Hello!

I'm a Senior Software Developer living in London, UK.

I could discuss my professional interests (Web applications, architecture, usability, standards) but you may well be more interested in the last 10 items from my LiveJournal. So here they are!

Wordpress 2.8 and vodex.net
Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:04:26 GMT
Recently, Wordpress 2.8 was released. This, & other events, prompted me to take a loot at vodex.net, as it's been largely abandoned for some time... imagine my delight to discover the Wordpress install wasn't even working anymore for some reason; the Livejournal post import was broken, I couldn't log in.. it was a mess. The old version, kept behind to enable custom modifications to integrate with Livejournal / the main site / various PHP applications, didn't help. (Security hole? I'd had the forethought to use a hidden path for Wordpress itself)

I use a lot more social media now, & have largely abandoned Livejournal, along with a lot of other people. (They could have been facebook, you know; shame they don't expose enough data to Google to let me find that very LJ post by someone on that topic). Anyway, I'm working on converting the entire site to Wordpress's considerably improved feature set, including various plugins for FriendFeed, Google Reader, etc. (I especially like the All-New Livejournal Importer for Wordpress, which is a much better job than WP's original LJ import script, or my own LJ import script ... except I don't want to duplicate posts on the site, I want to link to them. Might use it for a private LJ backup tool, though).

So, watch this space. Or rather, that space...

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Mozy Backup in Ubuntu via VirtualBox
Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:15:25 GMT
Well, it's been a while snce I posted here. But this *is* my blog, so what better place than...

A couple of months back I switched to Ubuntu from Windows full time. (The main hard drive seemed about to fail, got a new HDD, made the formal Ubuntu switch, and found it was Windows support for the drive that was bad, the drive was fine.)

I was using a paid account at Mozy for backup (after a burglary in 2007 & losing six months of stuff, online can't be stolen or lost in fires etc.). But there is no Ubuntu support for it.

I do have a minial Windows installation, but don't want to switch to it just to perform backups. So eventually, I got it running under a VirtualBox Windows installation, but it's not straightforward, so time for documentation.

The irony is, I'm not using it anymore, as it hangs for hours for no clear reason, with glitches (google around for more info; at $5/month I was willing to put up with them), but most importantly, it kept resetting the computer it was assigned to (you can only be assigned to one computer at a time), leaving me with no other option, even after tech support, but to start the backup process again.

I'm now using Crashplan , which is much more reliable, has a native Ubuntu version, and have just cut my losses with the remainder of my paid plan time.

Anyway, here we go:

  • Setup VirtualBox with an XP installation as normal.
  • Install Mozy with the latest version (1.12+) as the previous version didn't work under a VM (I know, if you're reading this you're probably running a version later still, but just in case...)
  • You now need Mozy to cope with the virtualized network. Under the Guest machine's settings, under Network, set the Adapter Type to Intel Pro/100 T Server. Set 'Attached To' to 'Host Interface'. Using NAT blocks certain Mozy functions; I don't know why the particaulr network adaptor is required.
  • As for the data you're backing up, they'll be on your system's hard drives, not the virtual Windows partition, right? They are also linux's ext3 disk format, not Windows NTFS.
  • Set them up as native hard disks inside the Windows guest to back them up. Using VirtualBox's guest additions to network share your hardrives doesn't work; Mozy has to access them directly.
  • I followed http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=662018 & http://blarts.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/how-to-run-virtualbox-using-a-physical-partition-using-ubuntu-feisty-fawn/, to create .vmdk files that VirtualBox can present as hard drivers to the Windows guest..
  • You''ll have to install IFS For Windows for your Windows guest to read Linux's ext3 format. This is by far the easiest step.
  • You may notice that you aren't meant to mount the drives in Ubuntu & the guest at the same time to prevent write issues. I ignored this, as you are only using the drives for reading under Windows. Unmount the ext3 drives, boot Windows, mount the drives again, use in both; no-one noticed a thing :)
  • Using Mozy, select content in your drives to backup as normal.

And that's pretty much it. As I said above, though, I got fed up waiting for Mozy to spend hours chugging through my 30Gb of backups, only to 'forget' and have to start again. YMMV!

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Waxy Dogheads
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:54:20 GMT
Waxy Dogheads. That's all I'm sayin'.

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Music Online sites (by Alexander Street Press) now publically viewable
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:01:39 GMT
Recently At Work, we upgraded the platform running our next-generation music products.

