Tom Wright's Web Log :: Web Explorations and Voyages of Discovery http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/syndicate/rss1.0/ Web Standards, Accessibility, PHP, DOM Scripting and General Peregrinations 2008-08-13T17:38:54+00:00 Severn Solutions developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) en-gb Copyright 2003 - 2008 Tom Wright Sergio Surfs the China Qiantang Dragon Tidal Bore http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/08/11/sergio_surf_qiantang_bore Most excellent news! My good buddy and bore riding compatriot, Serginho Laus (aka Sergio), has realised his dream of surfing the mighty Qiantang Dragon tidal bore. Last week he and fellow Brazilian Pacelli spent the new moon syzygy scouting and surfing the Qiantang bore over an area agreed with the Chinese government. While no records were broken, some good clean sections and peaks reaching 10 feet were found - in between the occasional ferocious Asian squalls.

Check out some of the photos of Sergio and Jorge surfing the Dragon.

The trip was principally a relationship building exercise with the Chinese government, to strengthen a bond Serginho has been forging for several years. With the intent of returning for the equinox festival in September to deliver a display of tidal bore surfing to the hundreds of thousands of people that flock to Hangzhou every year to revere the tumultous power of the Dragon at full force.

I have considerable respect and admiration for Serginho. He is a great ambassador for the sport of tidal bore surfing and no one has pioneered this unique sport more than he over the last 10 years. Having spent many years learning every aspect of the Pororoca and showing a true passion for the spirit of the tidal bore Sergio has taken gradual and delicate steps towards realising his achievement in China. It is for this very reason tidal bore pioneering should stay the realm of the tidal bore specialist and not be absorbed into and saturated by the all-consuming materialism of the surfing industry's Search.

I hope that Team Gerlach showed the same respect AND the Chinese government doesn't get greedy!

Keep up to date with Sergio's adventures at the brazilian website Waves.

]]> text/html 2008-08-11T11:01:45+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Surf and Travel BT Home Hub 2 and Airport Express Configuration? http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/08/11/bthomehub2_ae Simple objective to integrate an Airport Express station into my home network to allow us to broadcast audio to speakers in different parts of the house and then control the playlists using the new Remote feature on the iPod Touch. At the same time I was hoping to extend the network range by upgrading to the 802.11n wireless draft recommendation. My current network had a BT Home Hub router hard wired to a HomePlug to allow the range to reach my office in the farthest reaches of our large brick barn conversion.

  1. Convince BT support to send me a new BT Home Hub 2 without paying the £50 upgrade fee - after all they had just sold me into a new 18 month contract the previous month void of the upgrade router with N capabilities!
  2. Setup Home Hub 2 and assign static IP addresses to the platforms and virtual machines on my network.
  3. Test the new extended range with my 802.11n-enabled iMac and notebook.
  4. Get no improvement in signal whatsoever!
  5. Test file transfer speeds within range of the new router between iBook and Acer - marginal speed improvements. Disappointed with BT's claims and new product… Oh well onto integrating the Express base station.
  6. Follow instructions to configure AE (airport express) using the AirPort Express Utility on the supplied software from Apple.
  7. Once configured AE is no longer recognized on the network so forced to perform the AE reset.
  8. Try ethernet hard-wiring the AE to the Home Hub and configuration works. But once move the AE to wireless it again disappears.
  9. Trawl web to discover similar issues installing AE with the Home Hub version 1.
  10. Finally discover a successful installation using WDS.
  11. Try to emulate this method for the Home Hub 2 only to discover there is no option for enabling a wireless repeater in the Home Hub 2 configuration software.
  12. Finally hit a brick wall, and that is where the Home Hub 2 is going for the time being as I resort to rolling back to the Home Hub version 1.
  13. Follow instructions for WDS setup and everything works fine.
  14. Assign static IP address to avoid conflicts that regularly occur when with the Hub tries to assign IP addresses dynamically.
  15. DONE :)

Conclusion to this convoluted process is that it would appear with the lack of option for Repeater configuration with the Home Hub 2 there is no physical possibility for installing the Airport Express in a network powered by the BT Home Hub 2. So why have BT removed this configuration option anyway? I suppose their argument would be that with twice the range (up to 70m indoors) the new routers with 802.11n wireless do not need a repeater facility any more. Well maybe I just got a bricked hub from the outset but there is no way the new Hub was displaying that kind of improvement in range. Anyway I got a result in the end and have a happier household.

