The Code of Blogging

For me to be writing a post on a Thursday evening is the strangest thing that has happened to me in a while, mostly because tonight is possibly the only night since the start of the new school year where I have no homework. This, however, is a special post, being a rare tangential post, of which I only have 2 currently, but before we get into the post, I have an update.

After careful deliberation, I have finally decided that I will migrate my blog to Wordpress and manage my own hosting. The biggest, and possibly most important reason is that I am able to manage the nitty-gritty details of the blog without using incomprehensible HTML editors. There are however, a few points I would like to make about Tubmblr. Firstly, I see now that it is not a blogging service, but a micro-blogging service, which is all about small and frequent posts. Although that might prove useful, the available time I have is nowhere near enough to do such a thing. Secondly, Tumblr is idiot proof. Yes, that is a good thing, for some people. For me, however, I like a challenge, something to aim for, something that makes me think, but being not outrageously improbable to accomplish, like coding the next great operating system in 24 hours, although some may be able to do so.

That is exactly what this post is going to look at and attempt to explain, from my perspective, the story of the code of blogging.

Sorry for the Mess!

I truly am.

The migration has been called off, again, for the time being.

Sitting in my bed at 10pm, I have a lot to worry about, a piece of coursework, some long overdue homework and, possibly most prominently, the many, many, suggestions I got for my new blogging service.

They all agree Blogger sucks, except one.

Two say Tumblr is great.

And the rest, including the highly persuasive Henry Dyer, shout (and occasionally threaten me[!]) with Wordpress.

So, the migration has been called off until I can clear my head about what to do. I am that temperamental with my decisions: i can never make my mind up! I shall most likely have decided by this weekend, with a migration before or on Christmas, depending whether I get hosting.

Just to be clear, we are DEFIANTLY moving away from blogger. There is no question about it. It was nice, but slightly annoying!

Wordpress or Tumblr: that is the question. Do I want 404 error customisation or free and idiot proof? Do I want bother managing hosting or just let the pros do it? Which one is the more sustainable service?

We shall see my friends, we shall see...

Pickture This: On A Venture

It’s a Friday evening, and as most often is the case, I am at home, working on a post, carefully crafting the metaphors, similes, paradoxes and forming a good, balanced argument about the forthcoming topic.

“Sorry?” I imagine you are saying. “A balanced argument?”.

The truth is that I have just come out of an intense English lesson, so my mind is full of useless poetry and non-fiction analytical skills, for which I shall have very little use for later in life. My writing is ok, right?

Moving swiftly on from what I imagine my parents are going to talk and painstakingly lay out why poetry analysis is useful to me about after reading this, I would like to introduce a new topic on this hallowed blog (bit of an overkill there? Thought so).

I have decided to follow, advise (where advice is requested) and cover the ventures the many pupils do at my school. Before you click away from this, please note this. The kids at my school are a bunch of “interesting ones”. May I present you with Henry Dyer, who calls himself speshul. He, as well as many others, like to make stuff: I make articles, others build CNC machines and Henry makes the Crystal Palace exchange and the school servers overheat with the constant OnLive streaming. See, technically we are all speshul. To define “ventures”, I am going to say it is anything that any pupil or member of staff makes and invests effort into, like the aforementioned CNC machine or the following, all with close collaboration and permission.

< Content&Services > - Part 3

Oh, why don't you look at that, it's another aviationally written post, in the words of Henry Dyer, written, as usual, on the way to London on a cramped, full to the brim airbus A320. And lookie here, why yes, it's yet another title longing for a good old rant. I have written two similarly titled posts before, part 1 and part 2. Compared to what I shall discuss [yes, we all know my definition of discuss] in this post, those were merely trivial and mundane topics.

Have I peaked your interest yet? No? How about if I told you that the Internet as we know it could possibly come to an end depending on the decisions of a few people, bent on helping industries and not consumers? No? Really? Well, then you are stubborn person [coming from me, that's rich], enjoy your little encapsulated bubble that us your life.

You've Got a Friend In Me

Image from TechCrunch

Before I begin, I would like to tell all those reading on RSS feeds or receiving this post by email that this post will be very media rich, and so I would recommend that all the aforementioned people read this on the actual blog site (thecompblog.com,  for all those who don't know) to see all the embedded videos, links and photos. To add to that, this is not a post to be read in haste just before bed, or while half conscious at school or work. Take time with this post, watch the videos and read the linked articles to fully enjoy it! Make sure you CTRL + click (PC) or CMD + click (mac) to open the links in new tabs.

