Blog on Dan Murfitt

The Best Model at the Best Price

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 11:27:20 +0100

The pace of the frontier seems to be picking up rapidly over the last few months. Most mornings I’ll wake up and check my phone and there’s been another breakthrough overnight and the new best model has changed yet again. One thing that’s usually quite common when a new model is released is the provider will often show off the new benchmarks, highlighting their higher numbers compared to some of their other models or competitors. I feel like this act of showing off the benchmarks all the time is drumming into people: “This one is the best, you need to use this one, and if you don’t, you’re missing out.” However, if you’re doing a task that doesn’t require a high level of intelligence, switching up the model tier will often result in either marginal or no gain at all, but it might result in you paying more for effectively the same output.

Using AI to Publish, Not to Create

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend I’ve been experimenting with Hermes Agent using the new DeepSeek V4 Flash model. One thing I’ve been quite interested in is how I can make publishing to my blog a lot easier.

It always feels quite laborious to have to go to my computer, sit at the desk, and type out a blog post. It takes a long while this way, and I often stress over individual words for quite some time. That means the effort required to actually publish an idea is quite high.

Red, Green, Remember: A TDD Approach to Agent Evolution

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:39:13 +0100

When you’re setting up a new project and want to use a coding agent, it can be tempting to try and craft the ultimate agent file or system prompt. You might try to think through every edge case, including everything you want it to do and everything you don’t, in an attempt to make it work perfectly the first time.

Generating Synthetic LLM Training Data with datakeg

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 10:35:14 +0000

I’ve been keen to have a play with fine-tuning a local LLM for a little while now, and something I’ve wanted is the ability to easily turn documentation into training data. Ultimately, I’d like to turn documention into an LLM so you can use it as a local expert without needing RAG, but the first step is creating the training data to make that possible, so I created datakeg, a small CLI tool which helps synthasise training data.

Make the Docs Your Notepad

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As you work on projects, you’ll often find yourself making and keeping notes. These could range from whole step-by-step guides to little snippets. You know that eventually, you’ll be back at this point, and you’ll need this little nugget of knowledge again. I like to encourage people to keep their notes in a public place. In the context of an organisation “public” may just mean internally with others in the engineering team (I don’t literally mean go and post it on X!). You can spend a few more minutes tidying up the note to turn it into a mini “doc” (which is even easier now with AI). Notes are just a manifestation of your knowledge, and this slowly and organically helps you offload your knowledge into a searchable and sharable place.

The Pessimistic Software Engineer

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:03:02 +0000

Usually, when we set out to build software, we work from a specification or Product Requirements Document (PRD), which outlines how the software should function from a user’s perspective. This focuses us on the horizon of end-user functionality, and from there, we start working backward, filling in the gaps and building a model of how all of the pieces fit together to deliver this functionality. This might involve database reads, writes, API calls, validation, etc. If all of these steps go well, the user gets what they want, and the application meets its goal. But how many opportunities are there for failure along the way? How many known failures could there be, and perhaps more scarily, how many unknown failures could there be waiting to trip us up? The Pessimistic Software Engineer doesn’t just assume things will probably be okay, but actively assumes things will break, in every way possible, at some point in the future.

Building a prompt to generate chatbot persona prompts

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 10:01:16 +0000

This blog discusses an experiment in creating a generative AI prompt that can build other prompts for specific personas using ChatGPT or similar LLM providers. The process involves defining the persona and its desired behavior, coming up with an opening question to be used within the final prompt, and iterating until satisfied with the result.

Quickly import your ssh public keys from Github with ssh-import-id

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0100

There’s a neat Ubuntu command which allows you to easily import your ssh public keys from Github to your server user account.

`1`	`ssh-import-id-gh <github username>`

By default, it will append the fetched public key (or keys if you specify multiple accounts) to the current user’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. Once you’ve run the above, you will be able to ssh to your server account using the same key you would use to push code to Github.

Short Variable Names in Go

Sun, 24 May 2020 06:00:00 +0000

When I first started learning Go, I heard a lot of people talk about the idiomatic way of doing things. “Sure, that way works, but this is the way we do it in Go.” I’m OK with that - a strict convention can give every piece of code a strong sense of familiarity - and Go has quite a few of these. One such convention is to use short variable names.

Variable names in Go should be short rather than long. This is especially true for local variables with limited scope. Prefer c to lineCount. Prefer i to sliceIndex.

