I commute into Birmingham each day to work and see people on there phones and tablets passing the time.
I’m a bit of a nosy git, so I can’t help but take a glance at what they’re looking at.
I’m always disheartened when I see — most of the time — it ends up being Facebook.
It is sad to see that a lot of people’s only experience of the web is through the guarded corridor that is Facebook.
For the past ten days I have been doing the 100 day challenge.
I decided to have a go at building my own e-commerce CMS.
I don’t have a big passion for e-commerce. In fact most of the time I work with e-commerce it frustrates me. But then I always remember hearing the old saying:
“The best way of complaining about something is to try and build something better”.
I won’t say which e-commerce CMS has me often cursing. Those who know me will know by the curses and moaning directed at it.
It feels good to be 10 days in. It’s also the longest commit streak ever on my github account.
I think the biggest thing I am taking away from my 100 day project is the learning I’m doing along the way. The outcome is kind of irrelevant at this point in time — although it would be nice to have something to show for it at the end.
I installed Ubuntu server on my spare computer the other day and all was fine.
I then moved the Apache document root to a directory in my home folder — a common thing done by people, I hear.
I have done this many times before and always worked fine — as did this for a time.
I had done this via ssh as is common with a server OS. Only thing was, was once I exited the ssh, Apache seemed to stop working.
I spent about an hour then, at around midnight, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. What had I done differently? The answer was simple: nothing…… or so I thought.
Turns out I had encrypted my home directory on installation of the OS. Probably a good thing to do, except that of course when trying to view the Apache server page in a browser it would error — due to my having moved it’s root from its default into my home folder.
As soon as I logged in via ssh to the server, it would work again. But when exiting it would stop.
This was simply down to the fact that my logging into the home directory via ssh would cause it to decrypt itself — making the apache page viewable. And then when I exited the ssh, it would re-encypt, thus breaking it.
Fu fu fu.
Off to see Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation tonight. Really looking forward to it.
I just hope there are no annoying people about. i.e. screaming kids, idiots on phones, people saying things like “Oh he was in thingymajig” or “This bit is sick”.
I must be getting old.
Today is the first day of an exciting week – London for two days followed by Paris for 6 days. I don’t think its hit me yet that I’m going on holiday, but I’m sure it will once we land.I’m looking forward to walking the streets of Paris in the hot sunshine with my good lady and getting lost down some side streets. Last time I went to Paris I went alone, for a concert, so it will be nice this time to share the time.Before all that is London Zoo and Carmen at the ENO. Never been to either so that’ll be an experience.
Another day of feeling like crap today.Didn’t really get anything done, which annoys me. I just watched a bunch of interviews with Clive Barker, which led me to finally read his short story, Jacqueline Ess: Her last will and testiment. A really great story – part of the Books of Blood volume 2.I then went on to watch a couple of interviews with Steve Jobs. I’ve never been a fan of Apple products, except for the iPod, but he was an inspiring guy.As I did a quick search for Jacqueline Ess to make sure I’d spelt it right, I found out that Lena Headey will be playing the titular character in a film that is currently in the works.
Today was the first day of the monthly street food market in the Jewellery Quarter. I had a tasty meatball sub – The bad boy I think it was called. It was one of them foods on a roll that just had to be eaten with a fork. It was messy. Tasty, but messy.I finished watching the first series of Inside No 9 tonight. Those guys really do push television into dark realms that others just wouldnt dare go. The end scene with the school girl strapped to a chair in her underwear as a near-deformed man is about to pass on the devil that has possessed him for 50 years. Dark, dark places.I’m really looking forward to seeing The Terminator tomorrow night at Star City. The original masterpiece up on the big screen. Its gonna be great. I just hope my cough clears up a bit.Oh and I’ve just bought tickets to see Kacey Musgraves in Birmingham in November. Yay!
