Office

Friday afternoon in the office, a new mobile phone arrives to replace my old faulty one, take a photo & publish it directly to my blog - isn't technology amazing?

Programming for Fun!

Spent a happy afternoon writing an improved feature to administer my photo site . I wrote the site in order to begin teaching mysef PHP, it consists of a menu system to select galleries then view photographs within the selected gallery either individually or as a slideshow.
I also wrote an admin system to upload photos, assign them to galleries, manage the galleries and users etc. The basic problem was how to enhance this so that once photgraphs have been uploaded I could alter the display sequence (i.e. the order in which the photographs are displayed once the gallery is selected).
In the end I plumped for a simple idea of allowing the administator to assign an integer as the display sequence indicator and developed a page which would display all the thumbnails for a particular gallery and allow them to be resequenced as required. Had to struggle a little with the arcane way in which you must pass data between pages - the "connectionless" state of the internet leaves a lot to be desired when trying to develop "joined up" systems.

Musing on Websites and Blogs

This whole internet phenomenon continues to amaze me. As one who has worked a lifetime in IT I marvel at the use of graphics, communications networks, database technology and so much more that was considered "difficult" just a very few years ago, but has now become commonplace.

My background is as a programmer and systems analyst, but starting in a very different world from today's wealth of multi-media. Working in the computer laboratory at Salford University, supporting the NAG librarary we thought using a programme to do matrix arithmetic or seeing the GINO-F graphics libarary draw a gingerbread man, was cutting edge - I wonder how many people who use a graphics editor and rotate a picture through 90 degrees have any inkling of the mathematics behind ther actions?

Writing COBOL programmes for stock control for BICC in the mid 1970s was very different to the development I see happening in my own company, using tools like VB.net with sophisticated development environments - no queuing to submit a stack of punched cards then wait a day for the results for today's developer!

I developed my own website Travels with my Digital Camera to learn HTML, PHP and MySQL. It probably helped quite a bit that I have a programming background so database design and structure held no fears, but it is also possible that I have limited my horizons by my own thoughts of what is and is not possible.

Since signing up for the blog, I've also discovered Google AdSense, so having incorporated some ads on my site (and blog) I am confidently sitting back and waiting for the cash to roll in.

Off to take some photos

Another glorious day, so after a lazy morning in bed (breakfast included, thanks Lynne), I decided to take some photos.
My camera is a Sony Alpha 700 DSLR, the latest descendent from the Minolta range of Dyxum (or Maxum) cameras since Sony bought out Minolta's camera business in 2005. The first shot was taken with the Minolta 24mm f2.8 prime lens, hand held and the second with the Minolta 50mm f1.7 together with a 12mm extension tube. For this shot the camera was mounted on my Benbo Trekker tripod.
A drive past the old dyeworks at Belmont then a walk into the woods - found this pond. With the sunlight streaming through the trees and the reflections unruffled in the water it made an attractive sight.

It's only February, but already a hairy caterpillar was out eating lichen on an old tree stump.

First MotorBike Outing of 2008

Saturday saw warm (well relatively warm) sunny weather so got my motorcycle out of the garage. The battery charger (Optimate III from Shadofax engineering) had done its job perfectly and the bike started with no problem. Checked out the tyre pressures (foot pump needed to top up both, 42 in the front and 44 in the rear), oil, water, break and clutch fluids - all OK so set off to Bamber Bridge.
Chose to avoid the motorway and went towards Belmont and through Abbey Village.
As ever the bike behaved perfectly (why would anyone want anything other than a Honda ? The best Honda of all ? The ST1100a Pan European of course).