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Dan's blog

Foursquare Vs. Gowalla

Posted Fri, 20/08/2010 - 23:08 by Dan

With recent news about Facebook’s new ‘Places’ feature it looks like location based social networking could become the next big thing over the next couple of years. In case you can’t wait for this to be fully rolled out and you want to give one of the established location based social networks a try, here’s some background info.

Book Review: CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development by Adam Griffiths (Packt Publishing)

Posted Sun, 15/08/2010 - 21:14 by Dan

CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development by Adam Griffiths is a great introduction to CodeIgniter - and the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern in general - for intermediate and advanced PHP developers. I was asked to write a review of this book by Packt Publishing and this is now my third CodeIgniter specific book which I've studied. I’ve been working with CodeIgniter on several projects for over two years now so I’ve become quite familiar with the framework, but I’m always interested to see how other people approach problems and use the libraries available. There’re always a few hidden gems which are waiting to be discovered!

Another CodeIgniter book review on the way

Posted Sat, 08/05/2010 - 10:32 by Dan

CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development book frontI'll be posting another CodeIgniter book review for Packt Publishing shortly: 'CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development' by Adam Griffiths.

I'm really looking forward to reading this book, in particular the chapter on user authentication through Twitter and Facebook Connect.

Sample chapter

Beautiful time lapse video of Tokyo

Posted Sun, 18/04/2010 - 09:30 by Dan

I just saw this great time lapse video of Tokyo! I especially like 1:56 when the planes are coming in. Great choice of music too! Nice work!

Get up and go from Stefan Werc on Vimeo.

Android 2.1 (Eclair) for T-Mobile G2 Touch (HTC Hero) possibly coming soon?

Posted Sun, 04/04/2010 - 10:58 by Dan

Well, it's now April and many T-Mobile G2 Touch owners are waiting for the Android 2.1 update for their handsets, although all is still quiet on the news front. The last update from T-Mobile I saw was back in February when T-Mobile announced that they will be releasing "a firmware upgrade in April for the T-Mobile G2 Touch". We're all hoping that this will indeed be the Android 2.1 Eclair update we've been waiting for. There are some rumours out there as to the exact date and content of this release, but none of these are confirmed, so all we can do is play the waiting game for now.

I'll be checking the Android Updates section on the T-Mobile website throughout the month to see if anything appears, Eclair or otherwise.

Trying out Mollom for Drupal

Posted Sat, 03/04/2010 - 08:39 by Dan

I've decided to give the web service, Mollom, a try since my CAPTCHA, which I kept tweaking to the point where I nearly couldn't read it, was letting me down. The problem with CAPTCHA is it logs how many form submissions it blocks, which is great, but this doesn't necessarily mean SPAM submissions; it could be frustrated people not being able to post a comment on your blog. Mollom works by analysing the form submission for SPAM patterns, then determining whether it is suitable or not. It's quite strange to see my forms without a CAPTCHA underneath, but I should know soon enough how well the service works as I have many form submissions blocked by CAPTCHA each day.

Mollom is available for Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla! and many more CMSs. It also has developer libraries for PHP, Java, Ruby, Python and many more.

Book review: CodeIgniter 1.7 by Jose Argudo Blanco and David Upton (Packt Publishing)

Posted Sat, 27/02/2010 - 20:53 by Dan

The CodeIgniter framework is a secret weapon for many web developers as it allows you to quickly build complex web applications in a structured and organised way. I started using CodeIgniter over a year ago now so I've approached Packt's CodeIgniter 1.7 by Jose Argudo Blanco and David Upson as a way of expanding upon when I've already learnt from the user guide, forums and a book which I had previously read from Wrox called Professional CodeIgniter by Thomas Myer.

Drupal Editor for Android

Posted Wed, 24/02/2010 - 00:03 by Dan

I've just installed the Drupal Editor app for Android and this is my first 'test post' if you will. It's quite a simple app that connects to your Drupal site through the core blog api module. It then shows a list of all Drupal blogs and allows you to view, edit or delete the posts. You can also post new entries and assign taxonomy terms to them. It's simple and gets the job done!

To install this app search for 'Drupal Editor' on the Android Market. Enjoy!

'PHP Nature' missing from 'Project Natures' in Aptana Studio 2.0

Posted Wed, 13/01/2010 - 23:50 by Dan

For some reason, even though I have the PHP Development Tools (PDT) installed in Aptana Studio (2.0), I'm not able to select 'PHP nature' in the 'Project natures' of an imported project. I can start a new PHP Project which will have the 'PHP nature' selected as primary nature, but this doesn't even appear as an option in imported projects. The only two natures that are available are 'Remote Nature' and 'Web Nature'. The 'PHP nature' adds some really useful functions, like grouping my @todos into Aptana's Tasks view and also other handy things like auto-completing PHP docblocks.

To get the 'PHP nature' associated with your imported project you can manually edit the .project file which Aptana creates in your imported project directory so that it contains the 'PHP nature'. To do this, add the following code between the <natures> tags in your .project file:

<natures>
   <nature>org.eclipse.php.core.PHPNature</nature>     
</natures>

You may need to re-load Aptana to refresh the project but you should now find that your imported project has a primary 'PHP nature' set.

Note: Please do this at your own risk; although it worked fine for me I don't know if it will cause any side effects to the project or Aptana.

Location based reminders

Posted Thu, 07/01/2010 - 21:19 by Dan

Reminders, whether from calendars or todo lists, are typically time based, so they will remind you to perform an action at a desired time. However, I've just discovered location based reminders or 'geo-reminders' and this could possibly be my favourite life hack! When I say discovered, I actually had the idea when I got home from the supermarket having forgotten several necessities, but naturally this has already been thought of and many location based reminder apps already exist.

Location based reminders are reminders which, instead of alerting you at a set time, alert you when you enter a set location. So, you may set a reminder to 'buy more bread' for when you are next at the supermarket, or 'call John' for when you get in the office. This means you will be alerted when you are at the place where you can action the reminder. This isn't designed to replace time based reminders, but instead work along side. You could also (in theory) combine the two by setting a reminder to 'buy birthday card for Sam' when you are in town around the 5th of June.

So, without further ado, here are some apps which I have found that support location based reminders: