Ben Nuttall

Blog: A Day In The Life

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Wednesday, 6 January 2010

This Week in Technology

I seem to have spent the last hour doing little else than sharing links to BBC News articles on technology. There seems to be so much going on at the moment, so I thought I'd write a short post to mention a few of them.

Dolphin Browser for Android
I just came across this app tonight (free from the Android market) - it's an alternative browser for Android phones which has more advanced features than the standard one, such as tabs, easy sharing, select text and so on. The standard browser is ok (it isn't Google Chrome, which isn't available for Android as yet, but should be in time - it uses the Webkit rendering engine - the same as Chrome and Safari - which is the best one of them all) but I find it rather limited as although you can have multiple windows open at once, they aren't displayed as tabs and only the one in focus can load at any time. Apart from this feature being available in the Dolphin Browser, it also has a number of other functions I wouldn't have thought to ask for.

It has a fantastic share function which allows you to post the current page to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Gmail, Text Message (all by default) or a particular app you have installed which supports sharing. It also supports gestures which you can set to perform a range of actions - so that, say, swiping an L-shape on the screen with your finger goes forward in the browser, or a backwards L-shape to go back, N to open a new tab, and so on. You can personalise them to do whatever you like.

Anyway, I've only opened it once to see whether it was any good, so I'm bound to find many more uses for it. I have Opera installed too, but I don't really like it and only use it if I have a problem with the standard browser.

Google Nexus One Mobile
This week, Google released their first mobile handset (although I'm not sure what makes it more Google than the first few handsets with the Android operating system). It's been released in the U.S. as far as I am aware, and is due for release in Europe in the second quarter of 2010. It's set to be made available on Vodafone in the UK, which is great news for me as I'm with them now (with my HTC Magic Android phone) and wish to stay with them. I've got about another 9 months before I'm due for an upgrade, so I'll have to see what's on the market then - maybe the Nexus One will still be the main contender, maybe something newer.

Anyway, it looks great - pretty much the same as my HTC Magic, with a few more good points to it, like the inclusion of a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack! Oh and apparently Google Maps comes with voice directions, telling you where to go while showing you 3D imagery from Street View! That's even better than a SatNav!

Firefox for Mobile
Apparently Mozilla have been building a mobile app for Nokia smartphones, which they will roll out to other smartphones in due course - including Android, but not the iPhone, as Apple are being very restrictive of what they will allow to get on to their devices (like Google Voice & Adobe Flash - and similarly, they restrict iTunes from synchronising with any device other than an iPod or iPhone, so users can't sync music from iTunes to a non-Apple mp3 player or mobile phone). Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what Firefox is like on a smartphone, but for now I'm happy with my recent discovery of the aforementioned Dolphin Browser.

Google Chrome OS Demo Video
The Google Chrome OS was announced in July of last year, and I'm terribly excited about it - as for one I love the Chrome browser, another I love the idea of a free & open source browser made by Google, also my mobile phone is powered by Google's mobile operating system Android (also free & open source), and I simply love everything about Google and its ways of furthering technology and its applications in society.

Anyway, today I caught an article on BBC News which showed a demo video of the Chrome OS in action - and straight away I could see how they had thought about extending the browser into a whole computer system, and even at a glance I knew I could see how it worked because it was purely simple and completely logical. The shot I saw had the look of the Chrome browser, with two small tabs to the left of where the browser tabs are positioned, only an icon's width: one containing the Chrome OS logo; the other containing the Gmail logo. It was logical that the Gmail icon would be a permanent tab containing the user's email, and the Chrome OS icon would drop down to show other applications to run, such as documents, pictures and so on, similar to the Start menu in Windows, or the similar variants in other systems such as Mac OS and various versions of Linux, but simple and minimalist. This was demonstrated in the video.

Google Homepage Celebrates Gravity for Newton's Birthday
If you were to go to the Google homepage on Monday, you would have seen an apple tree draped along the top of the lettering in the logo. Upon the page loading (it now loads only the logo and the search & I'm Feeling Lucky buttons until the user moves the mouse, when the other links and information fades in to view), an apple literally fell from the tree towards the bottom of the page. Google often celebrates the life and achievements of historical characters such as scientists, mathematicians, authors and inventors (as well as other celebrations such as the olympics, Christmas, Easter, and so on), but this is the first time the logo, however imaginative and brilliant, has ever been animated.

Labels: Android, Computers, Firefox, Google, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 03:29

Monday, 4 January 2010

MMX

Another new year, in fact a new decade. I was born in the 1980s so it's the fourth decade I've lived to see. Astonishingly, my maternal grandparents have lived to see eleven decades! They were born in the 1910s (1914 and 1916) and have lived through the 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and the 10s again! They're 93 and 95 now and doing very well, although starting to slow down the last couple of years.

2010 is MMX in Roman Numerals, 7DA in Hexadecimal, 11111011010 in binary...

Speaking of binary, I noticed that since the last two digits of the year are '10', the date, in DDMMYY format, can be in binary nine times this year - on the 1st, 10th & 11th of the 1st, 10th & 11th months of 2010. By this I mean that when concatenated, these six digits can be made up of only ones and zeros, such as 1st January 2010 = 01/01/10 => 010110 which is a binary number which can be expressed as the decimal number 22. I tweeted this and got into a discussion with a fellow mathematician and twitterer @peterrowlett about the interesting properties of this. I pointed out that since it would always end in '10', the number would always be even so it could never be prime (which would be very cool, obviously) and said maybe in 2011. Peter replied saying that the binary dates in 2011 are prime more often than not (primes: 23, 31, 43, 47, 59. not: 27, 39, 55, 63.) Boy - that provides us with five prime binary days to celebrate next year! I can hardly wait!

The reason I mentioned Peter in this was our common interest in interesting properties of numbers, particularly interesting sequences of numbers in dates - which became apparent on 7th August 2009 at precisely 12:34:56 (at which time the time & date could be written as 12:34:56 7/8/9 or 123456789). An even more interesting occurrence along these lines is in the year ending in 89 (1989 or 2089) when the zero can be included: 01:23:45 6/7/89 or 0123456789, or even 1990/2090: 12:34:56 7/8/90 or 1234567890.

Numbers are brilliant, aren't they? Don't forget π day on March 14th (at pi second at 3/14 1:59:26pm) or square root day (the last one was last year - 03/03/09 - the next not till 04/04/16! They get more rare and spread out as time goes on!

Unix Timestamp
Unix time at the strike of midnight on 1st January 2010 was 1262304000. That's the number of seconds since 1st January 1970, which is what computers use to keep track of time. There will be a problem tantamount to the Millennium Bug which will occur at 03:14:08* on 19th January 2038, whereby the timestamp (currently a signed 32-bit integer, will be reset to 1901 as the signed bit will make the number negative, being expressed as a negative number of seconds since 1970, taking it back to 1901 as you can see:


*I don't think the 3.14 part is related to π at all, just coincidence...

However, don't all go jumping out of the window just yet - as we get closer to 2038 we'll start using higher bit types (it's more complicated than that but you can read a full solution explanation on wikipedia).

Interestingly, Unix time passed 1,000,000,000 seconds on 9th September 2001 at 01:46:40 and 1,234,567,890 seconds on 13th February 2009 at 23:31:30.

Twenty-Ten
I'm sick of hearing people say 'two thousand and ...' when referring to years 2010 onwards - it's only because the years 2001-2009, as an exception, were pronounced that way because they didn't sound right in the usual format (although I don't think it would have been too bad to have said Twenty-Oh-Five). Now it's 2010 we can go back to the normal format we've always used. We 1999 as 19-99, 1901 as 19-01, 1066 as 10-66, and so on. There's a website devoted to promoting the correct pronunciation: http://www.twentynot2000.com/.

Burj Khalifa
Oh and the new tallest building in the world was officially opened at the start of the year. The Burj Khalifa in Dubia stands proud at 828m, meaning falling from its height would have you reaching a speed of about 285 miles per hour by the time you hit the floor, which would take 13 seconds!

Labels: Computers, Internet, Maths, New Year

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:35

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

So Much To Do, So Little Time...

There was a time in my life, while I was at sixth form, where almost every day of the week was full of me being busy. Literally from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night I would have no time to spare on some days. For instance every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in my final year would go like this:

Tuesday
8:30 - 4:00 - school
4:30 - 8:30 - parkour training
8:30 - late - bus home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
Wednesday
8:30 - 3:00 - school
3:00 - 5:30 - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
5:30 - 9:00 - scouts
9:00 - late - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
Thursday
8:30 - 3:00 - school
4:00 - 7:00 - work
7:30 - 10:00 - venture scouts
10:00 - late - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)

I had so many commitments when I lived in Sheffield - I was an Assistant Scout Leader at a younger group (11-14), I helped run the activities & organise things at the venture scout unit (14-18), I ran the venture scout unit's website (and still do haha), I had a job as a pool lifeguard, I had parkour training, I ran canoe classes for the scouts at the swimming pool and lifeguarded the swimming session for them as a volunteer, I had my A-levels to prepare for, and on top of that I was a bit of a geek and needed to spend time on the internet doing what I used to describe as random but necessary internet tasks (things like sending and replying to emails, checking forums, social networking, reading bits of news, finding out about new technology and such, and blogging, of course...) - I can't look back on these things as a waste of time because I wouldn't know half the amount of stuff I know about computers, the internet, websites or random articles I read up on on wikipedia!

At one point I was doing maybe four parkour training sessions every week - and with three evenings with scouts, two or three shifts at work and trying to fit everything else in - it was manic. All of these things were important to me and the more I got involved, the more committed I became.

I've realised I'm at a stage now where I'm going to be in a very similar situation here in Manchester. I've just started by second year at university (this year's marks count towards my degree classification, it's a lot harder, I have more units and I'm now living in the South Manchester suburban area of Withington, near Stockport, which is a lot further out than I lived in halls last year!), I'm in a more demanding and responsible role on the committee of canoe club (of which I also run the website), I'm trying to train harder in parkour, and I'm also trying to learn more programming languages in my own time - as well as doing freelance web design alongside everything. I got my timetable for uni last week and that's what reminded me of my situation of my last two years back in Sheffield - I have some days when I'll finish at 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening (ugh!) and other days when I finish at 1:00 in the afternoon - the three days I finish early are the three days I need to be in town (where uni is) in the evenings, so I either waste time getting the bus home and back again (accumulating an extra hour to my travel time), or I find something to do in uni, in town or with friends in town - like today I finished at 1:00 and had to meet up with the canoe club committee for a meeting, then we went into the Union office to sort some admin stuff and fill forms out, then met with another committee member to discuss the upcoming pool sessions and weekend river trips, then had some food before going to meet the parkour guys for training at 6:00, trained till 9:30, got home at 10:00, made tea, caught up on some house stuff with my housemates then replied to the day's emails, checked the canoe club forum, did some stuff on facebook (canoe club stuff and catching up with friends) and then ended up writing this blog post in the early hours - and I've got to be up early for a 9:00 lecture! So I either have the choice of staying out all day (leaving at 8ish getting home some 14 or so hours later) or wasting time by coming home and going back again. The weekends are hardly a break either - I'm either parkour training, running river trips for canoe club or occasionally visiting my family or something.

