Latest Blog Entries
These are my latest blog entries. They are made up of either views expressed by myself, tutorials, or just thoughts that I have that I need to write down somewhere! If you want to view older posts, please use the Blog Archive section in the sidebar. Which is situated to your right!
Thursday, 2nd February 2012
This week while doing my running on the treadmill (I will be writing about my week’s training and results this weekend) I have been trying out a technique where you use a bin bag to aid loosing weight.
The use of a bin bag is a common sight in boxing clubs up and down the country. Boxers who are trying to make the weight use them to, well, make the weight. The common thought is that it helps loose weight by making you sweat more.
I’ve been reading about this, and there seems to be two schools of thought. One side says that the use of a bin bag (even a sweat suit) does indeed help you loose weight by dehydrating you. As soon as water is taken the weight is put back on because you’re replacing the water lost during sweat. For this reason boxers use the technique to loose weight before a fight. Otherwise, it’s best left alone.
The other side say that the use of a bin bag does burn fat and the sweat is a by-product. The idea is that the bin bag raises the body’s core temperature, and a process called thermoregulation. This means that the body burns fat to help control the temperature of the body.
The information on the internet is quite confusing. It is bad to dehydrate yourself, but at the same time if the body does burn fat using thermoregulation then this must surely be a good thing?
On Monday and Tuesday I ran on a treadmill using a bin liner, and I had Wednesday off. Tonight though I decided not to run with a bin bag on. As I’m just at the start of my training it would be difficult to tell if my fitness has improved in a short time or whatever, but I did noticed a difference in the way I felt while running. I ran longer tonight than I did on Monday or Tuesday, and I felt better. I didn’t feel tired or knackered. However, my t-shirt wasn’t as soaked either.
My view of the use of bin bags, after this experience is that an athlete can’t perform at their best in high temperatures. I’m no athlete, and I have only ran once with a bin bag, but there is definitely an idea in my head that while bin bags may be good for loosing water/fat it definitely isn’t good for your performance. If you can’t work as hard, are you really getting fitter or loosing that weight?
I’d be interested to know people’s thoughts. I know there are people out there who have more experience training with and without a bin bag. Leave a comment with your views.
Sunday, 29th January 2012
To some people, a little known fact about me is that I used to be a boxer. To other people who knew this, they also know that I never achieved what I should have achieved for various reasons. The most common reason was that I was never injury free long enough to make much of an impact. But the full story is something that can be saved for another day.
In the 6 years I had stopped doing meaningful training I had gained a few extra pounds and become a lazy bugger. The idea about going back to the gym had being rolling around for months, but on the 3rd January I decided to go for it. I made several small (and late) resolutions, which were:
- Go without a haircut for 12 months
- Get back to 15st (the weight I was when I broke my arm)
- Run a half marathon for Macmillan Cancer Support
Putting the haircut idea to one side, getting back to 15st is a challenge in itself. At the time I was 19st and hadn’t seen a bead of sweat in at least 6 months. But, the bigger challenge was to run a half marathon 3 days before my 25th birthday. A half marathon doesn’t seem too bad when you compare it to a full marathon, but I’ve only ever ran 6 miles in one go and even then I struggled. To run 13 miles should be near impossible.
It is possible though. A good friend of mine, Sean Smith ran a half marathon a year or two ago and he completed it. And I thought, if he can do it I can too. And it also doesn’t help that my girlfriend, who is a much better runner than me and is also running the same half marathon I’ll be doing, makes fun of the fact that I will probably struggle running it because I’m not fit enough. You can’t blame her for thinking that, in the 3 1/2 years we’ve been together I haven’t really been to a gym.
The one thing that is making me determined to run this marathon, and to complete it, is my dad. About 5/6 months ago he was diagnosed with lung cancer. In the time since he’s undergone chemotherapy, and so far he’s responded to the treatment. During this time though he’s been supported by both Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Macmillan Cancer Support, both in treatment and in support for his day to day living.
The way I see it, is that both the hospital and Macmillan have helped to try and cure my dad. It’s one of these situations where you can lay down in your bed before going to sleep and suddenly the thought “What if they hadn’t caught the cancer in time, what would be the difference now” pops in to your head, and in your mind you thank anyone who has helped your dad or loved one through what they’ve been going through.
To me, simply writing a letter or giving a box of chocolates to the cancer ward where my dad has his treatment or to the nurses who help him doesn’t go far enough. So that’s why, when I run this Marathon on the 21st October 2012, I will be running to raise money for both Macmillan and the cancer ward at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. That way, I hope, it shows how grateful I am to both groups that I still have my dad, and that I’ve went the exta mile (well 13 miles) to show this.
