The Paperlike2 for iPad

November 15, 2019 | Comment

If there is any gadget related job worse than cleanly applying a screen protector to a device I don’t know what it is. So it was with mixed emotions when my Paperlike2 arrived in the post this morning.

Paperlike2 is yet another Kickstarter project but one that had a higher chance of success as it it the follow-up to, of course, Paperlike. Basically Paperlike is an iPad screen protector that adds a slightly course layer on top of the screen making it more, well, paper like, and better for writing and drawing.

Application

But before you can get to the … Read the rest

Why Silence Unknown Callers is the Best Feature in iOS13

November 8, 2019 | Comment

I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the latest iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system with some pretty irritating bugs (although nowhere near as bad as the awful macOS Catalina release). However, there is one feature that I do love – Silence Unknown Callers (SUC).

The feature does pretty much what it says on the tin and at first seems something of a blunt instrument especially as it appears to only be on or off. There is, however, quite a bit of subtlety behind this toggle switch.

Why would you want to turn on SUC? Simply to reduce … Read the rest

Accessing Local Resources over the Internet with Packetriot

November 1, 2019 | Comment

When I am doing any development, such as for PostRecycler, I do the coding on my laptop running Apache, PHP and MySQL locally via MAMP. This is fine until I need to share work with others which means I have to either upload the work onto a public server or do it via screen sharing. Neither are particularly ideal.

I was vaguely aware of the service ngrok which allows you to expose your local services on the web and then, via Reddit, saw the similar service Packetriot which does a similar thing so I thought I would give … Read the rest

In the Days Before Digital Downloads

October 26, 2019 | 1 comment

Digging through some old papers I came across a letter that I wrote to the magazine Your Computer in 1981 when I would have been 16.

What’s interesting about this historical artifact is not that it was hand written and sent through the post on paper (although that is certainly unusual these days). No it is that it contains a submission for publication of a program that I’d written.

It’s hard to believe in these days of digital software downloads that there was a time when programs were small enough that they could be printed in magazines and people actually … Read the rest

My Everyday Carry (edc)

October 18, 2019 | Comment

Everyday Carry, as defined by wikipedia, are useful items that are consistently carried on person every day. It has become something of a movement with people showing off their own edc which, in many cases regrettably, seems to include a knife.

Always one to jump on a bandwagon when it is passing I thought that I would present to you my minimalist edc which you can see above and includes:

A couple of these items (Spooly and Mu) have been sourced from Kickstarter projects. I have to … Read the rest

How to pass multiple parameters in and out of PHP functions

October 11, 2019 | Comment

At some point in your PHP development you are likely to want to break repeated functionality out into a separate, well, function. Something that you’ll no doubt also want to do is pass information back and forward from these functions.

If you are familiar with scope in programming you will be aware that variables are typically only available where they are created. This means if you create a variable called $name in the main part of your code you would not be able to “see” this variable in a function unless you passed it across. The scope of the variable … Read the rest

HyperCube: Auto Photo Backup USB Device

October 4, 2019 | Comment

The HyperCube is another Kickstarter project but unlike the tardy Spooly this one went from completion on 16th July to delivery in just eight weeks which must be some sort of record for projects I have backed.

The HyperCube’s premise is simple. It’s a USB dongle that allows you to backup multiple device’s photos and videos to some connected media while simultaneously charging. That media could be a microSD card, a USB stick or even an external hard drive. The idea is that it makes backup simple and could replace services such as iCloud thereby saving you money.

The Dongle

… Read the rest

How I Got Here

September 27, 2019 | Comment

Many people have meticulously planned lives. They have a goal, a direction of travel, a way of getting from A to B and the drive and ambition to reach that goal. Others wander aimlessly through life without knowing whether they have achieved any goal through dint of not having ever set one. Others find that luck guides them.

Then there is me. I had a direction of travel that I was more than happy with. I had a goal that I had set myself years before and had achieved but as is so often the case when you reach the … Read the rest

Spooly – the Long Kickstarter Wait

September 20, 2019 | 2 comments

I’ve written about Kickstarter on numerous occasions highlighting both the successes and the failures for me on the crowdfunding platform. Today I wanted to talk about the successful failure that is Spooly.

On June 9th 2016 the self-styled “World’s First Magnetic Charging Cables” was fully funded securing £70,000 more than the project goal. What had attracted me to the Spooly was the size, little more than the connector and a short cable, and that it would stay neatly together using a magnetic cable.

The Long, Long Wait

I handed over my money and waited. And waited. And waited. In … Read the rest

How to run code before every controller in CodeIgniter

September 13, 2019 | Comment
MY_controller

I have been working on my side project PostRecycler recently which I have re-written to use the CodeIgniter framework. I came across an interesting challenge where I needed to run some code before every other controller.

What I wanted was to prevent a user from moving away from the dashboard page if their account had expired but what I didn’t want to do was to have to remember to put that into every controller. I guess I could have done it as a helper function but that still would have meant putting a call to it in every controller. MY_Controller … Read the rest