I closed down my contracting website (bitvolution.com) because that is not my gig anymore (and hasn’t been for a long time). I thought I’d archive the homepage and portfolio here, you know, for reasons.
The WordPress theme was original (created in-house, lol). I had open-sourced it and submitted it to the WordPress directory but alas, they didn’t accept it. More detail are at the end of the post.
Here at Bitvolution, we develop websites.
In a nutshell, that means that we sit at our computers all day punching out code for fine folk from around the world. The web is where we’re in our element! We pride ourselves in having the nerdy skills to resolve peoples ideas into websites and solve problems that come up along the way.
If you need a website, we may be able to help. We can develop and support your new site. Take a look at our portfolio of previous work and contact us if you want a quote for your new project.
↓ Bitvolution code factory ↓
Why you shouldn’t choose Bitvolution to build your site?
Freedom
“You want to be kept in the dark and to give up ownership of your site code.
We are open and transparent. Unlike most other companies we don’t reserve any rights to any of the code or images used to build your site.
Solutions
“You just want a website and have already mapped out exactly what to do.
We know you don’t just want a website – you want a website that scratches a business itch. We’ll keep at the problem until you’re happy.
Shiny & New
“You want a site that will be out of date the moment it’s released.
We use the latest techniques and software available. We are more agile than larger companies.
Approachable
“You love wading through the bureaucracy of a big company and dealing with multiple parties (e.g. designers, developers, SEO experts, hosting companies, etc).
We offer a personal approach, just the two of us to interact with directly.
Price
“You have tonnes of spare cash and you don’t mind being overcharged.”
Our prices are very competitive. In fact, they’re cheap! (yes, we know it’s bad to use the word “cheap”, but you can see through all that right?). We don’t have office rent or a receptionist to pay – so we charge less.
PeoplePerHour is a online freelance marketplace, take a look, you may find the site useful. I have worked in the development team since November 2008. I am directly responsible for implementing key features such as the homepage, search page, the registration process and the job posting process.
Website: Deanos Tattoos
www.deanostattoos.co.uk
This is a website for a Tattoo studio in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. It showcases a gallery of tattoos done in the purpose built Tattoo studio attached to Deans home.
Technologies: WordPress
Website: Sunflower Cottage
www.sunflowercottagebulgaria.com
This website provided pricing and availability information for a holiday cottage available to rent in Bulgaria.
This plugin changes the way WordPress displays it’s in-built image gallery and turns it into something a little fancier.
Technologies: jQuery, WordPress, PHP.
Website: Greek Island Property Finders
www.greekislandpropertyfinders.co.uk
Are you looking for a property in the Greek Islands? Julia and Petros can use the local language, knowledge and facilities to explore and enquire about property that you might be interested in purchasing. We created this website to help showcase some of the property that they are finding.
Heidi is a passionate plantswoman and designer. She wanted a website where her customers could find and contact her and she wanted to showcase her portfolio and post the occasional Blog entry about her gardening.
Website: Soulshaker Productions
www.soulshakerproductions.com
SoulShakerProductions provides sound design services for the film and television industries. Bitvolution created this site given an initial Photoshop mockup.
Website: USApplicants
www.usapplicants.com
USApplicants is a London-based consultancy offering bespoke guidance for students applying to American universities. Bitvolution created this site specifically to match an existing site that the client owned.
Website: Start a Faith
www.startafaith.com
The brief was to allow users to “explain the premises of their own religion, and to offer it up to the web in concise form. The word ‘faith’ is used widely here: environmentalists might preach about the spirituality of the green mission, football fans might deify Wayne Rooney etc.“
A simple WordPress plugin that can plot values stored in a custom field against the published-on date of all WordPress blog posts that use the field.
We have submitted the WordPress theme that we made for this website to the WordPress theme directory. It is currently being reviewed, so hopefully it will be available to download soon…
Theme features:
This theme is a no-frills fixed-width, two-column WordPress theme. It is based on a central-page with drop-shadow.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License (v3).
Includes Jquery in HEAD – so posts can use jQuery in their content.
WordPress features enabled. e.g. Widget enabled and Custom-background enabled (allows changing background image – uses in-built add_custom_background() function.
Theme options page – allows you to upload your own logo.
For Christmas I got mum a Apple Time Capsule primarily because I wanted to ensure her computer was backed up without her having to do anything pro-actively. However, I was also hoping that I could use it to extend her wireless network range (especially considering it’s damn expensive if it’s just a NAS).
Currently her wifi is provided by a old Linksys WRT54G (hardware version 2.0). I plugged in the Time Capsule and used Airport Utilities to set it up. I couldn’t get “extend wireless network” to work. I tried all different settings, I tried with a password and without any wifi secrity, I tried updating the firmware of the Linksys WRT54G (from v2.02.7 to 4.20.8). Whatever I tried it just showed up with a horrible little red error bubble that shows “extend wireless network” failure. It could join the network fine, and it could access the internet, but it just wouldn’t extend the network. Eventually, I gave up, guessing that the Time Capsule is just plainly incompatible with the WRT54G. I Googled it and apparently you can only extend a wireless network if the network is already based on Apple products (I should have guessed!).
So I wondered if you can do it the other way round. Make the Time Capsule the primary wifi base station and use the WRT54G as the repeater. This kind of made more sense anyway because the Time Capsule is N but the WRT54G is only G, so it would probably be better if the master router is the faster, longer range option.
It worked. The WRT54G doesn’t need anything except a power outlet to do the repeating. This basically saves £79 (the cost of a “Airport Express”, the Apple wifi extender).
Park land and inner city greenery is sacred. That’s why I can’t believe it needs defending. But it does because the Council want to build on the Park behind Great Knollys Street (Victoria Park).
If you live in or near Reading, please object online before 4/Jul/12. The Planning Application Reference number is: 12/00905/REG3 and the link is http://planninghome.reading.gov.uk .
The Planning Application Plan
Most of the green in this photo would be lost to a new building
A panoramic photo of the whole park, The left part would be lost. (this photo makes the park look much much bigger than it really is)
This is a view from Google maps (that also shows where we live).
I’m pretty upset by this. If I’m honest the main reason is that it’ll really kill our house price but it’s more than that, I really feel greenery needs to be kept green. On a nice day the park is packed all day. It’d be a real shame to lose it.
My Uncle mentioned that the audio on this aging PC wasn’t working ever since he got it “repaired”. It was running Windows XP and we were initially unable to find the right audio drivers online so I thought I’d give Ubuntu a go on it. Sure enough, the audio worked fine in Ubuntu. However, with the machine running Ubuntu, it was incredibly slow and unstable. It crashed every 5 mins with either a white screen of death or a screen that looked like a jail with vertical bars going across it. My uncle said:
Yeah, this ooobuntooo thing is ok but it keeps freezing like a zoo and I have to switch the computer off and on again
I tried Linux Mint 12 instead of Ubuntu and got the same instablility. I was left with no choice other than to leave with Windows set as the default grub option. Oh Ubuntu, you have failed me – You are slower and less stable than Windows XP, on at least 1 machine. In fact Windows was a better experience in terms of speed and stability by a significant distance! Sad days. Ubuntu, please step-up. I love you, but only because you are better than the competition.
Another problem that left a sour taste in my month was that my Uncles old monitor didn’t like grub and switched off after the initial bios splash screen, kept switched off during grub and then switched back on when the OS actually started booting. Luckily I guessed than Ubuntu is usually at the top of the menu and Windows at the bottom so was able to choose the right OS even though nothing was on the screen. but having grub invisible is not a good user experience! And it make it tricky to change the default to Windows (I had to guess the GRUB_DEFAULT value in /etc/default/grub).
Kix and I are on a health drive (because of my weight issues and because of Chloes herniated disk) so Chloe cooked prepared a recipe from a friend of ours who only eats raw food!
This is raw Satay style butternut noodles and raw brownies:
It was delightful. The “noodles” were tasty and surprisingly filling. You would think it tasted like eating a salad, but the recipe cleverly makes it taste more like a real meal. And the brownies are very rich, probably richer than the real thing. They taste like nakd bars.
I don’t think it’s easy to make – I was on a two and a half hour phone call and she was still working away at it when I had finished! It uses a weird machine that looks like torture equipment (a spiralizer).
This keyboard with integrated mouse only came out this week in the UK and I’ve no idea why it took so long because I would have thought anyone with a media center TV were crying out for this form factor.
I highly recommend it as a remote control for a MythTV box. It’s a good small size (it’s smaller than it looks in the picture), the integrated trackpad is responsive and large and has both mouse buttons. There’s zero config needed for Linux (at least in Arch Linux). The range is good. There’s no useless extra media buttons that no-one uses. In short, it’s perfect.
I have a Dell XPS L702x Laptop and the wireless is dodgy in Ubuntu 11.04. By Dodgy I mean it drops out and doesn’t automatically connect very often especially when a Ethernet cable is unplugged. It seems the problem is that Ubuntu doesn’t get on well with wireless-N (perhaps the driver is buggy?). I fixed it by disabling wireless N (but leaving G working):
To disable Wireless N, create a file called /etc/modprobe.d/iwlagn.conf and put the disable incarnation in it: > sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/iwlagn.conf
add:
options iwlagn 11n_disable50=1 11n_disable=1
Restart the computer to finish.
I agree this isn’t a ideal solution (to say the least!), but it’ll do for now.
Update after 2 months: Wireless has been reliable and steady since making the above change.
Update (15/Oct/11): This “hack” is a disaster for Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, it causes Wireless to fail to load. Be sure to remove the /etc/modprobe.d/iwlagn.conf file when upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10. I found this issue the hard way: askubuntu question.
Did you know that WordPress sends you emails when you get a new blog comment? I didn’t – because it has never worked for me. But once I knew it was supposed to email me I looked into it and found a fix.