One of the new features is having parts of a product be publically viewable to the world at large (not to mention search engines) - mostly the home page & browsing.

So here they are. Needless to say, not only am I very proud to be part of what we're doing, I'm also pleased that I can now easily show these to people :)

Click on the link/image to browse each product. If you encounter a login page when seeing certain content, then you/your organization needs to be a paying customer...

Classical Scores Library

400,000 pages of the most important classical scores and manuscripts.

World Music

50,000 tracks that delivers the sounds of all regions from every continent. (This is the product with albums like "English Drinking Songs", credits like "Unknown Camel Driver", etc.)

African American Music Reference

50,000 pages that offers the first comprehensive coverage of many forms of black American musical expression.
American Song

50,000 tracks that allows people to hear and feel the music from America's past.

Classical Music Reference Library ('Baker')

More than 30,000 pages of essential reference materials, spanning the entire history of Western classical music.

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online

The first comprehensive online resource devoted to music research of all the world's peoples.

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Mailmaker
Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:46:12 GMT
I've added a few things in MailMaker, the spoof Daily Mail generator:

  • option to create a Daily Express. It's not a perfect match; when I have some more time, I'll refactor so you can use the Express font/layout. And do The Sun as well.


  • made meaningful 'alt text' to the images


  • created an RSS feed of latest covers


  • and - bit warily - added some extra images, including, of course, Madeleine McCann. Not sure it might turn out a good idea (for hopefully obvious reasons of taste, hence the delay), but like Diana, what Mail/Express cover is complete without some?

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Flat Reference
Fri, 11 May 2007 10:13:02 GMT
For our new flat, our employers have been asked to give a reference.

Here's mine. Paul likes to brighten up people's days, so instead of a boring form letter:

Danielle,

I've received a letter from you this morning regarding our employment of John Field.

John Field has held the position of Senior Developer with us for nearly a year, and has been an exemplary employee - I am sure his excellence in the workplace would surely be reflected in his suitability as a tenant, indeed, I doubt you will find a more reliable, respectable and trustworthy person!

When he is not healing the sick and turning water into wine, he creates software of such beauty it makes grown men weep. It is my intention to see that he is employed by Alexander Street Press for as long as possible.

Hope that answers your questions.


Kind regards,

Paul Dixon
Alexander Street Press

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LighterLife Managment Day 10 (Day 123)
Wed, 09 May 2007 20:39:51 GMT
Back from LighterLife weigh-in. There are some new flavour packs (banana!!!!) that forgot all about so had no money to get.

Have lost three pounds since last week, despite multiple kebabs and a chinese takeaway.

Feel so much better - the yardstick is the weighin itself, as it was blatantly obvious, bright and alert and breaking down cardboard boxes as opposed to falling asleep on the sofa.

Breaking down boxes? Yes, she had a major delivery today, so took them for packing. Don't want to write about moving as it'll jinx it.
Not only broke down about a dozen, carried them the way back too without trouble despite being almost as big as me. I am feeling better.

I'm not fussed about eating food. Supposedly by this stage I can eat any fish, chicken, cottage cheese, any salad, milk, yoghurt, etc. etc. but it didn't even occur to me to do so.

Really am not bothered and would be happy with the shakes I've been on since January and the occasional chicken/fish for variety. Gave it a chance for my new clean palate, but salad really does nothing for me. ( Much prefer kebabs, cough cough)

She wasn't fussed about me taking vitamin tablets, which I think is what makes me good.

So am not bothered with food and still losing weight and feel good and can eat the odd meat-filled naughtyness without it causing problems. This is more like it!

Just don't someone tell me I could have been on vitamin pills all along...

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Lighterlife Day 116 / Managment Day 3
Wed, 02 May 2007 20:32:49 GMT
Have been in "management" for three days, where I start to eat food (a very limited subset at first). Have felt much, much, so much better, with more energy and much more motivation compared to how I was. Or maybe it's the vitamin supplements helping and the Beltane weather.

There is a Management Book, but they haven't finished the men's one yet, so I have to go with the women's one, which is rather patronising (lots of pictures of models on mountain tops and 'making a plane journey'  analogies). It turns out the women's stuff is much more thoroughly put together than the men's stuff, which is miles butter than the stuff back when started in general. Also have officially confirmed that I'm the only man in her groups to have lasted more than a few weeks, let alone going to Management.

