Mind the Gap

Took this on my trip to america last summer.­

A recent conversation on IRC and Yellow Stevens's post the other day about his Big Tick made me think: There are lots of things i would like to try. I should make a note of them before i forget.

There are so many things happening on this planet. Amazing things. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Even the things that are bad are amazingly interesting, and can give a whole different view on life. Too many people just do the same thing, day after day, without really experiencing anything really that different. Now, not meaning to brag, but i've done lots of things that most people havnt (if you really want to know some of them, just send me an email, facebook message, or whatever but im a modest kind of guy (no, really, it's true.)). So, here is a list of some of the things i still want to do at some point. Some of them are highly unrealistic, but humour me anyway. I will probably update this list many times and may even give it a more permanent home somewhere, somehow. Anyway... for now, here it is (excuse the rambly bits. its late, im tired, i just wanted to get this done before i forgot about it tomorrow):

•  Go to the actual north and/or south pole - i mean, how amazing would that be? the long days, or long nights, huge fields of ice. I really hope i get to do this some day
• Visit a war stricken area - OK. you're probably thinking "crazy" here but hear me out. Im not saying that i want to go kill people, or run around a mine field, but i believe that you would see some incredible things in places like iraq, afganistan etc. Yeh, they are incredibly dangerous and all that, and getting there isnt the easiest thing, but if someone offered me a job as an embedded photographer or something, i would seriously consider it. that would be quite an adventure.
• Hike through a proper, hardly visited, jungle - Right. Cons: really poisonous insects, reptiles etc, loads of deadly diseases, hard to get help if you get in to trouble. Pros: you get to see loads of cool things, some of which might have never been seen before! OK, they probably have, but not by many people. and you can see it in the wild as well! you just cant beat that.
• See some of those really poor communities in africa and south america - We have a pretty good life. even tramps on the streets of swindon have it pretty nice compared to some of the people in these areas. We see these appeals on tv all the time. £2/month for this, £1/week for that. They throw images of blind children and crippled old people on to our screens. I dont really know why, but i think its because you see all these charities trying to help them out and you always see these images, but it still isnt real. its a promotion. marketing. I would love to see it all first hand.
• Climb a really big mountain - Not everest. too high. I would probably die. but there are some other mountains that are also really big! i think something around 20,000 ft would be good.
  
• See the northern lights (aurora borialis (sp?)) - Because who doesnt want to see that?
  

Those were all quite big, expensive, trips. i really hope to do some of them but i realise that many will just be forgotten dreams. Here are some smaller things that are far more likely:

• Fly a helicopter - It just looks like fun
• Own a lizard, or maybe a few - lizards are awesome. need someone to look after them when i go away on holiday and things though...
• Get some of my photographs in a gallery somewhere - OK, im not that great, but i hope someday, something i do might be good enough for people to go "hmmm... how much?"
• Have a pet monkey - same problem as the lizard thing, but how cute would a little pet monkey be? a man can dream.
• Learn to throw knives - i doubt i will ever get around to this, but that would be a fun skill to have
• Learn gymnastics - will i ever be fit enough to do a backflip? probably not. but it would be cool if i could

And as im making lists, here is a big list of countries i want to visit, some of them for the second or third time:

• Kenya
• Egypt
• South Africa
• Brazil
• Canada
• Many states in America
  
• Japan
• Russia
• Iceland
• New Zealand
• West coast of Australia
• Cuba
• India
  

Im sure more things will be added to all of those lists. But its late. im off to bed.

This is Tialys, my nabaztag, Tony the T-Rex (a parting gift from PLC), Murray, the monitor dog and Parker the penguin.

I'm all about the alliteration today... 

but i intend to start blogging again. more regularly then once every 3 months as well. 

What have I been up to? Well, I finished my placement year at The Practical Law Company, which was great.  Just started uni again, which is ok. But they gave us coursework in freshers week... i think that is very unfair. I get the feeling this year will be a lot of work. I have to learn Ruby-on-Rails, do my final year project in it (12 hours/week minimum apparently), and all the other courses. Is there any time for fun? Im thinking of auditioning for Bugsy Malone, which MUGSS are putting on. It could be quite fun.

Anyway, that's about it. I will probably put a few photos and things up at some point. We'll see...

Symfony is great. Really great.

I always have a few projects on the sidelines. Most of them are just in the planning stages and have been like that for ages. Many probably will stay like that for ages. I seem to lack the time to really concentrate on them. That, and other "more interesting" things pop up. Anyway, my language of choice for the web is php. Mainly because its easy to write, runs without fuss and I know it. Many people hate it and I admit, it has its problems, but its not a bad language by any means. If it was, why would so many websites still use it?

 This post isnt about PHP though. One of the things that makes writing web apps so hard is stuctureing them in a way that makes them easy to maintain. There are many solutions to this out there and web frameworks have been springing up since the Web 2.0 thing hit a while back. I am now on the hunt for the best one. I have tried many of them. ModX was ok. more of a CMS really. CakePHP is great and i recently tried symfony. Fantastic framework but so complicated! The thing that annoys me about most of them though is that they lack user authentication code! The reason i want a framework is to take some time out of coding. A fairly standard feature of websites nowadays is user management, even if its just to allow a group of people to the admin side of a site. Many of these frameworks have modules for this but none of them seem to work that well, or at all. Im going to try seagull next. Hopefully that will do that job...

