Great Git Tutorial
Found a great tutorial on git at GitImmersion today. Very useful for anyone looking to get started with Git. You can find it at http://gitimmersion.com/
Found a great tutorial on git at GitImmersion today. Very useful for anyone looking to get started with Git. You can find it at http://gitimmersion.com/
First off a Happy New Year!
2010 was a life-changing year for me. At the start of the year I met my current partner, Daiana who has in some ways turned my life upside down! As an example I now find myself spending a significant amount of time in Oradea, Romania, so much so I've been told it has turned into a second home! That's not the only major change I experienced the past year.
2010 was also the year I finished my BSc Computing degree at UHI Millennium Institute. As part of my degree course myself and two other students completed a project called;ToiletFinder. The purpose of ToiletFinder is to share, rate and review publicly accessible toilets. The aim of this is to improve provision of publicly accessible toilets and increase the quality of current toilets. The original idea came from a local hospital consultant and UHI Professor, Grant Cumming. ToiletFinder became such a success Moray College UHI, a UHI Millennium Institute academic partner decided to fund further research on ToiletFinder. This research is due for completion in February 2011. February 2011 is also another important date for ToiletFinder. Development of ToiletFinder has been taken over by OpenFinder, in February they will be launching a completely rewritten version of ToiletFinder to cope with the continued growth!
During the summer, UHI Millennium Institute gave myself and two other students the chance to attend the Web Science Summer Academy at the University of Koblenz-Landau. This involved spending 1 month in Germany studying, exploring, socialising and living in a different country. I had a fantastic time at the summer academy; living in Germany was a completely different and new experience and one that I loved. Living in a completely different country from the one you normally live in is an experience filled with excitement, trepidation and enjoyment, all at the same time and in almost equal measure. I met such a wide variation of people during the summer academy; there were students from Kazakhstan, Morocco, Ukraine and India to name a few. Academically it was great learning from some of the "masters" of the web science world. Although I had prior knowledge of some subjects I still learned so much. The academy also had an interesting course on the legal aspects of the Internet, web applications and commerce within this field. Personally for me this was the most enjoyable course from the three, it was also the least technical.
After my time in Germany was over I spend almost 2 months travelling around Romania. Romania is a warm, welcoming country which when you dig a little deeper in the surface has some real hidden gems, one of them being Brasov in Transylvania, in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains. Brasov and the surrounding area are astoundingly beautiful. It is a city full of character and charm, despite being a popular tourist destination, the centre of Brasov is still the same as it was hundreds of years ago during the Austro-Hungarian rule, sometimes you even think you're in Germany such is the building style. While there I went up Bucegi Mountain (pronounced Bushten), this was simply breath taking. My journey up was in a 4x4 Toyota, the kind used by the BBC in remote regions of the world. This made all the difference when the boy inside comes out. At the top it was simply amazing. In stark contrast to the peace and tranquillity offered by Brasov, Bucharest is at the other end of the scale. Bucharest is a hectic, bustling city.
Returning from Europe, Myself and another student were selected to participate in a pilot student incubator project with HIE and Horizon Scotland. With this we now have an office at Horizon Scotland. Being in such an inspiring place had been great for work. Professionally I have learned so much in a short space of time. I have met an extremely wide range of people during this time as well, some of which have been inspirational. I have also been part of the aforementioned web science research being carried out by Moray College UHI. The research has been an interesting and at times turbulent which I’m told is normal for research projects. OpenFinder has also been a learning curve for me. In education and research your focus is very much on producing the very best idea that has the most benefit, moving into the commercial world this isn’t the case. Suddenly you must focus on what ideas will make money and in the shortest period of time. The open authentication standard idea I have just won’t cut it in the commercial world.
The year rounded off by a short break in Florida and the Caribbean. Before zipping on to Christmas and to the present day, Oradea Romania, where I am now.
