Meanwhile, On The Internet...

Hi, I'm Chris Green and you've stumbled upon my blog, where I post about technology, music and anything else I find interesting. More... var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-3946298-4']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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I'm back blogging!

As usual, I stopped blogging, as you can probably tell, but once again I'm going to pick it back up again. But with a few differences:

A lot of my posts before were simply videos or images and links to cool stuff. That stuff is more Twitter-worthy and therefore doesn't really belong on a blog. So, I've decided that stuff is going to go on my Twitter and I'm going to start posting longer, proper blog posts. That probably means fewer posts, but better content (hopefully)!

Also; I've switched themes and decided to start writing posts in Markdown using the very nice Mou app for Mac and then use Tumblr's Email publishing features to post easily, because quite honestly, Tumblr's web interface is horrible.

I've also been playing around with the very cool Scriptogram blogging service, which creates a blog from Markdown files in Dropbox. So, I may switch to that soon, if I'm not happy with Tumblr and can figure a way to export my posts.

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Put simply, a table is in 2NF if and only if, it is in 1NF and every non-prime attribute of the table is either dependent on the whole of a candidate key, or on another non prime attribute.

Simple

Adjective: Easily understood or done; presenting no difficulty.

Nice one, Wikipedia.

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This is an awesome track from Morning Parade's debut album that I just can't stop listening to. The album is on Spotify here if you want a listen.

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Thanks, MediaMonkey

I thought MediaMonkey was a great program for organising my rather large music collection and syncing to my phone. That was right up until about an hour ago, when I upgraded to version 4.

All I wanted to do was sync a new album to my phone. Now I'm sure when I was on their website it said somewhere about MediaMonkey keeping your settings when you upgraded, but when I did upgrade MediaMonkey didn't recognise my HTC Desire. But my Desire was still listed on the Portable Devices menu. So, I exported the data from there and imported it again, but it still didn't work properly, so I ended up having to reconfigure it all. Once that had been completed I hit sync and it started to sync.

Great! I thought.

My happiness didn't last long as I realised the progress bar had been on 'Deleting Content' for a minute (it usually only lasts for a few seconds as it deletes playlists). So I opened up Explorer and had a look in the Music folder on my phone. Then, to my horror, I saw each of the perfectly organised artist folders being deleted one by one.

Now that really pissed me off, I pressed sync, not frigging delete and it takes ages to put all the music back again. I mean, seriously MediaMonkey guys, all you need to do is implement a message box that pops up and says something like:

'Hey! I'm just gonna delete all your music from your device because you pressed sync and of course that means delete all the music that's currently on the device and put it all back again. Are you sure you want me to do this?'.

That would have saved me a lot of hassle.

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Everyone loves a bit of extra space on Dropbox and if you download the experimental build through the above link, you can get an extra 500MB for every 500MB's you upload (up to 5GB's).

Nice one Dropbox team!

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Clear is so simple and uses gestures brilliantly, I would use it even if I didn't want a todo app!

All apps should be like this, it takes advantage of touch so well.

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I've been learning JavaScript through Codecademy after signing up via Code Year at the start of the year. So far I have found Codecademy great and has got to be the best resource for learning to program I have used so far. In my opinion Codecademy beats other resources as each of the activities force you to do some programming and you learn by actually doing, instead of just reading. The problem with other resources is that they aren't very interactive and mainly consist of lots of text explanation and then a small 'Hey, copy and paste this into an IDE and see what happens' task.  At the moment Codecademy only has JavaScript courses but hopefully they'll be adding some other languages in the future. 

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The Internet Protests SOPA/PIPA

Today, as you may have noticed, there are many sites that are 'blacking out' in order to raise awareness of the SOPA and PIPA legislation, which could, put bluntly, ruin the Internet. Sites that are blacking out include: Wikipedia, Reddit, Wordpress.org and .com, Mozilla, Wired, BoingBoing, The Oatmeal (my personal favourite) and Google has done a special doodle (US only). There's a full list here.

If it is passed, this legislation could affect the Internet on a global scale, not just the US. Google has more info here, and so does Reddit.

Keep the Internet open and free!

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This is just madness. A student in the UK, who ran a website, TV Shack, that didn't host any copyrighted material and simply linked to it, could be extradited to the US and be sentenced to 10 years in prison. 10 years. For simply linking to copyrighted material. That is not right at all. Google links to copyrighted material and has it been shut down? No, of course not. 

The student, Richard O'Dwyer, has never set foot in the US and his website isn't on US based servers, yet he faces being extradited just because the website had a .com domain name. What he was doing wasn't even illegal in the UK. What gives the US government a right to come over here, take a student and throw him in a US jail, just because the film industry has lost a couple of quid because of their outdated business models.

If I posted a few links to some films on The Pirate Bay then could I be extradited as well?

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The link above explains that ICT at UK schools is being scrapped and replaced with a computer science program, which I think is absolutely great. The ICT that I did at high school was probably better named 'Microsoft Office Studies' because it basically consisted of creating posters in Publisher, setting up a simple spreadsheet in Excel and making PowerPoint presentations. All which was boring and taught me nothing. Even the course I'm doing now, a BTEC for IT Practitioners, which contains topics such as networks, programming and databases, keeps things to an absolute minimum and skims over topics. So I think this is great, especially as it is likely to produce more programmers and hopefully improve the UK's technology industry, which is way behind the US.

The only problem? There are only 3 ICT teachers in the UK that have a computing/computer science degree. Now that's a lot of training to be done!

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This video explains SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which is trying to be pushed through the US Congress and frankly if it becomes law, it will destroy the Internet as we know it.

This is a US law, but it would have a very real effect worldwide as it would allow the US government to censor US based websites (Google, YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook etc). The video above explains it fully, so get watching and SHARE the video! The more people that know about the effects of this bill, the more chance it will be stopped! Oh, and more information here.

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Twitter has just had a major redesign and although everyone seems to be complaining, I love it, especially the new 'Discover' tab! The Android and iOS apps have also been updated and look absolutely beautiful.

Great work Twitter!

If you haven't got it yet, there's more info here.

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The Android Market has reached 10 billion app downloads and therefore they are selling some top apps for 10p for 10 days! (different apps each day I think).

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This video is from an interview with Steve Jobs, its only 46 seconds long, yet it makes you stop and think.

Very inspiring.

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This is the TouchFire screen top keyboard for the iPad. It solves one of the major problems with the iPad (or any tablet), which is that the virtual keyboard isn't very good for much more than writing a short email, or a tweet. One of the main reasons for this is that the user doesn't have any tactile feedback as it doesn't have proper keys, which means that the user has to keep looking at the screen to check what they are typing. This solves this by overlaying keys that are made of a very thin and flexible silicon.

Now I know that you can get wireless external keyboards for the iPad, but this means that you have to carry around something else, whereas the TouchFire can fit under the iPad's smart cover. Another problem with a regular keyboard is that you have to reach over it to do anything with the touchscreen. But as the TouchFire is actually on the screen, you can use the touchscreen easily.

This could really make it easy to create content on the iPad (blog posts, word processing etc.) instead of just using it to consume content.

The TouchFire's Kickstarter page is here. You can tell how popular this is going to be just by the amount backed!

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I'm Finally Sick Of Desktops And Windows

Just the other week I applied for university, which I'm really looking forward to. But while I was looking around universities I realised that I would need something more portable than my current desktop computer. At first I thought about a netbook to complement my desktop. I dismissed that idea, netbooks are built on the cheap and are under powered. I'd probably get sick of it and just use my desktop all the time. Then I started to think about whether I actually need my desktop.

My desktop is only a couple of years old and when I bought it I was firmly in the mindset of "I'm a power user, I need a desktop with as much power as possible, not a laptop that mere mortals have." But now there are a few things that are starting to annoy me, not with the performance of the PC, the specs are great (2.8GHz quad core, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive and a 22 inch 1080p monitor). I've not got a problem with its reliability (its never crashed once). The problem is with the desktop form factor. At first it was great, sitting in front of my massive monitor with the fans in the tower whirring away next to me, looking like I was doing some heavy duty work. But after a while, I got used to the massive monitor and now I'm starting to get annoyed at being stuck at a desk every time I want to write a blog post or do some work. I'm even starting to miss the portability of my crappy old second hand Dell laptop. With my desktop I miss the ability to take my computer elsewhere, like the sofa, or outside. Instead I'm stuck at my desk. Okay, I've got my smartphone for browsing the web a bit, but for other stuff, I need a laptop. So I decided that a laptop would be the way forward for university. And so the search began.

I started off at looking at Windows laptops and immediately took an aversion to them, they just looked poorly built and plasticy, none of them made me want to actually buy them. I could just imagine them overheating, falling apart and having awful battery life. So as a last resort I browsed onto Apple's website, thinking the same thing that I've always thought: "They're going to be wildly overpriced, I could buy a laptop with better specs for half the price, etc. etc." Then, I browsed onto the MacBook Pro page, saw the MacBook Pro and immediately thought "I WANT THIS. NOW." I didn't care that I could get a better specced Windows laptop for cheaper. The MacBook Pro just looked beautiful. The unibody. And then that screen. Not only did it look beautiful, but it looked robust. It looked like it wouldn't break from a little knock.

Then I thought, what about OS X? I've heard it isn't very reliable compared to Windows and I've heard really bad things about Lion, the latest version. So I had a look at it, watched a few videos and realised that it's just what I wanted. It's just so fresh and different compared to Windows. Then I saw the multitouch gestures in OS X and thought "WOW!". They look so cool and there's nothing like that in Windows. I look back at Windows after looking at OS X and it makes me think: "Why have I been putting up with boring, average Windows all this time?" Okay, Windows has some advantages over OS X, but for me, I think it's time for a change, I've been using Windows for that long.

Once I got my feet back on the ground I looked at the prices and thought I would never be able to afford a MacBook. But then I saw the education discount. 15% off. Get in! Maybe I can afford one after all? I don't think I could live with a Windows laptop thinking what I could have got. I'll probably wait for the update next year before buying and If there's one thing I would miss from my desktop, it would be the 22 inch monitor, so I decided that I would probably keep the monitor and sell the rest and connect my future MacBook to it.

Is this the first step towards being an Apple fanboy?