The choir i sing with, the St Martin Singers, are singing in Marlborough on June 2nd. It's our summer programme, and the gig starts at 7:30pm in St Mary's church. Tickets are £6 and the concert is in aid of Cancer Research UK.

More info below:

---

Saint Martin Singers
Conductor Terry Hogan
With actors Nicolette McKenzie & William Russell

A Celebration of Summer

Saturday 2nd June 2007 at 7:30pm
St Mary's Church, Marlborough

Tickets: £6 in aid of Cancer Research UK
In memory of Anthony Berryman

Information, Donations & Telephone bookings: 01672 514030
Online Bookings: http://tickets.hampsteadparishchurch.org.uk by special arrangement. These booking can be paid for by credit card using PayPal, but a fee of £1.00 will be added to each booking

 

Tickets will be held for collection on the night.

 

About the singers:
The singers meet at St. Giles-in-the-fields in central London and call themselves by the name of the Saint who cut his cloak in half in order to share it with a stranger; for by singing they seek to share the riches they enjoy through their music-making and fellowship. The professional readers, without whom the programmes would not be possible, in their generosity give of their time and artistry.
More information about the singers can be found at http://stmartin-singers.org.uk/

So much better then the guy running the place

It needs work. First, it isnt even my design. I know there is nothing wrong with using someone elses design, but i do like to have my websites at least party origonal. There are a few things i want to add to it as well. The images need something to make them look a bit nicer in a post. Some kind of border. And i would like to make all posts i do from my phone to have a little phone icon. Im sure none of this stuff will be hard to do, but it just takes time, which is something i always seem to be lacking. I have a number of projects on the go at the moment, and work during the day all week, and just find that all these little things, that probably wont take long just pile up and never get done. Maybe i can get some of them done this long weekend (yay for public holidays!). Projects that i am working on:

• opuscopus.com - Need to sort out and fix up an ecommerce system for this site. And it needs to be done soon.
• Hampstead Parish Church - I have been working on this on and off for a long time. The site needs a decent content management system. There dont seem to be any really good ones around. If you know of one that has an easy back end, allows for custom content types, with your own fields, and has a decent calendar and event system, let me know. i tried drupal. it would probably do the job if the admin interface wasnt so crap.
• Kaisa - my old server. I need to finish with its refit and reinstall.
• Server Management Site - all the various services all have their own management scripts that dont link at all. Im sure i can hack together something that means the dns and mail servers can share the same table for domains, and all that kind of stuff. Just needs to be thought out and done.

And there are all the other projects that have been in the works for a long time Music Spot, Secret Bars, Sleeping Students, the list goes on. Can someone cram a few extra days in to the weekend please?

I decided to set up this place so I can blog from my phone. That way I can send witty and amusing messages from anywhere! With any luck I will also be able to post photos from my phone so this crappy camera can finally get some use.

This guy was riding around at the skate park one lunch time. There was also a film crew there, and whether he was part of that, im not sure. He seemed to be having fun though, and he only fell over a few times!

I was wandering around Hampstead this weekend and saw this school playground as i was wandering past. It was all locked up (obviously - it was a weekend) but this bunny that was painted on the wall looked like it was locked in a cage.

I spent an hour or so this weekend fixing my desktop (one of my hard drives decided to die a while back, so i took the oppertunity to put a new one in and install the latest version of Ubuntu on iit) and at the same time, sorting out my desk so that all the cables and stuff around it were hidden away as much as possible. So now, on my desk i have three computers. My desktop, my laptop and my first rackmount server, that is in the process of being redone. To go with them, i have two monitors, a 17" tft and a 19" widescreen. I also have a removable hard drive, speakers + subwoofer, a midi keyboard and various other things like my USB hub and freeview box. As you can imagine, all of this takes up quite a lot of space, and uses lots of cables. I took a picture of it. [UPDATE:] I should have mentioned, the midi keyboard in the photo is on loan from Antony Copus. He very kindly lent it to me when I mentioned that I was thinking of buying one. So Antony, here is your mention!

The First Post. Many blogs have a 'first post' post. Something that says very little of interest, but generally fills that void until something interesting happens. I actually have written this post twice already today but due to a series of unfortunate events, both of them were lost in the ether. So third time lucky!

With any luck I will actually remember to write this time around. I have started a blog 3 times before and always managed to keep it going for a while but I always managed to just lose the time to post. This time will be different! Maybe. I hope to keep this updated with my musings on life, deliberations of current events (mine and other peoples) and also maybe throw in a few photos of mine, and other peoples that I think are worth commenting on. I take lots of photos so that shouldn't be hard.

So yes. Enjoy. Any comments about anything I write can be left by clicking the cunningly named "Add comment" link. If you want to get hold of me for whatever reason, maybe to offer me a drink or meal, or give me an all expenses paid holiday, email is generally best and there is a contact form here that will do all the hard work for you. Just fill in the boxes and hit send.

The name of this blog was thought up by someone i chat occasionally with on IRC (did i mention i was a geek? no? well, I am.) and it could mean lots of things. Please tell me what you think it means by leaving a comment here.

Have a nice day!