a HD output, DVD playback and Video streaming. We decided to build our own HTPC in order to take control of our viewing options once and for all. Hardware List: Case: Lian Li [...]
PeoplePerHour on prime time news
PeoplePerHour.com (and 1s of my head) were on the six o’clock news last night: Unfortunately, the traffic spike generated from the mention on TV and the associated BBC web page brought our server down – so I’m feeling pretty bad about my abilities as a web developer at the moment Hopefully, I’ll be ready for [...]
Plea for donations
I’m doing a walk next month with some friends – we want to go up and down the 3 highest mountains in the UK within 24 hours – a serious challenge for someone who’s primary exercise for the last 5 years has been computer programming! We’re trying to raise £1000 for cancer research in the [...]
Nova-TD-500 Tuning issues
I wanted to watch freeview on my PC so I bought a brand new Hauppauge Nova-TD-500 card. Unfortunately I found the picture quality to be exceptionally low – There were significant image artefacts and glitches where everything is fine if I plug the same cable into a normal TV. I tried a whole load of [...]
Ant Problems
We get attacked by ants every year but this year we have an extra problem because ants seem to like cat food. Kix put the cat bowl into another bowl and half filled the outer bowl with a moat of water so ants can’t get to it. Anyone know a better solution?
Ubuntu 9.04 on a Sony VGN-AR51E
A jackalope? I highly recommend the new Ubuntu 9.04 release (Jaunty Jackalope), it has A+ compatibility on a Sony VGN-AR51E. I also recommend upgrading from previous Ubuntu versions. Apart from the pretty new style system notifications the other thing well worth upgrading for is the promise of better boot performance. Boot speed: Obviously, when I [...]
