Whilst I have been sitting at my parents house looking at various jobs, applying for various roles, etc. I have come to start my random dives into the web development world again, this was in no small part to a new project site that myself and a friend have decided to start up. This site was originally going to be running a copy of WordPress 3.0 setup as a CMS with a custom theme and some plugins to provide the functionality we required, however after some initial testing (read messing about with..) I made the decision to use a proper fully fledged CMS as WordPress whilst being amazing at what it does i.e. blogging, is not really suited to being a CMS. This is when I started to look into CMS applications for the site going on what I’d used before, which was Mambo / Joomla.

Mambo / Joomla whilst again very very good systems, were a little too complex for what the site needs and in my opinion a little bloated and full of things we just would never use. Yes I know there’s that age old saying “Never say never” but in this case I really don’t mind saying never as I think I found the answer to the CMS problems in…Drupal.

I’ve used Drupal on a site before and not really gotten along with it, thinking it was complicated and nothing made any sense, there were too many clicks to get where you wanted to be, theming was hard, blah blah, etc etc. needless to say I have since spent a little more time with Drupal in the past week and have changed all my opinions of the system around, and now think it’s actually one of the most feature rich, easy to use, and easy to theme content management systems available for the price….FREE!!!

I am currently re-familiarising myself with HTML, CSS, and PHP whilst building a custom template for Drupal which is something I’ve not done in about a year, but for some reason I don’t seem to have forgotten much and everything seems to be just falling right back into place where I left off. Now obviously theming an already existing CMS is not exactly as taxing as developing your own CMS which is what I was doing with this site originally before having too much work to be doing with uni, but I’m enjoying the design aspect as well as the development aspect of building this theme, and also playing with Drupal. We shall see where this leads, and if I get into a pickle with it, or if it turns out better than I thought.

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In the past 2 weeks I’ve also started on my fitness program again, however this time I’m following a preset program called P90X. I’m currently in the process of setting up another site for fitness related articles and information with the help of a very good friend of mine David Foley. David is the person responsible for getting me interested in fitness and working out properly, after seeing the results he got after not very long and just following a few simple rules. I will post an update on that when it’s all sorted and ready.

People who know me will know I’ve been working with a band called Ebullient on recording and producing a studio album and a live album, however due to me leaving Lincoln this is going to be an issue to keep recording. The singer of the band Ken Myers also flipped out at me for no reason after his cat got killed by a car, a few names were been thrown in my direction, blame was thrown at me for somethings that just were not under my control, and he decided that we were no longer friends and he didn’t want to work with me again. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the entire band and am sad that things had to be ruined by such a sad issue (for what it’s worth I am sorry the cat got killed Ken but it was not my fault…I can’t even drive) however my time with the band has been fantastic, they have all become good friends of mine and I hope to keep it that way in coming years.

The Ebullient Kick-Ups Live album has been fully mixed in 5.1 surround sound for DVD release, and nearly completed in stereo for CD and MP3 release. The tracks for the studio album however have been recorded a few times now and the most recent time is the only time that really came out properly, unfortunately only one track has been mixed from the latest sessions so it doesn’t look like the studio album is going to happen which is a shame.

All in all been a pretty good month but at the same time a sad month. I am going to miss every single one of my friends here, the city, and the university (including staff). I’ll be back at some point!

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The tenancy on my house ends at the end of June which means that I’m going to have to leave all my friends here and move back to my parents in Reading, which I’m not overly happy about to be honest. Since my degree course finished I have been hard at work getting the Ebullient studio and live albums completed, the live album is currently about 90% complete, and the studio album is taking a little longer than we thought.

Im back in the studio this week with Andy Reader and Chris Sands from Ebullient tracking the guitars, which has so far been going great using two different ProTools rigs allowing the both of them to work on tracks at the same time via Wi-Fi. Things are moving along but a little slower than we need really. Chris is off in Japan at the moment for a TV follow up on his hiccups, and Andy is at Download 2010 which does give me a little amount of time to start mixing the tracks so far.

I’ve been looking around Lincoln for jobs, however I’ve been coming up short so far I really want to be able to stay in Lincoln and do an MA in Digital Media, and stay with all my mates here as we’ve become pretty close over these years. I will be back I think, unless everyone moves away from here to where I am

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So that’s the breakup and new year, onto January and things were sort of ok. I didn’t really want to waste any time in getting moved into the room where my studio currently was, which shocked Claire but I have a lot on my plate this year as far as uni goes, and can’t really waste any time in messing about with something that’s happened. I’m now pretty comfy in the room and getting on with work, finding it very productive in the setup I have now which is great!

