Finally understood the distinctions between webservices and rest. Now I don’t mean the theory aspects Roy Fieldings paper adequately explains the concepts and frankly helps a great deal to try to introduce technology which is along the lines of ‘less is more’.
Blog posting from Google Docs
HTML meta data – MSThemeCompatible
Be aware this <META HTTP-EQUIV="MSThemeCompatible" CONTENT="no"> which is there to disable the Windows XP teletubby theme causes Safari and Firefox to completely remove scrollbars.
The issue is tracked in a Firefox bug report.
Localising a rails app – in 20 mins
I had an existing rails app which has nearly completed and during its development its been upgraded from 1.2 all the way up to 2.2.2. Anyway I sat down with the latest updates and figured that acts_as_paranoid and will_paginate needed to be altered but beyond that it seems it just worked.
Suffice to say I’d managed to configure the locales and make heavy use of google translate to begin adding an alternative language.
It is impressive how easily this has come together.
3 days to complete the showcase
Hi
So xmas break is coming and I’ve a long list of things I’d like to investigate concerning rails.
Having written a few apps now and kept up with rails.latest I’m ready for a serious test of my skills: a squash ladder in 3 days!
Should be fine its basicly a leader board with the added option of challenging users to games on a date and tracking the score to position each in the ladder.
I’ll keep u posted of progress!
Westminster Annual Motorcycle Parking
If like me you comute into work on a motorcycle and would like to purchase an annual motorcycle parking ticket then this guide may help:
Navigate to: http://www.westminster.gov.uk/cashlessparking/
Click on Manage My Account
Click on My Account and login using your mobile phone number and pin.
Along the orange toolbar click on ‘buy permit’, you can now select to buy an annual parking ticket
Evaluation of wordpress as an induction site?
Great idea presented to me today – the idea that a company induction site could all quite easily be sat within an instance of wordpress. WordPress being the blogging tool used by thousands on a daily basis to provide a strong and capable back bone to maintain and publish content. Plus throw in the facility that it provides plugins and static pages and we have a small induction site which can be maintained without an IT person – perfect.
So where’s the downside – well it aint custom so it will look like your actually in a blog, this could if not maintained mean that content doesn’t get ‘posted’ for sometime. Could this mean that the content looks old, and the site looks poor. Possibly but on the flipside the ease of adding content might suggest that any editor responsible for the induction site could add stuff. Of course if there is no sub-editor either process or person then we could end up with a shambles but I’m prepared to guess that this wont be the case.
From a costing point of view its extremely encouraging – wordpress is free and we have the skills to hack the code into various shapes. Add to that that all the really juicy content is stored elsewhere – videos, articles etc and it we have a compelling opportunity to bring something into being without excessive cost of bespoke development.
I’ll update again shortly with pitfalls and successes.
IPhone blogging
At last something useful for the IPhone – the ability to publish to the blog while at the coffee shop. Fab
What is your throw away value?
Concept:
Since childhood and the days I started receiving a reasonable amount of money each week (e.g. I’d got a job in the local cinema) I’ve had this concept of a throw-away-threshold. This is the amount of money that in a particular period, usually a day I’m prepared to twitter away to a hunch or meaningless indulgence.
At the age of 15 it was set at the amount of £1. Over the years I’ve watched it change and whilst watching a DIY home renovation program yesterday evening where it was clear their threshold had reached £200 I realised that at the grand age of 28 my threshold had reached £10.
I sighed and realised this had made my day, it feels grounding to still have a relatively low value before reasoning must take over from passion to take out my wallet.
UK Obesity likened to climate change
According to a report on the BBC Alan Johnson (UK Health Secretary) has likened the current obesity epidemic to climate change. Now I thought this was a great moment to remind myself of some of the great advice I’ve found to keep weight down and yet enjoy my food.
- Don’t go shopping when you are hungry. This can sound odd but the secret is to plan ahead and make sure you do your shopping before you run out or start to feel the need for some food.
- Portion control: I know plenty of friends who’ve moved in with their partners and have noticed that they have begun down the route of ‘man sized’ portions. The purpose of a meal is not to gorge.
- If you don’t have snacks your cupboards then you can’t eat them.
- Many times I find I feel hungry when in fact I’ve not had enough water and am feeling dehydrated. Try taking a large glass of water before any meal.
- Exercise, exercise, exercise. Put the remote down and go for a walk, hoover, run, swim, cycle there are so many activities you really can do anything to move about.
- Bench mark, find someone (that you know) who you’d like to be similar to and bench mark yourself against them. Now this is important to identify places where you can restrict yourself but the important need here is to take the findings constructively and make actions from them.
- Ditch the car, you really shouldn’t be using the car for short trips and walking is stress busting too
I hope this is useful its easy for such advice to be scorned at. In fact I’m sure you already new most of the items here. The issue is starting doing them today – now!