Book Highlights of 2011

First it was films, then TV Shows and finally Books, as I'm commuting to Manchester most of the week I get a good 40 minutes each way to chill out on the train. Most of last year I used the time to plough through quite a few books on my Kindle, was planning to write a review on the Kindle alone but considering they've been out for a while and everyone knows what they're all about I thought it a bit pointless. If you're a reader or want to read more then the Kindle is definitely a good route to go down, amazing bit of kit and does it's job extremely well. Looking back at my log I managed to read 31 books in 2011 which is pretty good going and will hope to keep that up for this year although my train time is now being taken up by catching up on TV Shows such as Mad Men and Sons of Anarchy on the iPad so will need to get back into the traditional pastime of reading. Now I don't think any of my highlights were actually released in 2011, it's just what I read.

TV Show Highlights of 2011

Last week was films, this week is TV Shows. Here's my pick of some of the best TV Shows I've been watching (and keeping track of) so if you've got some free time or need a new show to watch then look no further! Will hopefully be more active in reviewing new shows this year as I keep up my writing and can then use them next year when it comes to another yearly review!

Film Highlights of 2011

Considering how much of a movie fan I am I can't believe that I've not written more about the really good films I've seen. Alas that is now coming to an end, as soon as I watch a fantastic film I'm going to write about it and then post it here. I'll also do these yearly reviews so people can get ideas for good films. 2011 has been a great year for film, I don't always go to the cinema as much as I should to watch them but they do stick on my radar and try to get hold of them when they're released on DVD. Here are a few of my choice picks for great films released in 2011 displayed in the order I watched them with the last one first:

Happy New Year 2012

Can't believe that it's 2012 already, 2011 absolutely flew by. I've not been very active on the blog the past year but as a resolution I've decided to be a bit more active in the new year and hopefully get a post out every week even if it's a small one and not just about being nerdy. Quite a lot happened in 2011 for me, earlier in the year I bought a house with my girlfriend in Chorley, I started working reduced hours at my full time employment in Manchester so that I now have Fridays free to do my own freelance work which has been going quite well. Cheeky plug but if you're after a PHP developer or someone who knows CakePHP then look no further, hire me :) Then at the the end of year I got engaged to my girlfriend of 3 years and we're now in the stages of planning a wedding. It seems it's all the rage now adays as most of my local friends are hitched or will be at the end of 2012 so it's about time I got on the bandwagon!

Introducing Film Tracker

As with my previous app to track the TV Shows I watch, I also wanted an app to track the Films I've watched and also the ones that are on my to-do list. Using the previous app as a codebase I quickly managed to port it over to deal with Films so here it is.

The app is free to use for a 7 day trial and after which you can pay a one time amount of ten english pounds and you can use it forever and ever (I guess until I die and the server it's on is shutdown). Have a nosey around and visit the application on film-tracker.co.uk and let me know what you think.

Introducing TV Show Tracker

Being an avid TV Show watcher I sometimes lose track of what I'm watching and in particular the episodes I've seen and the episodes I need to watch. I have a PlayOnHD hooked up in my living room which plays pretty much everything I throw at it however the interface is a bit lacking and I'm unable to mark which items I've seen.

Being a web developer I decided to quickly throw something together that will help me keep track of the shows I'm watching and tick off episodes once watched. I wanted it to be accessible from my iPhone & Ipad so I could tick watched episodes from the sofa and overall having it look pretty slick. Within a few weeks I had a working prototype on a personal subdomain which worked well and fufilled the need of tracking my shows.

With the app being useful for me I figured it may be useful for other people, that and plans of world domination in mind I started working on a multi-user version that will allow users to create an account and start to track all their shows from one place. After a few more weeks work I proudly present my TV Show Tracker (TVST) application. Registration is free for a 7 day trial and after that you can support the application and continue using it for a one time only flat fee of £10.

Double Ace Design

I've been doing freelance work along with my full time job to earn a little extra money, the company was setup way back in 2007 however I've recently started working a compressed 4 day week so that I can spend more time doing my own stuff.

One of the big things on my todo list was the company website and I've finally gotten round to launching it so without further ado I present Double Ace Design, read on for more info on how it all came about.

Using Apache to Compress HTML,CSS & Javascript

Just a quick tip that I've come across recently, add this to your .htaccess file and if your server supports gzip compression HTML, CSS and Javascript will be automatically compressed.

# compress types
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

Not sure if the browser uses a cached version on subsequent requests so this technique may not be suitable for everything.

Downloading from Newsgroups

For a long time now I've been using Usenet to download everything I ever need from the internet so I'm going to let you know what I use and how you can get setup using it quite quickly. I do pay money for a few of the services I'm going to describe, but it isn't much and it's totally worth it.

Happy New Year, hello 2010

Happy New Year! I hope that you had a really good time over the Christmas period and that you celebrated the new year in style. I've been quite lazy with regards to my website but I've intentions of writing more regularly, whether I can stick with it is another question but I'll have to see.

The series on creating a full CakePHP application has been successful so I may do another one of those using the latest version of Cake and include some of things I've learnt along the way. I've also struggled with writing posts so if you have any ideas or you would like anything covered in a tutorial just leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Site Redesign

Welcome to the new site design i've created, i was getting a bit bored of the old one and i didn't really update it all that often. My aim with this redesign it to publish a few work related articles and other interesting stuff thats on the web.

The first bunch of articles will be about CakePHP a PHP rapid development framework that is quite simply "the business" when it comes to PHP programming. I've been using it over the past few months and although the learning curve is quite steep the results are definately worth it.

I'm also going to keep the website quite personal by showing what films, tv shows, music i'm currently interested in and this will hopefully keep the site fresh.