It’s been a hectic few days.

On Friday, my team-mates and I were working until midnight on our management of software projects coursework: the initiation step of a PRINCE2 project. When it’s been marked, I’ll post our submission and my mark.

Over the weekend, I wrote my web design and development coursework almost from scratch, as well as doing more on the MSP coursework.  I tried to go to spinning on Sunday evening but just before I got there, the new iPhone holder broke, spilling my iPhone onto Ferry Road. I did an emergency stop and retrieved the phone but this manoeuvre did something nasty to Lev’s rear wheel such that he couldn’t move. So instead of spinning, I cooled my heels waiting for a taxi that could take Lev and me home. In the morning, I found that Lev’s rear axle had shifted in the drop-outs. That was easy to reverse but I wonder why the axle was loose enough to move.

On Monday my team-mates and I wrote a presentation to go with our coursework and finished more of the coursework. In the evening, Elly and I went spinning as usual but Elly’s cold and tiredness from far too much work didn’t let her finish the session. On Tuesday we finished the last bits of the submission and re-rehearsed our presentation. Then I jumped into a taxi to get to Elly’s hairdresser, got my hair and beard cut and then taxied back to Napier to help out at the OpenKnowledge meetup. More info (possibly including my live tweeting) at #opendataedb and #okfn. Then a rapid run to Kalpna to meet Elly to celebrate my birthday with curry.

On Wednesday, I had the web design and development lecture and practical which gave rise to this friends-locked post. Then my team-mates and I gave our presentation, after which we listened to the other groups’ presentations. No failures but plenty of useful feedback from the stand-by lecturer. (The real lecturer is on paternity leave this week.) Then off to spinning again.

On Thursday morning I prepared for an interview for this post and on Thursday afternoon I sat the actual interview. I’ll blog about how I got on next post.

You may recall me moaning about the state and design of the cycle-path from Leuchars to St Andrews. I emailed Dr Bob McLellan at Fife Council about it. His folk replied

• to say that redesigning the cycle-path to avoid cyclists being dazzled would be too expensive, as would buying a second strip of land for a lane on the other carriage-way. One Fife Council officer made the valid point that buying strips of land on both sides increases complexity, thus leading to even more cost. He’s not yet replied to my question about buying one wider strip on one side, and using this increased width to create cycle-lanes on both carriageways. (I do see that some re-engineering would be needed, which of course has costs. But perhaps increased cycling-derived fitness might reduce government costs overall.)
• to apologise that the snow wasn’t cleared properly:
  

  This section of cycleway was only promoted to a P1 priority footway/cycleway in the last few weeks as a result of communications we received from the public as to just how busy this can be. Unfortunately the mini tractor driver had missed this part of his new route and steps have been taken to ensure this does not happen again.

Democracy at work!

I’m getting increasingly annoyed by our web design and development lecturer’s apparent inability to parse and/or reply meaningfully to questions. Here’s the latest:

Hi redacted lecturer-name

Won’t world+dog know that the default MAMP server username and password are root and root? (Even worse, WAMP’s default password is null!) How can we reset these defaults so the websites we create in real-life aren’t so easily hacked?

For the coursework, I’d want to put my effort online so I can ask friends to test it.

1. is this allowed?
2. if so, macs have a built-in apache webserver. You can see my use of this at http://www.bruceryandontexist.net. Can I enable PHP on this? If not, how would I direct users to the version within MAMP?

Thanks
Bruce

The lecturer’s answer, in full, was

The wamp server on our computers isn’t connected to the world wide web so no-one can navigate to it from outside. The default password is only there as root during the development phase. One a project is competed it is moved to a production server which is connected to the www – security issues and concerns are dealt with at this stage.

Does this answer my questions in any way? The lecturer knows I don’t use the uni PCs. (For a start, you have to reload all files into MAMP each session, and that these files go into C:/Program Files where no luser should ever go.) He knows, because I’ve told him and he’s seen me doing it, that I develop on my MacBookAir and home mac. And I was clearly asking ‘how can we go live and user-test from our own computers?’, not ‘is it possible to go live from a uni PC?’

I’ve tried again and will let you know if I get any meaning response to

Hi redacted lecturer-name
To be clear, I mean to use one of my macs as a production server as well as a development server, so I could invite others to test it. (In the spirit of agile, I would ask friends to represent clients testing features as I develop them.)
I have no hardware PCs – the nearest I get is running Windows via BootCamp* on my mac laptop or Windows virtual machines (under VirtualBox) on my desktop mac at home. All my development for this course will be done on these machines. So

1. is asking friends to test what I do, as I do it, allowed – or would this be considered cheating by Napier?
2. If it is allowed, how do I get PHP working on a mac that’s a production server? Or can I use MAMP, and allow world+dog to see the site?
3. To prevent anyone hacking my website, how do I change the default passwords on the production server’s incarnation of PHP/MAMP?

I know that the coursework doesn’t require the website to go live, but if I do any real-life web development, the go-live step will be quite important, so I want to take the opportunity to practice this too.
Thanks
Bruce

Too much already today

• feedback from many sources about this. Some positive, some helpful, some asking how we dare attack CCs. For the record, we don’t – we think they are at base good things. But they need to get where people are, and our research shows that many don’t. Phase 2 is to find good practices, and the pitfalls along the way, so that other CCs can learn and travel more smoothly. Ideally CCs would mentor each other – and my role might be to catalyse this.
• explaining to parents why SocMed can be a good thing, despite the caveats – and a necessary thing if you are trying to reach people.
• Issues with stuff we’ve ordered
• Correspondence about St Andrews-Leuchars bike path
• Stuff I’m involved with being ripped off – see final comment here
• contributing to class discussion of software project management
• check with two blogs whether they’ll host an article I’m writing

Other stuff to do, ideally today, includes:

• return calls
• contact a friend
• sort my lecture notes
• arrange to be able to use Edinburgh uni library
• data analysis, then redraft a paper
• get a friend’s HD sorted. Why the hell don’t people learn to back up properly?

Things that can wait include

• buying running shoes
• job application
• order some cycling gloves
• contact council about council tax
• blog about other things

And I need to eat and sleep. Bah!

I’m on teh internets! Interview with @myceliumme_CC on what our findings re CCs use of internet mean nationalnetworkcc.com/2013/02/toe-in… #eparticipation

We did see the copy (and were encouraged to make necessary amends), which is great journalistic ethics IMHO. I didn’t get to vet the photo – do I really look like that?

Top spinning session tonight:

• Martin (Facebook link) leading, explaining and encouraging at the front and Josh (Facebook link) right next to me so there’s no way I could have skived. (Not that I would!)
• Ace music too, especially the mash-ups. The one that most bent my head was The Doors’ Riders on the storm to the music of Blondie’s Rapture. And I loved the final working track. 5 minutes of ramping it up and living it large!

And I’ve just found this!

So the homework for web design and development this week was to create this.

The challenges were interpreting the mistakes in the instruction sheet, source code for jQuery not being on the virtual learning environment where it should have been and not sticking my fingers down my throat at the tweeness. ‘Inverhaggis’???

I believe we’ll end up creating bilingual versions of the site – my other language will be Klingon!

For a long time now, I’ve been using my Pismo¹ as a web server. It’s now running out of space. Should I:

1. delete the 9·2·2 partition and use that space to increase the 10·4·11 partition (cost £0)
2. replace the 30GB SSD with a larger SSD or HD (cost £3 for new enclosure)²
3. use my netbook³ instead of Pismo. (cost £0)
4. refurbish my 17″ MacBook Pro⁴and use it instead of Pismo. Total cost £200⁵, but with the advantage that I could run QuarkXpress 7 (useful for freelance work) on a mac that isn’t teeth-grindingly slow or noisy
5. something else?

If I go for 3, 4 or 5, what should I do with Pismo? I’m very emotionally attached to her. I’m also very attracted to option 4 – I want SURGE back in my life. But I’m too tired to make a rational decision about £200 just now.

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1. 400MHz, 1GB RAM, 30 GB SSD (as 2GB for MacOS 9·2·2, 28GB for MacOS 10·4·11)
2. I have a 60GB PATA SSD, currently in a USB enclosure and containing installers for SnowLeopard, Lion and MountainLion. I also have a currently naked 60GB SATA HD, for which I’ve just ordered a USB enclosure. So I could CCC the installers from the PATA to the SATA, then put the PATA into Pismo.
3. Dell Mini 10v, 1·6GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, MacOS 10·6·7
4. 2·5 or 2·6GHz (depending on which motherboard I buy), 4GB RAM, 250GB HD, MacOS 10·5·8 (if I use it for QuarkXpress7) or 10·8·whatever (if it becomes just a web server)
5. SURGE’s motherboard died about a month out of warranty. At the time, a replacement would have cost over £600, which I couldn’t afford. I can now obtain a refurbished motherboard for £200, which I can now afford, but it would have only 60 days’ warranty. SURGE would live on my hardware altar, so there should be no strain on his graphics chips.

I did my first ‘distance’ cycle of the year tonight. (Inverted commas because 20 miles with 2 stops is fairly pathetic compared to my intentions for this year.)

Apart from getting onto tarmac that’s relatively free of potholes, I also aimed to charge the USB-WERK’s battery so it could continuously charge my iPhone. I cycled from Haymarket to Broxburn, stopped to watch a plane coming overhead and then cycled back as far as the Mariott hotel: total distance 16 miles in 64 minutes riding (just under 15 mph).

I then connected my iPhone to the USB-WERK and cycled home. The phone didn’t start charging while I was stationary but did start charging when I started moving. As before, when I stopped moving the phone stopped charging. So I’m still concerned the USB-WERK isn’t behaving properly – or at least not behaving how I think it should.

I’d have liked to cycle for about 4 hours, starting with the iPhone’s battery about half-full. So long as the battery charge didn’t fall, I’d be reasonably content – I would have a means of keeping my iPhone charged enough. However, I won’t get a chance to do this until next week. Watch out for part 4!

Yesterday’s shot-between-the eyes came while using MAMP. I don’t know whether this was due to a whacko configuration but MAMP required us to put our website files in C:/Program Files! Surely no luser should ever go in there.

The horror … the horror.

UPDATE That should, of course, have been WAMP.