Tesco Boycott

Posted Thursday February 26th 2009

Since Tesco opened a third store all within a ten minute walk of each other where I live in Cardiff I decided enough was enough and didn’t shop there any more. Though occasionally I admit I did pop in for milk or if Walkers Sensations are on offer for 72p!

This was until I saw for myself number 4… FOUR! Thats 4 stores within one mile walk of each other.

Tesco stores in my area

Never again will I step foot inside a Tesco’s store. Never.

Tags: Boycotts • Dislikes • Me

eBay Ads Gone Mad!

Posted Thursday February 26th 2009

I usually surf the web with my trusty Adblock Plus Firefox extension turned on, but after turning it off recently (I have been working on my works affiliate programme… it actually took me a few seconds to work out why things weren’t appearing that should have been!) I got a bit of a shock when I went on to eBay. My usual eBay experience looks like this:

eBay with adblock plus enabled

However to my disgust with adblock plus disabled I was confronted with the following:

eBay's ads when adblock plus is disabled

I think eBay should be ashamed of themselves. They have completely compromised their site by selling out to ads and lets face it – it’s not exactly like they are short of money! I knew eBay had ads but this is getting silly.

Tags: Dislikes • Me • eBay

The Cat Came Back

Posted Tuesday February 24th 2009

I remembered this cartoon from my childhood today whilst speaking to my girlfriend. She hadn’t heard of it, so if you haven’t seen it you should definitely check it out!

Tags: Likes

Magento Theme / Templating Tutorials, Guides and Resources

Posted Monday February 9th 2009

I think anyone that has worked with Magento will agree that it is a steep learning curve, this is not helped by the lack of documentation. I have put together a list of useful links when that I found helpful whilst trying to get my head around Magento themes:

(I have expanded upon these lists which I found useful)

Tags: Magento • Web Development • e-commerce

Windows Text Editors

Posted Friday February 6th 2009

I’m a Mac user through and through but recently I have been required to use Windows for work. My favourite text editor for Mac is undoubtedly Textwrangler which is a free stripped-down version of Barebones BBEdit. This is a great text editor that does everything I need.

After having such good experiences with Textwranger on OS X my job was finding a Windows alternative. Other than the usual features (syntax highlighting etc) I was looking for:

  1. FTP Support (though I do not use this text editor feature on OS X, this was a requirement for me on Windows)
  2. Powerful multi-file search / replace
  3. Tabbed file editing
  4. Smart indenting- shortcuts to indent / unindent whole blocks of text
  5. Matching brackets

After some searching and testing of various solutions I found Crimson Edit, this is a great text editor that is also free! The only small problem I have had is a few bugs in the FTP connections but this is forgiveable and for me was the best free text editor for Windows. Crimson Edit has been open-sourced because the developer had no time for it any more.

Unfortunately Crimson Edit does not support SFTP connections so I had to look further. In the end I went for EditPlus. This application costs but is fairly cheap (35USD / 30 day trial available) and has a extermely powerful array of features (like Search / replace regular expression support and advanced (S)FTP support with file browser pane). I found out about this editor as it is used by the Magento developers.

Tags: Likes • OS X • Programming

I Hate Virgin Media

Posted Wednesday February 4th 2009

I have recently signed up with Virgin Media broadband. I have previously been a customer of theirs and vowed NEVER AGAIN! However as I live in the city there really isn’t much choice – so begrudgingly I signed up.


What a mistake.

