coder not= designer

Being able to write software code does not mean you have an eye for the design of a website but you can learn. New three column css layout for aboynejames.co.uk now has a better three panel back ground.

Learning design by doing.

Being able to hack

Being in the company of software engineers, Internet developers and geeks it's not long before you hear the word 'hacking'. Hacking the code. Now, I can join in this hacking. The word is so appropriate, I find myself hacking through the html/CSS/PHP code, like a forest some pages of code are thicker and more difficult to navigate than others. I get hacking.

aboynejames php

Now that my coding experience is expanding I am re-hosting aboynejames.co.uk
at a new ISP and making it all html, php based. So you will see parts of the site, probably more accurate to say, all of the site disappearing from time to time as I learn some new tricks.

Taste of Scotland Exports Conference

I spent the day at The Gleneagles hotel attending the Taste of Scotland Exporting Conference. A day of learning from those that have led the way in breaking into new markets a broad. The talks ranged from the product labeling to legal paperwork. The market and advertising used to enter market from USA to Taiwan.

Image041, originally uploaded by ecotorch.

Countryside geeks Highland geeks

When I am not travelling, home is in the countryside. Thanks to the Internet, epically with the arrival of broadband, we can develop websites and write software and publish instantly to the web.

I am keen to hear from others that have chosen a countryside or Highland (as in Scotland for me) base for the Internet development or entrepreneurial base. james (at) aboynejames (dot) co (dot) uk

Anita Roddick

I was travelling from Southampton to Brighton a week past Friday on the train. Sign posts pass by quite frequently and one was for Littlehampton. That means one thing to me, Anita Roddick and the founding of the Bodyshop. Little did I know by the time I arrived back in Scotland on the Monday that I would be reading about her death.

Equipped with entrepreneurship of the most able kind she trail blazed the causes of human, animal and environmental rights and put them at the heart of her business. Profits would come from caring for these causes. Her 'change the world' attitude and this wider meaning of what the word profit should mean, made her a entrepreneurial inspiration. I was fortunate enough to meet Anita a few times, while this will no longer be possible, she has left us many tales to read in her books and online and from observing the results of her actions, Bodyshop to volunteering.

barcampBrighton

I attended my first barcamp in England the other weekend, barcampBrighton. It was an intense learning experience as always and the range of topics range from Internet to some eclectic. Thank you to all the co-planners and sponsors for hosting a great camp. Here I am participating:

Gorms first snow today

The first snow of the new season covers the top of the Gorms.

drupal 2 session barcampBrighton

drupal

open source, free, impressive support, modular and themeable, wordpress plus, plus


Why choose? need to byspoke SME clients.

themes:bocks, and regions, you can ask the drupal engine.

beware, end website all look like drupal websites. UI needs more differenciation. This is now happening, more needed.


how to build

starting a theme
garland, default drupal theme. good XHTML layout, non tabular. Then striped of styling, as much as you can do.

removed CSS, chopped modular includes
removed what you can not use.

PHP template files underpin templates. nodes on page related to templates.php files.
Need to hardcode, to fix whole page look. PHP coded directly.


Site structure:
drupal good at flaksonomic or flat sites.
poor structured sites
one standard stcure, neu heirarch

can use category module. Had to create duplicate much core menu code. To make your own menu drop downs.


Content Construction kit
get more complex form from standard page or story page format

adds content hooks to node workflow
then create submenus, add extra fields, declare and create widgets and eit them

contributed code, NOT CORE. but well supported.

Forms, used plug in standard modules, signup etc.


Hacking the core.
NEVER EVER DO IT. core keeps moving


multiple development on the site, use subvertion to manage code base. use seperate files for each developer

depression in a geeks world barcampbrighton

presenter David Thompson fatbook 'fatty' domain name

.net developer c# asp

depression:

lack of motivation

geeks excess motivation

big contrasts, but what happens when you have both???

treatment, medication or exercise. Talk

Community, geek e.g. barcamp, understand what you say/mean. Feel accepted. Celebration of what you do.

Satisfaction in work, showing what you have done.

drupal cms barcampbrighton

Grant talk

Test alot of cms. Took open source stance.

Look to roll out new site press of a button.

Chose drupal, quick setup.

Client, low cost, $2k website.

losts of benefit of drupal.

cons, lot of work to understand api? Some contraints.

walk through of how to use. Very useful.

Warewolf barcampbrighton

Been playing a new team/group game called Warewolf. They tell me their is lots of info. on the game on the web so this is a reminder to search.

Involves in short, villagers, a seer, a healer and warewolf(s). Villagers need to find warewolf before vice versa, who ever does first, wins.

barcampBrighton hacking session 11.45

Presenter Tom Shannon

7 deadly sins.

1sql injection
2javascript injection
3cookie injection
4email injection
5file uploads
6corss domain
7


1, happened UN website, 2 days to notice. basically insert commands in username/password input boxes
.net most prone to this, but php an other happen. You need to watch that data processing and pass around by the application is secure and not intercepted.

2. e.g. myspace worm , ajax code to attract new users took down wholesite.

3. store data on server better than cookie

4. spammer include cc in email box to send out virus.
dont put user email in headers, tip

5. uploads, set proactively the stuff you want.