Cache Busting with Jekyll

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 11:00:00 +0000

If you’re running Jekyll and updating styles fairly regularly, you may want to add a cache busting line to your styles and scripts to ensure you (and your visitors) are always accessing the latest version of your assets.

Murfitt.net is now on Jekyll

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 20:36:00 +0000

This website has been run on various CMSs and frameworks over the years. Joomla, Drupal, Laravel, Symfony…and now Jekyll.

Creating immutable objects in PHP

Sun, 27 Jan 2019 20:00:00 +0000

You may have seen the \DateTimeImmutable class being used, and wondered why is this different from the \DateTime class? I guess it’s the same…but immutable, right? Why would I want to use an immutable object? Here’s a brief overview.

Move from Laravel 5.4 to Symfony 4

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Hello from Symfony 4! Today I finished the move from Laravel to Symfony 4. The content and design hasn’t moved, but the entire backend has been rewritten using Symfony 4.

I’ve managed to keep the content online for well over 10 years, and it’s been running on various versions of Drupal (5, 6, and 7) after being completely rewritten and migrated to Laravel a couple of years ago. A few months ago, I decided to rewrite it again, this time in Symfony. I saw a demo of Flex at Symfony Live last year, and I thought it looked like a lot of fun to work with. And it is :)

CodeIgniter vs. Laravel

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 22:06:00 +0000

It’s not always easy to give a definite winner with these sorts of comparisons, as depends what your requirements and preferences are. So, here are a few areas worth thinking about when weighing up CodeIgniter against Laravel.

Outlook for Mac 2011 not working on OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 20:35:00 +0000

tl;dr - If you use Outlook for Mac and you’re thinking of upgrading to OS X El Capitain, don’t…yet!

Edit (Fix): There is an update available now that fixes this problem. You can install it by opening Word, clicking ‘Help’ in the menu bar then clicking ‘Check for updates’. You should see the critical update available. Download, install it, and enjoy Outlook 2011 on your El Capitan Mac :) For more information, visit: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3098229

It’s been an eventful day, for all the wrong reasons. Usually my Apple updates go well, but today I discovered that if you try and sync Outlook (running on El Capitan) with an Exchange server, you get a (nice, redesigned) beachball. This is a known bug (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3098396), and the official workaround at the moment is to stick to using Yosemite.

Getting Laravel Homestead to work with larger file uploads

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 22:11:00 +0000

I’ve been working on a Laravel project which uses relatively large file uploads (about 30MB - 120MB). My development environment is Laravel Homestead - a great, pre-packaged Vagrant box for Laravel development. If you haven’t heard of this I highly recommend you check it out - it’s a great way to get up and running with Laravel, but it doesn’t seem to play well for larger file uploads through forms (over about 5MB). My forms were either hanging or returning an nginx ’too large’ error. Here are some of the settings which I’ve had to tweak to get Homestead working nicely with larger uploads.

Hello 2015! Hopes, resolutions and things to look forward to for the new year

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:26:00 +0000

For those of you that know me, you’ll know that I’d have a lot to say about 2014. It’s been a strange year. I won’t go into it in this blog post, but instead I’m going to look forward and welcome 2015 with wide eyes and big open arms. Come in and make yourself at home, 2015! So, here are a few things I’d like to look forward to in the new year.

DrupalCon 2013: Summary of Dries Buytaert's Keynote

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 21:14:00 +0000

DrupalCon 2013 is well underway now with Dries giving his keynote earlier today. There are lots of exciting things coming up with Drupal 8, and it’s a big change both technically and conceptually from the previous releases. I’ll attach the full keynote below, but here’s a quick summary for you speedy readers.

There are six key initiatives in Drupal 8 which Dries quickly covered:

Configuration management
Mobile
Blocks
Multilingual
Views in core
Web services

Book Review - Instant E-commerce with OpenCart: Build a Shop [Instant] by Murat Yilmaz (Packt Publishing)

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 21:07:00 +0000

I’ve just been going through my first ‘Instant’ book from Packt Publishing - Instant E-Commerce with OpenCart: Build a Shop [Instant] by Murat Yilmaz. They kindly sent me a copy to review, so here’s a quick summary of what to expect and what’s included:

This book is for web developers and designers looking at setting up an online store. You don’t need any previous experience of OpenCart to follow the walkthroughs in the book, but you will need to be reasonably confident (or at least willing to have a bash) at downloading and setting up a web application on a server or a local development environment (such as WAMP for MS Windows or MAMP for Mac).

Upcoming book review: Instant E-commerce with OpenCart: Build a Shop [Instant]

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 20:32:00 +0000

Packt Publishing were kind enough to ask me if I’d like to review one of their latest OpenCart books: ‘Instant E-commerce with OpenCart: Build a Shop [Instant]’ by Murat Yilmaz. It’ll be the first time I’ve read a book in their ‘Instant’ series, as I’ve reviewed a couple of their regular books before, so I’ll be interested to see how it compares. Check back soon for my full review.

MAMP: "#2006 - MySQL server has gone away" while importing database

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 21:32:00 +0000

I was importing a relatively large Drupal database today into MAMP (via phpmyadmin) and MySQL rudely walked off, with the following error:

#2006 - MySQL server has gone away

Ah, a nice vague error message! It seems that the import statement (from the cache_menu table) in the database dump contains packets which are too large to import using the default MAMP settings. To fix this, I created a my.cnf file in my /Applications/MAMP/conf/ folder with the following contents:

New vlog

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:28:00 +0000

I’ve just started a YouTube vlog covering news, tips, reviews etc. Check it out, and if you like it, subscribe :)

Getting to know Google+ better and more blogging

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:14:00 +0000

Google+

The experience of any social network is only as good as the activity of the people on it, right? Quite a few of my friends have joined Google+ and experimented with a couple of posts, but it doesn’t really feel for me that it’s taken off as a social graph tool. It works pretty well within the interest graph, though, and maybe that’s because the API is currently read-only. There are a ton of tools that help you market on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook by managing accounts and automatically posting, but because these aren’t currently available for Google+, the posts and shares seem a little more genuine because people have to actually post directly. It’s a subtle issue, but it means that G+ captures a little more energy, as the posts feel more like they come from people rather than social media management applications. I guess it all depends on who you follow, though. Anyway, I’ll be trying to spend a little more time on Google+ in the coming months and getting involved in the communities that I’ve joined.

The feedback process is still part of the whole customer experience

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 09:29:00 +0000

It seems every interaction I have with a company these days is followed by a “how did we do?” survey. It’s not like we step aside and forget the company when we’re going through the questionnaire - it’s still part of the experience. Imagine if this was true for high street shopping, and after every purchase, no matter how large or small, we were being chased out of the shop by someone begging for feedback.

A new web design trend: Windows 8 'Metro' UI style

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 09:53:00 +0000

It’s strange how influential an operating system UI can be on web design. I remember back in 2006 everyone was using Apple’s shiny table effect and it seems we may be about to see a wave of websites designed using Microsoft’s Windows 8 ‘Metro’ UI style.

Do these large companies that make our most popular devices’ operating systems set the trend, or are they one step ahead? The interesting thing this time round is that the Windows 8 style we see here is designed primarily for touch. The buttons aren’t just part of the UI, they are also delivering content. This means almost the entire screen real estate can be UI. It also works well on various screen sizes - not just desktop and mobile, but desktop to mobile with everything between. This is addressing the same problem many web developers have been solving by using responsive web design. If web design is inspired by operating systems it’ll be interesting to see what affect Windows 8 will have in the coming months.

Where to find the spam controls (Forefront) in Office 365

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 09:21:00 +0000

Things have been ticking over nicely since Microsoft updated its Exchange Online services to Office 365. The other day I needed to find the spam controls (Forefront) and they weren’t where I was expecting them to be so I thought I’d post the details here in case anyone else is having trouble finding them. You’ll need to be logged in as an Office 365 admin:

Login to the Office 365 Portal
Click ‘Admin overview’ on the left
Click ‘manage’ under ‘Exchange’
Click ‘mail control’ on the left
Click the ‘configure’ link on the right under ‘Forefront Online Protection for Exchange’

That’s it. Hope this helps :)

The use of version control systems outside of software development

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:32:00 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of Clay Shirky since I read ‘Here Comes Everybody’, and he’s recently been featured on TED talking about how the open source model of organising, or self organising, groups of hundreds of people can be an incredibly powerful way of producing software, not just technically but democratically. Specifically, he references Git, which unlike many other Version Control Systems (VCS), operates in a distributed way, that is there isn’t one central place or repository - everyone who is participating has access to all the source code and all the source code history. As he explains, this is a remarkably powerful way to foster distributed collaboration, but so far this has mainly been harnessed by the open source software community. This video really gets you thinking about the possibilities of version control for other purposes, such as politics, law, business, etc. The video is just under 20 minutes and I highly recommend watching it.

