Simple Bug Tracking with Evernote

March 8, 2016 | Comment

I have been starting on a side project with my son this week where I am developing a small web app for him. He has left home a while ago so we needed to find a way to collaborate on the project without too much effort and without interfering with our day jobs. So, for example, we went through the requirements while travelling on a train up to London.

When it comes to testing and bug tracking we again needed something quick and simple. In the past I have used both The Bug Genie for work and Trello for smaller … Read the rest

Pebble Health Review

March 1, 2016 | Comment

As I have said a couple of times before I use a Fitbit to record my steps and have toyed with Misfit on my Pebble when that became available. My issue was that the gap in number of steps recorded was too great. So when Pebble Health was released I was keen to see whether this might finally be a replacement for my faithful Fitbit.

Pebble Health is a native watch app that does all the same step and sleep tracking as other fitness trackers such as Fitbit and the on-Pebble Misfit. Difference being that as this is developed by … Read the rest

Raspberry Pi GPS tracker – Connecting Without a Network

February 24, 2016 | Comment

All articles to date have been about getting the GPS working with the Raspberry Pi and converting the original Python code to PHP. All of this works well (for me) but what if you want to make changes to the settings or download the log file while you are out and about and away from your home network?

Normally what happens is that you configure your device to connect to a known network but as you are going to be using the GPS/Pi combination away from known networks you need a way to access anywhere without having to connect a … Read the rest

Raspberry Pi GPS tracker – Converting Code to PHP – Part 2

February 16, 2016 | Comment

In the last post I looked at converting the original Python code to PHP. This all ran without issue but I quickly found that because the Pi wasn’t connected to the internet the date and time of the device never got updated. This meant that the log files always had the wrong timestamp when they were created making it difficult to find the one I needed.

Turns out that there is a simple answer to this problem. As the GPS satellites include the current date and time as part of the detail that is sent along with the location we … Read the rest

Raspberry Pi GPS tracker – Converting Code to PHP – Part 1

February 9, 2016 | Comment

Last week I looked at getting the hardware up and running for a Raspberry Pi GPS tracker. However, as I said I was using some Python code and I don’t speak Python so I wanted to convert it to PHP. So this week I am going to look at what I did.

Before I could even begin to look at the converting the code I had to see if it was even possible for PHP to access the serial port. Turns out this is exactly what Direct IO (dio) is for but it isn’t included as standard so you … Read the rest

Raspberry Pi GPS tracker – Getting it Together

February 2, 2016 | 8 comments

Having secured a Pi Zero from the cover of a the magazine MagPi I thought I would start out simple by trying one of the projects shown there. The one that caught my eye and required no soldering was to build a GPS tracker.

Getting hold of a cheap USB unit was pretty easy but make sure it is Linux compatible. I bought this one from eBay.

The first thing I did when I got the unit was to try it out on the Pi and while it was working I could see that it had got a satellite … Read the rest

Kickstarter is a stock market not a super market

January 26, 2016 | 1 comment

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Kickstarter having backed many, many, many projects but, as you can see from the above screen grab, not everyone is of the same opinion and I believe that stems from a fundamental misunderstand about just what exactly a crowd funding site is.

The reason for the ire shown by the commenters above is that the project delivery end date is slipping and so people are becoming unhappy. In this particular project’s case the delivery date has slipped by approximately one month – in Kickstarter terms that is nothing, … Read the rest

Useful Excel for Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

January 20, 2016 | Comment

Like so many others I am a regular Excel user but having grown up on Windows finding equivalent keyboard shortcuts for the Mac can sometimes be a pain. Specifically how to manipulate cells.

So presented here as an aide memoir for me and hopefully it will prove useful to others:

Ctrl + u – edit a cell

Cmc + Alt + Enter – new line in cell

Enter – move to next cell below

Shift + Enter – move to next cell above< … Read the rest

Microsoft Universal Folding Keyboard

January 16, 2016 | Comment

Now that screens are getting bigger on mobiles it is becoming increasingly more practical to do work on them, especially now that Microsoft Office is available on most mobile devices.

The biggest issue I have though is typing on the screen. While it is fine for short emails and text messages it isn’t really practical for longer pieces such as this blog post. One issue is that the on-screen keyboard covers too much of the screen real estate. To overcome this I’ve had portable keyboards before but they have either been clumsy or heavy to carry.

Now enter Microsoft to … Read the rest