Welcome to Simon Philp's Blog

Oh my 2 posts in the space of a day what’s going on?  I blogged yesterday entitled “What’s Occurring” and i mentioned about projects being put to the side.  Well unfortunately I didn’t spend as much time as i would of liked to on helping the guys make this release. I’m not going to re-invent the wheel so please be sure to check out both Phil's and Simone’s post about this release:

• Phil Haack – Subtext 2.5 Released
• Simone Chiaretta - What’s new in Subtext 2.5: full-text search, related posts and more

Lots going on in the Subtext camp. If you’re looking for an asp.net blogging engine then check it out www.subtextproject.com .

Wow, it’s been 4 months since I last marked the internet with a blog post.  How time flies by and how things change.  I really don’t know where to begin but right now life is on a huge high.  A couple of months ago I changed jobs, no longer do i work in the beautiful city of Edinburgh but instead work locally. Not only have i moved working location but i have also changed industries.  Working previously in a law firm brought many merits, being able to expose new technologies to help the firm succeed to new friendships.  Now I am working within the financial industry learning constantly working with asp.net 4 and other technologies.

 

Is that it?

Well, no it’s not.  Far from it in fact. Anyone who knows me or follows me on twitter will probably be feed up with me talking about either spin classes, body attack or body combat. I decided to take a plunge and go WAY outside my comfort zone and sign up and train to become a body combat instructor. Yes, you heard right.  For a couple of months now i have been studying and doing practical weekends to gain my Exercise to music qualification. My Les Mills Body Combat instructors course is now booked. Hoping I pass my exercise to music theory exam I should be qualified by the end of the year. WATCH THIS SPACE.

I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported and encouraged me.  I think I’d be here a while if I was to name everyone but you know who you all are.  Already a couple of people have offered to let me shadow/team teach after my module, THANK YOU… 

Another thank you to Drummond Education instructors, Kerry, Anne and Gillian for 2 drooling weekends of hard work and lots of fun. Over the duration I have learned a fair bit some of which is still trying to sink in and and made some fantastic new friends.

That’s all?

Yes it is, for now. The above has been positive in terms of focusing on pushing myself beyond my comfort zone but all this has come at a price. Gym, study, work, gym and then more study meant very little time to do anything else.  Unfortunately personal and other projects were put on hold during this time and I am sorry. Over the next couple of weeks and months I’ll be getting back into the swing of things.  I have an array of posts that I need to finish off in relation to a variety of topics including subtext, jQuery,Telerik controls, personal projects and a new series of posts entitled “I’m not a designer but I do have ideas”.

 

In no particular order here are some of the fitness blogs I check regularly. I have complete respect and admiration for these guys:

• Dan Cohen
• Gillian Foley
• Grandnat
• NZ Glen
• Mawgan Woodland
• Tommy Damani

I've had my new sky hd box since around Christmas time last year. While the engineer was installing it he updated the software on it from:

 

  =

to:

  =

Now I've never had any problems with basic functions such as changing channels, rewinding etc up till now.  The new software is appauling. Don't get me wrong the functionality that the new software brings is a huge improvement over the previous version but usability is a nightmare.  At one point I had pressed play over 10 times before the box actually responded.

Anyone know of a way to make this bearable? Really getting beyond a joke now.

Anyone who follows me on twitter will no doubt be fed up hearing about my daily gym chat. Yes, I am addicted, I do have a problem :P. One of my main classes I attend is Body Combat.  A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post about this latest addiction, Discovering Les Mills - Body Combat. Within this post I mentioned the program directors Dan and Rachael Cohen along with an instructor who posts his own videos on youtube Tommy Damani.

Tommy is the reason I write this. For anyone who hasn’t heard of Tommy here is a short bio:

One of Sydney's leading combat instructors. Moved to Melbourne quite some time ago now and i teach here. I am what i am cos i give my class all that i have.

On the 6th of this month Tommy posted a video on his youtube channel that sent a chill to all this subscribers.

