April 2011
1 post
First test for the RockHopper!
Took the Specialized RockHopper SL 2011 on its first proper test today - a beautiful offroad adventure in the ‘wilds’ of Couldson’s Happy Valley. Great fun - the bike performed well, especially on the final (fast) descent back into the valley…love my front suspension! Medium Happy Valley Route - from The Fox, via Farthing Downs, Chaldon Church and Alderstead Heath Share...
Apr 26th
4 notes
December 2010
1 post
5 tags
Reputation Systems for Good Causes
Recently, Facebook profiles have been awash with cartoon character avatars - designed to raise awareness of the NSPCC (a UK-based children’s charity).  Although apparently nothing to do with the NSPCC officially (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336035/Facebook-cartoon-character-campaign-NSPCC-charity-says.html) the online campaign has polarised many Facebook users, with many...
Dec 8th
8 notes
November 2010
1 post
Looking into the RCA Secret 2010
Some of my early favourites from the annual secret postcard sales from the Royal College of Art in London. (possible Tracey Emin?) (from my old Printmaking teacher - Antony Lee) Too obvious for a Hirst? Another Emin?
Nov 13th
3 notes
July 2010
1 post
Rails Part 3: Creating a Cart
Had a bit of an absolute nightmare here - one of those ‘oh yeah, I think I’ve followed the code carefully, but…’ moments. Just couldn’t get the darned thing to run without errors Eventually decided that the only way I was going to make progress was by (sadly) trashing my earlier code and stepping through the sample PragProg code provided on their website… a...
Jul 4th
June 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Rails Part 2: Adding a Catalog Display
So - on to Part 2 - and I’ve covered the following ground… Created a new controller to handle customer interactions Using the ruby script/generate command again, but this time adding a controller rather than a scaffold. Implemented the default index action. In the script/generate command, to implement the index action, simple add the word ‘index’ after the controller...
Jun 28th
2 tags
Learning Rails. Again.
I’ve decided to remind myself of how good Rails is as a development and prototyping framework after my 6-month dalliance with the Semantic Web. Picking up my dusty PragProg tome (Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition) I got down to business with hacking together their example of a web site cart, which will hopefully refresh my knowledge of all the Rails essentials whilst building...
Jun 27th
April 2010
1 post
1 tag
Apr 26th
November 2009
1 post
Serendipity and O'Reilly
Over the course of a short number of weeks, I’ve come to realise that Tim O’Reilly is one of the most important people that I follow on Twitter. Important, influencial and potentially life-changing. I noticed a tweet from @timoreilly “RT @mattcutts How did I miss out on this blog and upcoming O’Reilly book? http://bit.ly/14eucg “Building Web Reputation...
Nov 25th
28 notes