Evernote Quick Tip – Filter Out Skitch Notes

Evernote Quick Tip – Filter Out Skitch Notes

June 3, 2013 | 1 comment

Evernote is one of the most useful applications and I use it daily and with other apps such as Skitch, Penultimate and Hello it is becoming a real business powerhouse. However, while I like Skitch and welcome the Evernote integration to have all the random screen grabs I have taken showing in my notes timeline is really distracting.

Good news! It is possible to hide these as follows:

At the top of the note list select the icon to change the view. Hover over “Include” and then untick “Skitch Notes”. Simple as that. All the usefulness of synchronising with Evernote … Read the rest

Sloppy Development

Sloppy Development

May 17, 2013 | Comment

Screenshot_16_05_2013_10_51I spend all my working day dealing with software development and developers and have done so for the last 25 years. Over that time I have come across some interesting practices and learnt how to do things the right way. The five years I spent with Admiral Computing in particular was an invaluable education in delivering quality software.

So when I come across something like that shown to the left I find it both amusing and perplexing in equal measures. How can a menu item called “Test” make it through to a live system? Clicking the link takes you through … Read the rest

What we did Before Google

What we did Before Google

March 20, 2013 | Comment

IMG_6372I was away over the weekend and spotted this on my in-laws book shelf – The Internet Atlas by Richard Dinnick. A guide to the “best 1,000 sites on the web”.

Even though the book is only a few years old, it was published in 2000, it is a fascinating snapshot on what the web was like only thirteen years ago.

It includes sections on the browsers available which besides Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape also includes the first alpha version of Mozilla.

There is also a section on search engines which includes Altavista and Ask Jeves along with … Read the rest

Documenting MySQL Tables in MediaWiki

Documenting MySQL Tables in MediaWiki

March 11, 2013 | Comment

20130370_160381-CapturFilesThe 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

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

Hacker Monthly

February 22, 2013 | Comment

20130222-201903.jpgI 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