Skeater's Blog

Ok, I've actually had a new server for a few weeks but I've only just got Skeater.co.uk running on it.

There are still many holes in my plan... Wii20.co.uk is down, Lady Skeater is down, and I've got no WillshawMedia.com email, but I'm working on ti.

In the meantime, this chest infection is nearly gone, and I've barely missed 2 and a half weeks of Taekwondo training!

The important news is that Skeater.co.uk is now "in the cloud"... oooh that's so web 3.0.

Barf.

This entry was posted on March 7, 2012 at 11:36 PM and has received 99 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Seriously, I thought this was long gone!

http://www.geocities.ws/skeatermedia/

I was googling "skeatermedia" and "skeater" to see which one did better for me, and that old geocities site came up!

It's mad. Also it has a picture of my 15 year old bottom on their. Does that make it porn?

Good times. I haven't read through it all, it may be very offensive in places. If it is, please, do let me know.

This entry was posted on February 18, 2012 at 3:12 PM and has received 101 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

So this isn't going to be interesting for a non-techie, and is really only going to be useful for people using BlogCFC.

So I'm really loving being all Coldfusion based for my blog, it's nice being able to browse the code and see what's going on, Mr Camden has done a great job building it, and his wise cracking code comments make it even more enjoyable to install.

However, I have had a couple of snags when installing it, so I thought I'd mention them incase others had similar problems.

Issues with BlogCFC Mobile SES on Railo

The BlogCFC documentation points to this thread on google groups, explaining how to get the SES URLs working in Railo (which is the Coldfusion server I use for the blog if you haven't guessed), and that's all great and good. Without the additional servlet-mappings you get 404 errors aplenty.

But I was getting 404 errors when linking to the SES URLs on a mobile device. So I had to add an additional line to the servlet-mapping and then reboot my Railo install. Maybe I didn't need to do that part, rebooting definately fixed it after adding the additional line, but I'd like to know if there's a way to do a "graceful" Railo restart, like you can do reload/graceful with Apache.

Anyway, this is the servlet mapping stored in the WEB-INF/web.xml file, with the additional line required in bold (also this is my first use of the </code> tag!).

So there you have it, I hope that helps someone else one day too.

NOTE: I put a white space in the "/ *", otherwise it was starting a comment and breaking the font for the rest of the page. DON'T put the white space in your web.xml file!

BlogCFC Admin styles in Google Chrome

So this isn't quite so bad, but was still a bit annoying. But bloody easy to fix/make bearable. The admin panel works fine in Firefox, no complaints at all, but in Chrome there were a few issues I had.

The #content div was really narrow and didn't fill up the page width, so all the tabs at the top of the page were stacked on top of each other and misaligned. This made it quite hard to use the tool, as I had to do a lot of scrolling up and down the page.

As well as that, I thought the font size was much to small, which meant I had even less stuff on the screen. Part of the problem might be because I've given up my 1080p monitor to the Mac, so I'm currently using a 1280 x 1024 17" monitor.

Anyway, to fix these 2 issues, I just added these 2 lines to the admin.css file

When I switch back to my big screen I might want to set that 700px to something a bit higher, but it's pretty useable now.

So this might be a quick dirty fix, it might not be the best way around it, but it works fine and I'm happy. I'm not sure if it'll get over written when the blog gets updated though.

Has anyone else had either of these issues with BlogCFC?

This entry was posted on October 14, 2011 at 2:10 AM and has received 113 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

So I've seen this floating around 'tinternet but I've never really paid much attention to it, but a Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar.

Using Gravatar.com you can upload a picture, set up a small profile, and then when you add comments and responses to various things around the web, you're avatar will appear automatically (on services hooked up to Gravatar.com).

One such place you can post responses is here, in the comments section on my blog. I posted a comment in response to Tom Riley's having no idea how to get my picture to show up, when Tom's already did!

All I had to do was sign up to Gravatar.com. The wonders of BlogCFC, Gravatar and the internet.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but you stick a picture there, then whenever you comment on a Gravatar-linked service the picture appears.

And I expect anyone reading this to post a comment, so you should all sign up so that the page looks all pretty with your pictures.

Hey, what if your picture is nasty! I bet I can't block the picture, I'd just have to delete your comment!

This entry was posted on October 13, 2011 at 2:02 AM and has received 94 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry.

So for the last 4 years I've been writing websites in various assortments of Coldfusion goodness. Lots of CFML, rendered via Coldfusion Server or Railo, with more and more CFScript and CFCs, with ever increasing amounts of JSON thrown in to talk to jQuery, who's just introduced me to his cousin jQuery Mobile (I never really got on that well with jQuery UI, I should give him a second chance), and of course, I've always been bestest buds with MySQL.

I don't need to mention HTML and CSS, they're like the great grandparents of RIAs.

A long time ago, me and PHP used to be friends. But not any more. It's dirty, and I don't like it.

So I've ditched the bloated, fat, ugly wordpress, and I'm now happily sitting on a barely modified at all BlogCFC install! I've obviously brought my darling Lady Skeater along with me, who I will be forcing to use her blog more often to help promote Coldfusion in the world, and I'm also planning on actually writing into this blog more often.

I know I've said that before, but this time I've got a plan. I'm going to write about what I do - as in code stuff. I think I'll stick with it for a few reasons, 1) I've actually got stuff to talk about, 2) It means I can dig out useful code snippets that I keep forgetting and 3) I don't sleep well enough to write down my dreams anymore. So I've got to replace them with something.

Anyway, I'm currently migrating old wordpress entries across before I get rid of it completely, but that shouldn't take too long.

So there you have it, that's 2 of the things done from my list of 5 things that should have been completed by 25th September. Awesome

This entry was posted on October 11, 2011 at 3:01 AM and has received 92 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

So once again I've left it about a million years to post, but that's my style.

I really like the idea of blogging and often have many wonderful things to say, but I'm not usually close enough to a computer to actually blog.

I have started to Tweet a bit though, and I follow people lots, I think I get Twitter now.

But in recent months there has been an influx of modern fancy web connected devices into my life, so hopefully I can write down and record these ideas on the go and update more often.

Anyways, coming up this week:

• Skeatermedia.co.uk to be redesigned again!
• Willshawmedia portfolio to reappear
• iOS app number 1 to be released
• I rant about big companies, and getting stuff for free off them
• I do a techie geeky post about how I work and I invite you all to comment!

But the shockingest news... I've got an iPhone. And I'll probably buy a Mac of some sort too.

But I'll always have my PC, and she'll always be in charge.

This entry was posted on September 20, 2011 at 7:04 PM and has received 63 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

And while we’re on the subject of “updates” as you choose to call them, I may as well date you’re up while we’re here.

Me ladies

So first of all it’s probably worth mentioning some where in here that I’m now bringing up a baby and about to move in with my girlfriend somewhere in Bristol… assuming Kingsley Thomas pull through and prove that not all estate agents are complete morons… so far though they’ve all proven to be some type of moron, even if they started off well. So Kingsley Thomas, please, please prove me wrong.

Anyway, Lady Skeater, as she’d like to be known on the site, will now be blogging along side me at lady.skeatermedia.co.uk so pay attention to that, she’s very clever and funny and has a wonderful way with words.

The little baby will not be blogging, currently she has trouble sitting up on her own, and if I do manage to get her balanced up right it’s likely that she’ll squeak with joy and topple her self over.

And my other lady…

Moving on now to Sabine. My BMW 320i SE. To many people, she may appear to be nothing special. To my mother she’s known as Bob, but Sabine is not Bob any more. She is Sabine, named after Sabine Scmitz, she’s a fast german lady so it seems appropriate. I’ve got a bit of a thing for cars as many people know, and Sabine is the quickest car I’ve had to date. She’s my first BMW. But over the last 18 months she’s started to fall apart on me.

The electric windows failed, the suspension was squeaking, clunking and rattling, the alternator died, and on top of all this there was no room in the boot for the buggy for the baby. I was sad, despite recently fitting my 2m kayak in the car (from parcel shelf to dashboard) it seemed like I was going to have to get rid of her or part ex her for something cheaper to run and with a bigger boot.

But within the last month or so, things started to look up! The incredible Matt Leach managed to find the problem with the electric windows and sort those out with a tiny bit of solder. This week I got the suspension sorted out at the garage next to my work, they said “the left side is squeaking, the right side is clunking, and it sounds like the heat shield is rattling”. So they fixed the squeak and the clunk and now Sabine is a smooth and pleasant drive and I don’t have to grit my teeth when reverse parking! There is still some rattling, but I’ll find it. There’s a bit of rust, and it needs a polish, but I’m good at sorting that stuff out.

So my current theory is… make Sabine all shiny and new, and then see what inspiration I can take from here…

I GOTTA SHINY PHONE

I’ve been trying to work out how I can get my hands on a Nokia n900. I used my faithful n95 as a satnav, for browsing the web, checking my email, taking notes, listening to music, I used it all day long for lots of tasks as well as the usual phone calls and SMS stuff. Oh and it had an awesome camera. I don’t like iphones… or apple at all for that matter, and I don’t like the stupid little ball on the Nexus One and the Desire.

