New Look!
Sep/090
Hey,
Just thought I’d post a quick note to mention my new Portfolio page, I have been working on it the past few days and Its pretty much complete, its much more basic and clean than my previous portfolio, I needed something nicer to show off my skills and talents, I realised using such a bog-standard basic “placeholder” wasn’t really going to attract any business my way.
I have decided to be more aggressive in my freelancing, actively poaching work instead of sitting around waiting for it, which as you might expect wasn’t really getting me very far, furthermore I have been known to be slightly “picky” in the jobs I take on, looking only for things that peek my own personal interest, well no-more! As they say: “Beggars Can’t Be Choosers”.
So hopefully with this new look “LeeNug.com” I should be able to grab a few new clients and get some work in. So tell all your friends, Lee is Freelancing! 
Cheers
iPhone 3G internet Tethering – Working!
Jun/0931
After a little work, I managed to get internet tethering working on my iPhone 3G running 3.0GM on the O2-UK network, here is how I did it:
Firstly we have to prep iTunes to allow us to change the IPCC file on the iPhone, open up terminal and type the following command:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE
Or if your on a PC:
C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1
This now allows us to send our hacked IPCC file over to the iPhone. Next you need to ensure you are running iPhone OS 3.0 if your not this will not work.
Lnkr.co.uk
May/090
As part of my College Course this year, I had to project manage a web development project. During our initial meetings we quickly agreed that we would do a URL shortening application. As the only member of the team with any Web Dev experience I was elected the project manager.
After 3 weeks of development we have just released our first version. This is a very, very rough ‘alpha’ version. The basic functionality is working and we have some basic analytic components implemented. Our ‘Killer’ feature is still in development, as it turns out its a lot more complicated than we first anticipated. But please, have a little play with it, and of course, any feed back is more than welcome!
StarTrek
May/090
Simon Pegg as Scotty
A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get into a early screening of J.J. Abrams re-envisioning of StarTrek. First off, thanks to @ramshaw for hooking me up with the ticket!
The first ten minutes of this movie are epic, every second being action packed. Without giving to much away Abrams managed to justify every change he made to the Trek lore in a very plausible fashion. With great action scenes & plot twists infused with a touch of humor this version of the Enterprise will appeal to more than your hardcore Trekkies.
The cinematography reminded me of the Battlestar Galactica mini-series, with fast pans and zooms aswell as a nice sprinkling of out of focus shots. The styling was, ofcourse, reminisant of the origonal series with a new glossy finish.
The casting is simply perfect. Simon Pegg, one of my favorite comedians of all time! (See Spaced!) is amazing as scotty. There were some very funny moments inbetween the hardcore drama and action medly, Pegg providing most of the laughs.
I would highly recomend StarTrek to trekkies and non-trekkies alike. This truely is the begining of this years summer blockbusters. Go now, book tickets! For those of you who haven’t seen it, I’ve embedded the trailer after the break.
Disclaimer: I am in no way a film critic, these are just my short, unstructured ramblings.
StarMunchkin
Apr/090
Star Munchkin
After and introduction to Munchkin last week I quickly became addicted. We played thr origional game at CGZ last week and I must say, after my initial confusion, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Whilst not beeing as deep and complex as some other card based games Munchkin is a humours, casual time-waster.
I played with @port3m5 and @ramshaw last week and we were all pretty new to the game. But after one or two rounds we all seemed to get the hang of it. The general idea to the game is the first player to reach level 10 wins, using any and all means they see fit. You can attack, trade and decieve your way to victory. Personally I enjoyed backstabbing my friends at every possible opertunity, buffing attacking monsters, stealing prized items and riping them off during trades.
Though the rules seem itemidating at first, I would highly recomend the Munchkin series of games to anyone, geeks and non-geeks alike.
A Short Update
Mar/094
Wow, It’s been a while.
As ever I (re)started this blog with good intentions. My weekly posts, excluding the automated “My Week In Tweets” posts, didn’t come to be. I have however an excuse! I have been very busy over the past week or two with college work and such sort. As well as this I have taken my first plunge into Linux Server Administration.
As of the 1st of April all my sites, and friends sites that I host will be moved over to a shiny new dedicated linux box. This site your reading is over there now and my god, the performance boost is insane!? My old shared hosting account had an average ping of around 240ms this new box which is housed in a brand new datacentre in the Midlands has an average ping of 53ms.
As well as moving sites around the tubes I have been hard at work on a college project. The project, in its simplest form, is a tinyUrl clone. However, as you may know tinyUrl is basic in function and ugly in design. We have set out to create a user friendly, feature packed tinyUrl alternative. Yes there are hundreds of such sites out there but I believe that our killer feature has not been executed successfully before. We will be releasing a beta version of the site in a week or two with the basic functionality, we then plan to roll out the more meaty functions the days and weeks that follow. Screenshots to follow.
So that was my little update, as exciting as ever!
Emoji Icons on the iPhone
Feb/090
Some may describe me as an Apple Fan Boy but I would argue that the iPhone is one of the greatest technical achievements of this century, granted we’re only nine years in, but still!
Though a great achievement the iPhone is certainly lacking in certain departments (tethering anyone?!) one of the first things I missed, as a serial texter, when moving from my trusty Sony Ericson to the iPhone was support for icons in SMS messages.
The latest firmware update, 2.2.1, remedies this. Or it does if you live in Japan! Emoji are embedded icons that are very popular in the Japanese mobile market, virtually all modern phones support the use of Emoji. One analyst is quoted as saying the iPhone is suffering in Japan because of the Lack of Emoji:
“The iPhone is a difficult phone to use for the Japanese market because there are so many features it doesn’t have”
Version 2.2 fixed that, and now Japan is happily sending SMS and E-mails laden with Emoji goodness! Where does that leave us westerners?
Well the good news is that your iPhone has the Emoji in there, hidden and not user accessible but it is in there! TouchDial Emoji is an app available on Apples app store that will unlock Emoji for you:
- Step One: Download the App. [iTunes Store Link]
- Step Two: Run the Application
- Step Three: Go to Settings > TouchDial Emoji > And click enable Emoji
- Step Four: Run the App again, Play with it for a second or two.
- Step Five: Go to Settings > International > Keyboards > Japanese > And you should now have the Emoji Keyboard enabled!
The beauty of this little hack is that any iPhone user regardless whether or not they have completed the above steps will be able to see your Emoji in SMS, emails & IMs.
Future of Web Apps 2008
Feb/090
Last October a friend and I attended The Future of Web Apps conference & Expo in London. As aspiring web developers we were rather excited to attend our first tech conference. We were looking forward to seeing some of the webs biggest players talk about the industry we’re working towards becoming a part of.
My personal favorite Keynote of the event was “Languages Don’t Scale” presented by Blaine Cook and Joe Stump. This was an interesting insight on how high volume web apps handle traffic regardless of which language they are coded in. Another highlight was seeing Kevin Rose’s talk on the Future of Social news, I am not a Digg.com user but I still found his keynote very informative andenjoyed his insights on where he thinks his particular niche is going
Hello World… Again!
Feb/090
This is isn’t my first attempt at authoring a blog. For a short period of time I had a more tumblr-esque affair, posting short clips and funny images I came across whilst surfing the internet. This served me well for several months until I committed the cardinal computing sin, its a message that all of us have heard but most of us ignore, Back up everything!
So my server crashed taking my tumblog database along with it. I could have started again from scratch but I didn’t see much point in that, my tumblog was dead.