Archive for March, 2009

31 Mar 2009

joomla growing on me

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For the past week or so i’ve been working with joomla as one of my latest projects is powered by it.

Joomla Logo Horizontal Color Slogan
Creative Commons License photo credit: adria.richards

I started using joomla on theleavingcert.com a couple of years ago, but switched to wordpress. I believed wordpress would give the site a boost in search engines and make it easier to manage. How right was I? :mrgreen:

Anyway, joomla has come a long way since then and whilst i’d still favour wordpress for it’s simplicity, joomla is catching up pretty quickly. For a more community based / static site joomla is perfect.

I’ve also been impressed by the quality of some templates and the sheer volume of extensions available for all sorts of stuff. If you haven’t used joomla before, i strongly recommend you take it for a test drive.

As part of this new site i’m helping to build, i’m going to attempt to combine wordpress with joomla so that i can have all the SEO benefits of wordpress within a joomla set up.

I also have big plans and more new sites and partnerships lined up for the next few months and joomla will play a major role in those plans.

30 Mar 2009

Desktop Spot Check #3

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A while ago, i started taking pictures of my desk / desktop to keep tabs on what sort of equipment i was working with and how clean things were kept :smile: The goal was to build up weekly or monthly photos and then i’d have them to look back on in years to come… to see how far things have advanced.

Anyway, this evening i find myself using 3 PC’s at the one time. It doesn’t happen too often. My old laptop is basically retired now and sits in a bag, in a corner, 7 days a week. My netbook is strictly for college work and late night browsing. My Dell XPS 420 is my main PC and what i regard as ‘home’.

Anyway, here’s what things look like as write this blog post;

Desktop Spot Check

My netbook is currently copying files to my usb drive. Approx 6 gigs of stuff. This needs to be moved on to my desktop. The reason i have my old ferrari laptop out is because i’m messing around with ubuntu still. I have to write a report on linux/ubuntu for an assignment so that’s what i’m doing in one of my main 20″ monitors. In the other 20″ monitor, i’m writing this blog post :mrgreen:

Is it it overkill? Yes, undoubtably. But speed is the name of the game. If i were to use windows to do all of the above on one PC, it would take 2/3 times longer to get through all the work plus it’s painful having to actually flick between windows back and forward. You need to remember things in your head – essentially you copy stuff in to your brain and then paste it in a new window – i’m talking about memorizing diagrams or keywords or numbers…. you can’t copy/paste an entire page from one window to another…. usually you’ll go back and forth taking bits and pieces – but with multiple monitors, you don’t have that problem.

You don’t have to remember anything. If i’m answering a question, i can have lecture notes open on one monitor and be writing in another. No flicking back and forth, no need to remember things. Less stress, more success as the saying goes :mrgreen:

29 Mar 2009

busy ending to march

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I like being busy, being under pressure and right now, i can’t do much more.

Rush hour
Creative Commons License photo credit: Puss.In.The.Hood

College

I have just 3 weeks of college left starting tomorrow. I have all of this week to get through (feel sorry for me), then i’ve a two week break for easter, followed by two weeks of college classes, then a ‘study week’ off and then 6 exams which run from 11th to 21st May, usually a day between each exam.

So i have it pretty easy. I do have a few exams and assignments to complete this week as part of my continuous assessment mark. My overall marks are made up of about 40% CA and 60% end of term written exams.

I’m expecting about 30% out of 40% on the CA side of things which will leave me in a strong position going in to the summer exams. I have no repeats from Christmas and no subject really worries me, so i’m expecting to coast in to third year.

Partnership

Last week, i also agreed to partner up on an Irish Golfing website which i’ll name at a later date. I have no interest in golf, none whatsoever… but that is in many ways what attracted me to the project. It allows me to focus purely on things i’m good at like SEO and blogging – i won’t get distracted or de-railed by writing or researching golfing topics :smile:

The site in question is running joomla, so i’ve been busy doing my homework on joomla and have successfully upgraded the site from version 1.0 to 1.5 (latest version), plus moved the site to a new server. There’s a lot more work to be done, but it’s all coming together nicely and the site has a lot of potential.

Ubuntu

What else have i been doing? Well, as i speak i’m installing ubuntu on my old laptop… with a view to being able to dual boot XP and ubuntu. That sounds horrendously techy and i despise people who try to run 20 operating systems on a hacked mobile phone and things like that but this is part of a college assignment and i’ve no choice.

I like linux, i like ubuntu because they’re free and open source. Will i ever use them? No (not on a desktop). Everything is built for windows and works with windows so unless i’ve a really good reason to use any other operating system, i won’t be switching from windows any time soon.

Windows > MAC >everything else in an average home environment. For graphic design, film and arty types, MAC rules the roost. If RAM and power is a problem, the likes of ubuntu do the job nicely. But for mr.average, windows wins, which is why it is so dominant although i’ll concede windows dugg a grave for themselves with vista :mrgreen:

28 Mar 2009

Ireland -v- Bulgaria

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Posted in Work | 3 Comments

Quick post now, i’m off to Croke park, Dublin now for an Ireland-v-Bulgaria World Cup qualifier match. Come on Ireland!

DSC04200
Creative Commons License photo credit: anthonymcg

26 Mar 2009

lost an important usb key? tough.

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Posted in Work | 2 Comments

Every week i get emails from the college telling me how some student has lost their usb key and that it’s really important they get it back as their entire year’s work is on it and they’ve no back up.

he gets MAD when the food is gone
Creative Commons License photo credit: webchicken

Honestly, i couldn’t care less :mrgreen: I don’t care if somebody loses their work and don’t have it backed up – that’s their problem. They took the risk and it backfired. It’s laziness – nothing else. Pure laziness.

IT students in particular have no excuses. Who’s gonna employee an IT guy that can’t even keep his own data secure and backup up – never mind a company’s!

If something is SO important that you cannot afford to lose it, you’ll do everything in your power to secure it and make sure you reduce the risk of losing it. My usb key is like my car keys, phone and wallet – it comes everywhere with me.

If i lose it, i’ll be angry – yes but only because i’ve lost a €60 usb key, not because i’ve lost the data that’s on it. I have all my important stuff kept on my home PC, netbook and ‘in the cloud’ on gmail and other sites.

The single most valuable storage area i have is probably my gmail account. It’s hosted by google, so it’s pretty reliable. But that doesn’t make it bulletproof. I have gmail offline enabled on both my home PC and netbook – meaning the previous 3 months of gmail activity are stored locally on both of my PC’s.

So if gmail were to go down or my account get hacked or shut down for whatever reason, all is not lost. If i lost my home PC, netbook and was locked out of all my online accounts – then i’m in trouble but the chances of that happening are extremely slim if not nil.

The moral of the story is backup here, backup there, backup everywhere :smile:

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