Getting the browser spell-checker to work with CKEditor in Drupal

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 13:36:00 +0000

Most modern browsers, such as Firefox 15, Chrome 21 and Internet Explorer 9, have a nifty spell-checker built in to help us ‘auto-correct’ generation write, but when you install the CKEditor some of this functionality is hijacked by the default javascript used by the text editor. Fortunately, if you’re using CKEditor for Drupal, it’s a quick fix to get the browser default spell-checker working again. If you’re not using Drupal you may still be able to apply the fix by noting the configuration settings and using them in your setup.

CodeIgniter Math CAPTCHA library, with multi-language plain text questions

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 14:02:00 +0000

I’ve just released a new Math CAPTCHA Library for CodeIgniter, which can use plain text English words for numbers and random question phrases. It’s also supports multiple languages (as it uses the core language library) and both addition and multiplication. It’s still in the early stages so it needs to be put through its paces, but hopefully the CodeIgniter community will find this a nice alternative to the regular image CAPTCHA or simple math CAPTCHA.

How to get your Google+ profile picture to appear in search results

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:00:00 +0000

You may have recently noticed that lots of Google search results now show profile pictures of authors alongside the result for the page. I think this adds a nice element of trust to the link, as you can see the person who wrote the page and you can be pretty sure the content comes from a person as opposed to a content aggregator or such like. As always, there’s no exact formula to controlling the search result information, but Google has published some advice for setting this up for your blog or website.

jQuery UI touch support for iPad and other tablets and smartphones

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:22:00 +0000

The jQuery UI library doesn’t support touch features by default, so trying to use the slider or drag and drop on the iPad won’t work. Fortunately, all that’s required to get this working is a small hack - enter jQuery UI Touch Punch.

Check and clear cache in CodeIgniter with this Output extension

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:06:00 +0000

I decided to write an extension to the CodeIgniter core Output library as it’s great for working with cache but doesn’t contain any mechanisms for clearing or managing the cache.

Book review: OpenCart 1.4 Template Design Cookbook by Tahsin Hasan

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 13:03:00 +0000

OpenCart isn’t a system I’ve used before but Packt Publishing asked me to review OpenCart 1.4 Template Design Cookbook by Tahsin Hasan for them so I thought it’d be a good opportunity to learn more about an ecommerce shopping cart system. I spend a lot of time working on PHP/MySQL applications, including Drupal and CodeIgniter, but I haven’t used OpenCart before, so I’m coming to this book and application completely new.

'Close Account' options for web applications

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:22:00 +0000

It’s very rare that I come across a web app which allows me to close my account. Granted, it’s not a feature you want to encourage people to use but if people want to stop using your app then they’ll probably just abandon the account anyway. From a user’s perspective I like to feel in control so being able to close an account, even if I don’t chose to do so, can be quite reassuring. However, I think there are also some advantages for developers and stakeholders to benefit from by implementing a ‘close account’ feature.

Blog from the iPhone to your Drupal blog with BlogPress

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:39:00 +0000

There are a couple of apps which can post to Drupal as well as the majority of other popular blogging platforms straight from your iPhone: iBlogger and BlogPress. I’m writing this from BlogPress on my iPhone, but the app also supports the iPad for all you lucky folks out there. With BlogPress you can view previous posts, save drafts, upload images to Flickr or Picasa and upload movies to YouTube, all of which can then be embedded straight into the post. Drafts can be saved to the app and are stored on the iPhone or can be stored on your Drupal site. No more excuses for not having enough time to blog!

Upcoming book review: OpenCart 1.4 Template Design Cookbook by Tahsin Hasan

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:35:00 +0000

Packt Publishing kindly asked me to write another review for an upcoming book: OpenCart 1.4 Template Design Cookbook. The book covers a range of techniques for customising the header, footer, store navigation, creating dynamic content, custom error pages and sitemaps. The author, Tahsin Hasan, is a fellow CodeIgniter developer and has worked with other PHP frameworks such as Zend, Symfony and CakePHP.

