Rob's Blog

3 fish down... 150 to go...
Aug 23rd 2010 12:08

Ange and I are leading the service at Yeovil Community Church this Sunday. We're teaching on John 21, and are in the processing of making 153 fish to make a point...

... we've only got 150 left to go!

I've actually started writing the main part of the sermon too - how's that for being prepared!

PC World... better than Amazon and Ebuyer?!
Aug 20th 2010 08:08

I've just ordered a new printer, and a full set of ink. Of course, the first place that I checked was ebuyer.com - because it's always been my favoured source of all things computery. I was utterly disappointed, not only was their choice of sub categories for 'Printers' utterly unhelpful, but the listed specifications and product descriptions was pitiful. It made me feel very much that some stores take their repeat customers for granted, so I promptly started looking elsewhere.

After eventually settling on a product (an HP F4580) I added it to my Amazon basket along with both black and colour ink cartridges. I was a little surprised to see on the checkout screen that all three parts of my order were coming from different sources.

I didn't want to pay for priority delivery but if just one of those three items turned up at the tail end of the 3-5 day delivery it was going to cause me a headache. I trust Amazon to deliver items on time... but I'd never heard of the three companies that were going to be fullfilling the three parts of my order (and it seemed very odd just having the colour and black ink cartridges coming from different sources!).

So, I thought I'd see whether PC World had the same model in stock. I would never normally use them, having seen the enormous price difference between Ebuyer and PC World when looking for laptops, but I thought if I could go and pick it up then it would be a much better solution. I was very surprised by what I found. PC World not only had all the items in stock, but the order was £15 cheaper than it was on Amazon AND they were going to throw in loads of free paper.

In the end I opted to have PC World deliver the order for free rather than going out to pick it up from the store. The whole experience surprised me. Faced with competition from Amazon and Ebuyer, PC World were cheaper and provided a far nicer shopping experience. Maybe, just maybe, the high street still has a chance.

Learning to use Zend Framework
Aug 9th 2010 13:08

I've been getting to grips with a bunch of new tools all day. Mainly Windows 7, Zend Framework, Zend Server, NetBeans and GIT.

Windows 7. Yes, I've traited away from the Mac. The simple truth is I can't afford to pay the premium that Apple put on their hardware. Yes, I know it's better. But so is driving a Ferrari, and I can't afford that either. Windows 7 is so much better than Vista that it's really rather impressive. They've not really 'added' much, but Microsoft have managed to streamline a lot of what was already there and somehow remove the ridiculous memory eating that Vista was so good at!

GIT seems to work well from the command line, but all the plugin's and GUI's seem to lack polish. It's very much a Linux tool that's been ported. Still, as far as a repository goes, it pretty much does what it needs to.

Zend Server CE is now running on my laptop so I can develop locally, and I have to admit it was a joy to install and configure. A few minor changes (all improvements) have been made to Apache's treatment of configuration files, and it all feels very at home on Windows (where, in my book, it really shouldn't feel very at home!).

Zend Framework has had by far the biggest learning curve. I think I've just about got to grips with the whole Model View Controller paradigm, but it's quite a challange to think so abstractly. There is so much more code required to write proper object orientated PHP, and I'm not yet convinced that the framework is worth using on smaller applications. Still, the better I get at using it the more I'm sure I will change my mind.

NetBeans is the biggest revelation, why didn't I find this earlier?! It's SO much better than Eclipse and more functional than Coda... yay!

We're back from camp
Aug 7th 2010 14:08

We (Amy, Ange and myself) have just got back from Summer Camp 2010.

Amy was a proper camper for the first time ever and Ange and I were both tent leaders. That meant that along with another co-leader each we were responsible for the six kids in our tents for 23 hours a day. Looking after them on the camp site wasn't too stressful, but trying to keep tabs on that many children when you're in the pool at Butlins or walking between the rides at Crealy was really quite hard!

There were sports tournaments and craft activities all week, not to mention some truly epic games of manhunt and capture the flag. Large scale team games with 70 children and 14 adults are incredibly good fun!

Ange has completely lost her voice from all the chanting during the day and singing in church in the evening (evidently my voice is made of stronger stuff!). Amy is exhausted, and I'm utterly shattered. It's quite conclusive proof that you don't need to trek around the world to find adventure, it can be right on your doorstep!