2011 for me will be full of exciting commercial prospects, product launches and who knows what in my personal life. 2010 has certainly been a year to remember by any standards. When I will have a year that can beat this I do not know. I have to thank a few people in particular for making 2010 what it was. To Daiana for her laughter, support and being my travel companion. Mark McConachie for his continued support, both professionally and personally. Stanislav Nedkov for the fun times during the ToiletFinder project at UHI, all the best Stan! Finally to Grant Cumming for his wit, guidance and medical insight, many evenings with you have been funny, insightful and profound. These people have made 2010 amazing. Now to see what 2011 brings!
I leave you with a few photographs that for me symbolise 2010. (click to view them full size)
Relaxing here on New Year's Day, browsing Facebook I didn't expect to see the below image. It brings the important question, What controls do advertising companies have? I mean Facebook is a very popular site looking to hit 500 million members this year, displaying content like this to younger viewers/readers cannot be good. If the ad network, in this case I think it's Microsoft do have ad controls why do Facebook allow content like this on their pages.
One to ponder for the future and certainly a consideration for me if and when I decide to use adverts on a website.
It was Thursday 22nd October that the face of British politics changed forever, well that’s what the media would have you believe. Before the broadcast of Question Time the press were clambering over the news that such a terrible politician could be making his way into our very own living rooms. After the show we still have a furore amongst certain groups.
I’ve read all of the recent news stories about how Nick Griffin encountered a “lynch mob” and the audience were unfairly biased against him. That aside the most interesting one for me is that a YouGov poll suggests that 22% of the electorate would “seriously consider” voting BNP the next chance they are at the polls. The most surprising part for me is that politicians from both Labour and the Conservatives have been lambasting this poll. We have Peter Hain talking about how the BNP have “hit the big time”. What confuses me about this having discussed this at length with several people is what is the real issue at heart? It is that the BNP have fascist roots and are racist or is that just a side?
For me this is demonstrating a much bigger problem, one that has become ubiquitous with modern politics. That is that they don’t listen to the voter’s concerns; more worryingly with the recent expenses scandal they have shown complete disregard even abhorrence. I’m sorry but how dare an elected official treat their voters, who lets not forget are their bosses in such a way.
Taking this back to a grass roots level I often hear the average person on the street talk about local authority services. One such example would be social housing. Some “native” or “ indigenous” people can wait many months’ even years for social housing. While this would be fair if it were a first come first serve basis this does not seem so. You can have such an “indigenous” person who has lived in an area for their whole life being refused housing yet having a immigrant/outsider/alien get a house almost immediately. How do the politicians think this makes people feel? Incensed?
This argument goes well beyond being a tolerant society and racism. People who have lived somewhere all of their life feel a sense of entitlement, at least in comparison to an immigrant. I mean we now live in a society where it’s offensive to say blackboard and whiteboard.
Now more than ever I think we need some sense injected into society. Racism, fascism are all just covers for the excuses of the mainstream political parties failures in recent years. They need to start sitting up and listening to the real concerns of voters and stop this political correctness nonsense. People don’t care about the colour they want to know why somebody from a foreign country got a house before they did.
Writer’s Footnote:
While this may sound very biased towards the BNP, I personally wouldn’t vote for them, nor would I vote Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or even the SNP after Angus Robertson’s disregard for my tax pounds. However I do make the point in voting, voter apathy only creates more problems.
I've just spent sometime tonight watching another Michael Moore documentary/film. This time it was SiCKO which got a look in. After watching the entire 2 hours I really am amazed at the state of the American health care system.
You had some people who had sold their homes, been dumped by a taxi outside a free hospital. Not because they had been frivolous with their money or been picked up by a kind taxi driver. In the first case the medical bills were so extreme even though they had insurance, they had to move in with their daughter. In the other case the woman was unable to pay her hospital bill, she was turfed out, put into a taxi and dumped at the nearest free hospital.
I thought the US was supposed to be the most advanced country in the world, from what I can see this is not so.
Michael Moore also visited France and the UK to see how healthcare was done there and here respectively. For me it raised an interesting question. For many years now I have wanted to stay for a short/long/permanent time in the US. Really is this what I want? Having seen how things are done in France it seems I have overlooked what is literally on my doorstep. I've more or less overlooked Europe having been so focused on the US.