There's so much to do and so little time, and I find myself trying to be better at everything I do all the time - which makes it even harder to do it all! I want to train harder at parkour, I want to practise and coach kayaking, I want to do well at uni, I want to make new friends and spend time with the old ones, I want to visit friends in different places, I want to do freelance web design, I want to learn new programming languages, I want to spend time with my family, I want to watch films I've never watched, I want to spend time on the internet, I want to blog about things, I want to learn more maths, I want to do the Rubik's cube, I want to learn about things that interest me on wikipedia, I want to spend time with my housemates, I want to read all the books I've been meaning to read for ages (and re-read the ones I love) - and I just do what I think is best at any one time (like I'm writing this blog post now when I really ought to be sleeping).

Labels: Computers, Internet, Parkour, Programming, Scouting, University, Web Design

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 03:52

Monday, 3 August 2009

Going Google

I just read an interesting short article on the official Google blog entitled "Going Google" with Google Apps which in just three short paragraphs sums up the benefits people experience by using Google Apps and other Google services. I'm a big fan of Google (as you may have gathered from reading my blog) and use a lot of their services.

Here are the first two paragraphs of that article:

Every morning, millions of people wake up to a very refreshing experience at work. They don't see "mailbox is full" errors in their email. They don't worry about backing up their data. They can get to any file they need from any computer, anywhere with Internet access and a browser. They can all access and edit the same documents and spreadsheets at the same time as their colleagues. They use Gmail and Google Calendar at work as fluidly and easily as they use their personal Gmail accounts. They video, voice and text chat with their peers globally as naturally as they send email.

The IT people at these companies and organizations don't waste time or money buying, installing or managing email servers. They focus on the smart, innovative stuff they want to work on, because they never have to bother with expensive and painful software upgrades, hardware compatibility issues or managing data centers. They have left many IT frustrations and costs behind and moved on to something better.

Hopefully that will give you an insight to how people benefit from using Google Apps, and why it is an ideal business solution.

The websites I run use Google Apps, which is a wholesome solution for companies or organisations for their domains. So say for my university canoe club's website (MMU Canoe Club), I set up Google Apps for the domain, which means we get as many club email addresses as we need (up to 50 for a free account) with a massive amount of storage; we get an online document collaboration tool which allows each committee member to add/edit documents, spreadsheets and other files online; and we can use a shared calendar and all add/change events.

Using these Google services doesn't require the user to use Gmail as their main mail account, use Google Calendar for their personal calendar, or have an Android phone - but if they do use any of these things they will continue to experience the benefits of Google Apps.

If, like me, the user uses Gmail as their main email account then they can set up forwarding (as I do) to ensure all their club mail goes to their main account and they can reply or send new emails from their club address without leaving their normal Gmail account. There's also the option to configure with Outlook (though why anyone would wish to do so is beyond me). If, like me, they use Google Calendar for personal use, then they can set it up to show more than one calendar's entries together (colour coded), so I could have my own calendar entries in blue and the canoe club's entries in red. If, like me, the user has an Android phone, then they can access their email on their phone at the touch of a button, and even be alerted of new mail. They can send mail, reply, search, archive and sort mail. Without going too far into the functionality of Android, they can do it all really easily. They can also access their calendars on their Android device, add/edit events and receive reminders of events on their phone.

Being a web developer, I need to look to find the solution the company I design for is looking for. If they don't have a company email system set up (say, for instance, they just use their own personal hotmail, yahoo or ISP email accounts) then I would suggest Google Apps as a solution. If they do have something set up (say, Outlook) then I would look at this and probably suggest Google Apps as an alternative if they would be interested in it.

Google Apps is simply a perfect solution for a business or organisation - and if they have fewer than 50 users then the free edition is open to them (for a small fee of $50/year they can get unlimited users and extra features) - why anyone would pay for someone else to provide them with email accounts and such, and pay for just a handful of POP3 email accounts, I can't understand. Nobody can provide a better service than Google and it's free, easy to set up and keep running.

Universities are a prime example of the perfect users for Google Apps - quite a lot of universities in America are using it, and Google have been working with education authorities in developing nations to give them the opportunities to have access to better learning resources. Unfortunatey my university has recently decided to "Go Microsoft" and opt for the evil alternative to Google Apps, Live@edu. It's launching in a few weeks so I haven't seen what it's like yet but I only hope I can have my email forwarded to my Gmail account like I did with last year's system, otherwise I'll be forced to use Windows Live Mail (ugh) and go out of my way to separately check my university email account.

If you don't use Gmail, give it a try. It'll change your life. Here's a video explaining what I just explained, but better, and in less than two minutes:

Labels: Android, Computers, Google, Internet, University

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 16:49

Friday, 24 April 2009

MATLAB and Java Assignments

I've had a hectic week this week trying to get all my assignments in. I had a MATLAB assignment due in on Thursday and a Java one due in today.

The MATLAB one involved two questions: the first was a banking system which calculated interest and mortgage payments; the second was an animation of a sporting event. The first question involved a switch statement to begin, so the user was prompted to choose one of four options, each one taking them to a certain part of the code and allowing them to perform their chosen banking task. Within each of those I had to use nested for loops and if statements, taking input values and getting the loops to work out how to calculate the answer based on their inputs (for instance if the user entered 10 years, the loop would have to run 10 times), which was kind of fiddly but fairly easy. If you don't know what a for loop is, it's quite common in many programming languages, and here's a brief explaination:

for i = 1:10

a = 2*i

end

This means that the loop runs 10 times (for i=1, for i=2, ..., for i=10) and does the code inbetween each time. So the first time it runs, the variable i=1, so when i is multiplied by 2, a = 2 (in MATLAB this would return the answer each time). The second time, i=2 so a=4, then each time i increments by 2 until i=10 and a=20. This is a very basic example but there are many applications this can be used for.

For the animation, I had to draw the figures using x- and y-coordinates of polygons, filling them in with a chosen colour, and then use a for loop to change their coordinates (i.e. move all the x-coordinates one space to the left every time the loop runs). It started off as a simple yacht animation, but I got carried away when I added the second yacht and made it into a pirate chase with a bullet being fired.

It actually sailed smoother before I added the movement up-and-down, but the code to make it do this was rather complex and imaginative so I left it in to get more marks. I nested an if statement within the for loop:

for j = 0:120

...

if rem(j,2)==0

yboat = yboat + 1

else

yboat = yboat - 1

end

...

end

So every time the loop ran (the ellipsis doesn't show the bits of code that get the x-coordinates to move the the left), the if statement checks to see whether j is divisible by 2: if it is, the y-coordinates increment by 1; if not, they decrement. This makes the boat (and all its related shapes, again not shown) move up and down alternately. The assignment handout included a video of an animation worth 90% and it was much simpler than mine so I should have scored fairly well.

Once I had this finished and submitted I had to get on with my Java assignment: to make a simple sketching program in Java, as an applet for HTML. About 24 hours before the deadline I hadn't done much, only the very basics, and then spent most of the afternoon helping 3 other people to get that far, went to have a beak for about an hour and a half and went to train, then did a little more before going out to see the Inbetweeners at a club in Manchester, then woke at 10:00 the next morning to carry on with it, just 2 hours before the de this was only enough to get 40%. I worked on it every second for the next two hours, trying bits of code to get it to do more advanced fuctions, I added colours, a reset button, a change background colour function, different shapes, a text field, another text field, a change size field, and so on, until I had completed the list of functions to include, which were given with percentages of how much you would get if you did them, upto 70% (a First Class), and it said extra marks would be awarded for extra features and for the general 'look and feel' of the applet, so I should have done pretty well. I submitted at 11:59. Just in time. Here it is:

Java and MATLAB's m-code is very similar in what you can do and the code you use to do it, but MATLAB seems to be much simpler, for instance a simple if statement requiries the following: line 1 - a condition (e.g. if x>2); line 2 - a statement (i.e. do something); line 3 - else (or else if for another condition); line 4 - a statement (i.e. do something else); and more else if statements and conditions as required. Java requires brackets round the conditions and silly curly bracksets round the statements. Also, in MATLAB, when you type something it indents if accordingly, so when you write if, it turns blue and indents it, then on the next line it will indent further, then as soon as you type 'end' it turns blue and reduces the indentation creates a collapsing option for the if statement.

Next year's Java will be much more complex, with a much stronger emphasis on objects. As for MATLAB, I specifically chose the units which included MATLAB programming, one of which was about computer graphics and virtual environments, and most people who aren't interested in programming will have gone elsewhere so it should get much more hardcore.

Labels: Computers, Featured, Java, MATLAB, Programming, University

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 17:42

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Tweet Tweet

I'm now on Twitter. If you're one of the people who have heard of Twitter and you're terrified that it will be the new Facebook which is the new MySpace, then please calm down, this is not the case. No-one is going to leave Facebook to join Twiter, they are not the same thing. Facebook has statuses, photos, videos, applications, comments, wallposts, private messages, groups, pages and all the rest, and I think it's safe to say it's here to stay. Twitter, however, is only about status updates. Now before you dismiss it as pointless saying "but Facebook already does that", reseat yourself and allow me to explain. The main thing about the conceot of being on Twiter is that it's purely one-way. Facebook is two-way; if you want to connect with someone you request to become their friend and if and only if they recipricate, the connection is formed. On Twitter, you choose to 'follow' people, which means their updates appear in your feeds when you log in, but they don't have to accept you and in turn receive your updates. For example if I want to receive Stephen Fry's updates, why would he want to receive mine, along with the thousands of other people following him?

It was this concept that led to me signing up. It was a post on Dave Gorman's blog about how a couple of people had sent him messages saying he was rude not to follow them, when they had followed him. He explained to them that it would be pointless for him to follow the thousands of people following him, as it would be impossible to take in so much information and he wouldn't be able to actually keep track on the people he specifically wanted to. These people were seriously offended by this and said that he should be polite, even if he wasn't going to actually read the updates. So apparently they would prefer it if he admitted that he was never going to read their updates, just so they could add one to their number of followers, like the MySpace culture.

In my opinion, MySpace has its place - mainly for musicians, groups, bands, singers, DJs and such. It was only being used by people because Facebook wasn't here yet. MySpace isn't for me, but Facebook and Twitter are. Facebook is for almost everyone. Twitter isn't for everyone, because a lot of people don't have anything interesting to post. I hate those statuses on Facebook: "...is having a pizza", "...is bored", "...is popping in the shower" - WHY BOTHER!?

However, there are genuinely interesting and/or witty people out there who are on Twitter. Whether I am interesting and/or witty is up to you and it is your decision whether to follow me or not. One of the things I like is that I can have my updates shown in the sidebar of this website, so it's not just my Twitter followers that will see them, but my website and blog readers.

These are some of the people I'm following:

• NASA
• UK Parliament
• Stephen Fry
• Jimmy Carr
• Dave Gorman
• Google
• Google Chrome
• Downing Street
• MC Lars
• Richard Branson

These are some of the people following me:

• UK Parliament (hmm)
• Cheryl Cole (hmm)
• Bender (a fan-made Futurama tribute)
• The Real Alan Partridge (fan-made)

Labels: Computers, Featured, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 14:10

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Version 3 & Problems with IE

I decided I needed a new website template so I made one. Much better, don't you think?

It's compliant with W3C Web Standards (XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1) and I'm even using PHP to render it using Server Side Includes, as well as a PHP email form on the contact page. I've learned so much these last few months; a great resource for web developers (beginner/intermediate/expert) is W3Schools - it gives you all the information you need about every single tag, every single CSS style, how each browser renders each element, and which tags and attributes are permitted under each of the levels of markup (HTML/XHTML and Frameset/Transitional/Strict).

Version 3:
Versions 1 & 2:

(N.B. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the international standards organization for the World Wide Web, founded and headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA who invented the internet at CERN and is now a professor at MIT, probably the best institute for technology in the world)

Of all the people who converted to Firefox from Internet Explorer (IE), most of them know it's better but they don't really know why. One of the main reasons it's better is that IE does not comply with official W3C standards - it literally just ignores how things are supposed to work, and does it its own way. Firefox, Chrome and the other browsers all comply which means that when someone designs a website following the proper standards, as they're supposed to, it will look fine in Firefox, Chrome, or whatever they're using, but then they open it in IE, some of the elements will be displayed differently - something small like the spacing following a set of a bullet points - in the good browsers there will be a reasonable space immediately after a set of bullets, but in IE there will be no space. This can be resolved by adding the space manually using CSS, but that will double the space shown in the good browsers - and why should they suffer because of IE's incompetence? It should also be noted that if a website's code is valid, it will generally load faster, run smoother on all browsers and systems, and (along with other factors) increase a site's search engine optimisation.

One of the more famous bugs in IE is known as the Internet Explorer box model bug. This is a problem with the way IE interprets the markup and style differently to the W3C standards; when you set the width of an element, and then apply a margin, some padding and a border, IE will subtract the width of the border and padding and the content width will be whatever is left, whereas the W3C way is to declare the width, then add the padding, border and margin to it. IE's way means that if the sum of the margin, border and padding is greater than half of the width (half because it counts on both sides so can be doubled) then you are left with a negative width, which is impossible, so it just disappears! The diagram below should explain this clearer:

Labels: Computers, Featured, Firefox, Google, Internet, Web Design

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:00

Saturday, 28 March 2009

Google - Chrome Experiments, StreetView & Gmail

I've been blown away by so many things Google have done so far this year (and it's only March). They've done loads of work on Gmail which has incredibly made it even better; Gmail was already the best webmail service around, and it's been making life easier for millions of users all over the world for a few years now, and still they're constantly making small improvements (mostly based on the developers' own personal issues).

There is a section within Gmail called Labs which allows you to pick and choose which of their extra features you wish to use; this has been amazing for me recently - they've made such brilliant solutions to common problems with general email services. A good example is the 'forgotten attachment detector' - how many times have you sent an email to someone saying "...please find attached my (CV/Document/Presentation)..." and hit Send without remembering to actually attach it? Well this labs feature detects if you mention the word 'attach' or 'attachment' and prompts you if you haven't attached any files. Pure brilliance.

Another new feaure in Gmail is the ability to view all your email in your web browser while offline. If you're not connected to the internet (or you temporarily lose your wireless signal) it will just open your inbox where you can view all of your past emails and their attachments, and you can even send new emails (which will send as soon as a connection is found). Once your connection is back it will automatically download any new emails.

Next up, StreetView in Google Maps; it's been available in the US for a couple of years now and last week it was launched in the UK! You can now go to ground level in the major cities and actually look round 360° as if you were actually stood there. You can walk forward through a street, look round and pick a street to go down and just wander through. Not only can you spin round on the spot but also look 290° vertically, so you can look up at a tall building ahead.

I'm an avid reader of Dave Gorman's blog. Last week he posted about how when he heard that StreetView for UK was being released, it reminded him of "an incident from many moons ago" when he had been walking down Bethnal Green and saw a bizarre sight - a small car mounted with a huge nest of cameras - which he stopped to gawp at with curiousity, before seeing the Google logo on the side of the car, which made him realise that they were photographing for the StreetView project. He then realised that he would be shown in Bethnal Green looking stupid when they launched it. And he was right, except that they have blurred everyone's faces out, so until he announced it to the world, he would have been the only one to know it was him. You can view it here.