This blog, which has been left to rot really over the last 12 months will be a diary of my progress, and my thoughts etc about the training and how I’m coping with it. This isn’t some fitness freak who weights 10st and runs to work every morning talking, this is a guy who hasn’t excerised properly in 6 years and weights 5st more than he should.
I hope you can join me in the journey, and tell your friends about it!
Take care,
Michael Burke,
29th January 2012
Thursday, 11th August 2011
In preparation for a new game I am developing, I saw a guy on the train play Football Manager on his iPhone. This made me wonder, why is Football Manager the most successful management game in the world?
I’m an avid fan of Football Manager, spending hours playing it while I should have been studying my GCSE’s (I still walked away with good results such as A’s and B’s, my lowest being an E in French). I have also played other management games such as Grand Prix Manager and Grand Prix World, but these just don’t work the same and don’t have as much longetivity.
So, as I am developing a management game (more on this when I have information to give) I decided to get your general opinion on what makes Football Manager so good and so addictive?
Please leave your answers as a comment on this page, or e-mail them to me at michael@michael-burke.co.uk. Alternatively, contact me on Twitter with @mickburkejnr.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about this fine game, and in turn I look forward to your answers to help me understand what makes this great game tick.
Thursday, 21st April 2011
When I left my first job as a web designer/developer, it was during the height of the economic recession. I couldn’t get a job in the field, and I didn’t have the guts to go freelance at that stage. So I decided to take a visit to my old college lecturer to get his advice. He told me that I would be able to teach at the college on the strength of my HND qualification. The thought appealed to me, and I started teaching a group of 16 year old’s BTEC IT @ Work (Level 1). But by June, I decided I had had enough, and I left teaching to go back in to web design and development.
Why did I leave the teaching profession, which is essentially a recession-proof job? The answer has several parts, but the main issue was the content I was told ordered to deliver.
In one of my classes, one of the modules was a Web Design subject. Imagine my delight when I could finally get to deliver a class on a subject I love and know a lot about. However, I was told that I needed to follow the same materials as the other teachers who would be teaching other classes this subject. I let this pass, I thought they might know something I don’t. I was given the booklet which would be passed to the students. And I quote the first line: “Every website uses tables for it’s structure and layout”.
I nearly died. I questioned this, I asked how old this document was and why were we teaching students an outdated technique and a practice frowned upon by every designer and developer worth his salt. I also pointed out that teaching this technique could prevent these students from landing a job at a web design firm in the future. The answer I got was: “They will learn about CSS at Level 3, so we can’t teach them it at this level. They won’t understand it, and none of the teaching staff can afford to learn CSS”.
I set about doing a bit of an experiment. I created a worksheet for this class (who, in all fairness, were more interested in their mobile phones than actually doing work), and a small reference sheet consisting of HTML tags and CSS rules and statements. I gave them two hours to complete the worksheet. After the two hours, I got them round the table, and asked them how they found the task they had that lesson. Most of them enjoyed it, said it was fun and challenging but in the right sort of mix. They also said the language was easy to comprehend and would definitely like to do more of that type of work.
So, in the next teaching staff meeting, I brought this issue up, armed with the worksheets and handouts I gave this class, as well as the comments the class had. It was painfully obvious that it was possible to deliver and teach these kids the proper skills required to build websites etc. Yet again though, I was told the same story. It wouldn’t be considered. I left after I finished the module.
I’m telling you this story as example of how our children and students are taught when they sign up to an ICT course. These courses, whether they are in Secondary Schools or at Further Education levels, are meant to arm these students with the skills they need to land good jobs and be the best they can be. However, how good can these students really be if they are still being taught skills and techniques that were left behind over 10 years ago by the rest of the demographic?
The problems can be pinpointed to two places. These places are the teaching staff and the management of the school/college. The teaching staff usually never have industry experience in the fields they are teaching. While this may not be a bad thing, more often than not they have no idea about what they are teaching. They reference books all the time. So basically, when your child is going to college to learn from a teacher, in reality they are learning from a book.
Further to this, the teaching staff want to do as little prep work as possible. You can’t blame them for this, everyone always wants to streamline their work load. You will often get teachers that use the same materials in 2011 that they were using in 1991. For subjects such as Maths, English, some Sciences’, this isn’t an issue. These subjects hardly change. But IT changes all the time. You can get away with reusing the same materials maybe for two or three years, but 10 years? It turns the subject in to a joke.
As I said, the management of the school or college must be held to account as well. The teachers only do what they are told to do by management. If management are worried that the department won’t meet it’s 95% attainment rating (or whatever it is now), management tell them to basically “cull” students they think won’t succeed the course, and stick them in to a lower quality qualification. This basically means the student works on the modules of the original qualification to a certain point (usually about 5/6 modules out of a total of 12) and then leaves. This does wonders for the departments numbers, and increases or secures their budget for the next school year.