Create amazing explorable panoramas on the iPhone with Photosynth

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:57:00 +0000

I’ve just been playing with Photosynth for the iPhone. It allows you to take multiple pictures from different angles then stitch them together to make a 3D, explorable panoramic. So what’s so different about Photosynth? Well, you can also create ‘Synths’ which are 3D spaces made up of images from not only different angles but different locations. This means you can take a picture of a building from different sides and Photosynth will work its magic and make it into a 3D model which you can explore.

Optimising Drupal performance

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 10:02:00 +0000

There are a few great out of the box performance tweaks which Drupal offers to speed up page loading times and minimise server load. First of all, these tweaks wouldn’t suit every site. You need to first think about how much traffic you currently get and how often our content changes. You don’t necessarily have to add or amend a page for content to change; people can post comments and interact with your site in ways which change the content displayed. This will make a difference to how you chose to optimise your Drupal site performance.

Fighting blog comment spam

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:21:00 +0000

I’ve noticed a recent influx of blog spam which seem, to some degree, relevant to the content it’s posted on. I think spammers are composing comments targeted to specific subject areas and then searching the web for content on that subject so that when they post the comment it appears at first glance to be genuine. Of course the most telling part is the totally unrelated link to men’s watches or postal degrees which seem somewhat out of place in a comment on a php web development framework. Nevertheless, if you’re not careful the comments can slip through the net and appear on your blog. The other issue which has become more of a problem lately is the spammer’s ability to evade CAPTCHA challenges. I’ve increased the level of noise and distortion for the CAPTCHA challenge on this blog but some still get through. It’s as if there is a person actually typing in a response to the challenge, in which it won’t be of much help. There are a few ways in which you can help fight, reduce and manage blog spam, because let’s face it - it’s not going to stop entirely. So let’s have a look at some quick first pointers.

New 'Mix Radio' on Last.fm

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:05:00 +0000

Since Spotify I’ve slightly neglected my Last.fm radio favouring playlisted music over radio style chosen tracks, but I may start using the Last.fm radio again since they’ve introduced the new ‘Mix Radio’ station. It’s a great way to discover new music without being overwhelmed by too many unfamiliar tracks.

Qwiki: Information Experience

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:13:00 +0000

The recent TechCrunch disrupt award saw startup Qwiki win disruptive product for their information experience website which seeks to change the way we consume information. This is the kind of thing which we’ve seen in movies for years but Qwiki is making this experience a reality by pulling together information from various sources and presenting it in a much more experiential way. This sort of delivery is probably well suited to that kind of research where you hear a term you haven’t heard before and you want to know more. You’ll probably start by typing the term into Google then sift through the (usually first result) Wikipedia page followed by image search and/or movies etc. What Qwiki does is pull all of this together for you so you get an instant overview of all the information in a much more ’lean back’ way.

Sorting the garden out

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:32:00 +0000

My dad came over today to help sort our garden out. We wanted to open the end of the garden up to grow some colourful plants and maybe add a few solar lights. The end of the garden was previously segmented into smaller pieces, with a raised patch with a few shrubs and some fenced off stones.

Foursquare Vs. Gowalla

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:08:00 +0000

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)

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:14:00 +0000

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

Sat, 08 May 2010 10:32:00 +0000

I’ll be posting another CodeIgniter book review for Packt Publishing shortly: ‘CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development’ by Adam Griffiths.

Beautiful time lapse video of Tokyo

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 09:30:00 +0000

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?

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 10:58:00 +0000

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.

Trying out Mollom for Drupal

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 08:39:00 +0000

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.

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

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:53:00 +0000

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

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:03:00 +0000

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!

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

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:50:00 +0000

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.

Location based reminders

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:19:00 +0000

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.

Post blog articles to Twitter with Feedburner's Socialize feature

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:14:00 +0000

A friend of mine recently told me about Feedburner’s Socialize feature, where you can aggregate RSS feeds and post the links to Twitter automatically. This is quite a neat feature as Feedburner can also include some of your content in the tweet, create hashtags from the post categories and create inline hashtags from the categories and words in the title and post. Check out this feature by logging into your Feedburner account, selecting the feed you want to use, then go to the ‘publicize’ tab along the top then the ‘socialize’ tab along the side.

