I posted a couple of highlights from 2011 the other day and it wasn’t until after it went live and I re-read it that it struck me just what i have achieved throughout the last year.  I have great people/friends in my life who have believed in me, stuck by me, pushed me, and i thank them. I have set myself a couple of goals this year which i think are achievable. Personal I’d like to lose between 8 – 12kg. Take more life pictures. Snowboard more. Learn how to surf. Take up Tae kwon do. Pursue a senior developer type role to take on bigger challenge...

Who would think that 140 characters could make such a huge impact on the world? From a father being reunited with his daughter after 11 years to a chance encounter with a space shuttle. Twitter showcases all such tweets over at http://stories.twitter.com

I have just recently came across a browser that uses Google’s Chromium source code called ChromePlus. I am a big fan of Chrome, so if you like Chrome you’ll like this browser as it comes with alot more functionality instead of having to find an add-on. When you first run the browser nothing jumps out at you but when you go into the options you find it’s hidden treasures. From closing tabs with a double click, or even assigning a “boss key” the customisation straight out the box is excellent.  Check it out...

Not everyone has updated their website to integrate with Google+. This Chrome extension makes it possible to +1 any webpage which means you’re sharing it with your friends and contacts. The Google +1 button sits to the right of the address bar being very easy to share anything of interest. Check it out: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kmonhedbcpagbphilnoajiencllnpoii?hl=en-US&hc=search&hcp=main

Have you ever searched for something and the result shown is from a content farm that has scrapped or imported content say from stackoverflow? For me this is happening more and more until i found this Chrome extension. You can block these junk sites with ease. Why waste time and click on 2nd rate links? Check it out : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef

Share links, photos, messages to all your favourite social media networks may it be Facebook, Google+ or Twitter with this Chrome extension. Check it out over at : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kcglanoaanmpjcajbkpeajcaimokahpd?hl=en-GB&hc=search&hcp=main

If you’re like me and use Google as the central location for you contacts, calendar etc then this Chrome extension could help you organise your life that little bit better. You can add Facebook events such as birthdays to your Google calendar within a couple of clicks. Install the extension and a “add to calendar” will appear as an option on the top of a Facebook event page. One click and it’s saved. Check it out : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kdcimpbhnilcgolicdnepifecokinjof?hl=en-US

My my my, for some reason the internet has been bombarded with lots of beta sites: National Trust   BBC   Radio Time – Now Live Asp.net   You can see several UI patterns going across all of the above sites. Everyone making good use out of space. I have no idea why the beta asp.net site still has ads. Please replace with something more interesting please, you’re the only site that i was disappointed in.

I have a couple of other blogs that run on the popular WordPress blogging engine.  Linux hosting compared to windows hosting is much cheaper by comparison.  My most recent site ViPR blog runs on WordPress hosted by DreamHost.  Up until now Google Analytics has just been enough for me but I wanted to know more about my visitors. DreamHost offer stats on domains hosted with them and as such append it to the domain.  For example mydomain.com/stats/ but if your running WordPress then accessing it just isn’t possible due to the url rewriting rules that WordPress sets up in the .htaccess...

For people who use Gmail as their email provider there are a couple of features that can as the title suggests “protect yourself from yourself”. I am going to cover 2 features you may or may not of used or even heard of, Mail Goggles and Undo Send. Feature 1 – Mail Goggles Within mail settings go to labs and search for Mail Goggles: Once enabled, depending on the time of day will confront you with a maths problem. To be able to send an email you will need to answer the questions correctly. Feature 2 – Undo Send As before within mail settings go...

The internet has opened the world to communication, education, news and many other fantastic things however, there is a dark side. Viruses, Malware, Phishing sites, lots of baddies'. An innocent website you're on, harmless, seems real until you get your bank statement in and you've been a victim of online fraud. Protection comes in the form of keeping your operating system, browsers, anti-virus product up to date. Most of these sit in the background churning away some needing interaction of sometime. What if you had a hidden layer protecting you and your family from nasty's out there, also having the option...

Over the last couple of months my laptop has been slowly grinding to a halt. I posted a blog about small but useful tools that included a program called what’s in your startup. While this helped reduce the amount of applications loading up with windows, I wanted to clean up the rest of my laptop without having to do a full re-format. I had a hunt around the internet and found some good free applications. Before installing anything please check with the application requirements. I use Windows 7 but am sure most will work with the Windows platform. * Junk Yard picture...

What’s in your startup? This application weighs in at 50k, yes 50k. This program shows all the software that starts up along side windows. You can easily disable any item temporary or permanent. Is your laptop or desktop getting slower and slower when you first log in, check out what’s in your startup - WhatinStartup Defragment your hard drive Taken from the UltraDefrag website: UltraDefrag is a powerful Open Source Defragmentation tool for the Windows Platform. It can defragment any system files including registry hives and paging file. Also one of the main goals of UltraDefrag is doing the job as fast and reliable as...