From my experiences in education, the teaching establishment is only ever really interested in the money they will receive from the students who complete the course. The students don’t really have to remember what they’ve learnt, they just need to tick all the boxes set out by the school/college. Usually, everyone should be a winner. The college receive roughly £7,000 per student who passes the course, and the student earns a “qualification”.
In my honest opinion, and this is an opinion that is shared with other people in the IT industry, ICT as a subject should only be delivered by qualified personnel. For example, colleges should only be employing prospective teachers if they have a proven track record in the IT industry, and can prove they are constantly learning new skills. More often than not, the colleges will hire anyone to teach the subject just to get bums on seats. I may have been fresh out of college, but I was reliably informed that I was more qualified to speak about the subject than any of my co-workers at the time.
As well as a change of teaching staff, the attitude to the curriculum and the curriculum itself needs a major overhaul. Teaching specifications for the subject must be relevant and up to date, or at least no older than 2 years. Most of the specifications used by school’s and colleges have not been changed since the turn of the millennium. This is more to do with the Education bodies such as Edexcel, OCR and AQA. However, the materials put together by the teachers must also be up to date.
I honestly feel sorry for students learning ICT at schools and colleges. While technically what they are being taught isn’t incorrect, it is out-of-date. Employers these days aren’t looking for out-of-date skills. They want employees to have the most cutting edge abilities and ideas. For a country (I am speaking about the UK) that has nearly 1 million young people out of work, this is something that needs addressing and needs addressing quickly.
Tuesday, 29th March 2011
For you to design and release an app for the iPhone, iPod or iPad, you have to develop the app on an Apple iMac computer. Apple won’t release their SDK on to the Linux or Windows platform as it’s “too complex to port”.
Apple has a long history of keeping the outside world outside, and have only people they can trust inside the giant walls of Apple. Sure, this has lead to a “secure” platform that “works”. But as it’s built on Unix, and Unix is a secure cross platform operating system, I don’t think their policy can attribute to this. And with all of those “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” adverts trying to distance Apple away from the Microsoft of old, Apple is actually turning in to the Microsoft of old.
In their wisdom, they wish to lock down everything and close everything. There are benefits to this (they say there is anyway), such as making their platforms reliable and having a uniform user interface across their platforms. However, this also freezes out most developers. If someone wants their app to be used by everyone with an iPhone, these developers need to develop their applications on an Apple iMac and publish it on an Apple iMac*. I, for one, do not own or have access to such a computer, so already I am frozen out of developing app’s for use on the Apple App Store.
Let’s bring RIM and their BlackBerry Playbook in to play now. It has been announced that their Playbook will be able to run Android app’s on their product (albeit the Android app must be on their Blackberry App World application). What this means, is that RIM have allowed 100,000+ more apps to be available on their app store (which at the moment is just a smidge over 10,000), and also making their platform is more open.
I do bang on about open source and open platforms quite a bit. But I feel that for something to be open means that it has the ability to be the best it can be. Really, if your still wondering why open source is better, think about it as you would a chicken: eggs taste better from free-range chickens left to cluck about an open environment, instead of the nasty tasting eggs produced by their battery (closed) hen counterparts.
Anyway, as RIM are now starting to open up their Playbook platform (which I’m sure will then be passed on to their BlackBerry devices), and Google advocating an open platform with their Android operating system, the question about how long Apple can survive and thrive using the closed platform philosophy? Apple’s iPhone has been top dog for a number of years now, but with the collective number of Android handsets and RIM’s BlackBerry handsets decreasing Apple’s market share, one has to wonder what Apple will do. They could just think “oh the name will carry it through until we have some snazzy new technology”, but if I was in charge of Apple’s Company Roadmap, I would be seriously considering opening up their SDK and platform so that more applications can use the iOS platform.
A closed environment can have it’s benefits, such as keeping the applications and user interfaces standard. But, this can also be achieved by having an open platform but with proper peer assessment. If applications are built, they should be uploaded on to the relevant app stores and vetted before general release. This would stop poor quality applications being released in to the public domain. This is something that RIM has done very successfully, albeit to the detriment of the number of applications on their app store. According to RIM, their app store is all about “quality over quantity”.
At the moment, Apple’s position as the leading smartphone and tablet maker isn’t under threat. However, with the increase in popularity of the Android platform, BlackBerry and their Playbook device being released shortly, their position is under serious threat now. The Playbook is a huge advancement in tablet computing, much more than what the current iPad 2 is. And add to this the fact the Playbook isn’t fussy where the app’s it runs comes from, this can only make it popular. It also has a real chance of being even more popular than the iPad.
