Oops – Hit my bandwidth limit :-\

Well I’ve been seeing some increased traffic to the site lately and while I kept an eye on the number of users but not on the effect it was having on my bandwidth!

Suffice to say that this morning I was greeted with a ‘You Have Exceeded Your Band Width’ limit email! Oops!
Well as I host the site on a reseller account it was simple to increase the bandwidth limit so normal service has been resumed.

Posting From Android

Just a quick post from my Android phone to test out the free WordPress application from the Android Market.
Ok, it may be a bit geeky but sometimes I just don’t have time to fire up my laptop. Well this app is feature rich and a snap to configure, it can even handle multiple boots.
So I have 5 mins while I’m waiting for my girlfriends daughter to come out of Guides and can now feel like it’s not dead time.
If you want to blog on the move then its well worth a look.

[Edit: From PC]

Ok now that I have uploaded the post I can see’ that there are a few minor issues. First of all it was not clear that when I ticked’Publish’ and then pressed ‘Save’ that this would only save the post locally, i.e. it would not actually be published. To achieve this I needed to long press the post in [what I now see is called] ‘Local Drafts’ and then select the ‘Upload to Blog’ option. Ok a simple thing but the absence of any Help made it an easy mistake to make.

Secondly the post came through as ‘Uncategorised’ which is not ideal and I do not recall seeing an option to set the Category – but will check shortly.

Besides that, I’m more than happy with the application. Now I can utilise the otherwise dead time, if I can come up with something to write about that is.

Running CoPilot 8 SatNav for Android

When I bought my Android phone (a HTC Hero) I wanted to be able to use it as a SatNav as well – to save me having to carry two devices around with me. The Hero has built-in GPS and as it runs Googles Android operating system it has the Google Maps application installed as standard. So that’s it then – well no, not really. Read the rest of this entry »

I, Android

So I was in the market for a new mobile phone and being the geek that I am, it had to be a Smart Phone of some description – but which one?

The iPhone is the obvious choice for many but while it cannot be denied that it is a fantastic piece of kit but I really don’t like the fact that I’d be tied to iTunes, and therefore Windows/Mac! Add to that the fact that I’m probably goiung to want to write applications for the devise and that I don’t know Objective C the learning curve to develop even simple applications is going to be quite steep. Then there is the licence restrictions on the use the the SDK and conditions for deployment of applications to the App Store – from what I can make out you have to use a Mac, which I don’t have. All in all, the iPhone is not an option for me.

I turned my attention to the Android phones in general and the HTC Hero in particular. I liked the look of the phone itself and had heard a lot of good things about the device (along with a handful of problems it has to be said!). Android is an Open Source operating system which is based on the Linux kernel and this appeals to me as a Linux [Ubuntu] user. The SDK is essentially Java based with a little python thrown in (both of which I know), it can be used on Mac, Windows and Linux so I can develop and install applications directly to the phone.

The final factor in my decision to buy the HTC Hero was, trivially enough, that nobody else at work had or wanted one. There are a few Apple fan boys in the office along with a Blackberry or two – but no Androids, so I felt it was time to change that Read the rest of this entry »

Installing AtMailOpen Webmail Client on Hosted Server

I have a reseller account with my hosting provider which allows me to manage multiple domains (this being one of them) and also provides email services for each of them. The thing is that the two webmail clients it provides, Horde and SquirrelMail are [frankly] clunky and long winded to access – the latter being an issue with the implementation rather than the applications themselves.

To login I need to provide a full email address as the username (any you can see how long this domain name is) and a password. Then I’m presented with the option of loading Horde or SquirrelMail as well as enabling Auto Load the selected application. If I select SquirrelMail then I’m taken directly to my Inbox but if I select Horde then I’m presented with a ‘language selection’ screen which also contains a Login button. While SquirrelMail is a basic email client Horde also has a Calendar, Notes, Tasks and a News Reader – but they both look a little dated.

Now while I can handle the login process and live with dated interface it’s not something I would like to provide to other users – I’m just worried that I will get phone call after phone call about how to use the applications and complaints about the user experience.