This post is a carry on from my previous post organising photographs. If you’re like me I can snap away at random objects, landscapes, buildings, any excuse really. An example of this can be seen below taken on my way to work. Sunrise down at Leith Docks in Edinburgh. This photo isn’t the original as you can tell from the quality but it highlights that it’s moments like this you’re glad mobile phone technology has advanced over the years. Over time I have built up an arsenal of software I use to help process images. TSR Watermark Image If you’re going to be posting your...

Having an iPhone I find myself taking alot more spontaneous photographs.  By far I am not a professional photographer, but I like to think I have an eye for a picture.  At my old work place I use to use Macromedia Fireworks for touching up photographs or image manipulation/creation.  When leaving I started to hunt about to see if there were any good free opensource alternatives and I came across Paint.Net.  A year or so later I thought I would revisit this area to see if there are any others out there worthy of using. Virtual Studio Chasys Draw IES Paint.NET GIMP Fotografix

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.......

Having dual monitors is now really a common element for any developer or designer.    I thought I would share some of the links I have collected in relation to backgrounds and applications that can make the dual experience better. Backgrounds http://www.dualmonitorbackgrounds.com http://www.csbmb.princeton.edu/~smcclure/dualmonitor.html http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/downloads/date/any/ http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/wallpaper/multidisplay/#order=9 http://www.dualscreenwallpaper.com/ http://www.3datadesign.com/gallery/eng/ http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/70-beautiful-dual-monitors-desktop-wallpapers/ Applications UltraMon – Lots of useful features. Display Fusion - Free Multi-Monitor Desktop Wallpaper Software. ...

Update It's been over 2 weeks since I last posed on my blog and the reasons are simple, holiday and real life.  Holiday to Majorca was fantastic,  unfortunately the weather wasn't that great but with old and new friends much fun was had.  Yes, being British, chucking it down with rain and we're all the in the pool playing volleyball.  I am not sure if it was holiday spirit or the vodka slushes but everyone was having a laugh.  I will be uploading all the holiday pictures to Flickr over the next couple of days.  If you'd like to see...

It's that time of year again whereby Andy and I had the opportunity to attend Intechnologies golf day. This being our second time down we had an idea of what the day was to consist of. Like last year we signed up to the beginners section whereby a golf pro would show us how to hit the ball may it be with a driver, number 7 or a putter. This year there was certainly alot more people which meant that there were 3 beginner groups all rotating to the 3 various areas of the course. I'd...

The time is near.  My current hosting packages have been outgrown.  I have a couple of projects that require access to resources shared hosting can't offer. This ranges from asp.net trust issues to database performance issues. I can save £5 a month by merging both my windows hosting packages into an Easyspace VPS solution a month.  This does look good on paper but I have my concerns.   Easyspace VPS solutions come with a 12 month minimum contract of which I am dubious about.  On a realistic level  there will only be about 4 websites hosted on this virtual server.  3 low...

For the last 2 months my Norton Anti Virus has been shouting at me since my subscription has now expired.  Today I thought it's about time I done something about it as you can be as careful as you can but , some how chances are those nasties will work there way onto your machine.  Once a nasty is on your machine then who knows what it'll do? Maybe turn it into a zombie to do what's needed steal your personal information make it unusable?   I would like...

A while back you may remember that I posted an item Biggest iPod to date.  After posting the problem I was experiencing in the forums over at apple it would appear that my machine was confusing my iPod with a network drive.  After reading the article it all fell into place however what I was more confused about was where my iPod was getting its name from.  It's still not known but I am glad to have control over my iPod again. This leads me on to the following articles that were posted a couple of days ago over at lifehacker. ...

On Wednesday morning Andy and I travelled down to Harrogate to our Datacentre to drop off a couple of servers before heading to our hotel in preperation for the InTechnology Golf Day.  During our tour of the centre one of the private suites stuck out like a sore thumb.  On to the golf day.  Being complete novices to the game Andy and I were put into the beginner teams where we learned to putt and pitch along with driving.  It was then a matter of playing 3 holes where unfortunately Andy's team won. Andy also walked away with 2 bottles of...

After reading some posts over on sitepoint regarding the recent release of Safari public beta I thought I would download it and see what the hype was all about.  I have to say that I use both FF and IE quite alot at home and at work. Now 2 browsers have a huge market so what can Safari offer over Internet Explorer and FireFox? The fastest web browser on any platform, Safari loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.8 times faster than Internet Explorer...

iPhone combines three amazing products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device.Source :http://www.apple.com/iphone/   This ad was forwarded to me.  The phone looks and sounds the business. Looking at it's spec I have to say that being revolutionary the onboard camera could have been a bit better rather than just 2 mega pixels.   The rest of the ads can be found at Apples wesbite http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ Release date is the 29th of June 2007. Am not sure if...