I’ve not been keeping it up, have I?(phrasing)Try and try again I shall.Tonight I saw the first episode of humans – very good it was. It’s interesting to see exactly what it means to be ‘human’ – to have consciousness. The acting was great – I even tried making a cup of tea like a robot afterwards and it’s actually harder than it seems. It will be interesting to see where the show goes – especially as dark elements have already begun to creep in.Later on I ended up listening to an old episode of Cabin Pressure – Qikiqtarjuaq. It’s been about a year since I first heard this series and had forgotten how good it is. Benedict Cumberbatch is probably best known for playing Sherlock in the BBC series, but one should also check him out in Cabin Pressure. He, along with the rest of the cast, have incredible chemistry in one of the funniest series I’ve ever heard.
Today’s been a naff day. I’ve felt pretty aweful with this sore throat and cough. Please – send me no flowers.I’m looking forward to later tonight when I’ll get to watch the Game of Thrones series finale for the second time – I’m more looking forward to how my girlfriend reacts to the outcome of certain characters. I have the responsibility of warning her just before any gruesome bits happen – the temptation not to torments me, but I will do my duty.Tomorrow we are taking her mom to Dudley Zoo, which should be nice – hopefully I can kick some of this cough before then. Looking forward to getting some good snappy snaps of the animals. Here’s hoping we have some nice weather.
So I have failed completely so far in writing an entry each day. I have some poor excuses if that’s any consolation? I broke my computer and spent ages trying to reinstall it; I’ve also got a sore throat and cough……yep I know, I know pretty pathetic.So two months ago I signed up for the London marathon 2016. During my training I pushed myself a bit too hard and strained my ankle. I’ve not been able to train for nearly three weeks. But since buying an ankle support, it seems to be getting better. So this Sunday I’ll head out for a jog and see how it feels.I’ve not been confirmed for the London Marathon – the winners are announced in September/October time.However I will hopefully be doing a couple of half marathons before the end of the year. So that should help me gauge my fitness level.
I bought a new cage for Moomin on Friday night. I loved the idea of him having a higher one so he could climb up further. The idea of the high platforms seemed cool too. However in practice it wasn’t suitable at all – he kept falling off the platform and knocking the loosley-coupled platform bridges out.So I’ve opted to go for the same one as he had before. Pets at home were very helpful in getting it exchanged as well as letting me have some spare parts.I’m even thinking about connecting the two cages together – as they are the same model – to make Moomin a sort of super-lair. I’ll let you know how that one pans out.
So this is my first entry in my ‘keeping it up’ series of continuous writing – two days after the introduction post. How pathetic is that!? So anyways, here is the first of which i will do my best to be many.So I saw Jurassic World yesterday evening. I had seen the trailer and thought to myself how it was going to be terrible and probably best to avoid it all together – I have been known to be one of those people who goes on about how remakes or reboots are a bad idea. However I was pleasently surprised: I actually enjoyed it. It was a good two-hour escape into a world of dinosaurs and thought there were some great little twists in there.For me the whole film came together with the ending. I enjoyed it throughout, but the ending was great fun and improved the film for me as a whole.And it was good to see they didn’t shy away from the violence. With it being a 12A – always a warning sign for me for some films – I thought it would be completely kiddified. But there was a comfortable amount of people being eaten, crushed and thrown into trees for me to feel satisfied. I’m not sadistic – honest.
I was inspired by Jeremy Keith and his 100 words he has been publishing for the past 80 days. This is the same philosophy as The 100 days Project.I then heard the latest episode of Unfinished Business podcast where he, Jeffrey Zeldman and Andrew Clarke spoke about publishing on ones own site. Their conversation and views inspired me further.The discipline of doing something creative each and every day – no matter how quick or easy – sounded like something I’d like to try. To make myself create something every day and stop procrastinating. So this is it – my own approach to 100 words / 100 days. I will be writing an entry into this journal each and every day no matter how mundane it may be.I’m still thinking about whether or not to give myself some form of constaint. For example Jeremy’s daily journals have each been exactly 100 words. But I don’t want the thinking up of a constraint stop me from actually doing something, so I’ll just give it some thought.
I find myself most nights tinkering in some way to my website with the goal of making it the best personal publishing platform it can be.