Nothing impresses guests more than flashing out the iPod touch to change the music playing on several speakers around the house! But I certainly won't be jumping through hopes to use the BT Home Hub 2 again and wouldn't recommend the additional investment that BT insist on charging long-standing customers for the development that went into constructing this brick!

]]> text/html 2008-08-11T10:14:49+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Hardware 5 Years Old - Quinquennial Anniversary! http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/07/30/5yearsold While completing the Survey 2008 I noticed that this weblog has now surpassed the five year mark and in fact the wooden anniversary on July 1st slipped by without a mention. So here are a few quick words to toast our Quinquennial celebration - five years of blogging.

Input to this weblog has not been as enthusiastic and regular since the Winter of 2005. As I entered 2006 my priorities moved to new horizons and the future family that I am now lucky enough to share my life with. I was also feeling despondent with the attitude of the web community and blogging fraternity in general (a view recently shared in part by new media guru Justin Calacanis). In 2006 hand-rolled blogging software was becoming a thing of the past with the rapid advancement of numerous publishing systems and the volume of web-centric blogs increased as their quality decreased. There was rarely enough time in the day to both dissect the important information and share my own thoughts and knowledge.

While I cannot guarantee I will ever return to the volume of postings I once offered I would like to think I can keep this weblog alive and generate enough interest from a few valuable entries that will keep you coming back for more.

So with five years under my belt it is onwards and upwards. Who knows what the future will hold but I know it will never cease to be exciting..!

]]> text/html 2008-07-30T09:35:27+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Blogging The Survey 2008 http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/07/30/thesurvey2008 Have you taken the survey for people who make websites yet?

I took the survey 2008

]]> text/html 2008-07-30T09:19:29+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Blogging Everything's Gone Virtual! http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/07/24/everything-is-virtual Firstly apologies to anyone who has felt the urge to follow my blog with such a sporadic posting of entries over the last 18 months. Becoming a dad has compelled me to reassign my priorities and blogging time has really been under the kosh.

Anyway, time is of the essence so I must not ramble. Virtualization is the name of the game currently and I have been hard at work and play test driving a broad array of Linux platforms on both a Windows Vista host and a Tiger host. Since last posting my excitement at discovering VMWare Player back in May I have upgraded to Fusion and Workstation and started building virtual operating systems from scratch using ISO boot disks. I have one goal in mind and that is to create my development nirvana - a perfect setup of multiple displays and desktops that will allow me to meet my objectives in the quickest possible time using the minimum number of actual platforms.

I will come back to this in the coming weeks and discuss what desktops and operating systems I have gone for. Watch this space…

]]> text/html 2008-07-24T18:43:10+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Operating Systems, UNIX VMWare Saves the Day http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/05/30/vmware-saves-the-day Great - a solution to my virtual machine dilemma has materialised in the form of VMWare Player a nifty virtual machine that allows secure running of complete operating systems on the host platform. There are plenty of pre-built appliances available from the VMWare site of which I was relieved to discover a KDE desktop preconfigured with WINE and legacy Internet Exploder versions. In fact this method has one up on the side-by-side running in Windows XP in that session management works across all versions! This is a huge saving grace for testing presentation rendering inside an authentication only area of the site.

In fact my journey into virtual machines has led to several discoveries and now I have a full featured version of Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) running along side the Vista desktop full screen on a second display. So feeling slightly more satisfied with my Vista and Acer now :)

]]> text/html 2008-05-30T14:22:18+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Operating Systems OS X Come Back to Me! http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/05/01/osx-come-back-to-me Well haven't really had much time to delve into my newly acquired Vista platform but today with some urgent testing required for a completion the time had come.

