On a separate note, the Concert Photography Community over at Ning, is growing much faaster than expected and I’ve been quite surprised by the amount of new members every month.  If you’ve not checked it out yet, go ahead and take a look.

Getting Things Done

For those of you that are aware or do know about GTD as it’s affectionately known, there’s a fantastic tool coming out of Australia called ThinkingRock. the biggest benefit is its value for money, that it is, it’s free! The second great thing is that it’s actively developed, and slowly but surely is improving with each release. They have a very clear idea about where they want to go with the software, and have great community input, they’ve recently added a Windows Mobile GTD partner for ThinkingRock which allows you to synchronise and take your tasks and next actions with you. Although some people may comment that it’s not the prettiest UI in the world, it’s highly functional has all the tools I need on a day-to-day basis, which is much more important than great looking software that’s good for nothing. So go try it, the beta version (2.0) is what I’ve been using on Windows and OSX and it’s been 100% stable so far. It’s written in Java and is almost certainly available for your current platform.

If you already use it, or find it useful enough to use on a day-by-day basis, why not go and contribute something to the software team (you can find a link at the top right corner of the home page), which will only ensure that they are able to spend more time developing the software and making it even better (and perhaps a little prettier )

If you’re already using it, as always I’d love to hear more about it and what you find as the most useful features?. Cheers… ’til next time.

It’s come to my attention that there’s a significant amount of PHP/MySQL (why I focus on MySQL will become apparent as the post unfolds) application code out there that far more complex than need be. This is partly due to an insistence about backwards compatibility; i.e. I still have 2 users of my application that are using MySQL 3.21, or simply because there are many part-time developers out there that don’t feel that learning about how real databases can improve their productivity is important, because they can squeeze all the functionality we need out of PHP. So hopefully this will be a polite wake-up call to those of you that fall into one of the previous categories, to help you see why having a full understanding of database concepts is not only a “good thing”, it could help you with writing faster code, easier to maintain code, whilst maintaining data integrity, and improving overall security of your application.

I originally wrote this post as a single post, which started to look more like an essay the further along I got. So I’ve split it into multiple posts simply to make it easier to read and digest.

Now the reason I’m talking about MySQL primarily here is something of a history lesson. Love it or hate it, MySQL started out life as a relatively lightweight database, it sacrificed some of the more traditional database features and functionality, for gains in speed, and agility. The downside is that if you were developing real applications with real data, some of the work around methods to regain or replicate some of the missing functionality was quite painful involving some serious incantations of SELECT spaghetti!!. The reason I’m not talking about PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, or any of these other database products, is that anyone developing on top of them without the legacy MySQL baggage, really should know better!! Database abstraction layers are all fine and dandy, but really, what’s the point of making your app work with Oracle if it’s never going to exploit the advantages offered by that particular platform….. anyway… I digress..

The problem is that there are a lot of PHP or <insert favourite web scripting language here> apps out there that have their roots in the early MySQL era and have suffered sprawl and organic growth, don’t get me wrong this is a good thing, it just brings a bunch of baggage with it. You see over the last few years MySQL has made advances in leaps and bounds, it’s barely a shadow of the young upstart database that it once was, however many owners and developers of legacy applications have simply been too busy keeping on top of refactoring and recoding for the base version changes in PHP and MySQL releases to allow the existing code to work with MySQL both old and new. This means that many of the longest running most popular applications are almost certainly running with MySQL spaghetti SQL under the bonnet. Even many of the apps with extensive Web 2.0 and Ajax and other front-end bling, fall into this category. I would imagine that if you think of the top 3 most popular applications in the categories of Weblog, eCommerce Store, CMS, CRM or other mainstream apps, if they’ve come from a MySQL legacy background, that 2 out of 3 (or in some cases 3 out of 3) are running with Spaghetti SQL. In my next post I’ll talk about some of the ways that the features MySQL has added in the last 5 years can help to improve your applications. None of this is rocket science and I’m no database expert, so any DBA’s or Database Guru’s reading this by all means read and correct me where required, but don’t expect to get any useful info from me, I’m mostly harmless in regard to databases (and PHP for that matter!).

And if you still have 0.5% of your users that run MySQL 3.23 or older on their servers, which means that they can’t use a newer version of the application, then I suggest that you point them at an application with similar functionality that has ceased development, then they’ll be able to carry on working with that, whilst editing the files with ed, and viewing the html with lynx, reading their emails with elm, and before I get lambasted, I realise that there is a time and place for these apps and they are still valid, but NOT all the time in everyplace (oh and vi is so much better than emacs too!!).

We’ll start to dive into the detail in the next post, which will cover Triggers.

Ning is a platform for creating your own social networks. Our passion is putting new social networks in the hands of anyone with a good idea. With Ning, your social network can be anything and for anyone.

If you’re familar with MySpace, it’s similar to that, but in a more niche, content specific, kind of way. Ning allows you (and allowed me) to create a social network of like minded individuals, around any subject or topic…. love woodworking and making wooden toys, go and create a community to allow others to share their woodworking skills and ideas and knowledge.

So, if you’re into Concert and Gig Photography, and want to meet, talk, chat, blog, get critique, get feedback post images, and learn from others that are also into shooting live music, musicians, artists, bands and other musical shenannigans, go and take a look, sign up, and join the group!!

You can find it at http://concertphotos.ning.com

Don’t expect to be overwhelmed with members right away, I only created it today, and there’s only a couple of us there right now, but Professionals and Amateurs are warmly welcomed. I look forwards to seeing you on there!