If you go to maps.google.co.uk and search for 462 Bethnal Green Rd, Tower Hamlets, London E2, UK and then select 'Street view' it'll show you a view of the Shakespeare pub. I'm on the other side of the road so scroll round and you'll see me leaning against the wall of the Quicksilver Gaming Centre (boy, do I live in a classy part of the world!) It's probably not obvious to anyone else that it's me. But it is you know...

Lastly, Chrome Experiments (I realise I talked about them in reverse order of the title). Google Chrome is a web browser made by Google, which they decided to make using ideas based as if from scratch, so ignoring the concept of current browsers (because they were created back when all we did on the internet was look at text and images, and now it's all about applications and very interactive stuff), they came up with a much more powerful engine to surfing the web. I started using it when it was launched in September, but a few months later I was back to Firefox because it was a bit too BETA, especially with the slow internet connection I'm on in halls. I decided to give it a try again when I heard about Chrome Experiments (they removed the BETA tag a couple of months ago).

Chrome Experiments is a project which aims to demonstrate the power of the new Javascript engine, V8, and allow outside innovation to do so. It just goes to show how the power of innovation is changing the internet and the useful things we can do with the internet. This may be the dawn of Web 3.0 - it's just being demonstrated for fun at the moment but it could lead to a better way of conveying information, which afterall is Google's world mission.

The experiments on the site include a page that renders the Google homepage and when anywhere is clicked, all the elements drop to the bottom of the screen and bounce (and you can still type and search, with all the elements laid out on each other at the bottom), another couple I've seen let you pick up a ball with a mouseclick and you can throw it about within the browser box (one lets you throw it between different browser boxes, the other has as many balls as you want, and they bounce against each other), another lets you play Tetris (built using Javascript and DOM), another shows a man's (or a pirate's) face and as you speak into your microphone, his mouth moves up and down as if he's talking.

Here's a video showing a few examples:

"Not your mother's Javascript"

I joined Twitter today. More to come on that in a new post on the next few days. Anyway, you can follow me here: twitter.com/Ben_Nuttall

Labels: Computers, Featured, Google, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:53

Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Happy New Year 2009

People say there's no point making resolutions because only 2% of them happen, but if you're doomed to failure and willing to accept it like that then you're not going to get very far. I never set amyself any of those silly spontaneous resolutions people think of in ten seconds like 'I'm going to go running every day' or 'I'm going to lose weight', but I tend just to have a good hard think about the previous year; take stock of my life, where I'm going and where I want to be, and make a decision about how I can get there, and set a goal to take a certain angle on life in order to do so. It's not a measureable way of doing things, like I'll know when I've acheieved it and can sit back and relax when it's over, but more of a kaizen philosophy (continuous improvement).

It's always easy to look at each avenue of my life and think 'I want to work harder at this' for each one - because of all the things I do, I know I can do better at them, but how do I work harder at everything I do? Surely putting more pressure one one will put less pressure on another? It depends. What needs to be done is an analysis of the things that take up time and are not useful, and maybe reduce or eliminate them, which is always a tough call.

I've decided I don't like this site template anymore. I'm going to write a new one from scratch in the next month or so. I've recently been doing quite a bit of web design for various things; I've made a website for the university canoe club, of which I am on the committee, this was the first website I have made form scratch since I started learning HTML - I just opened up Notepad++ and started typing and I'm really pleased with it because the code is so clean; I've redesigned the Woodseats Venture Unit website which I think is a great improvement; and I've also taken up my first paid web design job - my friend's Bouncy Castle business, and he's really pleased with what I've done for him so far because the guy he had to do it before took months and he wasn't interested in the content, just what it looked like and he spent ages making pointless flash animations.

• MMU Canoe Club
• Woodseats Venture Unit
• Bonkers Bouncy Castles (EDIT: Now completed and launched)

I'm looking to do more web design this year; I've seen what some people pay for crap websites, and I know I can do better and won't charge anywhere near as much.

I had an awesome week in Wales with The Unit between Christmas and New Year; unfortuately there was no water (the water levels in the rivers was really low) so couldn't do much in the way of canoeing, but went biking which was great (I haven't been on a bike for years and we did a pretty hardcore mountain bike track) and led a scramble up Tryfan, which is a mountain in Snowdonia, not quite as high as Snowdon but much more exciting to do, as it's rocky as opposed to hilly, and it's not as touristy.

See more photos here

One of the Scout leaders at my group - John Hall, who was with us in Wales - was in the Queen's new year's honours list and has been made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) which is a great achievement and wonderful recognition for all his work. He is 70 years old now and has been volunteering as a Scout leader since he was 18, giving young people opportunities to go mountaineering, kayaking, to travel, to do things they never dreamed of, and make the most of their lives, and it's all down to the time John has given up to do it all. He's still doing it today, he was with us in Wales this week, he was with us in the Pyrenees in the summer, and the last few years he's taken the group to Slovakia and Slovenia.

Labels: Computers, Featured, Internet, Kayaking, Scouting, Web Design

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 15:13

Friday, 10 October 2008

A Fresh Start

I'm now at the end of my third week of university. I've moved away from home and now live in halls of residence in Manchester, which is a completely new experience for me. I can cook and generally fend for myself but it's still very different from being at home. I'm having a wicked time out here and loving the whole Manchester scene - the parkour's awesome, the bars and clubs are pretty cool, my flatmates are a great bunch of people and I've also joined the canoe club which is brilliant.