CodeIgniter 1.7 by Jose Argudo Blanco and David Upton

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:10:00 +0000

I was recently sent a copy of a book from Packt Publishing to read and review called CodeIgniter 1.7 by Jose Argudo Blanco and David Upton. I’ll be interested to see how the book compares to what I’ve learnt so far about CodeIgniter (>1 years experience CodeIgniter and >4 years php) and see what else it can offer, especially in terms of planning and managing application projects. The description on the Packt Publishing website says:

Flickr picks no2: Snow

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:00:00 +0000

We’ve had a lot of snow over the past few days making for some beautiful, bright snow photos.

Great Braxted Park.

Stuart Axe, on Flickr

Star Burst!

Scootzsx, on Flickr

Firefox or Chrome

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:36:00 +0000

Here’s an edgy stand-off I find myself in the middle of every so often – Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. From a day to day, quick browse, everything is on the web perspective I’d have to say I prefer Google Chrome. It’s fast(er), simple and gets the job done. However, from a web developer perspective Firefox has the add-ons that you so sorely need. I’ve tried designing a Drupal Zen sub-theme with Chrome’s ‘inspect element’ feature but it’s not as comprehensive as the Firebug add-on for Firefox which I couldn’t work without. However, when I want to check my daily barrage of social sites Chrome shaves off valuable seconds. For today, I’ll leave Firefox as my default browser simply because of the add-ons – they’re useful, I need them and I don’t mind sacrificing a bit of speed.

Facebook News Feed and Live Feed. What's all this about?

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:49:00 +0000

I’ve been switching between Facebook’s two feed modes, live feed and news feed, for a while now and up until now I didn’t really know why. Facebook introduced these options a month ago and it’s been confusing users ever since. So, what I’ve found is that by default I am shown the news feed which shows the most relevant information, but it’s often out of date, sometimes by a couple of days. That’s not good. Then you go to the live feed, which seems to be up to the minute but is bloated with Farm Ville and whatnot. That is also not good. The terminology “news feed” and “live feed” are also quite confusing, as you’d expect the “news feed” to be up to date and the “live feed” to be relevant.

Goodbye, Drupal Zen Classic theme!

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:46:00 +0000

The Drupal Zen sub-theme, Zen Classic, is to no longer be included with the Zen theme download. The Zen theme will now purely be a theme framework and starter kit. If the Zen Classic theme is to be continued it may be done so as a separate project. Although many people said it was bland I quite liked the simplicity of it, but since it’s been removed and I’ve been thinking of redesigning my site anyway maybe this was the kick up the butt I needed to put pencil to paper!

Twitter and the short URL conundrum

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:09:00 +0000

Although the spam seems to be dying down a little on Twitter since they introduced their ‘report as spam’ option I’m still a little cautious about clicking some shortened URLs - SO many of the links seem to lead to spam (spam and more spam). The whole concept seems to have gone full circle as well with people using extensions like Long URL Please to make the short URL long again. Although I think this is a good a useful add-on, the whole process seems a little excessive. I can see benefit in using shortened URLs in printed media but, when it comes to the web, why are we making links short just to make them long again? I guess Twitter has a big part to play in this by restricting messages to only 140 characters, but surely there’s got to be a better way?! With this in mind, I’ve been trying to get some perspective on the issues. Shortened URLs:

Social Media Revolution

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:08:00 +0000

Very interesting, thought provoking video. We are well and truly hooked into social media - there’s no turning back now!

Source of video and data http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigge…

Spotify mobile demo for Google Android

Thu, 28 May 2009 23:02:00 +0000

Very smart demo of the up and coming Spotify client for Google Android. Also featuring offline sync. Check it out!

Windbelt electrical wind powered generator

Sat, 23 May 2009 11:27:00 +0000

A few years ago Shawn Frayne came up with an ingenious way of generating electricity on a smaller scale than wind turbines by using vibrations rather than rotary power. His invention, called the windbelt, works by oscillating a pair of magnets through a metal coil at the end of a belt which vibrates as wind passes over it. This physical phenomenon is know as aeroelastic flutter and it’s the same principle that caused the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph wind, making the windbelt 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines.

Free subversion repository hosting accounts

Sun, 17 May 2009 14:17:00 +0000

I’ve come across a few subversion hosting services which offer free accounts so I thought I’d share the links. Most of these seem to offer a limited free account and a range of paid accounts. If you’re working with subversion a lot and you come to rely on them then you may want to upgrade in the future - at least you can try them out first for free. However, if you’re developing one or two projects on your own you may be happy to stick with the free account. These details are for the free accounts only, and most offer a lot more for the paid account (for example, SSL access, more users, repositories, etc.).

