Tag: PC

bookmark_borderXAMPP

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In my copious spare time I have been known to design and build websites. The first website I ever built was for the first company I worked for, back in 1996, so I’ve been at it a while.

However it’s only been the past couple of years that I’ve started to get some larger clients with grander ideas, and that has meant getting a bit more organised. As such I now have a standard questionnaire that I ask all prospective clients to fill in, a standard design proposal document which I use to present back my ideas based on the answers to the questionnaire, and I have a nice little area of my PC which is dedicated to building websites.

The key part of which is XAMPP.

I discovered this marvellous application about 3 years ago, and if you are building websites, or installing and customising anything that requires MySQL and PHP then you must give it a look.

Many people know from their own experience that it’s not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl.

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.

It really is that simple. Once you’ve downloaded it, start up the Control Panel, start Apache and MySQL, then head to http://localhost. Done!

A lot of my web design work is creating custom themes based around WordPress, sometimes it is just a look and feel but more often than not custom code is required. Now, rather than having to upload a file to a test web server somewhere, I can work locally on the php files, and just refresh the browser to see my changes. Much faster.

XAMPP is one of those applications that, after you’ve used it once you think “how the hell did I manage without this!”.

Given that a lot of technical communicators are looking towards other distribution models (blogs, Wikis and so on), then XAMPP is an easy (and free) way to get a test system setup, allowing you to run short proof of concept projects. I hope you find it as useful as I do.

bookmark_borderLessons learned

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It’s all go at McLean Mansions but that’s nothing new for the first week in May with my sister celebrating her birthday on the 5th and my sister-in-law celebrating hers on the 7th. Of course that means presents and nice meals in restaurants, so we were out for dinner on Monday evening, and we’re back out tonight. Twice in one week! I know, I know, such a heady life I lead.

It’s not all fun and games though, I’ve spent the rest of my evenings either watching football, working on a client website, and royally screwing up my Windows PC (thank heavens I have a Macbook as well). Add in a fairly mental week at work and a rapidly filling list of things to do and I’ll admit that I’ve not really been fully concentrating on some things.

In other words I’ve fucked up a couple of things. But hey, a wise man once said you “learn by your mistakes”, although this stupid man is wondering how many more mistakes I need to make before being granted “wise” status.

However, in the spirit of sharing, here are a couple of the lessons learned.

* Geek warning active *
Continue reading “Lessons learned”

bookmark_borderTo hell with what people think

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I had a long post planned but, ultimately it was really just a way to some how gain approval that buying a new iPod was the right solution.

I had planned to waffle on at some length about the size of my music library (stop, phhnarring at the back you!), and about how I listen to music at work more than most places but can’t store all of my library on my work PC and how slow and cumbersome using a separate USB drive is and how HARD it is (ohh woe is me, I know, I know) to have to sync the USB drive with the home PC and goddamn I wish iTunes had an easier way to switch libraries as I really need my own as well as a larger “everything” library and wwwahhh wahhhh wahhhhh.

And then I read this post over at Swiss Toni’s and realised just how lucky I am and all that stuff.

As the old adage goes, I might have MS, but MS doesn’t have me. I’m not going to NOT write about it because I’m worried about what people might think of it and of me. Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing that MS Week is trying to change? I think it is, and so over the next few days, I’m going to write about pretty much nothing else but MS, and to hell with what people think.

To which I say, quite bloody right Mister!

bookmark_borderWhat to do when you can't

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It was a normal evening. Arrived home, fed the cat, started dinner, ate dinner, watched a bit of TV. Ordinary, staid, perhaps even boring.

With a couple of things to do I turned on the PC. I checked my email, skimmed some RSS feeds and pondered what I’d do next. Perhaps a blog post, perhaps I’d see if the writing muse had bothered her pretty little arse to turn up, or maybe I’d push on with my current mini-project (er… noodling about in Photoshop trying to rework the banner graphics a little).

At this point I turned to my current “what can I do that will divert my brain from the fact that I’m still not sure what I want to do” service. You may also know it by its proper name, Twitter.

It was at this point that everything came tumbling down, the lights dimmed, the room vibrated with the tremor and, somewhere, the sound of a helpless baby crying could be heard. Trees were uprooted, cars overturned and lumps of debris were launched into the air, terrorising all as they landed with sickening crunches and thumps.

I had no internet connection.

The eery silence was unsettling at first, punctuated only by the incessant click click clicking of a mouse button and the almost silent cursing of a man who knows some rather choice swear words.

I checked the flashy lights on the modem, the other flashy lights on the wireless router, and I even turned on the strobe light just so I could check another flashy light. After realising that the strobe was just giving me a headache and didn’t, in fact, have any impact on my lack of internet connection (and for the sake of clarity it also has no impact when I do have an internet connection) I turned it off and checked all the cable connections.

Everything LOOKED a-ok so I fired up a web browser to go and check the status page handily provided by my supplier. It’s a great idea, it shows any outages or planned maintenance across all of the services they provide. With a quick click I can check whether I have broadband or not. Brilliant.

What I did do at this point was connect my iPhone to a certain Wifi connection that could, may, possibly, be coming from next door and which is open to the world. Lo and behold the status page showed a red dot (this is a bad thing) next to the word BROADBAND. Next step is to phone and be told, by recorded voice, “if you are in the ML postcode area, you may be experiencing broadband conn…”. I hung up at this point.

And you know what I did then, dear reader?

I read a book. Ain’t NOT having the internet wunnerful??

bookmark_borderBackup

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Over the past few months I’ve become much better at backing up the important stuff on my PC. Largely this is photos, music, any ripped DVDs and important House documents, license files and so on.

So, if my PC dies a death then at least I’ve got the important stuff backed up. The rest, the downloaded freebies, fonts, software and so on can be downloaded again and, in a way, it’s a chance to re-evaluate things.

Not that my PC is dying a death but it does, this very moment, have a virus. Not quite sure where it came from, as I’m very careful (having worked for an anti-virus company I remain somewhat paranoid about these things). All I know is that I was downloading an update to DirectX so I could have a go at Football Manager 2009 (a guilty pleasure if ever there was one), and as Microsoft downloads can be a bit flaky under Firefox, I fired up Internet Explorer (7) and kicked off the download.

Somewhere, somehow, I now have a virus. It’s proving a bugger to fix so I’m doing a little research to make sure I’ve got the right tools at my disposal. Such is the advantage of having a laptop. I can research the issue, download the right tools and fixes, dump them on a USB drive and I’m ready to tackle the virus.

It’s THIS kind of thing that just pisses me off. I don’t download illegal software, I virus check everything that I do download, even if it’s from a ‘safe’ source, and I have a good clean system which is checked for spyware, malware and viruses every 6-8 weeks. Then something like this happens and I just know I’ll spend a couple of hours fighting it.

That’s not why I have a computer. It’s not supposed to be a battle, it’s supposed to be a tool. Just like those arseholes who keep creating and releasing viruses. They’re a bunch of tools too.

bookmark_borderPicasa for the Mac

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I’ve used Picasa on my Windows machine for a few years now, it is my photo library and where I probably do most of my photo editing as well. I just love the way the application works as it ‘just works’.

So to hear that, finally, it is available for Macs certainly does warm my cockles.

(hang on, I’m not a cockney… there are no cockles here!)

The thing about Picasa, something I’ve only really considered since hearing this news, is that the way it’s been designed seems almost Apple-like, with small touches well designed and well thought out. Of all the applications I run on my Windows PC, Picasa is the most pleasurable to use, it is a powerful application that seems simple. Not something that can be said for every Windows based application.

When I got my MacBook I did consider making it the main computer in the house, moving all my media files and work files to an external drive and switching my personal computing habits over to the way Apple do things. I never did make that switch and one of the reasons was that, with 6 years of digital photos in the library, the prospect of having to use iPhoto to manage them filled me with dread.

I wonder now if I can finally make the switch.

Music wise I use iTunes, so that’s fine. Work wise most of my projects are web based so all I need is an FTP client and text editor, again the Mac is well equipped to handle those things (Coda for example). Beyond that I already know the Mac will handle everything else I need it to do.

So, for me, Picasa is the cherry on the icing. The finishing touch that should let me, finally, work the way I want to work, independently of any constraint enforced on me by the operating system and choice of applications. Yup, sounds like it is time to get that QNAP NAS drive I’ve been pondering.

For those interested: