I recently picked myself up an 8GB Ipod Nano, I spend a fair bit of time walking my little dog Murphy and I’ve found it great for both music and more recently podcasts. So much so, that I quickly got few to the few podcasts I was subscribed to, so went in search of more. I’ve listened to and liked very much:
The new editions to my list are:
I’ll pipe back in a couple of weeks and give my thoughts on the new ones.
I noticed some problems with my browser (FF2/Ubuntu) with the Sifr headings on the posts, so I’ve commented them out, sorry about the horrible blue heading links ;)
Kind of pre-launched a site for a friend this week, he’s started a new business with a slight twist of a limosine service, he’s going to be ferrying people around in a fully-tracked articulated vehicle, which is kind of like a tank people carrier. Will post later with a press release and a few technical tidbits on the site.
I’ve been sitting on some code updates for www.which-broadband.net for a while now, what seems like ages ago I added a simple news section and adding link redirecting along with click tracking, but didn’t get around to releasing it. I actually made a couple of sales of the site the last couple of months, so I thought I’d make a little effort to tidy things up, but decided to do it the long winded way and learn something in the process. I’ve read lots about Capistrano before, but never really put it into practice, now seemed like the time and also to try the ActiveRecord’s migrations. Most of it went swimmingly, the biggest annoyance I found was ActiveRecords MySQL implementation, in that the BIGINT’s I had were only integers to ActiveRecord so once I created the database with migrations, the columns wouldn’t hold a number large enough. I got round this by making the columns strings and overiding the accessor and modifier in the model in question and then things were fine. I also had problems where I was reading the Capistrano one manual, but using version 2, which has some major differences. Anyway now I have an updated version of my site online, plus an automated deployment tool readily available, lets hope I’ll make more frequent updates. I’m doing a few little tests with AdWords to see if I can do any click-flipping, if nothing works I’ll just leave it alone for now, don’t have the time to push it too hard.
Been a long time since I’ve posted, taken a step back from freelance work as of late and I’ve been doing lots of other things. One of them is reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done
A simple way of sending SQL to your database from everyone’s favourite editor Vim, without any plugins or macros.
Firstly we need to add a custom command to our .vimrc, open it up and add the following line, where:
:command -range=% CommandName :<line1>,<line2>w !mysql -uUsername -pPassword Database -t
For example:
:command -range=% SendDB :<line1>,<line2>w !mysql -utest -ptest test -t
That’s all the setting up we need. As you can see, after the exclamation mark is just the regular MySQL Command line tool and various options.
Fire up vim and start editing your sql.
# vim test.sql
As an example, here’s some simple SQL.
-- Drop existing table
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `test`;
-- Create table
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `test` (
`test_id` INT(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`name` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`test_id`)
);
-- Add our data
INSERT INTO `test`(`name`) VALUES('dave');
-- Get it back out again
SELECT * FROM `test`;
If we’re happy with what we’ve written, while in command mode, type :SendDB, or whatever you called your command and hit enter. If it works, you’ll see something like this.
~/test.sql[+][sql] unix :SendDB +———+——+ | test_id | name | +———+——+ | 1 | dave | +———+——+ Press ENTER or type command to continue
You can always add to the custom command, in particular piping the output to less can be effective for larger result sets.
I’ve just seen the following Adsense block on the Ubuntu Forums, not seen one before. Click the thumb to see the full size image.
SlashMySearch is a internet search engine that pays it uses as they search. An interesting thought, I’m sure there are plenty of sites like this out there, but I thought I’d give it a try. I came across it at CJCM and IT via ProBlogger.
Simply signup and set your unique URL as your homepage. I don’t think it’s everybodies cup of tea and it might get a little annoying but it’s got to be worth a try. They also run a referral program, so tell your friends!.
I figure it’s about time I updated my blog and designed a new theme, but before I do I thought I would tidy this one up and release it. just like I told ‘Big John’ from Position is Everything I would do well over a year ago. It’s far from perfect, but I kind of like it and it made a good project for me to experiment with some new design technologies.
The layout is based on the The Jello Mold Piefecta Layout, being a 3 column, source ordered, fixed width, equal height column layout. The template also uses sIfr ( to produce rich and accessable headings.
Looking back I was clearly influenced by Mike Davidsons Blog design, for which I apologise to him and in no way take credit for the ‘look’ of the theme.
Get the zip or gzipped tarball. Feedback and comments would be appreciated, but not quite as much as bug reports and fixes.
A couple of days behind with this one, but I thought I’d post to help out. As alot of the PHP community have mentioned, The PHP London user group are running the UK’s second dedicated PHP conference on Friday, 23rd February. Confirmed speakers thus far are, Cal Evans, Simon Laws, Kevlin Henney and Rasmus Lerdorf.
I didn’t make it last year but will see what I can sort out this year.
Dave Marshall is a Web Developer living in Hull, England. He works on various personal projects and is the Lead Developer at C Spencer Ltd, a multi-discipline engineering contractor.