Firefox not checking spelling as you type

Sat, 16 May 2009 20:07:00 +0000

Firefox has a handy feature which can check your spelling as you type in forms. To enable this go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Browsing and check ‘Check spelling as I type’. If this still isn’t working you may need to install your dictionary (even if your dictionary is listed under Tools > Options > Content > Languages). To do this, go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:3 and download your language, install and restart Firefox. You should now have many squiggly red lines in your forms as you type (ok, maybe that’s just me :o) ).

Atlantis silhouette during solar transit

Sat, 16 May 2009 11:30:00 +0000

This image shows the space shuttle Atlantis in silhouette during solar transit on Tuesday 12th May 2009. Pretty cool!

Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)

Thierry made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)

Spotify world of music

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:11:00 +0000

Spotify is an online music service which allows you, much like Last.fm, to stream music to your computer via a downloadable app.

You can play individual tracks or build, share and collaborate on playlists. The free version allows you to listen to unlimited music with the occasional ad. They come up about once every 4 or 5 tracks so it’s not too intrusive. You can also buy a day pass for 99p which gives you an ad free service for the day or sign up for a premium account and get unlimited ad free listening for £9.99 a month.

Hitachi DZ-HV565E High Definition (1080p) SD Video Camera

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:26:00 +0000

I’ve been looking through some of the little HD SD-based camcorders recently and I came across the Hitachi DZ-HV565E in Argos. However, this video camera seems to be a bit of a mystery online, there just isn’t much information about it, I couldn’t even find any test footage on YouTube.

Outlook calendar problem - all appointments recurring forever

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:42:00 +0000

I came across a strange problem with Outlook Calendar recently where every appointment which was added to the Calendar and then edited suddenly repeated forever! A scary concept! It seemed to be related to a piece of software called ‘OutlookAddinSetup’. From what I’ve read (http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/29012397/re-recurring-calenda…), this seems to be something which comes installed with Dell computers. After I uninstalled this program (from Control Panel, Programs, Uninstall a program) the problem has stopped and events only occur once. If anyone knows what the program is supposed to do please drop a comment below :)

CodeIgniter 1.7.0 Released

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:30:00 +0000

It’s that wonderful time again! CodeIgniter 1.7.0 has been released, so it’s time to upgrade.

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/installation/upgrade_170.html

Upgrading looks fairly straight forward - here are some notable changes (http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/changelog.html):

Diggnation - Live from London, 10th October 2008

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:50:00 +0000

I went to the Live Diggnation at the end of the Future of Web Apps Expo. Excellent show - I really hope they come back again next year! :) (video below)

Flickr Picks no1: Autumnal selection

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:46:00 +0000

Here’s my first “Flickr picks” picture selection. Every now and then I’m going to pick some photos from Flickr with a particular theme. I thought some nice autumnal pictures would be a good place to start as it’s one of my favourite seasons for taking pictures (winter being the other).

The great thing about autumn is not only the colours from the leaves but also the moody weather - rain one minute, sun the next - it really creates a stunning atmosphere.

Protecting a Drupal site from hotlinking

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:40:00 +0000

What is hotlinking?

Hotlinking, sometimes called image leeching or hot linking, is where another website embeds an image which is stored on your web host. So, for example, if you want to add an image to your website, you can upload the file to your web host then embed the image into your HTML referencing the source for the image as the location of the file on your web host. When someone accesses the HTML page where the image is embedded the file will be downloaded from your web host. If you don’t protect against hotlinking, someone could embed that same image on their web page, which means that every time someone accesses their page, the image will be downloaded from your web host and drain your bandwidth. Don’t do this, it’s not cool and some sites see it as stealing.

Dreamweaver closes straight after opening

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:29:00 +0000

This really is one of the strangest software bugs I’ve come across!

The Problem

Dreamweaver crashes and won’t open again. When you try and open Dreamweaver it just closes straight away, with nothing more than a glimpse of the splash screen.

First flight for the Flexifoil Buzz

Mon, 05 May 2008 20:25:00 +0000

Took my little Flexifoil Buzz (Petrol) out for a fly today. Pretty cool kite actually. It was a little smaller than I had imagined it, but it’s very responsive even under light winds, and very nippy once the wind picks up.