*You can also release a web app for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch which doesn’t require publishing or development using an Apple iMac. However, you can’t make money from it.
Thursday, 24th March 2011
A lot of designers will design a website straight in to Photoshop or Fireworks, play about with how nice it looks, then transfer the design to HTML and CSS. The site’s backend then gets developed using this design, the site is launched, and then they wonder why it hasn’t been successful as they anticipated or why they are getting loads of complaints from users asking “How do I do this?”.
Obviously, there are a number of reasons why the website isn’t successful, but there is one glaringly obvious step that has been missed in the above statement. The lack of wireframes designed for the project.
Why Do I Need To Design A Wireframe?
It’s much easier to work out how to place key areas of a website when you use a wireframe. It acts as a blueprint for the layout of the user interface, and will also make the design phase a lot easier, as the designers aren’t guessing where the menu should go or where the title should be placed.
As well as this, as the wireframe is essentially a page of fine lined boxes and text, it focuses more on the layout of the website. Working out the placement of key areas of a page during the design phase can lead to confusion about the best place to put these areas. This is because it’s easy to get caught up on the aesthetics of the design and not the function of the page.
A Stitch In Time Saves Nine
I’ve worked on projects before where the wireframe step was completely missed. I’m not proud of that, but due to project restraints I was ordered to skip this step. Some of the sites I did this on were awful, and weren’t as successful as they could’ve been. I put this down to poor planning. On more projects though I argued that we needed to do the wireframe procedure. Again, I was told not to bother, but I did it in my spare time and based the designs on these wireframes. These sites were far better and easier to work with.
If all of your hard work is put in the beginning of a project, in the planning and concept stages, you will find that the later stages of the project are far easier. Usually because as the sites are planned and these aren’t changed further along the project time line, problems and bugs don’t appear right at the end. We’ve all been there, a design needs to be changed at the last minute because the text may be too big on some browsers (or something like that). The fix adds days of work, and usually always breaks something else.
Conclusion
To conclude, the wireframe process doesn’t take all that long and doesn’t cost the Earth. If you spend just one hour trying it out before designing, you will find that you could save nearly 2 hours of design time basing the design on the wireframe you created. Forward planning always provides the best results!
Monday, 21st March 2011
Some years ago (2007), a friend of mine introduced me to Ubuntu. Back then, you could go on the Canonical website and order a ridiculous amount of free CD’s. These CD’s were intended to be used as a promotional tool. It came with stickers (which I still have somewhere), and a choice of Live CD’s for x86, x64, and PowerPC computers. This was back at version 6.04. He reckoned that it was the best flavour of Linux out there. When I used it, and I used it quite often, I couldn’t see his point of view. I didn’t like the colour scheme. Brown just doesn’t do it for me. As well as this, I had grown accustomed to .rpm’s. I never really trusted .deb’s! For the most part, the one thing I took away from Ubuntu was its window manager, GNOME. I instantly liked it, and when it came to me going to Linux full time, I selected GNOME for Fedora and have never looked back.
Fast forward three years, and the Linux landscape has changed. Ubuntu remains one of the most popular distro’s out there, but not for everyone. Since 2007, the IT market has been flooded with “netbooks”. Over the last three years, the purpose behind these dinky machines has changed. They are getting more powerful all the time, and are starting to replace laptops in people’s homes. The need for a light and powerful operating system doesn’t really exist in this market anymore. Linux was always the defacto operating system for these machines, until they became popular.I read a while ago that a computer manufacturer (I believe it to be ASUS but it could have been Acer) reported that Linux-based netbooks were returned almost four times as often as Windows-based machines. Why? They weren’t broken. Far from it! People didn’t know how to use them.
What Made People Bring Them Back?
The majority of computer users are IT illiterate. They will know how to switch it on, go on Facebook, type up some home work, and play some games. That’s it. If a virus appeared on the computer, then they will go to places like PC World and pay £40 to have the virus removed. Or even pay £50 for the privilege of having Norton screw up their system. When it comes to more complex things, but things they should know about, they don’t know what’s going on and say the laptop or computer is “broken”.So, imagine Joe Bloggs buy’s his new ASUS EEE netbook, and wants to chat to his mates on MSN. He knows how to install it. He just goes on the Microsoft website, downloads the installer. It should be able to run, and install. No fuss!Wrong! Mr.Bloggs can’t install the software! He doesn’t know why, so he brings it back to PC World, and they tell him the netbook isn’t Windows, its Linux. The advisor then has to tell him that Linux isn’t compatible with Windows, which is no good to Joe. So he get’s a refund, or a replacement netbook that runs Windows. Joe goes home, and life goes back to normal.