It also highlights something else for me, if I need medical treatment I don't think about it, I call up my GP or visit the local A&E, something I've not needed to do in a while. I take all of these provisions for granted. A 9/11 ambulance technician/EMT Technician had to pay $120 for an inhaler due to respiratory issues brought on by 9/11. I can remember when I was younger requiring an inhaler these were provided free of charge. Along with any other apparatus that I required. I also remember a small operation I had whilst still in Primary School, it just happened, their was no worries about can we afford this.
When you see that US President Barack Obama is trying to like Hillary Clinton did 15 or so years ago and push through healthcare reform, people are resisting. Banging on about how it restricts choice or means you'll get poor service. Well the toddler who died because her mother went to the wrong hospital and not one run by her own insurance company, that's restricted choice. As for poor service, what about the guy who could only afford to have one finger re-attached. Poor service? Restricted choice? With the NHS neither would have had the problems they did, both fingers would have been re-attached and the mother wouldn't have had to worry about which hospital.
I leave you with the parting insult for American Citizens. Another woman interviewed for SiCKO was in a head on car crash, understandably the ambulance arrived and brought her to a hospital. She was fully insured so paying was not much of an issue. To find a few weeks later the ambulance had not been "pre-approved" and she was to be billed for this. Pre-approved!
So I decided to try and improve my backup situation. I have Time Machine running on my iMac connected to an external drive, this works fine for one computer, for two it's not ideal. So I decided to look into getting a NAS of sorts. The obvious choice is Time Capsule, the only problem with Time Capsule is for the amount of backup space I'd need it's prohibitively expensive.
With a budget of around £160-170 in mind I decided to look at some alternatives to Time Capsule. The first NAS I came across courtesy of Liam Daly was Iomega's Home Media Network Drive. In a recent update Iomega in combination with their EMC Retrospect Express software enabled Time Machine to work with the drive. This was great but from what I could tell it was really no different from getting a cheaper NAS and using the various hacks to make it work. It also bugged me having to install EMC Retrospect Express. Then another friend pointed out I could use the Airport Extreme Base Station and connect an external drive to it. This was great in theory but the disk performance on the AEBS is supposedly really poor. The second issue was it still meant I had to buy a enclosure and drive for it.
I currently had 1.5TB of storage space in my Icybox enclosure, 1 x 500GB disk and 1 x 1TB. I thought wouldn't it be just as easy buying Time Capsule, taking the 500GB drive out and putting in my 1TB disk so this is what was done. I made sure I got the latest MB764 model as I was also looking to improve wireless performance. It's getting pretty bad with the number of routers around me.
First I started by removing the rubber foot from Time Capsule. This was easy and straightforward. Taking a tip from a YouTube video I used a hairdryer to warm up the glue, this made removing the foot super-easy.
The next step was to remove the 10 screws found on the bottom of the drive, once done the metal plate was easily removed, watch not to brake the cable connecting the fan to the main circuit board. I recommend you twist the metal top round so it's not glued to the desk you're working on!
So let's recap, so far we have removed the rubber foot from the Time Capsule, then removed 10 screws from the bottom. I should really have annotated a photograph with which screws to remove, but this blog post wasn't planned during the take-apart of it!
The next step is to remove the existing hard drive, I grabbed the disk from the side and was then able to lift it up and remove the SATA power and data cables.
Now the hard drive has been removed Time Capsule is pretty empty inside.
Before adding the new drive, take the old drive and remove the 4 mounts. When the metal plate on the bottom is replaced the 4 grey rubber rings go around these mounts to help reduce vibration and keep the noise coming from Time Capsule to a minimum.
Now all thats left to do is to install the new drive, this was just a reverse of removing the original, once in place all that was left to do was install the temperature sensor. Luckily for me it was never stuck down very well to the original drive, also the new drive I installed (Western Digital 1TB Green) had the same external shape as the original so it could be placed in the same area.
With the drive replaced all thats left to do is put the top back on, screw in place, stick back on the rubber foot and format the disk. Armed with the hairdryer again I warmed up the glue again to ensure it bonded well with the rubber foot, this should mean it wont be falling off anytime soon!
Have a look at more of the photos over on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbeattie/sets/72157621478164583/
