Well so much for planning!

I recently found a new badminton club and called in for one evening for a hit to see if I’d fit in. The evening was going well, though I got hit with the realisation of how much fitness I had lost over the preceding few years. Yes it was all fine right up until the last point of the last game of the night where upon I dash across the court stretching to reach a smash down the line… and then suddenly over goes the ankle and I get that sinking realisation of what has just happened!

It’s a horrible feeling, made all the worse by the fact I’ve had the same type of injury roughly 4 or 5 time previously… apparently I have flexible/weak ankles. Anyway what’s the point of that little tale? Firstly a hope that in the act of actually writing this up I will be more likely to remember to strap up the ankles in the future and secondly a hope that it may make you dear reader more likely to do the same!

Now sometimes words don’t make enough of an impression so for my own memory at least I’ve included a quick pic of my foot a mere two days after the injury. Not the nicest thing to look at eh?

Case in point. The most recent episode of Triangulation had Bram Cohen on. Bram is the guy who built Bittorrent. He’s now come up with Bittorrent live, a peer to peer solution for streaming live video with low latency while lacking the need for very expensive setups to support it.

If one imagines how much bittorrent changed the landscape on the internet for downloading large files I believe bittorrent live will do the same for live streaming over the net.

I’d highly recommend you watch it if you have a spare hour.

Still having said that  most climbers spend the majority of their time training on an indoor wall. And when you spend a lot of time training indoors for your real rock projects you don’t want to be doing it on your lovely expensive 60m or 70m dry treated rope. Besides the point of it being ridiculous that you would trash such a rope indoors there is the issue of pumping yourself out by having to haul 70 meters of rope back and forth between every lead! Also the people waiting to get on that route may not appreciate you taking so long on it either :)

If one doesn’t want to use their ‘good’ climbing rope then you need to get a workhorse rope. What myself and fellow climbers think of as a workhorse rope I’d say is one that measures 30m so you don’t have to pull unneeded rope through, can take a good number of falls, doesn’t have any fancy dry treatment etc that isn’t needed and finally is relatively cheap. That’s what my Mummut rope was for the past year and that’s what was in my mind as I started searching for my next workhorse rope.

Now when I’m choosing an outdoor rope I tend to be pretty conservative and pick up one from a manufacturer that loads of my climbing mates recommend or to choose one that has a stellar reputation in the sport. However when it comes to indoor ropes I’m far more willing to test out manufacturers that I’ve had no experience with as long as people aren’t slamming it all over the place.

Essentially this was my thinking when I came across the TENDON smart 10mm. It had a few good comments floating around about it and despite it having some external treatments it came in at a quite respectable price. The only thought I had was that I had no experience of TENDON ropes and not one of my climbing partners had ever had one. Despite this I bought it, as I said it’s a good chance to see what a manufacturers ropes are like.

I’m starting to think that I made a mistake :(

When it first arrived I thought it was an excellent choice and my image of TENDON trended on the up. It ran really smooth when belaying and had a really clear half way mark which is useful when your coiling it at the end of the night. The only bad mark I could put against it was that where the half way mark was the rope was quite stiff but that’s nothing major and I thought it might just need a bit of time to loosen up a bit.

Well I’ve had the rope from the start of December 2011 until today, which is currently the 12th of February. In this time I haven’t even used the rope as much as I had my old Mammut rope. I have been leading with it once or twice a week. Included in this time however was Christmas when I travelled home and had no climbing for about two weeks. On reflection I’d say I averaged once a week.

How’s the TENDON holding up then? Not good. The sheath is fuzzing up in places already and far more importantly for me places in the rope have become quite spongy. A friend suggested It could be a splice point but it’s unlikely if it’s happening in more than one place. To be completely honest I shocked at how much it has deteriorated in the time span with the level of climbing it’s seen. I mean I’ve taken it quite easy considering it’s supposed to be a workhorse rope.