My blood boils (and my money evaporates) ever time I have to contact them… which is a lot. There are lots of reasons to hate Virgin Media, but here are my top 5:

  1. Installation – I paid £30 for installation, which consisted of a ‘technician’ turning up to my house and plugging a modem in. I tried to get a web page up which didn’t work and when I turned around he wasn’t there any more. I caught him in his van and got him back, but I soon realised that he had no idea what he was doing. He also refused to call technical support because ‘it would end up costing HIM money’.
  2. Pricing – It’s not cheap, add on to that that they have a hidden £1 charge because they send you paper bills. Signing up for ‘e-billing’ is the solution – but they don’t tell you about this and be dammed if I know how to get on it from day one, so I ended up paying £1 for the first month.
  3. ‘Contact Us’ – Not only do you have to contact them all the time to sort out your service, but the only number is a premium rate one! To get signed up on e-billing I paid £5 in phone bills sorting this out, because after all no-one knows what they’re doing. Even the numbers listed on www.saynoto0870.com are all blocked.
  4. Overcharging – the one thing companies should be able to do right is bill their customers the correct amount. Not Virgin Media! They charged me my first bill (£51) twice! I gave up contacting them and went straight to the bank and got them to reverse the charge.
  5. The service – their service really is appalling. Ask anyone who is with them and they will tell you they are not getting the speeds they are paying for. And don’t get me started on the fact that their ‘Unlimited’ packages that actually are limited.

Add to this a confusing web site which never actually does anything (you need to phone about 10 different people to sort it out) and you’ve got yourself a near heart attack.

My advice – Virgin Media, really really really really don’t bother.

Tags: Boycotts • Dislikes • Me

Transmission Hybrid Icons

Posted Thursday January 22nd 2009

What Is This?

For an excellent BitTorrent client (http://www.transmissionbt.com). For replacing the new (Leopard style) Transmission icons with the older-style ones.

In response to: http://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?t=3156&start=45

Download

The following link is to a 14k zip file which includes all of the icons.

http://morehawes.co.uk/stuff/Transmission-Hybrid-Icons.zip

Installation

All you need to do is paste the new png files into: Transmission.app/Contents/Resources (right click on Transmission and ‘Show Package Contents’)

Tags: BitTorrent

Shortcut To Show / Hide Hidden Files In OS X

Posted Sunday January 18th 2009

Working with OS X is a pleasure for me, but there are some things that really frustrate me, like having no easy way to show/hide hidden files. Whenever I wanted to do this in the past I had to first Google it, then open up terminal and change the Finder config before relaunching Finder:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

But no more! Tim Fletcher has written a small application that can be dragged into your finder toolbar which runs the command. So no more Googling necessary.

See his page here and download it for yourself: http://www.timothyfletcher.com/journal/posts/finder-button-to-showhide-hidden-files-in-os-x

Thanks Tim!

Tags: OS X

Frankfurt and home!

Posted Wednesday October 29th 2008

At the moment I am in Frankfurt seeing my friend Hanna, staying with her and her boyfriend Felix in his flat. Tomorrow I fly back to the UK and there ends my trip! I have had a really wonderful time, more so than I ever could have imagined. When I think back on all the things I have done, things I have seen and people I have met it feels like years of experiences. Not just two months! I hope the diary has been interesting, thanks to everyone who took the time to email me whilst I have been away. It was really nice to see that people were thinking of me and keeping track of my progress, your emails made me look forward to getting internet so I could check my inbox! I look forward to being back in the UK and especially catching up with you all. All the best, Joe.

Tags: Travelling

Rome

Posted Wednesday October 29th 2008

Theres lots to see and do in Rome, I think you could spend weeks there and not see it all!

Everywhere you look, every corner you turn you see so much history. It’s hard to get your head around just how old everything is in Rome. You are looking down on alot of the older monuments because the ground level has got progressively higher over time.

My first night in Rome was in a hostel, full of people from all over the world and upon arrival I was treated to a free dinner with wine! The following day I met with Francesco and he showed me to the convent which would be my home for the next two nights. This was an amazing place and everyone was so kind and generous I felt really welcome. I was stuffed full during every meal with a wonderful array of Italian food and wine!

Francesco showed me around the city and we spend a whole day walking the streets. Rome has such a vast complex of small streets that even after having lived there for six years he had the street map close at all times! During my last night we drove to a wonderful spot overlooking the city, a really nice way to say goodbye to Rome. Francesco was a really amazing host and made my stay in Rome really something special.

Tags: Travelling

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