The only problem is, is that because I spend the time tinkering with the site, I find myself not publishing as often as I’d like. I do write notes throughout the day which get published and shared out in most cases, but I’d like to be writing long form more often.
So what I will try my best to do is write something everyday in a more long form style — within my journal section. I was inspired by Jeremy Keith’s 100 Words he has been writing every day. Its all about keeping the drive to produce results in whatever creative profession is yours -i no matter how busy you are or how you’re feeling.
I’m looking forward to seeing what everyday writing will produce. Likely it will produce a bunch of ramblings on everyday things but maybe I’ll find a little gold nugget every once in a while.
We shall see.
I have just installed ownCloud on my laptop as a testing ground. I am soon to be buying a new computer off a friend and will be using my current one as a personal server.I decided to go with owncloud because it seems to do everything I need it to right out of the box. Cross device file syncing with as much storage as I have on my computer. All I had to do was install owncloud via the ubuntu terminal following these steps.I am starting using it on version 8.1 and first impressions are that it is very nice. It has a clean UI and straight forward settings controls. This is going to be a big step in me taking control of my own data and moving away from services like Google and Dropbox.The big job now will be to import all of my photos out of Google as well as re-downloading all of my music from google play music.
You see so many horror stories about companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook. About how they use your data to whatever end they want. I heard a story once about how through facebook’s various smart algorythms, someone’s profile had inadvertantly been made an endorser for something inappropriate to their own mom!Now I’m not saying that these companies are super evil. Infact it is simply their business model to use you for the collection of data; to learn everything they can about you; to sell that information to their real customers – why do you think Google, Twitter and Facebook are all free?As Aral Balkan from Indie puts it: “you are the quarry being mined”Take Google for example. The services that they give you for free are great. They give us maps of every place in the world imaginable… every place; free photo storage; free document storage; free email. Great. But at what cost is free?I became aware of the importance of owning ones own data through reading about, and implementing several principles of, the IndieWeb. On top of this the work that Aral Balkan and his team have been doing at Indie has inspired me to take a more pro-active approach to my data.Like I said, I have already begun implementing several aspects of the IndieWeb: I write any potential tweets as notes on my own site first; I reply to other people’s tweets from my own site first.The next logical step for me is to move away from using Google for many of the things I currently use it for. This is quite a lot.EmailPhoto StorageDocument StorageCalenderBooksStreaming MusicMaps and its associated location trackingYoutubeSome of these I will still use. But many of them I will be finding other alternatives.EmailI have been using protonmail for about three months so far. And so far I really like it. Take a look at their security details to see why I have chosen them them to go with.Photo StorageWhen I take a photo on my Nexus device, it automatically gets synced to my google cloud storage. While I love the convenience of this, I’m going to be putting together an alternative where I will store my photos on a home server – with automatic backups – and the only ones online will be ones that I upload to my website. As with my syndication of notes/tweets, I may syndicate images out with notes that I make.Document StorageAs with photos, I will be looking to store any digital documents on a home server.CalendarI am yet to look into this. Although I very rarely use any form of calendar, it may be nice to have a personal one. I may decide to build my own – possibly incorporating it as a secret area of my website.BooksStart buying physical books again as opposed to digital downloads. That’s a pretty easy one.Streaming and Storage of digital musicThis is one thing that I wont be changing. I love how I can have all of my owned albums digital stored in the cloud. On top of this I also love how I can pay eight pounds a month and get unlimited streaming and download of countless artists and albums. Many of the artists I now listen to have come as a direct result of just randomly picking an album to listen to.MapsGoogle maps is probably way out there in front of its other competitors. However I love the idea of Open Street Map. So this may be my alternative in the near future.YoutubeI will continue to use youtube as normal as it now comes with features exclusive to Google Play: All Access customers.
Explore
If you want to search, or just get an overview of my stuff, the explore page is a good place to start.
Any interesting websites and/or people I have found online, I link them on my blogroll page.
I keep a record of things i use on my… well… my “uses” page.
Album on repeat
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All of my collected posts, grouped by year.