In case you can’t picture what I mean. Maybe you’ve been very lucky with your ropes, here’s an image of what I mean. See how the right hand side bit of pinched rope is far more closed compared to what it should be one the left. There are bits of the rope that spongy at various points.

I thought I’d put up a post to try and help any other climbers considering a TENDON rope. Let me stress I only have experience of this one TENDON rope and you may have a different experience from me.

Let me say this however, when I come to having to upgrade my 70m beal outdoor rope It isn’t very likely that I will replace it with a comparable TENDON rope… unless they give it to me for free, and even then maybe not.

I have put a message into TENDON to ask them if this is normal for their ropes and I’ll update this post with their response when they come back to me.

Happy and safe climbing everyone.

It’s a little old but the verge has an article demonstrating the point - Recreating famous Abbey Road scene could violate new UK copyright ruling. Now I’ll agree with you (as I’m sure you’ll notice) that copyright law isn’t in the heart of the technology industry but all I’m trying to convey is how the general situation of politicians making stupid decisions is getting worse.

I’d highly suggest you give the article a read and have a good think about whether you agree with it as you stare at the two pictures at the bottom of their post. I certainly do not.

As I don’t want to drone on too much about this point let me cut to the chase. Copyright law should protect against a person exactly duplicating another’s actual work but it should not ever prevent a person from creating work of the same idea. Essentially what this idiot judge has said with this ruling is that anyone who wants to shoot a red bus driving across Westminster bridge and process the subsequent photo to white out the sky must get permission from a person that has already taken a photo with that composition.

I mean where to even start dismantling this ruling! I don’t think I could without making this a multi part article. Can you imagine how many people would have taken a photo from that position with that composition while tweaking the sky in a bit of post processing? A damn lot. Can you imagine if this is upheld how many people will be running around famous landmarks and photographic regions snapping away with their DSLRs and howling about how their copyright is infringed when the next bloke/girl comes along with a similar artistic eye for the same scene?

Now to finish off. I would love to take a trip into London to take a few shots and claim ownership of the photographic composition but sense it is late at night and freezing cold I have opted to instead use a nice stock photo to make my point visually.

Here’s a scenario. You are going to travel to London for a day trip. You’ve never been. You find the traditional red phone boxes charming and would love to take a photo of one. While exploring London you see a red phone box with the London eye in the background. Lovely composition. You decide to take a shot…

NOT SO QUICK!

Someone has got there before you. Too bad…

So you continue to climb with your cams and because you aren’t just a fair weather climber some of these trips are climbing in… absolute sh**t storms! You return from your most recent trip and notice that the action on a cam or two isn’t exactly what you’d call smooth and then you notice one where the units aren’t even snapping back after you pull them.

Now is the time to clean your cams!

This is the scenario I found myself in recently. At the beginning of 2012 I had a check over all my climbing gear and noticed that a few of my older DMM 4CUs weren’t operating as smoothly as I would like and one was even sticking. If a cam is sticking like this do not use it to climb with. I hope it’s obvious why.

I thought I’d put up a quick blog post detailing what I did to get all my cams running smoothly (mostly) once again.

The problem

Here’s a video of a stuck cam before I fixed it. It demonstrates one of the issues where cam lube can help. You certainly wouldn’t want this happening while your hanging from a few finger pumping out on real rock.

What you need

• A stuck or gunked up cam/tech friend
• A tooth brush
• Some cam lube. I’ve heard some people say one can use something like WD40 and I’ve heard some people say you shouldn’t. I think sense I’ve spent £40 – £50 per cam that I don’t mind another £5 for some definitely safe and made for the job cam lube, so I’d recommend using metolius cam lube or another climbing brand’s stuff.