Setup: My setup is running WordPress.org on a Ubuntu 9.04 box called Butterfree with sendmail installed.
The problem was that the Return-Path header in my outgoing mails wasn’t valid which caused some mail recipients to reject the mail, while other less picky ones, accepted the mail fine (e.g. gmail). The Return-Path header that sendmail was using looked something like this:
I found this by changing the admin email from the one that didn’t work to a gmail one, then posting a test comment on one of my posts. Then I waited for the email to arrive in gmail and selected “show original” from the gmail interface. A quicker way is to check the entries in /var/log/mail.log.
In order to fix the issue, I configured the return path in emails sent from WordPress (i.e. PHP) to something different using the -f parameter for sendmail:
sudo emacs /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
Find the sendmail_path and uncomment it and add the -f flag:
; -f will set the "return-path" headers.
sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -t -f sendmail@bitvolution.com
Doing this solved this issue so I now get email about new comments.
My fix feels a bit of a hack. I would be interested in how to solve this problem the right way, so let me know if you can give me some advice. For example, perhaps I should have done something with my DNS settings for my domain?
Because I’m lucky enough to work from home 90% of the time, I spent almost all my life here:
When it’s not work, it’s catching up with the news, checking my calendar, writing my journal, playing games, shopping, writing my todo lists, looking at photos, watching youtube, etc, etc.
The good news is that being tied to a computer is now changing – I’m finding the more casual surfing tasks which are usually leisure based rather than productivity based are now more pleasant to do on the iPad on the sofa or in bed.
Do you live to work or work to live? Luckily the question is moot for me because my work is programming and programming (or more accurately, problem solving) is my calling. From “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt (which I haven’t read):
Most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling.
If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work.
If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige.
If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to quitting time nor feel the desire to shout, Thank God its Friday! You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy.
If I suddenly became very wealthy, I would definitely continue to program.
I bought a new CPU cooler (“Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP Low Profile CPU Cooler“) for our media center PC but unfortunately it didn’t fit on the motherboard (ASUS P5N7A-VM) even though it is the correct CPU socket type (“Intel socket 775“).
It wouldn’t sit on the CPU properly because some capacitors on the motherboard got in the way of the cooling fins. It was also very hard to to install the motherboard anchors that the fan screws into. Be sure to avoid this fan on this motherboard.
High quality, fun game.
There was a short space scene which I think they pulled off quite well, if just to show-case the incredible space-scene graphics.
I don’t like the continuing trend of sad endings 🙁 .
We tried growing a few pieces of veg this year. We tried carrots, potatoes, beans, salad, mushrooms and strawberries. We failed to get anything decent except perhaps the potatoes (we got about 10kgs).
I was most excited about the carrots but we ended up with vegetarian veal:
If you use RSS and you have grouped your Facebook friends into lists, you can subscribe to all activity in a given Friend List using the following URL:
your_facebook_id – To find this, go to your facebook notifications page and copy the link called “Via RSS“. The URL will be something like http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=668921524&viewer=668921524&key=1c9c72f322&format=rss20 and “668921524” is the id you need.
your_friends_list_key – To find this, go to your facebook Friends List page and click on the list. The URL will be something like http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/?sk=fl_447510731524 and “447510731524” is the key you need.
This is useful if you want to make sure you don’t miss any activity of a particular group of friends – I don’t go to Facebook every day but I do go to a RSS reader every day. It is also useful if you want to filter out and ignore a particular group.
I don’t know how people manage Facebook without using this feature!
If you have a interest in art, you may enjoy this genius music video called “70 Million” by Hold Your Horses. See how many renditions you can recognise:
I closed down my contracting website (bitvolution.com) because that is not my gig anymore (and hasn’t been for a long time). I thought I’d archive the homepage and portfolio here, you know, for reasons.
We have submitted the WordPress theme that we made for this website to the WordPress theme directory. It is currently being reviewed, so hopefully it will be available to download soon…
For Christmas I got mum a Apple Time Capsule primarily because I wanted to ensure her computer was backed up without her having to do anything pro-actively. However, I was also hoping that I could use it to extend her wireless network range (especially considering it’s damn expensive if it’s just a NAS).
My Uncle mentioned that the audio on this aging PC wasn’t working ever since he got it “repaired”. It was running Windows XP and we were initially unable to find the right audio drivers online so I thought I’d give Ubuntu a go on it. Sure enough, the audio worked fine in Ubuntu. However, with the machine running Ubuntu, it was incredibly slow and unstable. It crashed every 5 mins with either a white screen of death or a screen that looked like a jail with vertical bars going across it. My uncle said:
I have a Dell XPS L702x Laptop and the wireless is dodgy in Ubuntu 11.04. By Dodgy I mean it drops out and doesn’t automatically connect very often especially when a Ethernet cable is unplugged. It seems the problem is that Ubuntu doesn’t get on well with wireless-N (perhaps the driver is buggy?). I fixed it by disabling wireless N (but leaving G working):