I had previously written a post detailing my deepest sympathy for Steve Jobs. I kept it simple, not listing everything that was going through my head as, firstly, I did not know how to place them in and secondly, because I knew that is not what Steve would have liked, I imagine.

But this is a post on everything else. Over the past 2 weeks, I have been inundated with articles about Steve Jobs. This was not a bad thing, to be clear! It was very interesting to see the outpour of strong feelings for this man, and as I have said before, it is still hard for me to fathom the loss. This is a curation of articles, photos and videos that I have found recently, which state exactly what kind of man I believe Steve was.

I would like to start with Steve's 30th birthday present from Apple: a video containing a multitude of things, from apple adverts to clips of Steve's keynotes, played with Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages". It starts off with the quote:

To Steven Jobs on his thirtieth birthday.

For the first thirty years of your life, you make your habits.

For the last thirty years, your habits make you. 

Tragically, Steve never lived to see out the next thirty years. He had died at 56.

Yes. Technically, it will.

Oh look, what do we have here? Yes, it's another airplane post with yet another ambiguous title providing no help whatsoever on the content and/or meaning of this post, but as I like to say, all in good spirit. So let's get crack'n!

Before I continue, let me update you on the happenings of me. iOS 5. Great, but there is a much more interesting story. You know about MobileMe, right? The failed syncing service from Apple that I actually kinda liked... But anyway, Apple totally screwed up the transition to iCloud. What I wanted was one Apple ID for everything, iCloud, iTunes, AppStore, everything, but Apple, being stubborn, made me either use my useless MobileMe ID or work something out on my own (as Apple do not allow the merging of multiple IDs, which the world desperately needs!). So, I was up until about 12pm sorting out this catastrophe! To add to the stress, my iPhone and iPad were refusing to update, as Apple’s servers rejected the verification! Very "it just works", Apple, it was one of the easiest transitions ever!

Now onto the bulk of this post. Back in the day, year 7 to be precise, I had a great history teacher. I could never understand her instructions, but that was because I hardly listened as history was not an interesting subject for me, but regardless, she was one of the best teachers I ever had. During one lesson, we were studying the industrial revolution, where the advancement in technology was unprecedented; she said something that really stuck with me:

"we are also living in a revolution, the technological revolution, but you don't realize it, just like the people during the industrial revolution. You don't wake up and think 'oh, another day in the technological revolution' right?".

Highs of Lows and Lows of Highs.

Waking up at 6:40 in the morning before one of the worst Thursdays at school in the year is never a nice experience. As usual, I always check my Twitter feed on my iPhone for the most recent updates around the world until the snooze forces me to wake up to the same routine we all complete every day, but this time, this time was different. Besides being a special Thursday at school, the one we all resent, something on my Twitter feed took me by surprise.

TechCrunch TechCrunch 

Steve Jobs Has Passed Away tcrn.ch/pc2zGK by @parislemon

At first, I immediately thought what the date was. October 6th. Ok, so there are no joking traditions on October 6th, right? Then I thought that this was some sick twisted joke some hackers managed to post on TechCrunch, until I realized that it was even on the apple website.

Follow the Crazy Ones

Yes, it's finally time again for a 1000 word post on a topic where the title, being without a doubt ambiguous, can give you no help on the actual content. All shall be explained later, but for now, let's update you on my doings and happenings.

School.

And there we have it: an update on my doings and happenings. No, that's just a very large proportion of them. I actually got hooked on this Shrine of Apple website, listing every single apple product ever made. During my time browsing their limited, but ever expanding, catalogue, I thought about how much this stuff actually costs. I went onto eBay, and before I knew it, I had bought an Apple II, a Macintosh plus and a Newton MessagePad 110! They are really, really, really awesome! I know, I know, only a huge geek would get excited about legacy gear, but there is something about them that I enjoy. It is possibly because I am fascinated about how I cannot even fit a small JPEG onto a floppy disk, the fact that I am astounded how far technology has come, or just maybe because I am flabbergasted what people thought was the best thing ever made.