First step – the swishing…

Before applying the lube to your cams you want to get as much gunk (defined here as dirt and anything else that could be clogging up the cam) as possible out. From searching around I found most people recommend getting a saucepan of water to just before boiling and then swishing your cams in it while there being worked. Once swished, take the cam out and work it over with toothbrush to dislodge any stubborn gunk, then once you’re happy swish it once more in the water. When swishing your cams do try hard to just submerge the head and none of the rest of the cam.

Once you’ve swished as much as you can swish place the cams on a towel or hang them up (I used a cloths horse) to dry completely. I left mine for an hour or so.

Second step – Lube…

Once you have nice dry cams again it’s time to add in the main ingredient. Take your problem cam and tube of cam lube and nudge a decent amount into and all around the moving parts of the cam head and axles while working the cam. It’s best to do this in a comfortably warm room as Metolious recommend it be above 5 degree Celsius. Once your happy with the amount of lube you’ve applied and the (hopefully) smoother action of the cam take a clean rag and wipe of the excess lube from the device. Once done you can leave the cam on the towel or hanging to allow the lube to dry and form a nice barrier to any further gunk.

Third step – Check and check again

When you’re happy the lube has dried give all the treated cams a really good working over al the while thinking to yourself ‘Would I be happy trusting a fall to this cam when the sh*t hits on rock’? If the answer is yes then well done job done. If you are even unsure or the answer is no then you will have to try another cleaning session and if the same result presents again then it is probably a good idea to retire that cam. I know they cost quite a lot and you may be tempted to hold on to it but in rock climbing you need faith in your gear or it’ll mess with your head so let it go.

Moving forward after your cleaning session it is important to store your cams correctly. Keep them nice and dry and not exposed to any chemicals etc. All the normal rules that apply for most climbing gear applies here as well.

Before I wrap up below is a video of the gunked up cam shown in the above video after it has been cleaned and lubed, but before I wiped off the excess. I’m happy enough with the action to take it back out onto rock with me.

Other guides

I hope you get all your cams in good working order. If you need more guides I found the following two sites very helpful.

http://www.highinfatuation.com/blog/how-to-clean-cams/ &
http://www.metoliusclimbing.com/how-to-cam_care.html

Happy climbing!

iGoogle is where I start most of my browsing sessions. It lets me see my email, RSS and calendar feeds all at a glance on one page. It’s a great little productivity booster for me. If you don’t already use a start page I would still recommend using one even though some opinion nowadays is less favourable towards them.

Anyway here’s two screenshots of the new interface. Judge for yourself. Give the images a click to see them full size.

The Good

Not too long ago I was developing a website for a pretty high profile technology conference. Of course it was being built with HTML5 and all that good stuff. As I’m sure you know dear reader if you plan on using features available in modern forward looking browsers you really should provide a fall back for older (read IE) browsers that don’t support the new approaches.

Instead of me just telling you what library is best why not give it a search using a term such as ‘detect browser features‘. What comes up top? Modernizr! Honestly you really should look into reading a few review of this library.

If you are a web developer and you don’t know about or currently don’t use this library you’re really really missing out! I’ll assume you know why simply detecting the user agent of the browser and serving customised code to it is the wrong path, if not read up.

Of course if you can’t use browser detection then what is there. capability detection. Essentially this is what modernizr does. It tests the current browser for certain capabilities and then appends a class to the page’s body tag to let you test for the inclusion/exclusion of that certain feature. For example if css3 background gradients are not supported then the body tag will have a class of ‘no-cssgradients’ whereas if the browser does support it then the class will be ‘cssgradients’.

What this offers the developer is priceless. A reliable and easy to implement method to do the right thing (capability detection). No more is there an excuse for mere browser detection.

The bug!

Now the thing is I was a bit lazy one morning and instead of going to the modernizer site and downloading the most recent copy of the library I simply grabbed one that I had already downloaded not too long ago. That was my mistake!

The version I was using was 2.0. Here’s the thing. Version 2.0 has a bug in it that causes IE7 to not visually display the webpage. It will either be white or the previous page displayed. If you view the source of the page it’s all present. This had me scratching my head a bit as well as unleashing a torrent of unsavoury terms at the test PC running IE7.