The Problem With Linux
The problem with Linux, and why it hasn’t really been accepted in to the main stream yet, is that it isn’t compatible with Windows. You can’t install Fallout 3 or Football Manager on to Linux and expect it to work. But most people do, because they have been conditioned to think all computers run Windows, and that all their software titles and games will run on all computers, because they all run Windows. Apple hasn’t had this problem, not to Linux’s extent anyway, because Apple brands their machines as different to PC’s. Linux brands itself as a “work on anything” product. But you can understand what people think when they use Linux and can’t run their favourite Windows programs on there!I’ve read loads of articles about why Linux hasn’t been accepted. And they all generally go down a long the lines of “the interface is different” and “there’s too much choice to make a decision”. While there is an element of truth in these, and only a small element, there is a bigger reason. Linux needs the ability to run Windows programs.
WINE and Play On Linux -So Close, Yet So Far
WINE has been around for years. WINE, if you didn’t know, allows the emulation of Windows applications on a Linux environment, but without the need for purchasing a Windows license. If you take a look at its website, www.winehq.com, you can find out how many programs will work under it. It is a great bit of kit.The main problem with WINE is that not everything works with it, and it isn’t easy to get along with. Sure, most programs will run on Ubuntu or openSuSE for example. But if you’re using Fedora or another flavour of Linux, it might not work. This has happened to me, and it is a struggle sometimes to get it to work. It’s obvious that when you have someone who has no IT skills, they will not be able to use WINE if they used Linux.That’s where Play On Linux came in. Play On Linux gave a graphical interface to WINE, and for the most part, allowed Windows applications to be used easily. But again, this has its draw backs. The fact you have to select what program you want to install from a pre-compiled list only makes it more complicated, and doesn’t even guarantee that you will be able to install the application successfully.
What Needs To Be Done?
In my opinion, there are only three things that need to be done to get Linux to be accepted in the mainstream. These are:
- Make Linux more compatible with Windows
- Make it easier for users to download and install compatible applications on their Linux systems
- Provide easier to understand information about Linux, and promote it
Make Linux More Compatible With Windows
At the present moment, Linux isn’t built with compatibility for Windows. This needs to change. The ability to have Linux compatible with Windows applications would have huge benefits, not just to the experienced community but also to people who don’t know much about computers. Life is so much easier and simpler if it just worked. Inexperienced users won’t spend massive amounts of time troubleshooting why a program won’t run. They often won’t know how to. What should happen is that a Windows application should be able to be loaded on to Linux, executed, and work. This isn’t happening at the moment.
Make It Easier For Users To Download And Install Compatible Applications On Their Linux Systems
A lot of the time, when people are first introduced to Linux, they will want a program that will allow them to do something. For example, they may want a calculator program but Linux doesn’t come with one. How would they know where to go to get it? (It’s only an example; Linux does come with a calculator). The ability to have something like what iTunes does for the iPhone is badly needed for Linux. A user should be able to search for an application from their desktop, and be shown several results that match their search query. Ubuntu have implemented something similar in their Lucid Lynx release, but only for games. It isn’t a general software portal. I may look in to setting something up like this, but I think you’ll agree it needs to be done!
Provide Easier to Understand Information About Linux, And Promote It
When I started with Linux, I feel if I didn’t know how to use Google I would never have learnt anything about Linux. Linux can be the best of friends a lot of the time, but sometimes it decides to stick two fingers up at you and not do as you tell it. While most Linux distributions have vast amounts of information in the form of Wiki’s, an internal system to the operating system would be much better. Remember, if the user doesn’t know what to look for, how can they find the answer? So on top of this, simplified (if possible) error codes should be implemented.
Conclusion
Linux, at this moment in time, is very unlikely to become big on user PC’s or Laptops. Not even in 20 years. Although, it is making huge in-roads in the mobile device segment of IT, and this is where it enjoys its success, and probably will for many, many years to come. But Linux as a desktop operating system needs far more change and conventionalism in order for it to be successful. Having native Windows application support would mean it could take about 10% market share within 6 months. The benefits are obvious of this suggestion, as well as the other two I mentioned.
Who knows, maybe one day all of these wishes will come true?
Monday, 21st March 2011
So, my interface design phase is complete. I’ve come up with something very nice and sleek, and quite unusual in the way of it being laid out and how the user navigates it. I would upload a taster of it, but right now I feel I haven’t done enough work to the actual website and how it works to justify doing so yet. So, below is my planning strategy for building my website. You could use this a template for any website where there is a need for content to be added and removed from various sources on the web.