I have a domain which will soon be hosting a WordPress blog that my girlfriends daughter will be using to keep in touch while she is working abroad for six months before starting her college studies. I didn’t feel comfortable giving her the standard email client offerings so decided to configure AtMailOpen instead. Read the rest of this entry »

New Year Resolutions 2010

In my first post on this blog I declared an intention to learn non-Microsoft languages and technologies so that I was equipped to handle both sides of the fence (hence the blog title). During the last year I have been looking at learning PHP using Drupal as a platform for my development. This is progressing well and I have a few mini-projects underway – more about those in future posts.

However, I think that the main thing I have gotten out of this last year is a better understanding of Linux (Ubuntu in particular) and have realised just how far it has come on since my first encounters with Red Hat 8.0. So much so that I am currently using Ubuntu as my primary Operating System – the Windows 7 installation on my other partition rarely gets a look in. My previous post highlights my disappointment with Windows 7 and my intention to reconfigure my laptop to move Ubuntu to the larger of the two partitions and revert to Vista (which never gave me all the problems others complain about) on the smaller one – just in case I find I need it for something. But there’s the thing – why would I need it? What do I do on a day to day (or even week to week or month to month) that means I have to have a Windows system at my disposal at all times – just in case? Read the rest of this entry »

Ok – that’s it. Windows 7 is outta here!

In an earlier post I detailed the upgrade of my Vista partition to Windows 7 Eval and how smoothly the process went. Well I’m afraid that the shine has gone off Windows 7 and after looking at the upgrade prices I’m hacked off enough to say that I’ll not be bothering.

I upgraded my laptop from XP to Vista because I was starting a new job and it’s what they used – so I thought I should get up to speed before I started. I later configured the laptop to Dual Boot with Ubuntu but Vista was always my default Operating System – if I wanted to boot into Ubuntu then I had to remember to wait around for the Boot Menu instead of just turning it on and walking away. Recently I was lured into installing Windows 7 and at first I was quite impressed and do admit that it is a massive leap from XP (and probably Vista). As most people say, it is what Vista should have been. Read the rest of this entry »

Upgrading to Windows 7 (Dual Boot with Ubuntu)

I’ve run with Vista for about a year now and on the whole have had no problems with it. Now I’m one of those people that hasn’t really had any problems with Vista – and frankly I’m not sure what all the fuss was about. Yeah, I was happy with XP and only upgraded to Vista because my new employer was using it.

So why was I looking to upgrade to Windows 7 now..? Well there were a number of reasons but the most pressing was that Vista was starting to get on my nerves. So some reason it started to run painfully slow. This was mainly due to the fact that the hard drive would be chattering away for a good 20 minutes after I had logged in – now that’s infuriating! What the hell was it doing.? Well I didn’t really have the drive to spend hours looking for the source so had just lived with it.

When Windows 7 hit Release Candidate I thought – “What the Hell”. If it all went to hell in a wheel barrow then I could either restore my XP system with the CD that came with the laptop or install Vista from the CD I had bought for the upgrade (OEM version purchased with a new HDD).
Read the rest of this entry »

Upgrading Ubuntu Intrepid to Jaunty

When it comes to upgrading Operating Systems I’m not known as an early adopter, I normally wait a while for others to have the headache of encountering and resolving problems. However, in a moment of madness I decided to upgrade my fully functional Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) installation to 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope).
Read the rest of this entry »

All Change……

If you are one of the 100 or so previous visitors to the site then you may notice that it has changed quite a lot, in fact the more observant of you will notice that I am now running a WordPress Blog Engine rather than a Joomla! based CMS.

I decided to change to WordPress for a number of reasons but I belive in trying to use the right tools for the job and as the site was growing into more of a blog and while Joomla! can handle this it is pretty well accepted that WordPress is the No1 Blog engine on the Net. That’s not to say that Joomla was a load of rubbish but the learning curve was much, much greater with than with WordPress.

I also found that trying to find and install plugins was not as easy with Joomla! as it is with WordPress. The site will probably have quite a bit of code on it and trying to get Syntax Highlighting plugins for Joomla! was a nightmare. In contrast I had a WordPress one installed and working in minutes.

I’m not totally turning my back on Joomla! though as we are going to be using it within one of the projects we are running at work – so I’ll still need to climb the learning curve but at least I’ll be getting paid to do it which can’t be bad.

The only thing lacking (so far) is the ability to take the site offline (although I understand that the is a plugin for this) so if you are reading this around the same time I’m typing this post then be aware that I am still working with the imported data from the Joomla! site so some of the posts will be missing until I update the links etc.