Archive for 'Personal'

… but I ended up neglecting my blog again.

A new project is on the horizon. After a lot of experimentation with drupal, I finally found what works for my forthcoming site. Drupal has a wide range of modules available, some with similar functionality, but sometimes just the “one” which fits perfectly. I highly recommend it as a content management system (really it is a framework for content management systems). It’s straightforward to install, configure and has awesome modules such as Content Construction Kit which allows the construction of custom content types. It really helps to make drupal even more capable, especially when porting a website (especially a custom-scripted one) to it.

I also finally found a graphic designer - no only one who’s good but is also reliable. She also has the ability to understand the requirements, a website idea and produce exactly what’s needed. This does not always happen when hiring a third party to produce work. I’ve got her producing a few images for the website. I also have one script left to finish writing and then of course the obligatory testing, so I aim to launch on 29 February.

My mate Chris is on holiday in Costa Rica. He has been posting updates on his blog. Seems like he’s having a whale of a time! There have been highs and lows… it’s all documented there and you’ll be wanting to know what’s happening next.

Whether reading about his dislike of currency exchange or exactly how he’s "roughing it", you’ll be eagerly awaiting to know what’s next and find the upfront style of writing entertaining. Or you’ll even find yourself wishing your were on holiday there too - who wouldn’t want a holiday in a tropical paradise?

You know you want to, yes you’ve gotta do it… you’ve gotta Visit Chris’ site and read all about it for yourself!

Last weekend, I visited Northumberland’s coast with some friends and my girlfriend. One of the places we stopped by at was Warkworth Castle which not only is very beautiful but the surrounding area is breath-taking. The beautiful trees and river compliment the castle well.


The castle in fact started out as a wooden fortress in the 12th century and it was well in to the 13th century that the wooden fortress was transformed in to a stone castle. It is alongside the River Coquet, on the high ground which provided a great defensive position.

Read more…

On Tuesday (28/08/2007) I arrived back from my wonderful two holiday in Poland. Great food, weather, alcohol and prices. Wonderful coast line, albeit without rocks, and mountains, countryside. I highly recommend visiting Poland to anyone who enjoys something more than lazing by a pool. In a few days I’ll post some photographs of the wonderful places I visited while there, including some breath-taking views of, and from, mountains in Zakopane.

Unfortunately, though on returning from holiday my PC’s power supply unit exploded inside …twice (I tried another cable, as I at first couldn’t quite believe what I heard). A shame because it was quite a good PSU (Antec, somewhat expensive) albeit not good enough. I just hope that the PSU failure did not cause a problem with any other components such as the process and motherboard.

At least my laptop is working… (touch wood).

… And they went and released 2.2 just as I’d finished modifying core and plugin code and creating a custom theme…

I’ll give it a few weeks and then perhaps try out 2.2 … 2.1.3 seems OK, except for a few bugs although I’ve been able to work around all the ones I have found so far.

Why did I switch from Blosxom? Well, as nice as Blosxom is I was finding some limitations, especially as I used it in static mode. I managed to get around some limitations by using PHP within the pages, however I needed more flexibility so I tried out Wordpress. There’s no looking back, unless a better and much more active development community for Blosxom was to appear, but I can’t see that happening (sadly).