After trying a few investigatory things to prod the page and try and direct my search in the right direction (try searching Google for ‘blank webpage’!) I eventually thought about Modernizr. Not for any particular reason, it’s just that when you don’t have a clear idea of what is causing a problem the mind tends to wonder and come up with solutions.

So I head to Google and narrow my search down to focus on Modernizr issues, sure enough after opening and closing a few tabs I hit on this page – https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/issues/296.

The takeaway

The takeaway from this little article is to keep on top of new releases of libraries you use on your sites. I learnt my lesson. I saved 5 minutes but ended up loosing an hour or two. Learn from my mistake. Oh and if you happen to be using modernizr well done but make sure if it’s version 2 you update it!

If you happen to know of any other interesting bugs with modernizr do let me know. I hope this article can help someone in the future.

I was planning on going through the points Schmidt discusses one by one and giving my own opinion on them, however sense I mostly agree with what he has to say I don’t think it would make an interesting post to read so instead I’ve decided to take the easy way out simply embed it below.

Do have a watch as it’s really quite good. It start’s at roughly 36 minutes in and goes to the very end. Of course don’t forget to let us know what you think of Schmidt’s speech in the comment.

I don’t intend this to be a long article. In fact I don’t intend this to even be an article that has a particular purpose, say to sway your opinion on anything in particular. Instead I merely wish to discuss how I view the current crop of frameworks and when the right time to use one is, that is if there is a right time.

So let me kick of the meat of the discussion with the question ‘Is a PHP framework a net benefit to the developer who chooses to use one’? I’ll do my best to explain why I think the answer is a resounding yes, albeit with a caveat or two.

As with anything there are advantages and disadvantages. Trade off’s which you have to decide are worth it or not. As I’m feeling in an optimistic mood tonight, most likely due to the choc fudge cake and ice cream I’ve just indulged in I will begin with the advantages.

Temporal Efficiency

How about that for a headline! Who wouldn’t want temporal efficiency? Ok maybe I’m over egging this bit but then again maybe not. Time is the most valuable asset we have. Anything that increases the amount of it we can productively use can only be a great thing.

Semi nebulas statements out of the way. Basing your next project on a framework can save you a lot of time throughout the projects lifetime. All the major projects come with well tested and sensibly implemented classes and helper functions that as much as possible allow you to work on the logic to solve your clients needs rather than implementing the basic workings of your system.

For an example. A client of Thirst currently have a website which is getting pretty decent traffic sense we redeveloped it for them. When we had redeveloped it we put it on Media Temple’s Grid hosting, I fully expected to have to move it off this pretty basic hosting as soon as their traffic started increasing but as I had built it on CI (codeigniter) it turns out I didn’t have to as it handled the traffic pretty efficiently. Now here’s the great thing. When the website does start pushing very close to the limits of the Grid hosting package it will be a relative cinch for me to turn on static caching of the sites dynamic content and prolong the time that I can keep the site on the Grid. This is great for the client as they get to stay on a very good value hosting plan and keep there costs down as long as they can.

Now I’m not saying that if I hadn’t built the site on a framework that I wouldn’t be able to implement static caching of the websites content. I would be able to implement it but the fact the CI has everything needed already in place and all I need to do is make a few method calls makes it all the easier for me to do and cheaper for the client as well.

Another example of a common task that a nice helper function can help out with day to day is DB backup. The previous site I was discussing has outgrown the native PHP DB backup method but most sites probably won’t. Therefore CI having a nice easy way to help me backup a datbase manually or via CRON is going to save me time everytime I use it.

A good way to see what’s on offer is to visit the CI user guide and drop down the top navigation menu and check out what’s on offer.

Tell me honestly if all that well tested and proven functionality doesn’t tempt you.

Code reliability

Maybe you’re a lone developer or one in a team of developers but can you truly say to yourself that you are better than a global network of hundreds or thousands of developers all putting in work to make one system better and better?

I don’t think any sane developer would say they could match the above statement. Not an honest one anyway. It’s just a fact of coding that more good developer eyes means more reliable code.

Sensible and proven design pattern

Model – View - Controller or MVC. It’s a great design pattern for your web apps.

Essentially what it says is that you have your models to interface with your data sources, which are not only a relational DB but could be files or other web services.

Your views are are of course the files that you use to present all this data you have to your users. Note the view may include some basic programming fundamentals such as iterating over an array of something with a loop but they shouldn’t be doing any ‘real work’!

Lastly your controllers are what co-ordinates everything. They are the files where you call your models methods, get the data, maybe doing some manipulating with it and then pass it to your views for presenting.

While there are different interpretations by developers on exactly where (and how much) to place certain logic within the MVC pattern, such as fat/thin models (i take this view) or fat/thin controllers, the consensus on the overall pattern is extremely positive.

This being the case MVC is the pattern that the majority of PHP frameworks use and it is a pattern that will benefit any developer who takes the time to understand it and become proficient in its working.

Another great advantage to MVC is that it really helps you keep your code modular. I think now is a good time for a cheesy video – see below…

Community support

Unless you create your own framework or choose to implement one that is just starting off or that has no support then when you get that client that comes to you requesting something out of the ordinary and you thinking gosh can I do that. Can the framework do that then you can ask that question to the community of users of your chosen framework.

One reason I love CI is that their user guide is very clear and helpful but if I were to ever encounter a problem where the information wasn’t present in it then I would feel very comfortable asking some help of the wider community.

Support if the community is a great asset to have. It is one that you don’t appreciate until you have had to lean on it in a time of need. I can safely say Ci has a great community but I would wager that it is closely match in this respect by almost all of the popular frameworks.

Performance

The guys and girls and Yii framework have a chart detailing the performance of various frameworks. Of course Yii wins! I don’t mean to be cynical, Yii is actually built to be the fastest and I think the consensus is that it does that part of the job well.

I included the above link to let you see a snapshot of the comparative performance of the major frameworks. I’m happy to see that CI is the best par Yii for performance but I think it could be even better. You see you can config CI to only load what you need. So if your app will never access the database just don’t load up that class.

Performance isn’t everything but when choosing a framework do take it into consideration. Your choice is to suppose to help you build and maintain your web apps easily and as efficiently as possible but you don’t want your framework giving with one hand and taking away with the other one.

Now that the advantages are out of the way and the choc fudge cake has given me a headache I shall discuss the disadvantages of using a framework.

Learning curve

With any approach there is a learning curve. Hell with learning native PHP there is a learning curve!

It is often brought up as an argument against frameworks. While it is true it isn’t anywhere near reason enough to not use a framework. I think it stresses the need for a developer to properly research his options before choosing a framework as he/she doesn’t want to be continually learning new ones or switching between 10 different ones.

Proprietary solutions

I say proprietary but the truth is that’s not really accurate. Sense all these frameworks are open source there’s noting proprietary about them. It would be better to think of this possible slight disadvantage as ‘system specific solutions’.

By that I mean the way of developing within CI will be different to CakePHP or Zend.

A developer must be aware that if they invest in learning a framework then they are taking a slight risk in that if it were to disappear part of the time invested would be wasted and they would need to either swear off all frameworks or choose another one to develop with.

Lack of true understanding

This is the only one I’m honestly worried about when chatting to people regarding frameworks and my opinions on them.

If you are a developer starting out put in the man hours to understand how PHP actually works. Use it’s native functions, read up best practice articles on how best to develop with only basic PHP. Don’t use any frameworks for a while. When you are very comfortable with native PHP then start looking into frameworks and ORM etc but get the basics first.

I would hate to see a developer who didn’t know what was actual native PHP and what was part of the framework. Don’t let that be you!

