Tom Fotherby
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 […]
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 […]
Using Javascript to make a table rotate
It only takes a few lines of Javascript to make a HTML table start rotating it’s rows. Example: Demo 1 field 1a field 1b field 2a field 2b field 3a field 3b field 4a field 4b field 5a field 5b field 6a field 6b field 7a field 7b field 8a field 8b Demo 2 – […]
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert A. Heinlein)
Sci-Fi, 8/10 – April 2009 [asa tomButton]0450002314[/asa] The story follows the revolution of a Lunar penal colony against earth for political freedom. The people of the moon don’t have any conventional weapons but it is “uphill” of earth (in terms of gravity) which means it can throw rocks down apon earth with a near-nuclear impact. […]
PeoplePerHour.com homepage redesign
My latest project at PeoplePerHour was to implement a redesign of the website homepage. The new page is a lot less busy and less work for the webserver: Previous Design New Design I’m loving jquery at the moment.
April Fools
The best April Fools jokes are the subtle ones right? We have pretended to add a dating service to our website. Check it out at peopleperhour.com. We’ve added cheesy dating profiles and fake FAQs such as the following: Will the dating site affect my rating on PPH? No you will have a separate score on […]
The beginnings of a Home Theatre PC
Kix gave me a myth for my birthday (a Myth Box without the box). More specifically she gave me a motherboard, a ASUS P5N7A-VM which is special because it has a HDMI port for nice connectivity to a TV. Full Motherboard details: ASUS P5N7A-VM micro ATX GF 9300 / nForce 730i LGA775 […]
Feverous Tea
Check out Feverous Tea:
Halo Wars Demo
XBox360,RTS,4/10 – February 2009 It has been proved, RTS on a console just isn’t possible. You can put as much effort and talent into making it as possible but a mouse is a fundamental requirement of a RTS. Playing this demo made me doubt whether releasing a demo is always financially advantageous for the game […]
The Pillars of The Earth (Ken Follett)
Fiction, 6/10 – February 2009 1000 pages set in 12th century Britain based largely around the building of cathedrals – sound interesting? No, but it comes highly recommended (33rd in the BBC’s 2003 big read) and in an effort to broaden my horizons I gave it a go. It is based on real historical events […]
Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (UK)
[asa tomButton]B000B9RYG8[/asa] I looked around for quite a while to try to buy something non-Microsoft branded because I didn’t want to “feed the hand that bites us” but at the end of the day one has to be a bit pragmatic? I highly recommend this keyboard – Everyone should upgrade from a standard keyboard because […]
Rich Chocolate mousse cake
Source: Weightwatchers “Cook!” (p180), Takes: 20 mins to prepare and 45 mins to cook, Rating: 9/10 Looks like a cake but doesn’t have the texture of a cake – it’s really smooth and melt-in-the-mouth. Usually recipes don’t look like the picture right? Well, this is an exception: Mousse cake Not mouse cake