Ok I was prepared for the multitude of software bloat I might find on the Acer 5920 when it arrived and actually it wasn't too bad! Just a case of removing a few irrelevant games, some dodgy looking attempt at DVD authoring software and finally making the decision to replace NIS with BitDefender. Actually this was only after, having installed and updated NIS, I discovered when I awoke Aristotle (yes all my platforms are philsophers!) this afternoon that my 3 month subscription to NIS had expired in 1 day!? All looked a bit time consuming having to deal with support and no way I was restoring this puppy so off it went. Fortunately an uninstall process that was far less painful than I recall encountering with my old Win98 box many years ago - thanks of course to RegSupreme.

Great so I have a secure system, I have removed the unwanted software and killed the odd unwelcome service. Nice sleek, clean Vista platform ready to begin software install for development. No time to deal with all the usual software tools initially as I had to crack straight on with testing. Joining the wireless network was not an issue - although file sharing was (for another post perhaps!). And soon I had the sandbox up for testing in IE7 on Vista. Great! Now time to download the Virtual PC so I can get on with legacy testing….. Arrrrrggggghhhh……! Virtual PC doesn't support Windows Vista Home PREMIUM. But I thought Premium means all the bells and whistles. Well according to MicroDollar it clearly doesn't! In fact it only seems to be a few more quid than Windows Vista Basic!? So what is the actual point of all these different versions. It seems to me I have wound up with Windows Media version and am looking at another hundred quid to get it updated to a version that will allow me to do all those lovely developer like things I like to do with all my philosophers. Nice one MicroDollar!

I thought it would save me time and money getting a laptop with Vista to do M$ testing rather than going down upgrading route on Socrates - my iMac box running Tiger at present. But now I guess not. Painful…

To be continued I am sure…

]]> text/html 2008-05-01T15:24:26+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Operating Systems Into The Vista Maelstrom http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/04/29/vista-maelstrom Nearly three years ago this very week I switched platforms with the acquisition of my first ibook. I have certainly fallen for the Apple candy and a 24" iMac and iPod Touch have been added to the arsenal. With a final loss of patience in the very old and hacked Dell platform I have been running Windows testing off, and a total lack of time to even contemplate upgrading my principle platform to Leopard for Windows Boot Camp I decided to pick up a budget Acer laptop to fill the gaps. With a few windows-centric jobs looming it will also allow me to tread the shaky path that is Windows Vista for the first time. While I wait on delivery a bit of preparation has been in order including:

The platform will principally be used just for testing so I will also be after Virtual PC and the Windows XP disc image to allow standalone versions of the legacy exploders. Will blog on this in due course…

]]> text/html 2008-04-29T09:27:50+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Operating Systems Back Again!? http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2008/04/29/back-again Once again apologies for a long spell of absence…! No excuses. I have been absorbing my time with our beautiful daughter, Olive. It has taken four months but finally we have found a balanced routine.

So, with my first footsteps into Vista looming on the horizon I felt this was a good time to try and return to some informative blogging.

]]> text/html 2008-04-29T09:13:39+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) Blogging iPod Touch Accelerometer Rotation Tips http://www.severnsolutions.co.uk/twblog/archive/2007/11/10/ipod-touch-accelerometer There are two things my friends want to do when I flash out my new iPod Touch: pinch zoom and spin that accelerometer into action. Both great features. Especially the latter when rotating into cover flow mode. But more often than not the accelerometer fails to respond to my demonstrations and we are left in expectation of what might happen as the accelermometer does not work.

I was starting to share the feeling of others on the web that this might be a repairable bug until I discovered last night that it is all down to the position I hold the iPod Touch. If the Touch is being held vertically (at right angles to the ground) the accelerometer seems to be flawless in its performance. The problem only arises when the Touch is held horizontal (parallel to the ground) - I assume because the detection mechanism does not work in this plane. Seems to resolve any issues and while I generally prefer to hold it fairly flat in my hand I will be prepared next time a friend asks to see my iPod Touch.

]]> text/html 2007-11-10T10:27:50+00:00 developer[at]tomwright[dot]me[dot]uk (Tom Wright) iPod Touch