Not doing the counselling/mental exercises - never got to do them in the male groups and they seem similar to general CBT stuff anyway.

Day One: (Monday 30 April 2007): Smoked haddock strips. Was amazing.

Day Two: amazing levels of energy, and real funny taste in mouth like metallic sticker glue. Was out after work looking at flats with Lisa and everything, which haven't done on months. Morale very high. Peppered Quorn Steaks, thought they were a bit bland and very spicy, but apparently they smelt delicious.

Day Three: same amazing energy levels, spring in step, the difference is impossible. Went into work an hour early, went viewing flats in evening.
Evening: have weigh-in, but by this point had run out of gas and was knackered again. Have lost 2.6 pounds since Sunday, despite putting maybe a pound of food in, that's still my intestines somewhere. Am 16 stone 6 pounds.

Went to get food to eat, and those months of not having to plan or worry about food hit hard. Couldn't find anything suitable, was very tired & grumpy, shops full of ch**s. Result: kebab and chips. Oh so much for lean protein, salad and balsamic vinegar. Ah well.

As you may have gathered, we're moving. Oh the things that happen if you don't do LJ in a few days!

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Sustainable London
Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:12:31 GMT
Have just been to the Sustainable London exhibition from New London Architecture. It was fascinating stuff, recommend it, but it closes on the 28th. One of those situations where "those in charge" are getting smart people to tackle an issue over and above the call of duty, without fanfare, and knowing full well the general public'll hear little about it (beyond occasional tabloid whinging).

Random facts:

  • The ecological footprint of London alone is twice the size of the UK.

  • Temperatures in city centre are up to 4 degrees higher than in the suburbs.

  • All new developments must generate 10% of energy needs on site - 20% soon.

  • The congestion charge has dropped particulate pollution by 15%.

  • 'The Mayor' and his office are effectively going to force large businesses to be climate-responsible by hook or by crook, and has the political capital to do it. That's going to be fun.


They also have a funky 3D map of inner London, which brings home how close everything is & how little I have taken part in London "as a place to live". It can take an hour to travel stuff that clearly would be walkable in a few minutes if everything wasn't in the way.


And lastly (& the reason I started this post!) the Building Centre where this is at has showrooms by Generic Building Companies - types of roof felt, Norwegian sliding doors, the sort of stuff that bored you silly as a child when you parents dragged you round them.

Still boring, but look! These guys are so proud of their toilet seats, they advertise them as if Leonardo da Vinci designed them himself!

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Welwyn North Wander
Sat, 07 Apr 2007 08:42:03 GMT
Yesterday, took advantage of my morning energy, & trains running as a normal friday, to go to Welwyn North. Why? Because every weekday, the train passed over the Welwyn Viaduct, over a picturesque landscape of fields, horses, streams, trees, etc. Wanted to go and check it out, but without the hour travel time on weekends. It was very nice, peaceful and naturally well-balanced - the viaduct looms over everything but also melds in with the landscape really nicely (compare this victorian effort with, say, Twyford Down). Came back after a couple of hours exhausted but happy, and did little else for rest of the day.



By coincidence, Google launched My Google Maps (yet more mirroring of the physical world in some mist-shrouded hard drive in California) so instead of just adding the photos to flickr, wanted to create a "personalised, annotated, customised map using Google Maps" of it, to much "fifth level techie" ribaldry from Lisa.

I use Picasa for organising photos, which is also Google, so thought it would be a case of geotagging the pictures in Google Earth & slapping them online, right?

Well, all Picasa users know it doesn't touch the photos, it stores your actions on them (e.g. rotating etc.) on a seperate file. But when when you add geotags, it modifies the picture directly. But doesn't change the last modified date of the file. Hmm. Nor does Windows or Paint Shop Pro seem to display geo tags in file information. So cue 10 minutes of "how does it know it's geotagged?" headscratching.

Nor does flickr recognise geotags unless you tell it to at http://www.flickr.com/account/geo/exif . And there's no way to tell Google My Maps "take these photos & work with them". Even from Picasa. And lastly, Google's pictures of Hertfordshire are rather poor, so all my geotags are out & I ended up re-doing them in flickr anyway, which is now attached to non-primary data And Is Bad.

So in summary: this is the aborted "needs more features" Google Map, and this is the flickr set, with nice map & everything. It's uncommon to see google playing catch-up these days.

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