barcampScotland 2008

It's hard to believe its approaching a year since the first barcamp in Scotland. A month earlier this year, we have barcampScotland 2008 on 2nd February, Edinburgh. Full details on the wiki and a party Friday evening too this time. A barcamp is an unconference event where participants freely and openly share learning and experiences, web2.0 to software to eduction etc. etc. if you have a topic or interest you want to share, get it on the schedule.

What is important

me & my DNA

The Richard Dimbleby lecture was given by Craig Ventor last night, entitled, A DNA-Driven World .

At the heart of his lecture was Life.

He touched on a couple of topics that are core to me. Focus on life outcomes rather than transactions.

Transforming education from memory factory to real world problem solving.

Prevention agenda on all fronts health to war.

Ben Avon white with snow

The first good covering of Snow wraps itself around the Cairngorms. The Westward or each facing slopes are holding most of the wind blown snow on Ben Avon. Will this be the start of the skiiing season? The free skier and snow boarder were out on the hills on Friday. Powder was to be had. Great.

Ben Avon white with snow, originally uploaded by ecotorch.

Butterworth Jigtime 68 minutes

I teamed up with a couple of friend to enter the Butterworth JigTime competition this weekend. You get a puzzle, in this case, a Howard Butterworth painting of Dunnator Castle, 250 pieces and you have to put it together in the quickest time. Our time 68 minutes, took second place, 13 minutes behind the winners. Now, 250 does not seem a lot of pieces but this is no ordinary puzzle. No corner pieces and harly a straight edge to find. Watch out for JigTime 2008, it is a lot of fun.

Image013, originally uploaded by ecotorch.

Whisky live Glasgow

I attended Whiskylive Glasgow on Friday and Saturday. A celebration of whiskies of the world. Most were Scotch, with single malts leading the way but one Irish whisky attended too.

I liked the format. You get a whisky glass and vouchers to exchange for a sample of the water of life from a product of your choosing. My favourite single malt was The Benromach Single Highland Malt from Gordon & MacPhail, the world's only organic certified Scotch. Warm and smooth.

Cheers to all for making the event a great experience.

Whisky live Glasgow, originally uploaded by ecotorch.

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!