6 cross domain form submission

risk e.g. one click buying access. or risk for emali apps within socialnetworks, e.g. flickr mail, use token with form to stop.

7 Cross domain api



www.ts0.com blog url for Tom

Learning to code

I've resisted for a while but I have decide to learn to code, ie. write software. I sort of do that today anyway but I am extending my range to PHP and Ruby on Rails. Both open source web scripting languages. I have never been taught at Uni or on a course so I am learning all the basics via excellent blog posts on web. I was going to buy a book, might yet, but I often find the best book is the blogosphere. Not quite as well organised as a book but boasts many more benefits. For example a book is written in one style, however, in the blogosphere you can get different styles or different levels of knowledge. I am two weeks in, one week focused on PHP and one on Ruby on Rails. This has helped teach me the basics of programming. Now I need to focus on one? One of the initial challenges I faced was just installing the correct setup environment and then getting apache talking to mysql and mysql to PHP and Ruby (OK, I use the rails server for now).

I am enjoying the code and not so much the bugs!

video will be reborn every time the image quality improves

I capture and publish a lot more video these days. The quality play back on my local laptop is good but most views are via a flash or media players on the web. We upload our content in high quality but that is not what gets published. The service providers still have the original files, so as Moores Law continues to reduce costs with time we will see video services up-grading the play back quality, again and again until the quality that is captured is the same as the quality seen on the Internet.

Morven walk 2003

Join me on a walk up Morven Hill, Deeside, Scotland.

The media makes everything entertaining

The media, broadcasting, stuff on the tele to the web try to make everything entertaining? Not entertaining then no one watches. It's just a take on information. Take the weather. We watch weather forecasts, but the level of personalization in minimal. However, you can go to the source of the information that the Weather 'experts' use to make us the weather entertainment. What is the weather like this afternoon. Lets look up the paper or twich on the tele. It will come but why not switch on the local radar piciture to see if it rain near by and see if the wind is blowing it our way. We can do this today but for me very few do. Inertial is with the media. Is entertainment what we always want? Not the reality that is personal?


And an add on point. I have realised that social weather casts will becoming along. We need all the source weather forecasting informaiton and more as technology allows. However, I guess that one of the best sources of informatoin someone visiting Aboyne in Royal Deeside could do looking for a weather forecast and linking it to the outdoor things they want to do or any activity would be to ask me. Why I have lived here all my life. I can map the information to the experince of life. I have the most informaion on the subject.

Aberdeen OpenCoffee Club

I have setup up an Aberdeen OpenCoffee Club event on Upcoming.org. While in Silicon Valley I attended the Palo Alto, OpenCoffee meetup which is part of the OpenCoffee Club community. They are great places to talk to fellow entrepreneurs, Internet developers and all those interested in startup businesses, Internet or other wise.

If you are interested, sign up to upcoming website and I'll see you there.


The opencoffee club are also promoting the SEEDCAMP unconference in London in September.

The Industrailist The Digitalist

I have observed that as an entrepreneur you will be swept along or crushed by prevailing trends in society. Now your vision may be to create one of these but the total game is a lot larger than a vision.

I read an interesting slide and document linked in this blog posting. It describes how we are at an impasse between The Industrialist and The Digitalist. The former driven by scarcity and the economics of Adam Smith and the latter driven by abundance and of a new 'adam smith' science that is just starting to be understood. The article uses history to show that when such shifts in society take place, the incumbent, in this case The Industrialist, will fail to see the new world, even if they are looking directly at it. Conversely, The Digitalist will be discounted.

We are living in such times. The Digitalists do exist, the author lists, CEO of Google, as an example of how they drive a different message to the State (Government) and the rest of the corporate world.

As a startup entrepreneur and visionary I put myself in the Digitalist category and have been so for 10 years or so. I am not sure I knew or appreciated this until very recently. Looking back on my experiences it easy to see some repetitive lessions and feedback. I can see the way to how tomorrow will be but virtually no one around me would see it, they didn't even understand the vocabulary I use, words they know but in combinations foreign to their thinking.

Moving to silicon valley surrounded me with Digitalists. Conversations can be engaged with no schooling required. But its not just a case of moving to find like minded people, I need to learn as an entrepreneur new ways to communicate and show a stable and sensible or business case to encourage industrailists large and small to change. I feel more equipped to do this.

comparison shopping entrepreneurship lesson: never waiver

In 1998 I turned my startup energies to comparison shopping. This involved moving to Edinburgh to live for the first time. After a couple of years of bootstrapping I raised some angel funding and Prosumer Solutions was incorporated. I used my primative graphics skills to illustrate my thoughts on comparison shopping for financial services. The business quickly moved into content management tools and eventually the business stopped trading.

Today, just some 7 years on, comparison shopping websites are selling for hundreds of millions and romnours of $4bn UK floatation. The industry is profitable.

As an entrepreneur you have the vision to see these times, ahead of time. That is the easy part. The part I failed in back then was sticking to my guns, using my creative abilities and engery to guide a team throught the tough and often dark times to see the market opportuinty realised further along the line. You learn from failure and are better equiped to lead next time on the startup rollercoaster.