Introduction – Design Brief
So, what have I got left to do? Well, lets look at the all the things I want to include on my website:
Portfolio of my work*
- A news section of work I’m doing or have finished
- A lab section of the site to showcase various bits of work I’m working on with a view to getting feedback
- A section that hosts all classroom material or tutorials
- A section for music that I tend to make from time to time*
- Live Twitter and Facebook feeds that will display automatically on my site
- A photo gallery for well, hosting photos
There is a lot going on. If you notice two of the above points have been starred. This is just to show that these features won’t be “switched on” when the site is live. This leads on to one topic, what should I be able to do with my website.
Website Features – What The Website Will Allow Me To Do
This list is different from the previous one. This list talks about what my website will be able to LET me do, in order for it to include everything I want:
- To “Switch on” or “Switch off” sections of the website without loss of data
- To update the website from several sources on the web, such as Facebook, Twitter, and My Opera
- To add content to the site from a mobile device
- To set up automatic back up to a number of locations I choose
- To add images from either my PC or from a mobile device
- To save revisions of blog posts or any other content on to the database
Most of these things will only be implemented towards the very end of the development/testing cycle. To just start off, and get the basic site up and running, I’ll be concentrating on getting these finished for BETA testing:
- To “Switch on” or “Switch off” sections of the website without loss of data
- To update the website from several sources on the web, such as Facebook, Twitter, and My Opera
- To add images from my PC
- To save revisions of blog posts or any other content on to the database
How will I go about getting these things done though? Well I plan on using something called a Content Management System (CMS). CMS is nothing new, not to me anyway. I’ve used everything from ExpressionEngine, Drupal and Magento. Drupal is the best pick of these, but for me I’ve never got on with Drupal. I had one issue of no images being displayed due to “500 Internal Access” error. My hosting company weren’t too helpful, so I decided to stop using Drupal. This left me in a bit of a “what to do” state. I needed the benefits of a CMS system, but I wasn’t prepared to use something that wasnt as good as Drupal. Thats when I decided to make my own CMS.
The easiest way to build a CMS would be to use a framework. There are a few to choose from. Symfony and Joomla are the leading PHP framework releases, while my favourite Django uses Python. As I intend to do the bulk of my coding work on Linux, this would be an ideal choice for me.
There is a slight issue to this. When I was studying for my HND, I decided to make a web based application, entirely from scratch, using raw PHP code. I had several personal reasons why I chose to code the entire application from scratch. The biggest reason was that I wanted to prove to myself and to other people that I could code in PHP, and design robust MySQL databases. I succeeded in doing it, and it works rather well, if a bit simple and not very secure. The thought occured to me that I could very easily re-work the projects code, and create a CMS using it. Most of the hard work had been done when developing it, such as writing to the database, log in sessions, and displaying information from the database. So I’ve decided to use this college project as my starting point for my CMS.
Design Shortfalls With College Project
Pinpointing possible shortcomings right at the beginning when designing anything leads to creating something that is fairly safe and reliable as the end product. When I developed my college project, I knew it had a few failings, some minor, some major. These included:
- Passwords stored in plain text on database
- No protection against SQL injection attacks
- Over-reliance on Javascript on certain pages
These problems must be overcome first and foremost. While I wont admit to being able to design something as secure as Drupal, I know damn well I won’t have my software open to attack by every Tom Dick and Harry on the internet.
Also, the current project only allowed people to add content to a database and then display the content somewhere else. For it to do what I want it to do, I would need to basically make the whole application autonomous. For every new page created manually on my project, I would need the application to do this automatically.
Saturday, 5th March 2011
I just love the word BETA. Or is it Beta? Or beta?
The word beta is a greek thing. It’s the second letter in the ancient greek alphabet. But in computing it means a whole different thing. BETA/Beta/beta is a word given to a piece of software or hardware which is in between experimental and the finished article. After development, and the Alpha stage, this is what most people who test software will get their hands on. These people test, poke, prod it to see if it is ready for release on the general public. Thats what BETA/Beta/beta used to mean anyway!
While going around the internet looking for ideas for my website, I’ve noticed that a lot of these Web 2.0 websites splash BETA around like it’s got the same weight in gold as a D&G or Ferrari logo. It’s more of a fashion thing, and this is why.
Naming Something BETA Just To Cover Your Back
While developing a college project which I intended (and still do) to have online, I called it BETA. In all honesty, it was at a BETA stage of development. The interface wasn’t very nice to look at, it had a few bugs, the Javascript never worked! So I’m allowed to call it Beta. But, I know that theres parts of my site that [I]could[/I] have been made to work quite easily IF I could be bothered to. But I didn’t. So I used the BETA label to basically say “Well don’t expect too much, it’s a working progress. It’ll break quite easily in places”. There are plenty of places out there who use this as an excuse!