Strange MSN Login problem (Login error code 80048834)

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:40:00 +0000

No idea what this means, but I thought I’d post it in case anyone else was having the same problem - don’t you just love spurious error codes?

I was trying for a while to sign on to MSN messenger but I kept getting error code 80048834 (ohhhh…that one….). After some help from Google I came across a forum post where a couple of people were having the same issue. Anyway, for people skimming this post I’ll jump straight to the solution…

Welcome Drupal 6

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:20:00 +0000

Drupal 6 was released today! After having a play with the beta and release candidates…well, I don’t have to say; this really is a phenomenal release! Here are some of my favourite new features which I’m looking forward to using:

Extended logging - You can set Drupal for OS level logging
Batch API - A progress bar can track tasks running in the background through multiple HTTP requests
Scripting from the command line - This is really cool! You can now run Drupal code through the command line
Forum improvements - Granular permissions can allow more control over forum moderation
Sticky table headers - Does what it says on the tin
Drag and drop features - Again, the tin…
CSS only theming - Define regions etc. in .info files without writing any php code, then set styles in CSS

Well done to everyone who has been clearly working hard on this!

Talks begin on Drupal 7

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:49:00 +0000

It’s incredible how rapid the development of Drupal has become. Drupal 6 is only just around the corner and we’re already talking about what improvements and features we’d like to see in Drupal 7! Drupal 5 has been absolutely fantastic. I’ve found it not only a great content management system, but also an excellent framework for building applications.

Email access becomes slow when lots of messages are left on the server

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:14:00 +0000

I noticed recently that if you’re using POP with leave mail on server (LMOS) enabled, authenticating and downloading new messages can become progressively slower. So much so that the email client can even time out, leaving the mailbox locked so you can’t even log in again for a while.

Drupal 5.6 and register_globals

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:37:00 +0000

As of Drupal 5.6 you will no longer be able to install the CMS onto a server with register_globals enabled. The notice on the Drupal website says:

We no longer support servers with the PHP directive register_globals set to on. Attempts to install Drupal 5.6 when register_globals is enabled will fail. Current installations will continue to function, but will display an error on administration pages and the status report.

Handy fix for a broken Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote)

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 20:09:00 +0000

A few days ago one of my Nintendo Wii remotes started doing some crazy things. It seemed like there was a problem with the remote’s gyro, as you couldn’t get any response from swinging the remote in the bowling game (instead, you just took everyone’s legs out with the ball!). Anyway, I found a strange fix which involves wacking the remote, button side down, against your palm several times. I wacked the remote hard enough to “fix” it, but not too hard as to break it. I guess it must have dislodged the remote’s gyro because it started working again like normal.

How to get WPA2 working on Windows XP

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:18:00 +0000

WPA2 is the latest standard in Wi-Fi security, and it’s considered fully secure (for today at least). It’s a good idea to run the highest level of security you can, even on a home network. I won’t go into the benefits, but as far as I can see there are no reasons not to move to WPA2 - you won’t even notice any difference, but your connection will be more secure.

XAMPP and mod_rewrite (getting clean URLs to work)

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:50:00 +0000

If you’re using a CMS or blog app, like Drupal or Wordpress (even if you’re not) chances are you’ll probably want to enable clean URLs (sometimes called search engine friendly URLs). This cool little feature uses an Apache module called mod_rewrite, and if you’re developing your site using XAMPP this is disabled by default (possibly for security reasons).

Essential Firefox web developer / designer add-ons

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:06:00 +0000

I’ve been taking a few Firefox add-ons for granted, so here’s a little nod to some excellent add-ons which have made my life easier. I’m not going to list 50, simply because I’ve found either some do the same thing, or I don’t end up using them as much as I thought. So here they are:

Firebug
Web Developer Toolbar
Dummy Lipsum
IE Tab

Getting alt text to display without a caption using img_assist

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:58:00 +0000

I ran into a spot of trouble recently with img_assist, in that it only displayed alt text if there was also a caption below the image. Img_Assist takes the alt text from a combination of the title and description, and these fields are filled by default from the title and body of the image node. Although there is no real need for a caption below each image, you will almost always need alt text.

The problem was that Drupal wasn’t wrapping the caption in a span, which meant no easy way of hiding it without digging into the module code. This is the HTML output:

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<img class="image _original" width="200" height="75" title="Sunset" alt="Sunset" src="http://example.com/files/images/sunset.jpg"/>
<strong>Sunset</strong>