My dissertation work is well and truly under way which is fantastic and I’ve also had the opportunity to go and work with the guys from The Pavement who I am doing my dissertation project with. I had a great time while in London during January and have already planned my next trip down during this month which I’m really looking forward to. The iPhone application I’m working on is coming along nicely I feel, and I’ve had to learn an awful lot along the way to getting it this far but it’s been great fun the whole way!

I think I’m getting a real liking of iPhone development, I haven’t really used IB (Interface Builder) all that much as I’m using cocos2d-iPhone game framework which pretty much requires you to get right down to the code and do everything in Objective-C2.0 which I’m really loving. I’m looking at making a few utility apps for my gym sessions with IB, however I need to re-read a few parts of the book I got to remind myself on how to actually use IB properly, it’s been a while since I used it I did however purchase my own iPhone Developer Program subscription finally so I can release apps to the store if I like, and also I’m free of having any uni obligations with the apps I develop (not that I had any anyway but hey), I am still a member of the uni developer team if they need me however.

The gym has become another important aspect of my life, which I now go to nearly every day and do either weight training, or cardio training. Since starting to do this in November and then stopping during December only starting again late in January I’ve felt so much better, not tired all the time, not as stressed, and much fitter. It’s also great to get out the habit of eating junk food, etc. I can’t remember having a McDonalds, or Burger King since October 2009 which for me is fantastic, I always used to use them as fast easy meals when I was hungry, sorting my nutrition out has been such a great thing.

So I think that just about brings me up to present day where I am sat in front of my MacBoook Pro typing this having a rest from coding during having my lunch. I’ll be posting more non uni related things up soon when I get the chance, however with all the work I have at present it’s hard to get any time to do anything of my own for fun. I will be making a special note to get at least one app at least developed of my own this month though, even if it is just a gym utility app!

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I’ve had a pretty decent time this Christmas, I’ve met up with a few old friends, still need to see one of them, done a bit of work but not enough I’ve really fallen behind on that, and I’ve also messed with my server to aid in development stuff. So I shall address these things in order (if there is such a thing).

Christmas

I suppose it’s only fitting to put this section first as it is probably the biggest thing that’s going on at the moment. I returned home to Reading to my parents house for Christmas on 17th December, I had a meeting in London on 18th December with The Pavement to discuss an iPhone app which went pretty well, I do think I shall be around London a fair bit in the coming months. I got back to my parents finding it had snowed while I was away which was great but it did play absolute havoc with traveling which was great fun!

Moving on a few days I met up with a few friends, spent a day in Reading in Starbucks which was probably a mistake as I came home with a coffee high which I admit was great fun.

Along came Christmas day and I come downstairs a little late I admit due to going to sleep later than I wanted, open the usual presents of clothes, sweets, and some cheques which is good, and then while tidying up my dad turns around to my mum and said that he was certain there was another present for me, I was confused to say the least. He runs off upstairs and then comes back with a moderately large sized present, I was just lost at this point, start to unwrap it and notice a bar-code with the code A1297 under it, I knew I’d seen that code before and it suddenly hit me that it was an Apple code the brown box confused me but I was sure.

I opened the box to find a brand new Apple 17″ MacBook Pro which just took me completely by surprise. I was not expecting to get a new machine for Christmas but it turns out the my parents took pity on my MacBook Pro slowly dying on me. After all that surprise we sat down for a meal later that day which was awesome, I want another one!

Development and server

During this holiday I left Lincoln with the intention of doing as much of my uni work as I could, as it happens I’ve done nearly nothing towards my uni work. This has annoyed me as I had it all planned out, and I have a lot to get done including my first two chapters of my dissertation, and my live production writeup, oh for the want of more time to get this done!

I have started to re-read my “Programming in Objective-C 2.0″ book to try to get around my head how certain things work in the language. I have also bought another iPhone development book called “iPhone Game Development – Developer Reference” which is a Wiley book. I’ve had a read of a few parts of it and so far I’m pretty impressed with it, we shall see if it actually helps me or not however, I am thinking about getting a few more of their books as they are pretty good.

