I’m currently on the look out for the opportunity to develop a web application which I can use to showcase my skills. This could be a product or indeed a service. Ideally this would be in an area where current solutions are lacking in some way so that my solution would not just be a case of reinventing the wheel.
If you have any ideas, I’d be interested to hear about them. Please add a comment to this entry.
Well after nearly 10 months, I finally have a company provided computer system!
I’ve spent the Tuesday nad part of Wednesday setting it all up and transferring the necessary data off my laptop. The system is running a development environment of Apache 2.2.4 (web server), PHP 5.2.1 (server side scripting language) and MySQL 5.0.37 (database engine). Other development tools I use are jEdit (cross platform programmer’s text editor), TortoiseSVN (a Subversion client for Windows), MySQL tools package (general database adminstration and querying duties), pgAdmin III (PostgreSQL administration), Putty (SSH client), WinSCP (for secure file transfers over SSH), ArgoUML (UML diagramming tool) along with the essential PHP and MySQL manuals for quick reference. I’m sure that there are a few others also which I can’t think of at the moment.
So I’m quite pleased with that, it’s all up and running and is highly responsive compared to my laptop. I will now have the freedom to format and rebuild my laptop which should help speed things up a little! I also have my eye on purchasing a copy of the new Command & Conquer game which would run nicely on my laptop 
At the start of 2007 we decided that we wanted to purchase our first house. So we got cracking and started looking in earnest after casually looking for the past two years. We soon found a two bedroom Victorian through terrace in Golcar out to the west of Huddersfield town centre.
We soon arranged a viewing and instantly liked it. We have looked around a few houses now and this was a very spacious two bedroom house in comparison to those that we had seen previously. We also really liked the area being high up above Huddersfield and Halifax practically on the top of a moor! The population of Golcar is predominantly elderly people and young families. It is quite a bit further out of town than where we are and so should be quieter. We will be a 5 minute walk from the village centre with shops and a library as well as having two small pubs within easy walking distance. We will be next door to a doctors surgery and a top rated infants school. We will be able to see Huddersfield’s Castle Hill from kitchen and bedroom window!
We promptly put an offer in and after a few more our offer was accepted. We soon got the wheels in motion in January and after a few miscommunications on the part of the estate agent, we look set to go. We are really looking forward to moving and taking on the challenge. We are in theory all ready to go, we need to sign on 6th April looking to move on 28th April. Let’s hope we don’t suffer any more hitches!
Take a look at the area on Google Maps.
I have just finished setting up Subversion 1.4.3 and Trac 0.11-dev on our web server at work. These are systems we will use to help with the management of the web development process. They are both geared towards software development.
Subversion manages multiple versions of the same file whilst providing a central location, repository, for a team working on a project to store project files. This will allow us to track our changes much better and assess progress. It will also allow us to work on new features while still be able to fix any issues which arise with systems int he mean time.
Trac is a wiki, Subversion repository browser and general project management tool. It provides many tools to track and manage a project and to manage issues with the project. It allows for quick reference to related items within the project in theory making tracking and communication easier.
I’ve had fun with our server and setting these tools up. We use the Plesk web hosting administration panel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Because of Plesk, I’ve had to install Python 2.5 in addition to the existing Python 2.3 installation which has caused a number of issues. I have also installed the PostgreSQL database server, Subversion 1.4.3 server, Apache mod_dav module, Apache mod_fastcgi module, Python bindings for Subversion, Python bindings for PostgreSQL and then Trac and it’s dependencies. With not having a great amount experience of compiling packages and installing software in Linux, I have had a bit of a steep learning curve. I seem to have come through it intact however and have gained quite a bit of experience in the process. This should be useful for my own Ubuntu 6.10 system for compiling the latest version of PHP.
I’m looking forward to working with these tools full time!
Well, it’s been a little while coming but the new theme for my blog is now in place. I think that it looks a little cleaner personally and provides more functionality. I hope that you like it, please feel free to comment.
I’m also doing some work on organising and updating the information on here. And I shall try to post a little more regularly!
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