So to what end? Well basically these guys all run search pages with “clickthru” value links and drive traffic to the their sites by bouncing traffic thru your webpages. In other words; they will submit a page to google for example, the link they submit will be full of the most heavily searched terms (usually warez, porn and cracks) but because they can only submit their site to Google a single time, they have to use pages externally. So they compromise (break into illegally) servers and infect them. So the result that comes up in Google when someone searches for a porn phrase for instance will look like this http://www.yourwebsite.com/mambo/time.php/porn+search+here where that last part is the search the user put into Google, the first part is your website, and as mentioned earlier the time.php is an infected file placed on your website by the crackers. The infected file rewrites the URL and redirects it to their income generating website in the hope that someone clicks the links (which they often do).

Have any of these people been caught yet? I have no idea, but surely if they do at the very least it’s obtaining money by deception (fraud) in any country aside from any computer violation and misuse laws that may be in place.

There are ways to avoid this happening, mostly revolves around vigilance and being aware of the files in your website (be aware of new files recently added when you’ve not updated your site in a while). There are software programs like Tripwire, that can alert you when stuff like this happens, but are beyond the average user. A more detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this weblog, but if you’ve been cracked, your circumstances may differ greatly and any cracked server requires proper forensic examination to check if anything else has been compromised. The guys that do this, thrive on complacence, try to be aware of what’s happening on your website. Good Luck.

So this is very much new ground for me, but the short version is, people have been becoming increasingly aware of my lack of empathy and total obliviousness (?) to others emotional states and needs. Turns out this is a kind of emotional detachment or dissociative disorder (think similar to mild autism) where basically all my choices and all my actions were based on objectivity (hence the name of my blog) and just about never allowed for emotion into the decsion making process unless it was fun and humour (for some reason I grok those two things).

This has become a problem for others around me, but one of the the hardest parts about accepting that I really had a problem is because, this is the way I’ve always been (according to my mum), so I have no benchmark to compare my current state of mind with. So off I trundled to the shrink, who is the one that informed me about my dissociative state, but happily informs me that, getting the emotions to come to the surface and putting me in touch with them is the easy part, apparently the hard part is for me to decide if I want to go through the process of opening the emotional floodgates. If you want to read on, click on “more” below

Here’s the deal. The guy I’m working with says that everyone out there with a normal emotional responses and empathy goes through a decsion making process. Step 1 is to comprehend objectively, using eyes, ears, touch, smell, taste, and collect data (no problems there) but Step 2, apparently is the involvement of emotions, to apply feelings and emotional response before moving on to Step3 which is where you take Step 1 and Step 2 and apply logic to all of the information and create an action plan.

So, after hearing all of this, I’ve been trying to understand the ramifications of both sides of the coin, will I operate better with emotional awareness or without it. Doc says that right now I’m only half a person (metaphorically speaking) who is only enjoying half of his life and that I’d enjoy it far more if I had access to these feelings he’s been talking about.

• Without Emotions – This is my current state of being. Currently working in a sales environment, I pride myself on being a fantastic salesperson, to a great extend because of my lack of empathy, I get to concentrate only on the facts and make the solution fit the consumers needs without being clouded, some people would say this is a bad thing, but it certainly works very well for me, and my peers tend to agree. Think of me as a walking, talking product brochure! It also allows me to deal with emotional situations in a very logical, and non emotional way, which often makes me a good listener and allows me to give non emotional feedback when people come to me with their problems. The cons I can immediately see, affect my hobbies and my emotional side (obviously). Firstly photography; one of my biggest passions in life right now is photography, which is clear from anyone that has visited this blog in the past. I do very well with factual and technical shots, but whenever emotional input is required I’m at a definite disadvantage, this is particularly evident in most photographic situations where at least some empathy is required in order to create an image that “tells the story“. Secondly music; I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember, loved listening to is and since I was about 12 have loved playing it, now as long as I was reading dots from a piece of sheet, I was fine, it tells you what notes to play at what speed and gives you a feel for how it should be played. Now all this is very logical, and I know any of you out there that are accomplished musicians are shaking your heads and vigorously complaining that you can’t do music without feeling, let me just say that there is nothing accomplished about my musical abilities. But now I’m trying to write music and create it, I’m finding this lack of emotion a very large road block for me indeed! But my total objectivity is one of the things that has made me such an accomplished geek.
• With Emotions – This is the nirvana according to the doc. So looking at this, immediately it’s obvious that anything to do with my creative side will benefit. My interactions will happen at a much more personal level and I’ll be able to relate to people on their own terms. I’ll have a fuller and more interactive life with people on a whole new level, this is the hardest to grok because I have no point of reference with which to gain an understanding of exactly what this means. I’ll become a whole and complete person (allegedly!)

So here we are, at a crossroads in my life. Do I open the emotional floodgates, and attack life with a completely fresh outlook, or am I better with the devil I know? I guess I’ll decide in the next week or two and move forward with one or the other!

I’ve had my new laptop for a month or two now, and I can confirm it’s quite addictive. I’m not new to Macs but this is the first Apple laptop I’ve had, and it’s great. It’s fast, and along with Parallels VM, it runs Windows XP every bit as quickly as my old Vaio did, result!

I have a minor whinge though. Firstly damn it gets hot, damn hot, in fact I’ve never had a laptop get this hot ever before (someone said something about it being 80 watts, is this a lot for a laptop?).

Anyway, I’m not gonna go on for ages, everything about them has pretty much already been saids probably hundreds of times, I’ll simply say, I can highly recommend them. Go on, spoil yourself

From their website: “D2OL, was first to use computational methods to deploy targets against Anthrax, Smallpox and Ebola, and now is first to have a credible SARS target (A target conserved between pig and human coronovirus, the suspected virus behind SARS).”

So that’s my soapbox done for the day, if you feel inclined and have nothing else using your idle CPU cycles, then give it a try, and you never know, you might be the one that finds a suitable cure candidate for some pretty nasty diseases. Head on over and take a look.