Using BETA In Branding
But, there are people out there who label a fully working product as “BETA”. Google, you are one such person! For ages their Google Chrome browser was labeled BETA, as well as their on-line word processor/spreadsheet etc. All of them worked, and worked well! In their case, as I think you would have come to think, is that they have labeled their software with the BETA label to give it some sort of exclusiveness. Imagine a group of geeks at school saying “Well I just tried the Google Chrome BETA. It’s just come out”. So this instills a “oh my god I need to find out how to download it before anyone else”. They’ll all hop on the BETA wagon before Joe Public gets the final version. And this sort of pecking order using the BETA label is, to me, a new way of viral marketing. This can, and something not, be very effective.
So When To Use The “B” Word
If your becoming increasingly pissed off with the Web 2.0reah that is filling up every corner of the internet, my suggestion would be to not use the label publically. I’m more likely to use something if I know it has been worked on and all the bugs polished out. I may go on a BETA site just to have a goosey-gander around to see what ideas are being thought up. But at the end of the day, you go home to your home which is built. Not in a BETA stage. And you play on your Xbox 360 or PS3, when neither of them are in BETA mode.
Although, if you are pushed for time with projects, putting the BETA branding on your website can help get you much needed feedback. If you go out to say that your web creation isn’t finished, and it is in a BETA state, then people are much more likely to give you positive feedback. Otherwise you’ll get the good old “ur website iz cRap” e-mail. Oh how we love them!
To Conclude
Key points to remember:
- BETA branding has been done to death. Don’t use it for polished web creations
- BETA branding can have a huge benefit to people starting out and getting feedback on their creations
- If you choose to use BETA on a half-arsed attempt at doing something, don’t be surprised if I strike you off my Christmas card list
Thats it! I hope you have fun with whatever your doing!
Peace
Monday, 21st February 2011
Designers are perfectionists. Everything has to be right. A block may be a pixel too wide, but the designer will pick this up. That is why a designer gets the glory and money for doing a kick ass design for a customer.
The problem, as I am experiencing myself and having seen it with other people that I know, is that designers take nearly 4 times as long to design their own website as they do to design a customer’s website.
My site, has been like this since June 2009. Well not exactly like this, but in a state where I look at it and think “I’m not happy with it”. Problem is when I say this, I don’t know where to go with it. What do I add to the website design to make it me? And to make me happy with it?
The thing is, when designing a web site for ourselves we don’t have the same conditions as we do for designing websites for the customer. The customer will tell us that it has to be done yesterday and then want a specific colour scheme. We work to these constraints, and we produce fantastic results. When it comes to ourselves, we could set a deadline for next week, and still be working on a design until Christmas. We could set out with the idea of using a specific colour scheme, but end up experimenting with completely different colours during the design process. And when the colour isn’t right, it puts us off the whole design, so we start again. (It does for me anyway). We are, in this instance, our own worst enemy.
What Can Be Done To Solve This?
It isn’t an easy thing to fix. It will vary from person to person, as we all have our own levels of self determination. What I suggest, is that you plan your layout first. No one likes flash based websites. Every time I go on a flash site I get pissed off with waiting for it to load and I go elsewhere. The design needs to be neat, needs to be well thought out, and needs to have the user engaged.
Secondly, as daft as it sounds, look at your clothes for colour inspiration. The clothes you buy are bought on a basis of style and colour. As I have found, if your wardrobe contains more black clothes than yellow clothes, then your favourite colour is Black. Or well, the colour you most associate with. Base the colour of your design around your favourite clothes colour. As daft as it sounds, it actually works.
Finally, once you have done a design, leave it. Go away, come back to it a week or two later. In the mean time don’t do anything design wise about your site. Then come back to it, and evaluate it. Doing this, I have found I only really change one or two things, instead of how I was looking at it after about an hour and ripping it up and starting again.
To Conclude…
We are our own worst enemy. We want to be perfect, and we want our work to reflect this. But you can’t spend the next 10 years developing a site that won’t go any further than Photoshop. Once you do something, park it, forget about it, then come back to it. Hopefully, this will mean you design an efficient site that resembles what you do and will get the next client to pay megabucks for your work!
Saturday, 19th February 2011
As I’m a web designer/developer by trade, I need to create something that shows off my skills. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But do I want my site to be another incarnation of a website that’s been done 1,000 times before on different websites? No, of course I don’t. So while I’m designing my website, I’m thinking of my five objectives:
- Be easy for someone to use and to navigate
- Make the user think “wow” when they view the site
- Make the site accessible and platform independent
- Create a website that will be a portal to my other projects that I have in the pipeline
- Be innovative
All of these are equally important. But there are three of these that are absolutely crucial. These are:
- Be easy for someone to use and to navigate
- Make the site accessible and platform independent
- Be innovative
These are the three main objectives. My site needs to achieve these. But on the flip-side, these shouldn’t just be objectives my site meet. They should be objectives every website being designed.
Be Easy For Someone To Use And To Navigate
A website needs to be used by everybody. Regardless of technical ability, or physical ability. So websites need to be easy to view, and to be accessible. So avoid having images with text in them. If the user uses a screen reader then they won’t be able to find out information contained within an image.
Make The Site Accessible And Platform Independent
Due to the explosion in popularity in mobile web browsing and netbooks, the focus of web design is starting to shift to include these platforms. This causes it’s own headache and problems. Let me talk you through it logically.
iPhone And Mobile Browser Compatibility
Just like making sure your site works and looks the same in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, you need to make sure your website looks the same uniformly across all possible browsers and platforms. (I’ll get to platforms later). A lot of the time, when mobile browsers render websites, they tend to remove the CSS style sheet. This has it’s good points, but a massive amount of bad points!!! What the web designer/developer should be doing, is writing a mobile browser specific CSS sheet. A favourite website of mine, The Register, has a mobile equivelent. View it here: Mobile Register. As you can see, it looks very strecthed out. But view it on a mobile it makes perfect sense and looks as close as to the mother site as possible. Alternatively, you could hope any user on their mobile is using Opera Mini 
Platform Independant
This is something that doesn’t get enough air time, and it can cause problems when designing websites. A website CAN look different if viewed on a Windows PC, a Linux PC, and a Mac. From tinkering about on various sites I’ve designed, I’ve come to a conclusion that it’s down to font rendering, and possibly screen resolutions. I will go in to this at a later date, but try and use a Font that is used uniformly by all three of these operating systems.
Be Innovative
The main aim of every true web designer who isn’t driven by money! It is so easy to just view a competitors website, think “hmmm good idea” and copy it. Maybe even tweek it a little bit. I’m a victim of this, but not because I’m like that. It’s what the client wanted, and what my bosses wanted. Since I’m basically Freelance, I can basically do what I like. And I can definitely do what I like with my own website. The fact is, and the problem I have, is that all sites look the same now. They have the same generic menu layout and page layout. Header at the top, menu under that, content under that. I want to break away from that. If I manage to make it different, and make it so that the navigation is highly usable, yet different and easy to use, I’ll have made my site innovative. And, I’d have also made it unforgettable to the user. And you know what that means? Returning visits and user loyalty!
Right now, I’m still very much in the design stage. The last objective is a tough one. Thinking up something completely new, and never-done-before takes time, effort, and a lot of inspiration! Of course I’ll let you know how I get on, maybe even show you sneaky bits and peices!
Any questions, please e-mail me or leave a comment!
Wednesday, 26th January 2011
I’ve just struggled with this very problem! And for once Google was no help. Read on
I have been running Windows 7 for the past 2 months, and it’s been fine. A really good effort by Microsoft to repair the damage done since Windows ME. And I for one have been very happy with it, until last night.
For the past few days, I had noticed the computer was slowing down a little bit. So I decided to buy a Flash drive to use this “ReadyBoost” option that Windows has told me about since Vista. Anyway, on powering on my machine, I felt the cable of an external hard drive and it was red hot. So hot it melted in to the plastic of the PC case. And this is where the problems started.
When Windows booted up, it went straight to a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). It displayed this:
STOP: 0x000000A5
I googled the code, and all the posts I read referred to Windows XP having this error when the motherboard’s ACPI is incompatible with Windows, and a BIOS upgrade was needed. I fiddled about with the BIOS settings, such as enabling ACPI 2.0 support, and nothing would work. But, Windows would sometimes work, but then switch off.
Getting desperate I decided to try the Live CD of openSuSE 11.2 to see if I could at least use the computer itself. On trying to use Live KDE or Live GNOME, I got a Kernel error. Nothing had started yet! I tried an Installation, and that only got so far until a Kernel panic ended it. On restarting, I decided to do a Memtest. Because, to me, if the Live KDE or Live GNOME wouldn’t work, then it must be RAM related. I ran the test, and the RAM failed.
I took out one stick of RAM (my computer is comprised of a single 1GB and a single 256MB). openSuSE ran with the 256MB, but I thought Windows 7 wouldn’t run with that. So I swapped them around, and I’m writing this blog to you from inside Windows 7.
Now I’m not a huge hardware wizzard. But I think my burning USB cable and this failed RAM issue are related. So far, I haven’t tried the computer running either RAM stick in the second RAM slot. A duffed RAM slot may be the problem? I don’t know, but hopefully some one out there could shed some light on this?
So to you guys who are experiencing this problem. Before attempting a risky BIOS upgrade, CHECK YOUR RAM!