There are ten of us living in my flat - five boys and five girls - which sounds a lot but I think it works fine. We've each got our own room on the corridor and we share a sizey kitchen which we all use at different times so there's only ever a maximum of two or three of us cooking at once. I couldn't have asked for a nicer group of people to live with. We're all from different areas of the country (even one girl from France) and we're all completely different in person which makes us gel in that we all have something to bring to the group and there are plenty of questions bouncing off each other about all our hobbies, interests and ways of living. We all went out together the first few nights and got to know each other and the city, but now we're tending to do our own thing in smaller groups (a few of us joined different union clubs) and we're all settling in to our own ways.

In Freshers' Week I had no lectures, just introductory sessions. So after two weeks of lectures I'm feeling like I'm definitely on the right course; it's exactly what I was hoping for and I can see it being challenging enough to be worth doing, I feel like I'll be learning useful things rather than stuff that's pointless. My degree title will be BSc (Hons) Mathematics and Computer Studies - I opted for the Combined Honours programme where you pick two separate subjects and do the core modules of each rather than a single course where you do lots of extra modules. This was because I wanted to keep my options open by doing a combination of two subjects and develop a wide range of skills in two fields. Interestingly, the Maths course at my uni is very computer-oriented, and the Computing course is very Maths-oriented, so they'll go together very well.

I'm having to learn two new programming languages; M-Code for solving complex mathematical functions in an application called MATLAB (Matrix Laboratory), and Java for writing and executing programs.

My modules this year are:

• Mathematical Fundamentals
• Programming (Java)
• Discrete Mathematics
• Linear Algebra
• Programming (MATLAB)
• Computer Platforms
• Statistics
• Learning & Employability (lol)

I have the option to select a major and minor next year (i.e. do more Maths modules and fewer Computing, or vice-versa) or just leave it at 50-50. I'll see how I get on.

Maths started easy (C2) on Day One, then zoomed ahead to FP3 on Day Two, which is way more advanced than I did at A-level, but I understood the lectures and managed to do the questions afterwards so that's good. I did ICT at GCSE and A-level and learned nothing of any real use to me - everything useful I can do on computers has been self-taught. Schools just don't teach anything that's useful to people today. I'm glad to say that so far the Computing lectures and practical classes have been interesting and I can see me getting a lot out of the course.

Yesterday evening I had the best midweek parkour training session for such a long time! There were about 15 of us out, and even Sam Corbett had come over from Sheffield to see a Swiss guy called Tobias who he had met in Lisses who was staying with Scott McQuade. We did some great training for about three hours, we chatted about parkour and there was a brilliant atmosphere within the group. Then Sam departed for his train home, which he missed and so ended up staying the night at mine. We did some more jumps on Oxford Road on the way home and chilled out with a pizza and watched some Futurama! Unfortunately Sam had to set off first thing in the morning to make it back for his lectures but it was nice to have him round. The first overnight guest at my "pad".

I absolutely love the location of my accommodation. It's a maximum of five minutes away from where my lectures are, ten minutes from a massive ASDA and ten minutes from the parkour meet-up spot. Oh and canoeing takes place every Wednesday evening at the Aquatics Centre across the road. I love how I can nip home in between lectures for food or if I forgot something, it's so convenient. I can't imagine any other way now! I went on a beginners' river trip in Bury with the canoe club last weekend to get the freshers started (in fact, sue to my experience and qualifications they asked me to help lead the trip) and I'm going on an advanced trip this weekend! They've also asked me to take one of the three places on a BCU Event where you learn how to run a uni canoe club, which should be really informative and exciting! Tomorrow I'll be showing prospective students around the halls of residence (like I looked round last year).

I can see it's going to be a wicked three years. Watch this space.

Labels: Computers, Kayaking, Maths, Parkour, University

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:45

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

Connecting with Rev. Josh Through Aslan

The internet is such an extraordinary thing. While I was googling for a good picture of Aslan for the video I posted last night, I came across a blog post about a guy who had gotten himself an Aslan tattoo:

I left a comment on his blog, saying I thought the tattoo was cool and that I shared his admiration of Aslan. I tend to comment on blogs when I find them randomly, but never expect a reply - you never know when a blog is redundant or still in use. Anyway, today - I received a reply. He commented after me to thanks me for the positive comment and he wondered how I had come across his blog, so I told him I was looking for a picture of Aslan for my parkour video and linked him to my blog post with the video. He went on to comment on the video post on my blog to tell me that he had posted a new post about the random incident of connectivity between us. His post explained how I had found his blog, that he realised he can't have known me because I was from the UK (he's American), that he had never heard of parkour before he saw my video, and that he enjoyed my video (which he had embedded in the post) and compared it to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. He finished by warning blog-reading teens not to go out and try parkour, and explained that I referred to it as "training" and mentions the bail I talked about in the post.

This guy is called Rev. Josh, and his About Me says:

"I am an ordained UCC clergyperson serving as an Associate Pastor in the Connecticut Conference. I am also into fantasy, science fiction, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons... Contradictory? You'll have to decide for yourself!"

I love how the internet brings people together like this. Remember the time I was contacted by a guy who found my secret message from Danny Wood and Paul Maunder? And you know who are always at the heart of it all? Google! It was the same for Dave Gorman who ended up flying all over the world simply because someone had entered the words 'Francophile Namesakes' into Google. For more about this see this post. Speaking of Dave, I recently discovered he has a blog, which he updates regularly - it's worth a read (and even a subscribe if you like what you see). Also check out his awesome photography portfolio (again, which he regularly adds to) on Flickr.

If you were wondering why I have a fascination with Aslan, then I suggest you read the Chronicles of Narnia. I recently read them all (as you know if you read my Pyrenees post) and even though they're written for children they're really enjoyable and thought-provoking. They helped me understand my beliefs and opened my mind to new ways of getting my head round why things happen and what there is beyond the scope of the plain-thinking view of existence. It's hard to explain but the stories put situations into a different context and use analogies to explain things that most people fail to comprehend about faith. C.S. Lewis was a genius who gained a Triple First from Cambridge, and had a thorough understanding of theological concepts and a brilliant way of telling a story. I have to admit the books are, for the most part, rather dull as not a lot happens until the very end when Aslan the King of the Beasts and son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea comes and sorts everything out and explains everything. My favourite book was The Magician's Nephew which is where two children from Earth enter into an uninhabited world by means of magic rings made by the boy's Uncle, and they witness the creation of Narnia by Aslan. This tallies with the story of Genesis and even has a tree of forbidden fruit and shows the temptation in personal greed.

This has been a crazy post. I somehow managed to refer to four of my own blog posts, as well as four other people's blogs. Two of these people I have never met. I never plan my posts, so I tend to drift off the point and write way more than I intended. I'm working on cutting them down!

I had a great Bank Holiday Monday - I spent the day in the park with my Sister Kate and my four-year-old niece Olivia. Here are a couple of photos I took of Olivia:

With under four weeks left in Sheffield I have lots of people to see, so I need to arrange days to spend with friends I haven't seen in ages and those I won't be seeing much any more. If you didn't see yesterday's parkour video, you can watch it here. Oh and check out the new 'Post to Facebook' links which appear at the bottom and the sides of each post - click one of those to share that post on Facebook by either sending it as a link to one of your friends, or posting it directly to your profile feeds to share with anyone who visits your profile.

To close I would like to quote Rev. Josh:

"Be safe & be good to each other"

Labels: Computers, Faith, Featured, Google, Internet, Parkour, SPKD

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 00:01

Tuesday, 26 August 2008

Let's Go On An Adventure, I've Got Lots To Show You

Last week you saw the revival of the Sheffield Parkour Diaries. This week I'm bringing you a parkour special edition of the recently-revived diaries with episode 15, edited by yours truly. It contains 90% parkour and just 10% silliness and promises to be entertaining and inspiring. This is a showcase of the movements we have accomplished during this week's training, and features training at the University of Sheffield English Department and also Tapton Flats, an abandoned estate outside the city centre of Sheffield. I hope you enjoy the video.

It's been a great week of training. Tuesday was horrible weather but a great session nonetheless, then we met up again on Friday and had the sickest day of training I've had in ages (in glorious weather too) and again on Saturday when we did some cool stuff even though we were very tired, but enjoyed the company of the group, talked about parkour and other stuff and had a great day.

One thing I feel I ought to mention is that I had a pretty bad fall on Tuesday. I wasn't hurt, injured or damaged in any way, but the potential was there. I did an arm-to-arm (as seen successfully executed in the video at 4:46) at Tapton Flats and it felt really good so I was raving to Will and Danny about it; they seemed a little less enthusiastic and weren't really up for giving it a try - for some reason this irritated me and I made it my mission to persuade them that it was fun and that they should try it. I was just on a buzz from this movement I'd seen, done and enjoyed. I started to get a little arrogant about it, which is odd, and did it again, but somehow slipped on take-off, missed the other wall and slid down it to the floor. It's probably a 10 or 12 foot drop from where I took off, and I slid down the side of the wall I'd failed to catch the top of, landed on my feet thinking myself lucky. I came down from the buzz and chilled myself out. The other guys tried it eventually (with a little more care than my second attempt) and found it fine.

This led me on to the point of discussion with Danny that parkour gives you a sense of immediate recovery. In a situation where you fall or slip (even in normal life situations other than training), your inner parkour comes into play and adjusts your body to where it needs to be to prevent injury. You just suddenly become aware that you are falling and in potential danger and you immediately and sub-conciously do whatever it takes to stop yourself; whether you need to put your arms and legs out, take a drop or force a roll, you just do it. This is like an extension of natural reflexes such as shutting your eyes to shield from something, ducking from something, putting your hands in front of your face or whatever. Parkour just gives us that edge, from all the practise of movements and being in unusual positions where accidents can easily happen, we're just used to adjusting quickly to defend ourselves from pain.

I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the video; I think it's a great piece of software to use, or at least it would be if it didn't crash every two minutes. I'm not kidding. I would be dragging a clip into the storyboard and then click to view the next one and ... FREEZE. Damn. I'd have to Ctrl + Alt + Del it and end the process. Then open up again, locate the project file, wait for it to load, hope that it worked and that I hadn't lost too much in the process. It's so temperamental! And incredibly hypersensitive. It just doesn't like you clicking something while it's doing something else, and instead of just ignoring you it simply freezes and there's no solution other than to close it down by means mentioned earlier, and waiting for it to load up again. That's the last time I use WMM for anything. I've used Adobe Premier and Adobe Premier Pro before (Pro was just annoying, as if they'd removed the useful features) but it's a massive application to run so not really the best option for me at the moment. I've heard good things about other software, so if anyone has any recommendations (except Paul telling me to get a Mac) they would be more than welcome.

Here are my photos from the week's training. View the photoset here.

Labels: Computers, Parkour, SPKD

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 00:46

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