Documenting MySQL Tables in MediaWiki

March 11, 2013 | Comment

The last few companies that I have worked for we have setup an internal wiki that everyone uses to hold information about all aspects of the business including, of course, the technical team. We use MediaWiki for this mainly because it is easy to setup and is also familiar to users through Wikipedia.

One area that we try and document is the database structure. Having this on hand and searchable in the wiki allows new employees to quickly get to grips with it and makes us all more productive.

The issue is that creating the MediaWiki tables by hand is … Read the rest

Recognising the Opportunity: I Could Have Written WordPress

March 5, 2013 | Comment

Over the last few weeks I have been moving the content from one of my other sites, The Williams Database, to WordPress. This means that all my sites are now running on what I consider to be the premier content management system but if I had acted differently a few years ago that might have not been the case.

In 1996 I launched a fan site to the Williams formula one team. In those days there wasn’t much of an internet to speak of, connection speeds were slow and access was costly but it was new and great fun. … Read the rest

Hacker Monthly

February 22, 2013 | Comment

I have a voracious appetite for technology news which by and large is satisfied by twitter and apps such as the excellent Zite.

An even more hardcore technology news source is Hacker News. This is little more than a collection of user submitted links that are that voted up or down by other users. Eventually interesting and popular stories float to the top of the list. Unfortunately there is far too much stuff there to read it all and sometimes I just want a leisurely offline read. Enter Hacker Monthly.

Hacker Monthly is a curated version of … Read the rest

Mailstrom

February 19, 2013 | Comment

Think it is going to be a while before my Mailstrom account is going to be ready…
This is what happens when you get a positive shout out from Lifehacker!… Read the rest

“Hello this is Windows Software Support”

January 29, 2013 | Comment

One of the things that I hadn’t been quite prepared for with working from home was the number of phone calls that I would get from random individuals. It’s actually quite ridiculous the number that feel I need help with my energy supply, PPI reclaim and so on.

However, until today, I hadn’t had one of those fabled calls from abroad telling me that I had an issue with my Windows PC and offering to remotely fix it for me.

Whenever the phone rings and the display says “International” my heart sinks but when this caller said that she was … Read the rest

Rule #1 – No Matter How Much Testing You Do Users Will Find Something You Didn’t

January 19, 2013 | Comment

I was casually looking through the database (as you do) for my side project The Chubby Challenge yesterday when I noticed something odd. The latest challenge to be created had a blank end date, something that you are not supposed to be able to do.

I immediately went to my test site to see if I could reproduce the issue and what I found was that even though you are supposed to select a date using a date picker you can still type something, anything, into the associated edit control. I guess that this is precisely what the user had … Read the rest

Sinclair ZX Spectrum Review

January 14, 2013 | 1 comment

Here’s one for all you computing history buffs out there. Two reviews of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum from PCW and Practical Computing magazines in July 1982. (Hey, hey, 16k)

… Read the rest

The Bane of Family Tech Support

January 12, 2013 | Comment

One of the occupational hazards of working in the IT industry is that you become official tech support for family and friends.

There is a expectation that you will be an expert in all forms of technology.

My mother-in-law regularly asks me questions about her android phone, for example, despite I having never owned or used such a device. My requests for her to move to an iPhone or use my wife who has exactly the same phone as her have so far gone unheard!

Sometimes, however, the job is made so much harder by mischievous software vendors and I … Read the rest

Google Chrome 2012 A-Z

January 5, 2013 | Comment

John Rentoul in the Independent produced an A-Z list of sites Google Chrome takes you to if you just press the first letter and press enter. If you are logged in to Google then these results will be tailored to your usage.

I thought that it would be interesting to do the same and my results are below. What was interesting was that it was quite narcissistic in that several of my own sites appear on the list, although not this one. I was also surprised by what was missing. For example I would have expected to see Autosport under … Read the rest

Virtually, the UK Leads the World

December 17, 2012 | Comment

Fascinating new report from OFCOM which shows the the UK is still a world leader in one thing and that is consuming online content.

According to the report the UK is top dog when it comes to:

watching TV from catch-up services, such as the BBC’s iPlayer
online shopping. We spend an average of £1,083 per person per year online
accessing social networks on our mobiles

Watch a slightly surprised Yank go through the numbers in the video below or see the data courtesy of the Guardian here.

Go Team GB!… Read the rest