One user commented :

Your stuff is awesome. And then I watched the knee video. What terrible news. I hope everyone's positive vibes will bring the best result. Instructors / performers like you are so rare. All the best xxxxx –  FitFrog

This news is very saddening. As you can tell from his videos he’s very passionate about what he does and this injury obviously sets him back in many aspects of his life. Tommy has setup a website that will make it easier for subscribers to engage him aswell as post updates.

http://www.tommydamani.com

On his site he has a donate page where anyone can help towards his surgery costs ($5000).  Am sure if all the people who have watched his videos/subscribed donated even $1 then the target would be reached very quickly.  I know I’ll be donating, so why don’t you?

Links:

• Donation page
• Tommy on youtube
• Tommy on twitter
• Tommy on facebook
• Les Mills official body combat site

As mentioned in my previous post we got a nice white Christmas this year with an impressive amount of snow.  While walking back from the shops i managed to take this picture on my phone:

I hope the snow continues to be with us till the new year. I am hoping to get up north for some snowboarding as the webcams are showing good coverage on the majority of resorts.  I plan on hitting Aviemore, Nevis and Glencoe. Watch this space for pictures :) Have a nice Boxing Day, if you're travelling have a safe journey. 

 If you have any pictures you'd like to share like the above then please comment and leave a link.

 

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Well this morning was a bit of a shock when I looked out the window to find the below:

This was the result of 3 hours of heavy snow. What a day, been out snowboarding, yes, in Dalgety Bay :)

I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Stay safe and to a fabulous 2010.

If you’re on twitter then you may have noticed the #uksnow appear in the trending topic. Watching the trend on twitter or a desktop client isn’t going to do anything for you. However, Ben March has developed the #uksnow Map 2.0 whereby a twitter user can update their status like the following #uksnow EH3 0/10. The status broken down.......

At the end of last month I started working on tweaking my subtext skin so that I can increase my YSlow score. 

What did I do?

1. Merged several css files into one sheet
2. Merged JavaScript files into one file
3. Put items 1/2 files onto a CDN
4. Placed site wide images on a CDN
5. Moved the JavaScript calls to the bottom of the page
6. I also merged xfn icons into one image and used a CSS sprite

Before YSlow:

After making some changes I managed to increase my score by……….

Using the Firefox plug-in httpfox I checked to see what the results were. After removing again web/script resources and Google stuff (total was 24) this is the outcome

Previous totals were Time: 21.202 Sent: 23081 Received: 216529.

After totals are Time: 11.196 Sent: 6066  Received: 133105.

I also reduced the number of http requests from 37 to 13.

I am happy with my score going from F33 to C72. Running the other 2 YSlow tests over my site as the above is YSlow(V1) I get the following results:

• V2 – Grade B score of 80
• Small site or blog – Grade A score of 90

 

What next?

This was a quick experiment on my homepage to see how easy it was to make a small difference.  From what I learned I will be implementing in my new skin hoping to beat the score of 72.  I will also be submitting a patch to the subtext project with the xfn css sprite changes i made.

Resources:

• CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them
• The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials
• Google App Engine

It wasn’t until a friend Simone on twitter stated about how it’d been snowing all night that I suddenly realised, I’ve not checked the weather reports for up north. Yes, this year I am late in checking out my usual winter haunts. Usually I am on top of any sign of snow fall up in the highlands in hope that the season will kick off early. Like the previous posts:

• What a pretty sight... Early Season? - Oct 2008
• Nevis gets some powder - Nov 2007
• Man is it cold – Oct 2006

In between the above posts there have been trips up north and abroad that can be found:

Rest of snowboarding posts

Off I went to http://ski.visitscotland.com to check out some of the web cam pages and what a big surprise I got.

Glencoe

*both images from - http://www.glencoemountain.co.uk/

Cairngorms

both images from - http://www.cairngormmountain.co.uk/snow-sports-at-cairngorm-mountain

Nevis Range

No images available from this month. The last web cam images was uploaded on 8th of last month (time of this post).  These can be found

http://snowsports.nevisrange.co.uk/

 

This weekend will see me putting my boards in for a full service in preparation for what I will hope be a fantastic season. I can’t wait to use my flow bindings again as this year they proved to be a worthy investment, click, click and away you go :)

Other Resources

• Nevis Range on twitter
• Cairngorms on twitter

I know the new skin for my site is overdue but I am waiting for the next release of subtext so I can fine tune my skin to any changes made in the release. During this lapse I have been contributing to the project and I have also been adapting another nice theme that will be finished in the next couple of days.

This post is related to a previous post, ongoing maintenance where I talk about my sites YSlow score (33) :(.

Using the FireFox plugin httpfox I loaded up my website and was fairly surprised by the following results: (note i have removed web/script resources and google stuff, total was 52)

Looking at the time total above 21.202. The list in full total was 30.441.  That’s some time considering everything is straightforward no fancy stuff nor is it image heavy.

What’s the plan?

1. Remove any redundant tags.
2. Check images have been compressed properly and are right size.
3. Reduce number of javascript files.
4. Reduce number of css files.
5. Use CSS sprites where possible.
6. Removed unused javascript/css and compress.
7. Add static site files to a CDN.

All the above is pretty straightforward but I’ll need to investigate how to reduce the core files related to subtext and possibly suggest these changes in a future release.

I plan on using Google App Engine for my personal CDN. I’ll put up a blog post on how simple it is to get setup and running.

Let the fun begin……..

 

Quick post about the recent release of Clubland 16. This 3CD compilation has some fantastic tracks. If you need something to give you a little kick up the back side at the gym and don’t mind a bit of hard dance then this little number is perfect.  At current time of writing, you can buy this from Amazon for £11.98 which includes free delivery in the UK.

The workout kicks off with an Ultrabeat cover of Use Somebody from the Kings of Leon followed by an Ultrabeat remix of Cheryl Cole’s – Fight For This Love.  I wouldn’t just listen to all the CDs in order as there are some tracks that i don’t like. If you’re working out what does it matter?  I can see this being used by many spin instructors, several tracks have a natural rush that would easily get people motivated and possibly singing. An absolute belter is CD 3 track 10 : DRT – Take me Away. Warm-up track, conditioning or upper body it certainly would do justice.

Overall gym rating would be 8.5/10. Defo one for the iPod.

There has been quite a few tracks that have caught my attention lately from the house, trance and euro genres. I think it' may be time to wipe the dust off the decks and get a couple of gym mixes on the go?  I keep forgetting about my podcast site, keep an eye for future mixes……

Check out Clubland 16 on Amazon

BODYCOMBAT™ is a non-combat, martial arts-based fitness program with moves drawn from Karate, Tae Kwan Do, Kung Fu, kickboxing, Muay Thai and Tai Chi. Each 55-minute BODYCOMBAT™ class is choreographed to 10 tracks of the latest music, providing an exhilarating exercise experience that delivers ultra-fast fitness results. * taken from official Les Mills body combat site

For anyone that knows me or follows me on twitter will know that for the last 8 months I have been addicted to spin classes at my local gym. I do spin 4 – 5 times a week depending on who’s taking the class as I personally believe that the instructor, music and style make the class. After months of friends trying to persuade me to try body combat, I did 3 weeks ago, body combat 40 (behind in releases).  I have to admit that the day after was fairly sore mainly down to using muscle groups I don’t normally work as hard or at all.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and I am now doing it twice a week (working up to 4). During a class my heart rate is hitting about 177 and burning around the 820 cal mark an hour. If you’ve never heard of Body Combat and want to try something different then check out the official Les Mills body combat site.

On the site Dan and Rachael Cohen go through some of the moves involved in a release. Doing the moves right saves you from injury so is worth checking out or asking an instructor. For an insight on a typical class I would check out Tommy Damani’s youtube site. The current release I am doing (40) can be found on my playlist - body combat 40 - tommy vs kayleigh. My favourite within this release is track 3(speed ball) and 7(Muay Thai).

The launch of the next release is happening at my gym in a couple of weeks and I am looking forward to what it brings.

I would thoroughly recommend Body Combat so what’s stopping you?

If you’re on Facebook or twitter you can be a fan of or follow Dan and Rachael

Dan Cohen – Twitter

Dan Cohen – Facebook

Rachael Cohen - Twitter

Rachael Cohen - Facebook

In the past I have posted about holiday tunes:

• New additions to the snowboarding playlist
• Some holiday tunes for Majorca 2008

With me going on holiday to Tenerife soon I thought I would do another round up of what’s on my iPod along with other bits and bobs.  * Photo by Guido’s.

Current holiday podcasts :

• Dj Cruze
• Dj Ted Eiel
• One Phat Dj
• Martin Lucas
• Trance Euphoria – Dj Discovery
• Dance Department
• Scott Mills Daily
• Urban World UK Rnb/Hiphop
• DJ D.Lux
• Evil Rabbit Podcast *
• illjazz *

Albums bought:

• Fierce Disco Remixed
• Fierce Angel presents El Divino Ibiza 2009 only £3.99
• Hed Kandi: Beach House 91
• Gatecrasher's Trance Anthems (1993 - 2009)
• The Fame - Lady Gaga
• The Script
• The E.N.D - Black Eyed Peas
• 21st Century Breakdown - Green Day
• Humbug - Arctic Monkeys
• Q - the Anthems

I listen to a range of music types and the above just scratches the subject but hope it brings joy to your holiday as i know it will mines. :)

On the run up to the holiday I have also bought a fair bit from one of my favourite shops Boardwise. They’ve had a fantastic sale going on over the summer and I’ve managed to pick up quite a few bargains. Worth checking out. The new Burton Logo Fill Get Lucky Tee is looking very nice and will be the next purchase on pay day. If you know of any other podcast or album that should be on the list please comment or get in touch.

* Added after being contacted

First thing if you’re using subtext for your blogging engine then I would like to point you in the direction of Phil Haack’s blog where he has announced an important security issue.

Secondly it’s been a while since I posted about the progress of my site re-vamp. Due to work and personal reasons this has taken longer than expected. I’m trying to outline my steps in posts, going from conception to implementation. I’ll be posting them once I have made the skin live in hope to help someone out there.

If you have a subtext blog and taken the plunge to create your own skin then why not share it with other subtext users? You could put it on subtextskins.com for all to use or on subtext google groups page giving other users some influence to take the dive. If you’re thinking about creating your own skin then check out the documentation. My last skin I done for a friend can be found over at Andy Kemp’s website. He’s hacked it quite a bit since I passed him the basic skin files. When I have a free moment will pack up the skin and put it on the skins website for all :)

Ok maybe the title is a little harsh? I hate spammers with a passion. If it’s not online drugs, it’s casinos or fake banking site phishing for details.

I don’t usually write about the random junk I get but this email stuck out. Did you know Microsoft had a consumer award of which you can win a cool half mill? I don’t believe for one minute that anyone would take such a thing seriously? This reminds me of the 419 eater site which tempts me to setup a temp email address and fire something back to this person, have some fun? Can we get this person to Photoshop a passport together to prove their identity?

Who’s to blame? What can we do to stop these pests from using server resources? Looking at message labs statistics for spam on a global ratio  May/June 2009 was a staggering 90.4% (1 in 1.1 emails). If you put this into the context of millions/billions think of the bandwidth and processing power used to send/block all these emails, someone has to pay these bills.

Fortunately technology moves on and as the end user we tend not to see alot of these emails.  Companies take on managed services that use sophisticated algorithms and anti-spoofing checks to ensure spam doesn’t get through to their users. Chances are there will always be a small percentage that get through the once, but then the system learns and once more the door is shut. Is a vicious circle and luckily enough vendors are usually quick off the mark.

Enough of me ranting on, to my “winning email” :

Note: if you’ve not gathered already this is NOT a real Microsoft competition and this email is not associated with Microsoft nor did it originate from them. I have removed Microsoft’s trademarks that was used in this email and a known Microsoft Address.

Subject : SPAM-LOW: You are a Winner

Your Email address has been picked online in this second quarter's 
MICROSOFT CONSUMER AWARD as a winner of a lump sum payout of Five 
Hundred Thousand Pounds Sterling "£500,000.00" in the international 
winners category.

Please complete Cheque Requisition Form / Worksheet below

1. Full Names:.........
2. Home Address:.......
3. Age:................
4. Sex:................
5. Marital Status:.....
6. Occupation:.........
7. Tel/Mobile No:......
8. Country:............

Attested information should be emailed to Mr Tony Adams: 
fiduciarytonyadams@live.co.uk

Congratulations from Microsoft promotions program.
Best Wishes.
Award Committee.

Looking at the raw headers it would seem that the email was sent from a mail server in Italy. I have forwarded the email to the abuse email address given when looking up the IP address, will anything be done about it?  Probably not.

For more information about being safe online please check out Get Safe Online.