-
Latest Discussions
Find Me
Site Tag Cloud
Powered by Vanilla 1.1.5a.
Installed add-ons.
Adverts
-
-
FloatWorks Floatation Experience
- bySpode on13th March, 2010 inGeneral
-
Quite a while ago now, I won a £100 voucher for Red Letter Days thanks to the friendly PRs at 3 Monkeys. Finally, I got round to using it and booked a floatation tank experience with FloatWorks. They have been going for over 18 years, so they must be doing something right!
It's pretty simple really - you are put in your own private booth where you strip off and take a shower. Then you put in some ear plugs (partly to block out any extra noises - but also to stop salts getting into your ear canal) - in my case, I also had to smear Vaseline over a large cut I have on my shin from a tumble I took a few days back on the Velo.
Once fully prepared - you step into one of these...
This tank contains about a 12-16" of water, mixed with Epsom salts. These...
-
-
-
Goodbye Tonbridge, Belvedere I Come...
- bySpode on12th March, 2010 inGeneral
-
Anyone who keeps an eye on my domain name WHOIS might have noticed a new registered address pop up. I'd be a little alarmed if any of you answered yes to this, but hey, it's a flimsy pretext to me saying... I've moved house!
I did love living in Tonbridge, and specifically, the house I was in was perfect – only a few minutes walk from the station, huge rooms, garage and garden and at a price I could easily afford. Living up to it was going to be tricky!
The main reason for leaving was so that my girlfriend of 16 months, Hannah, could commute to London at considerably lesser cost. Plus, with Dave leaving Think Bikes to me, I was no longer so tied to Kent.
Our original plan was Orpington, but after months of hunting, nothing came up that was close enough and cheap enough. Finally, we came across...
-
-
-
JQuery MouseHold Plugin - Improved
- bySpode on9th December, 2009 inGeneral
-
While redesigning the scrollbars in JournoTwit - I wanted the ability to click on an arrow and have it automatically scroll. Through Google I found this mousehold plugin - which just so happens to have been written by Remy Sharp - a chap I met whilst doing the Twitterati photoshoot for Wired UK Magazine.
However, it lacked a key element for me - a delay. Just like on your keyboard, when you hold down a key, there is a delay before that key starts repeating itself. So I took Remy's work and modified it slightly. I also re-did the code tabbing and added some comments to explain how it works. I have a rather messy tabbed code layout - but I find it easier to see where functions open and close.
You can download my modified version here.
-
-
-
Christmas Comes Early
- bySpode on9th December, 2009 inGeneral
-
With most of my deadlines now dead, I can finally start thinking about Christmas. And not a moment too soon - considering that mine is coming a little earlier
I booked flights to go and see my parents in Italy for the 11th-16th, from BA for only £85 all in - very impressive! It means I can go from Gatwick instead of Stansted, and I don't have hidden costs like credit card charges and extra baggage.My sister and I are going, and bringing my girlfriend Hannah (been over a year now - scary!!!).
I leave you with a picture of me in my Movember glory, with Hannah, our new kitten Baxter and Karl's kitten Kai
-
-
-
PHP CURL and the Mistaken @
- bySpode on2nd December, 2009 inGeneral
-
I've been having intermittent issues with JournoTwit and TwitPic support - and honestly, just assumed it was their service being flakey. But today, I came across the problem.
So if your using cURL in PHP to upload your pictures - you might have some code like this:
$params = array( "source"=>"journotwt", "media"=>"@$filename", "username"=>"$username", "password"=>"$password", "message"=> $_POST['StatusText'] );This works. However, when doing an @reply with a picture it in - the text starts with an "@". PHP considers this to be a file pointer - so instead of sending the...
-
-
-
Too Much Free Time? or Just Too Much Energy...
- bySpode on18th August, 2009 inGeneral
-
Firstly, I know I've been awful at blogging on here. The fact is, Twitter has quickly become a replacement for what is going on with my life because I can report on it there and then - and quickly! Even my parents use it as a way of keeping up with what I'm doing.
So recently, I've been *really* preoccupied with JournoTwit. If I looked back 6 months ago - the last thing I thought I'd be doing was creating my own twitter client - but here I am. The new "edge" version is a vast improvement over the current stable branch and involved almost a complete re-write of key sections of the code. It's been a useful experience for me - especially from a Javascript point of view.
It's now fully customizable with custom local/global searches, black listing, drag and drop columns, animations - dare I say "TweetDeck Beating". And I've...
-
-
-
From Smart to Stupid
- bySpode on12th June, 2009 inGeneral
-
I love my 35 minute train journey into London – it's where I get my best writing done. Wrote 2000 words in total thanks to those two journeys. Naturally, they will both need some trimming down
I was heading in for two reasons – and one of those was to test drive the latest Smart car.
One of the comments I had on Twitter when I mentioned this, was that they wouldn't respect my opinions on cars as I've only recently passed my test - a fair enough comment. However, I wasn't intending on writing about my experience as someone of authority – in fact, as with any event I turn up to, there is no guarantee I'll write about it at all. However, I've always had a soft spot for Smart cars and was eager to finally give one a go. How could I say no?
So, after a grabbing a...
-
-
-
Short Trip to Italy
- bySpode on9th June, 2009 inGeneral
-
So I've just got back from my impromptu trip to Italy and thought I'd write it up a little (actually, I wrote most of this on the plane home!). I haven't seen my parents in a while, so I thought a trip was in order. Because of my eye problems, I felt a few days away from the computer would do me some good too.
I paid just under £200 in total for two tickets (me and Hannah) to fly to Genoa with Ryanair, and another £32 to park at Stansted. The £10 charge for paying by card was extortionate – but made worse that they charged £10 per person, despite both tickets being paid on one card. Is that even legal? Not only this, but the dimensions of carry on luggage were so small (20cm wide?) that I was forced to check a bag in.
Obviously I was the only...
-
-
-
Coping with Eye Strain
- bySpode on2nd June, 2009 inGeneral
-
Anyone who has been monitoring my Twitter feed will be aware I've been having some trouble with my eyes recently. I use computers a lot - like every waking moment - so it's not surprising that I get eye strain almost all year around.
When it comes round to the summer, it gets too bad to cope with - so much so that I've had to take days off at a time because I just can't look at a computer screen for more than 5 minutes. Not only do I get eye pain stopping me from taking the visuals in, but it will be accompanied with a head ache so severe that I can't think straight or hold a decent conversation.
Why it seems to be at its worst during summer, I'm unsure. Certainly the bright sunlight doesn't help matters - I've always found myself sensitive to bright lights and this...
-
-
-
Britain's Got Talent, Season 3
- bySpode on25th May, 2009 inGeneral
-
Anyone reading this for the first time - it's worth going back to page one and reading from the beginning. This thread talks about the experience of being on Britain's Got Talent from the very first phone call.
After watching the first few episodes, I was convinced we weren't going to get shown on TV. However, after this clipping in the Radio Times - I started getting my hopes up - nay, advertising the fact that we were going to be on the show. I mean - after all, why on earth would this photo be shown?
The only way such an image could have been used, was if Talk Back Thames had released this image - we don't even have it. So why would they release images of acts that weren't going to be shown? Perhaps we were a last minute cut - maybe they read my blog
So after all...
-