All entries for July 2005

Back from holiday

Writing about web page http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/kieranshaw/gallery/tenerife_2005/

We got back from Tenerife on Tuesday and was just what we needed. The hotel was superb and comes highly recommended (Spring Playa La Arena ).

As with every other year I've been to a Spanish speaking country I've come back wanting to learn the language. For once I've actually done something about it and signed up for a two term Beginners Spanish Course from the Language Centre. With a bit of luck I'll actually be able to do more than order two drinks by next year.

The other thing I've come back determined to do is get more organised (last year it was more exercise ). I've read Getting Things Done which I hope will help me get in gear. It's a tough read, but makes a whole lot of sense and if I get myself sorted perhaps it'll do me some good…time will tell.

Anyway…back to the grind stone for me, 6 weeks of work before I'm off to South Africa for 2 weeks…busy busy.

Oh..some photos:

: 22 Jul 2005 22:01 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Before and after

Follow-up to Monday night work out from Kieran's blog

Well, we're off on holiday to Tenerife in 12 hours time and the garden is not quite finished. It is mighty close though:

Since I lasted posted some pictures we've done:

• Finished off the gravel (all 2 tonnes of it)
• Laid a path around the circular lawn
• Level off that lawn because it was really uneven (so now looking a bit dead)
• Planted a hell of a lot of plants in the borders
• Made up around a dozen pots for the patio
• Started putting in 17 lights (downlighters, lanterns and spots)

We even enjoyed the first BBQ on it the other night, so it is really starting to feel like we can enjoy it.

Garden make over gallery

: 11 Jul 2005 19:22 |  Tags: New House |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Atom and talking to the outside world

Writing about web page http://dsonline.computer.org/portal/pages/dsonline/0507/w4sta.html

I really need to try and get Atom support into BlogBuilder. This is a great article all about Atom to get up to speed on the standard. One of the things that we really need to work on is out interoperability with the outside world beyond Warwick Blogs.

We've started with accepting external trackbacks, but there is plenty more to do. Chris suggested we should try integrating with Technorati too.

: 08 Jul 2005 10:42 |  Tags: Blogging |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Things to do with RSS

Writing about web page http://timyang.com/wiki/doku.php?id=lists:thingsyoucandowithrss

RSS is great…you can get RSS feeds from Warwick Blogs…here is a list of other things you can do.

: 05 Jul 2005 19:38 |  Tags: Blogging |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Creating faster web applications

Writing about web page http://www.baekdal.com/articles/usability/faster-web-applications/

Users always want things to be faster…the times of 14kbps modems and slow load times are over, the bottleneck is no longer the network but is instead the speed of our web applications.

Serving out a bunch of static web pages is easy, but in the times if dynamically generated, database heavy, user personalised pages…things are getting slower. Thankfully our machines are getting faster too, but they never seem to be fast enough for users.

This article on Baekdal.com has a few good words on the subject.

• It is about perception of speed, not actual speed
• Remove the waiting time, not the time taken for an actual activity
• Instant feedback via AJAX

: 01 Jul 2005 10:36 |  Tags: Java |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem