I have recently not been posting much to my blog and I must apologise to my readers for this.
However, since I have new stuff to review, I will be focusing on reviews this week, particularly the MacBook Pro Retina which I just received today.
My blogging system is still underwork and I hope to have a good system in place by the end of September.
I have been working on a variety of different tutorials, particularly the VB.NET tutorial and the HTML tutorial so please take a look if you are interested in either of these.
Until the next post, goodbye.
Welcome to my even newer blog!
This is my third blog on my site, and this time powered by some clever magic provided by a system called JBlogs. Notice the "JB".
The point is, this is my CMS (content management system) that although is missing a back end, has a really nice front end at the moment. I wanted to 'integrate' my blog better with my website, so I built a PHP blog myself that will retrieve all of the posts etc. and place them on the page. The styling for the page is down to my actual website. This means that anyone can just use JBlogs on their site so that their blog fits into their site. Now why didn't WordPress do that?
I was slightly sick of the separate design WordPress offered on my blog so I decided to make it more part of my website.
JBlogs is still under work, but I feel it is now ready to be used.
The US is supposedly giving up control of the DNS root zone. Read it here from Ars Technica:
As you will likely know, I've changed hosts for the first time since the debut of this site in April 2010. My new host is a bit more expensive than the standard package I got with my last host, but I get a premium of extra features with the new hosting package.
The new site host has so many things that the previous did not have that it would take forever to post about them all. The key features however have been outlined below:
- PHP (yes, my previous host had this too)
- MySQL (same story here) but I can have as many databases as I wanted
- Ruby On Rails (something I want to learn) and Ruby Gems
- Perl (again something I want to learn)
- JSP (I'm not really that interested in anything related to that coffee bean)
- SFTP (basically a much more secure FTP using SSH)
- Control over Apache server handlers (excellent feature!)
- SSL support
- Multiple database accounts (higher security)
- Direct FTP from PC or Mac without the need for an FTP client (my previous host offered this, but it was one way only, you could download a copy of files and have to upload them, this way it works like a drive on my computer, so I can update straight to the server and the operating system does the rest.)
- HotLink Protection! (haha, you can't just HotLink my CSS anymore! And it works beautifully, just try to navigate to my CSS files such as my template).
- A built in image manager to scale down images etc.
- Quick Joomla, WordPress, phpBB creation (I may bring back phpBB in the future, by the way)
- Better control over the subdomains on the site
- Plus unlimited bandwidth
- And unlimited storage vs 30GB at the same price with my previous host
- 6 domains rather than one.
Ok, so I've been tweaking my website more and more again recently.
This week's updates brings monetisation to my website in the form of adverts. Google approved my request for adverts on my site, so it now brings in money for me (according to Google's predictions ~£123 a month[!], which covers my site costs and more).
I'm also marketing my site better, and will in the next few months be using tools to improve the outlook of my site.
I've also brought back my calendar. My previous calendar was created by One.com, and while it was useful, it was a nuisance trying to update it because I had to go onto my email account to update it. So I decided to build my own. It comes with it's own update system as part of my own content management system (CMS) called BlackCat.
Just a little bit more about the adverts. Currently they reside only on my desktop site. I intend to keep it that way. I aim to keep the tablet and mobile websites free from ads because of the space limitations of both devices.
I will in the future be improving BlackCat and adding a blogging mechanism to it. The only reason I have not done this yet is because of the fact that I still love WordPress. For now BlackCat remains a part of my website, but in the next few months to years I will release it for free on to the web where it will feature four major features:
- Calendar
- Themes
- Blog
- Page creation
In the next few days Microsoft will rebrand SkyDrive under the name OneDrive due to a claim by BSkyB that this is a breach of their trademark. The new is catchy and it's quite nice, but it will take time for people to adjust just as it took people a while to adjust from Windows Live Folders, and then I think SkyDrive folders(?) or something. There have just been too many to remember.
It's a bit like MSN Hotmail, sorry Windows Live, sorry Outlook. The constant change makes it difficult to talk to others about. I still occasionally refer to my email provider as simply 'Hotmail' or sometimes 'Windows Live' and very occasionally just 'MSN', but really, it is now Outlook. Outlook is a good name for it and it feels so much better than what it was like back in 2003 when I first used it on my 24K or 56K dial-up modem (everything had to be that way, otherwise it would take hours to load[!]).
Microsoft have a terrible problem with rebranding. Windows 8 has this problem with things like Xbox Music which was previously Zune music from what I remember. In some sense, I don't really know what an Xbox is. What actually does the word Xbox mean now? Is it a brand of different things? Is it a program or is it the hardware? I call on Microsoft to describe it.
Microsoft's bad marketing plans are probably one of the reasons I steer quite clear of their recent products, and if they keep going this way, constantly rebranding things, I will not be able to come back.
It's been speculated for sometime that a new Mac Mini is next on the line up for Apple. Well, once again, the Belgian store computerstore.com has placed on their site a new Mac Mini, featuring Iris graphics.
The picture below shows that the CPU and RAM have yet to be placed here but the Iris graphics definitely sounds like a new feature. From this, we can assume it to be Haswell powered and not a future generation of Intel CPU that is going to take us by surprise in April.
The lack of a new Mac Mini is frustrating
Now my blog is up and running on my new host and new database.
Here is where the initial problems occurred:
Firstly, I wanted to remove the prefix of my blog tables as they were going to be placed in their own database rather than just having prefixes. The way I did it was to move each table into the new database and rename each of them without the prefix. Then I downloaded that whole database (using phpMyAdmin, not WordPress). Next I changed wp-config.php such that it had no prefix and pointed to my new database. I dropped (deleted) the database and created a fresh new one with the same name. I then took the whole database SQL commands to Notepad (thank you Notepad!!!) and removed all instances of the old prefix. To finish off, I then used the Import feature to import all of the SQL commands into my new database. And that's all there is to it!
All my tables are now divided up into databases for each, therefore there is less of a security risk (I have a set of users, each user manages a certain database and has no access to others).
The other thing about this multiple database idea is the neatness and organisation. I'm really happy to have changed hosts and later I will post about what's really nice with this new hosting package.
I really do adore writing and as some of you may know, I used to even love English the most at Secondary School before I decided to ditch it for Computing.
But some things still hack me off even more than people who don't know why their Windows Taskbar is at the right hand side instead of the bottom. I've now decided to start making blog entries on things that people consistently get wrong when writing.
Today's post is on the difference between the two words lightening and lightning. They are very distinct words that are one character different. I noticed this twice in the past two days and it's just something I cannot get out of my head. One place I now notice this problem all the time is when people are referring to Apple's Lightning connector. So here's the difference:
Lightning
That is lightning without the extra e is the form of electrical discharge that we see when warm and cold air mix (or something like that). Notice the single e.
Lightening
This is when you turn a lap on and the room begins to lighten up. Another example could be take 10 potatoes out of a bag, this is lightening the bag.
There. There may be more of these posts in the future because I get annoyed.
If you are not familiar with Mac OS X Terminal commands, then you may be unaware of the flexibility it gives you.
For a start, one of my favourite things to do is to change the way the Dock works. I'm going to show you two different yet really cool things you can do with the Mac Dock.
Add a separator to the Dock
This is a real nifty trick that helps separate icons on the Dock so that there is a better structure. I'm still surprised that Apple does not include an easy way to use this feature in the Apple Menu.
So here are the Terminal commands:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'
killall Dock
Lock the Dock
To me locking the Dock on Mac OS is a necessary feature. This again is completed via the Terminal. This can be achieved using the following commands:
defaults write com.apple.Dock contents-immutable -bool yes killall Dock