To make sure I don’t loose any of my development work I’ve spent some time on setting up Subversion on my server along with Mantis issue tracking software, this should enable the guys at The Pavement to help me out with some of the stuff to do with the project, and also so I don’t need to constantly make sure I have all my code with me wherever I am. If I can access my SVN server then I can access all my code. I’ve managed to setup Xcode 3 to work with my SVN repos so I don’t even need a separate SVN client.

I’ve also had a bit of a mess about with updating the server, but for some reason updating Apache, and PHP managed to break the entire server so I had to restore from a backup image. All sorted again now, and all updated with a little more speed added for fun.

Well I think that about ends this stupidly long post, hopefully the next one will actually have more of a point to it

Adam

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A few years ago we could all look at what ever we wanted, download what ever we wanted, send email without anyone else knowing what it said unless they got sent the email, chat to our friends via messenger services, access social networks without the fear that they were going to misuse your information, and various other things. Well this seems to be coming to an end now, especially in the UK at least.

The first step the government took to breaking our personal right to privacy was concealed under the banner of protection. They could order the ISP you get your internet connection from to store all email sent, and received on there servers to be reviewed later if they felt it was needed. This then changed to every email is to be scanned for certain words, or phrases as far as I know, I may be wrong on that one but if that is true surely that’s a HUGE infringement on our personal rights!

Until recently that was all the government had the power to do, however now it seems that they want to completely monitor ALL web traffic for everyone with an internet connection in the UK. This move is to apparently monitor for torrents of music files which has been pushed by the record labels, however it is common knowledge that file sharers actually buy more than non file sharers. Have the labels shot themselves in the foot by helping to push this move? I think so.

The ISP now not only has to store emails but all web traffic packets from people for it to be scanned to see if any of these torrent packets exist. If they do exist then the government is pushing for the ISP to disconnect the customer from their internet service immediately no questions asked, which a lot of people are massively against, ISPs and customers alike. There is also talk of the three chances scheme which will give you three chances to stop sharing files, and if you carry on then you get disconnected.

Personally I think that the government should stop trying to control everything and everyone and let us live our lives with the privacy we should have, but don’t anymore!

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That being said however, I have made it to chapter 8 of my iPhone development book so I’m making progress on that, and have been pretty much constantly messing in Xcode. I recently got a copy of Unity Pro, and Unity iPhone to see if that will make game development any easier, however I’m still going to work through my book first so I don’t confuse myself too much. Unity does look good after having a short play with it, but I have yet to get my iPhone actually hooked up to it.

Saying I’ve not been doing much work recently isn’t totally true as I’ve just finished my ‘Live Sound Production’ module at Uni unofficially as there are no more lectures, I completed my dissertation proposal and got that handed in, I’ve been working on a presentation for my ‘Audio Project’ which I will have to give in a week or so, and I’ve also been pretty busy writing my actual dissertation chapters. All in all I’ve been pretty busy, if very unmotivated.

I did give my studio a little bit of a clear up (my desk area really) as you can see in the image. I’ve given it more of a development feel about it for the time being as I’m not really doing much audio based work at the moment. I currently have 2 MacBook Pros with one running OS X 10.5 and one running OS X 10.6, the reason behind this is that one of them contains the licenses for Unity, and the other doesn’t, that’s it really…oh the other reason being my main one (under the monitor) is dying!

Well with so much stuff to do why am I posting this you may be asking, well, basically I’m attempting to escape the mindset of constant working, and trying to make my mind create again. Then I will start to do work again once I’m back in a creative mood….this could take a while however.

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One of the oddest things that has happened seems to be a hairline fracture appearing on the right palm rest at the exact place my wrist rests while I’m typing, which I do a fair bit oddly enough. I thought it was a little odd that a palm rest that should last for the life of the laptop should gain a fracture, again spoke to someone at the Apple store and they said again that they couldn’t do anything but replace it, at a cost of course. The Apple store doesn’t just replace the part that is breaking, noooo, they replace the entire case at a cost of about £150, all I want is for a crack to be gone!

I have also noticed that the machine seems to kick the fans into overdrive a lot, even when sitting on my laptop cooler on my desk, and that when I’m using the machine on my lap it gets ridiculously hot to the point I have to put it on a lap tray to use it comfortably. Guess where I went, yup, the Apple store, yet again to be told that they couldn’t do anything but test it which they did and said everything was fine, however for them to replace the parts if I wanted, they would need to replace the entire logic board (mother board), this included the CPU, GFX, WiFi, BlueTooth and board itself. Now I’m not sure what has actually happened but the cost of that is nearly £800 to replace!!

Now if we add all of these things up to a fully working laptop again, with no heat issues or non working hardware, the cost is:

• Battery £90
• Super Drive £120
• MacBook Pro Shell £150
• Logic Board £800
• Total £1,160

Now let me put that into perspective, the new latest MacBook Pro costs £1,299 for the base model, which is a fair bit better than my current mid-range model from a few years ago. Why on earth would I pay to replace the parts of the current one to get it working again, when I could just buy a new machine for just over £100 more?!? I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do once I have the money to do it, I can’t actually use my laptop as a laptop at the moment as I have to leave the battery out of it to stop it overheating!

It has served me well, but I think its days are numbered for my use Bring on the new 2009/2010 model MacBook Pro, even though I think the new screen shroud looks a little silly.

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I decided to take more of a look into Bing as it interested me on how they planned to beat Google at the thing Google have been doing so well at for years, and the one thing they do. Well the video on the Bing website says it all really, or rather it shows it all. M$ in all it’s ripping off glory have yet again managed to take another companies product, add a few bits here, change a little bit there, changed the name, and released it as their own.

I’ll explain this for those people who haven’t seen the video. When you open Bing you are presented with a page which looks very much like Google front page with an added banner, and side bar. When you run a search the results are displayed not in a new inventive layout, with different uses of colour, fonts, etc but they look remarkably like the results page you get when you use Google. This even goes down to the affiliated links section at the top being yellow in colour. Not only that but every other colour in the results is identical to Google colours.

I have to say come on M$ if you can’t beat them once, stop trying and let another company have some sort of product out there. Bloody monopolising corporations who have to have their mitts in everything really piss me off. Microsoft have already been caught for anti-trust infringement in 2004, and then again in 2007, do these guys never learn? Stop trying to be the biggest and best at everything Microsoft, and get better at what you currently do, Windows stinks and is full of bugs, why not move the Bing dev team over to Windows dev, add more people where it’s really needed, or are you still getting all your ideas from Apple for OS’s?

Gah sodding Microsoft AGAIN!

Adam

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I’ve been filmed by a BBC documentary team as Chris Sands is a member of the band that MRM has signed. I’m hoping that the publicity will finally help Chrisy to get his music somewhere it deserves to be, and I’m hoping I can help him get it there. I have to admit while in the studio with the band, setting up solo was a pain in the ass, and not to mention the console in the control room wasn’t working properly, then the 003R wouldn’t work with my new G4 audio machine everything just seemed like it was falling apart. We managed to pull through though using a spare 002R and rigging the Mix A from the console through the talkback.

So far we’ve managed to record about 5 tracks to a point that they need vocals adding to them and then mixing properly. There will be more info on all of that on Ebullient’s new website, and the MRM website once I get around to designing them.

I’ve upgraded (many would say down graded) my recording studio since my last post also. I decided that having the latest and greatest isn’t always the best thing to have, therefore I have managed to reach my childhood dream of owning a full ProTools|Mix 24 TDM setup. So far this consists of 2x 888 DigiDesign interfaces, a MDD G4 Dual 1Ghz, Digidesign Mix Core card, and a few TDM plugs that I already had. I’m running the whole system with ProTools 6.4.1 TDM instead of ProTools 8 LE, so far I don’t actually miss anything from the new version with the exception of a few plugs, this just forces me to refine my recording technique so I don’t have to fix stuff afterwards.

I have a 1622 Digidesign interface being shipped over from the US hopefully this week, enough wood to build 3x 7U racks for all the ProTools setup, G4, and outboard gear I have, and with any luck I’ll have 2x DSP Farm cards, and a D24 card on the way to increase the power of the TDM setup. I still need to sort out a mixing desk but I’m running out of money now which sucks.

Well the development has kinda taken a back seat to all of this other stuff going on, and I’m sure it will for a little longer until I’m 100% finished with uni, and until I have spare time from recording.

I think that’s about it for now. Once the 2 new sites go live I’ll start updating this site more, I’ll have a lot more stuff to add on here as the summer comes and goes by.

Adam

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