snow cover on the gorms

The Cairngorms and the higher peaks in Scotland get a reminder of winter today.

Fiddling at HMT

The fiddlers spectacular show runs for a week.

queens loch, originally uploaded by ecotorch.

Scotland Land of Food & Drink

The First Scotland: Land of Food and Drink Conference was held at Gleneagles this week.

A two day conference, with each day starting with a look at trends, retailing trends day, one and on day two, tourism/food market research from visitor to Scotland. Then the rest of the days talked about 'farm to fork'. The supply chain to service retail demand. The retailer seemed to be used a lot as the customer for the supply chain. The end individual consuming the product is surely the customer. The second day saw smaller entrepreneurial farmers and hotelier share their stories. Stories that focused on the end customer, the individual. Much more enthusiasm and innovation from these speakers than on day one.

The CEO of Scotland Land of Food and Drink clearly articulated an ambitious agenda. There is clearly a big opportunity, thinking 'small' may however be the best way to realise those goals?

Scotland Land of Food & Drink, originally uploaded by ecotorch.

dataportability barcampscotland2008

www.dataportability.org


friend of a friend


opensocial example. ref semantic

user in control in profile

Authentication is important e.g openID

WC3 to ratify?


Needs to be Free Patent Policy



Presenter Harry Halpin

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.