Sum up

I will say that if the developer is careful and aware of the risks then said risks become far less potent. It is the developer that isn’t aware of them that will encounter problems in the future.

So should I use one!

Here’s the straight forward answer. Yes. Be aware of the downsides if they apply and then jump in with both feet.

If I’ve got my points across with any clarity at all you may well be looking for a list of popular PHP frameworls right about now. Well I’ll be damned, look at that!

• Codeigniter (My chosen framework)
• Zend (Sort of the official framework but quite large and a bit slow)
• Symfony (sorry I’ve no experience with this one)
• CakePHP (recommended by a friend I respect but I didn’t like it)
• Many more…

And in case you want a bit more on MVC and haven’t already jumped away to another site check out this Stanford video lecture at the 22:30 to 28:00 minute mark for a quick walk through on MVC.

Enjoy all your future framework-y goodness!

To put this deal into perspective the last major deal that Google made was to acquire DoubleClick in 2007 and that was for the grand sum of 3.1 billion. That deal turned out to be excellent value for Google. DoubleClick ad exchange eventually became Google ad manager and allowed Google a massive leap up into the display advertising game. It’s interesting that Microsoft was also interested in DoubleClick back then and they were reportedly interested in at least acquiring Motorola’s patents. Burned twice by Google in two very large acquisition attempts.

The question everyone is scrambling to answer is will the Motorola deal be as big or bigger success as DoubleClick or fall flat on it’s face.

Here’s my take on what the deal’s about.

Protecting Android

Mobile is the future. Google saw the trends many years ago and so smartly invested in a mobile platform, and by invested I of course mean bought another company who were developing a mobile OS that has become Android.  They have played the mobile game pretty well over the intervening years against Apple, Microsoft and RIM.

As of mid July 2011 Google have said they are activating 550,000 Android devices everyday. That’s a lot of devices, more than half a million every single day and they say it is growing at a pace of 4.4% every week.

The point I am getting to is that Android has become a massive success in a market Google must be part of if it is to continue to be relevant and competitive in the coming years.

So what do you think Google thought when companies suddenly took notice of this success and came knocking on the door with patents they say Android infringes on? Do they not take it seriously and hope it gets sorted in the courts over many years or do they take offensive defensive action?

Well they went on the offensive to protect Android and all of it’s partners that use it or have bet their companies on it.

By purchasing Motorola Mobility Google obtained roughly 17,000 extra patents with which it can use to fight off Apple, Microsoft and Oracle among others. Before this Google only had about 1,000 patents.

The reaction from partners has been interesting. They have all come out in support of the acquisition as it offers them more protection. It will be interesting to see if their sentiment is genuine or if it’s mere public fronting while they plan behind the scenes. I think it’s genuine. I think Google won’t risk pissing off all it’s partners by relegating them all to a second tier below Motorola.

HW + SW integration

The title sort of says it all. Here’s the thing when I was previously upgrading my phone about a year and a half ago I decided to still go for the iPhone. I had many reasons why I decided to stick with Apple last time among them (though not the largest) was the quality of the iPhone 4 and Apples tight integration of iOS with it. HW/SW integration is a valid point. I don’t think it’s the be all and end all of success in the market but I do believe it is a factor, at the very least for a segment of the market.

If Google decide to keep the HW division of Motorola then they will be able to say to consumers here’s a piece of HW that will work superbly with Android and btw there’s we haven’t loaded it up with any extra crapware that will suck up your battery and slow down your phone.

I think this can only be a benefit to consumers and a positive effect on the market as a whole.

Larry page shining through as war time CEO

Lastly I think this purchase is a good guide of how Larry Page will be as the new CEO of Google. It appears that he will not shy away from being aggressive. He won’t be afraid of making big bets and fighting to make them pay off.

To me this is a big consideration especially moving forward. Goggle is up for the fight with Larry Page at the wheel.