I really really liked my n95, and the n900 has awesome reviews, plus it’s running on linux and I’m a techie… so I did a quick bit of maths and decided if I get £70 for my n95 from envirophone, and £200 for my laptop on ebay then there’s little difference between those 2 and the n900 at £330 on ebay. So I bought it!

I’m yet to get the money for the other 2 items I told myself I’d trade in… but I’ll get there!

The n900 is bloody awesome though, I’m pretty much glued to it all the time… it’s really bad I’m constantly communicating via the internet in some way now, and I have to resist the temptation at work to pick it up and play with it, but it does everything for me. I should probably write a proper review of it on LUUUX.com instead of just ranting generically about it. I’ll try to do that soon…

Where are my dreams?

Anyways, it’s getting quite late and I’m rambling quite a lot. Something I’d like to point out is that I’m not having as many random crazy dreams as I used to, I think becuase I’m too tired from commuting to reading and back and trying to sort my life out at the moment, but hopefully in a month or so when I settle to my new home… where ever that may be… and stop traveling so much I’m hoping the cruise ships, aliens, monsters, battles and adventures all return.

This entry was posted on June 2, 2010 at 1:48 PM and has received 60 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Since I last blogged, many things have happened to me. But I don’t feel my blog is the best place to list them all.

One thing that happened before I last posted though, was that I drew this incredible picture. If you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll follow this link to look at it.

I’m still not stinking rich living off the profits from my novels, websites, documentaries, musical productions and race teams, but I’m probably not much more from a fortnight away from doing all that.

The first step is to obviously sign up to all them online “get paid to write reviews and fill in surveys” sites. So I did that. Currently I’ve earnt THOUSANDS of… points. Which if I earn tens of thousands more… will become, vouchers. Good times.

Oh and also, some good news! A personified piece of Donkey Poo broke 2 windows on my car and stole 4 – 5 Euros (yes, Euros) in very small loose change from the center console of my car. Unfortunately the stupid bastard didn’t trip over his probably undone shoe laces as he waddled away with the stolen goods. And he clearly would have waddled, because the most stupid and ugly people in the world waddle.

I imagine instead of using a crowbar, the utter minger probably just looked at the windows and they shattered, so in spite they took the Euros so they could emigrate to somewhere else in Europe and start a new life pretending their disgusting face was actually a practical joke by a surgeon and it’s funny, not sad.

Anyway, not that I’m bitter or anything, but all car thiefs are disgusting and I hate them. I think anyone who has ever stolen anything from or vandalised a car should send me £70 each, the cost of my window excess >:(

I hope none of you ever have your car broken into, especially on a day where you have a flat tyre and a drum lesson that you have to cancel.

Instead, I hope you enjoy the link, here it is again – http://www.skeatermedia.co.uk/strip.php

This entry was posted on February 1, 2010 at 11:42 AM and has received 54 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Alright punks, punks probably just being me/you (if that's you/me talking to me/you/us again)...

SkeaterMedia is a little way off being finished at the moment... but it's going to be sooooooo good it'll be worth it, with new additions a-plenty to be added, many of which are already made and just need to be uploaded into the new site.

Anyways I'm just too busy either earning real money or wasting real money or playing Team Fortress 2 and waiting for Portal and Episode 2 to come out to really do anything constructive, plus with the little free time I do have I like to watch Scrubs and/or drink Budweiser.

In conclusion, I'm running out of Scrubs to watch (I'm taking a break after 4 seasons back to back) and my Budweiser is about to run out (luckily we've got 5 gallons of Thatchers and £70 worth of spitits + mixers) and so by the time Chrismas comes, SkeaterMedia.co.uk will already be the biggest internet success of all time.

Coffee makes you wee more, it's true.

This entry was posted on October 9, 2007 at 11:54 PM and has received 60 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

These days in my real job I do loads of stuff with databases, and I've been thinking about rebuilding SkeaterMedia so that it's clever and stuff and easier for me to add stuff to it. Now at work I'm supposed to be building a flash video player, something I've been thinking about adding to my site for ages, so it seemed like the right thing to do was rebuild my site with all these fancy new things I've got to do at work anyway.

I've set the deadline of this Friday. I may or may not hit that deadline. We'll see.

This entry was posted on September 23, 2007 at 3:44 PM and has received 71 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.