Craig Sansam's Blog

If you read back through my blog you will see that in December last year I posted 2 speed tests, one from my home ADSL connection and one from my MiFI.

Here are 2 new speed tests, one from my home ADSL connection and one from tethering on my iPhone. I am yet again amazed that my iPhone gets a greater download speed and upload speed. Nearly 1MB/s more on the download and just over 0.50MB/s on the upload. Granted the ping is 61ms higher on the iPhone.

It makes me wonder what we actually pay BT for… Will we ever get better broadband where I live? Honestly, I doubt it, most of the people round here are of the “older generation” and probably don’t even have computers. So with there being no call for it, it’s not going to happen. I might as well contact a mobile network and see what they can do for me…

First Image: iPhone Speed test           Second Image: Home ADSL Speed test

CodeIgniter is awesome. How did I not know about this before?

All of the websites I have coded in the past few years, I have coded from the ground up, and I mean from the ground. I had written the file to auto-include all of the function files, and made the extremely long .htaccess files.

Now all that has changed, and for the better! If you are coding like I was, I urge you now to take a look at CodeIgniter.

I will be posting more in the next few weeks, I know I have said this before, but I mean it this time I have a lot to vent :p

I believe one of the ways to keep “in touch” with the web industry, is to keep an eye on your fellow designer/developers profiles, and see what they are producing. Obviously, you can’t copy what they are doing, but you might find out about new design techniques, frameworks or build an inspiration gallery.

One of the things that I have noticed, more with local companies/agency’s (I use the terms company and agency loosely, as they are often just one man bands portraying the “big agency” image) is the wide use of templates. It’s not the use of templates that annoys me, it’s the fact they call themselves web developers and/or designers, but yet 90+% of their portfolio are sites made from templates. It concerns me, that these people are doing this and calling themselves web designers/developers, when it is obvious, they are doing very little of either!

I think it gives people like myself, who build and design each site from scratch (granted I some open source plugins and frameworks) to the clients individual specifications a bad name.

What do you think?

I have redesigned my personal website yet again, and your looking at the new design right now. This is my first blog post for over a month, bet you were worrying about me… no? oh…. awkward…

To fill you all in on what has been happening, I have started cycling again, I’m also nearing the end of my M150 Uni course, my mobile contract expires in 2 months (Come on Apple, I want the iPhone 5!), I got bored and got a new dedicated server and got some new fans for my home server. Sounds like a normal geeky life doesn’t it? Well it’s not. There has been lots of other crap happening that have been interfering with other stuff, most of which I can’t post on here.

I’m also planning on going freelance again pretty soon, so if you want to employ me, get in touch. I’m just finalizing the plans, and getting everything registered with the tax people.

In case you forgot what I look like, here’s a picture.

Chow!

All I seam to be doing in my posts at the minute is moan. I am not going to let the side down, and here is another post moaning

Last night, mainly because there was nothing on tv, I thought I would go to bed and watch the first episode of hustle on my iPad. What a mistake that was. The show started playing fine, then it stopped, after 5 minutes I refreshed the page in safari, and it started playing again from the start! I skipped to the part I was at, and it played 5 or so minutes and stopped again! This when on for the full hour show.

After this I thought, I wonder if anyone else has had the issue, so I looked on the BBC forums. There was/are a few people experiencing the same issue, but they have just been dismissed as “having bad connections”. I have had a stable 2meg connection for a while now, so doubt that is the issue. I had a quick look on twitter and there were some reports on there of people having the same issue, so I am holding out for a “fix”

Have you experienced this problem? Let me know

P.S. Dogs noses work on iPad screens

Here we are, another new year

I got an iPad for Christmas and I thought I would buy TVersity so that I can access all of my tv programs and stuff on it. I thought it was a steal at £26, it worked fine for a few days but no the “Media Service” refuses to start, after several re-installs I am non the wiser as to why it isn’t working. I have posted on the TVersity forum, but whether I get a reply is another matter. If I don’t the only thing that will be left to do will have to nuke it.

I was just sat watching TV and thought, oh I can write a blog post about that. But I cant remember what it was. Oh wait… nope… it’s gone…

I’ll be back in a bit, going to try and remember what it was I was going to post.

So it’s the big day today and all the family are round it’s been a good day so far and I have gotten everything I wanted and more.

So far I have gotten an iPad, case and iTunes voucher and some clothes, watch and some vouchers for river island and topman. I have also gotten some awesome gifts such as Jack Daniels and Coke mixed in cans… How cool is that?

I have just downloaded some cool apps on my iPad, one of which is iMockups, I shall write a review on this later in the year, when I am less drunk :p

What did y’all get for Christmas?