Music Production, DJ, Live PA and Random Ramblings
Technology
WordPress Hacks
Aug 15th
I am busy going through the pains of re-designing my site to be more appropriate for future plans and in doing so I was initially struck by the idea that I should change CMS to something like Joomla or Drupal. I actually gave it a bash for a few hours….I set it all up, tweaked a few things, tried to get everything just right and then realized that I hate Joomla and it’s rubbish! Now by rubbish I don’t mean it’s crap…it’s a darn good CMS, it’s just rubbish for my intentions.
I also gave one of the new competitors, Concrete5 , a bash which on first impression, seemed pretty good. It had all the plugins you would need to satisfy current social media integration within your blog and seems aimed at designers, which implied that it should be simple to use and capable of crafting impressive UI’s. It’s actually a bit old school in the sense that one drags components around the screen to place everything but it was precisely this technology which I don’t like. I don’t like “designing” each page in isolation. I like to spend hours and hours configuring post or page categories and then use clever tools which derive menu’s from the category hierarchies and then apply page bling across the whole thing.
To cut a long story short, WordPress has it’s quirks but I am used to it and as of 2009, it actually beat Joomla for the top spot in the Open Source CMS awards, so not only is WordPress being considered more than just blogging software but it’s actually considered the best CMS software at this moment and I fully concur with this.
Back to the tips and tricks…
In WordPress you can only have a single dynamic page of posts. You can create static pages for things like “About” and “Contact” but you can’t actually post to them. This posed a problem for me because I am trying to use WordPress as a CMS with a complex and hierarchal menu structure comprising dynamic pages which contain posts pertaining to those sections. The answer lay in post categories and the particular theme I am using. What I did was first replicate the menu structure I wanted as post categories, including any hierarchies. This is one of the great things about WordPress.
Then once those were set, one can setup the menu using the provided menu editor for this particular theme. The cool thing about this custom menu is that you can point the items at pages, categories or custom links.
The resulting menu looks like this:
So at this point, we have a set of custom post categories defining how we want our content to be structured and a menu structure linked to both the categories and some static pages. The purpose of this exercise is so that when we create a new post and specify that it is in category x and y, then WordPress will add the post to menu item x and y and effectively dynamically generate different pages for us based on the the category of the post.
Post Categories
The use of the categories will also allow us to use the category sidebar widget to inform the user of both the nature of the posts but also to provide a post count and rss feed per category.
The menu item that matches the post category will now contain posts within that category such as the example below which contains a single post in the “Fun and Humour” category.
Hope it helps your WordPress en devours 
The future of social networking
May 12th
In trying to solve world peace I was wondering to myself about social networking and where it’s all headed? Not from a specific bias but just as a neutral observer. What could be in store down the line?
To answer this I think we need to summarise where we’re at….Social networks have become, for many people the most interesting side of the Internet and old Web 1.0, which was aimed primarily around information dissemination and corporate advertising, has been incorporated or replaced by the rise of social connectivity. Names like Facebook, Twitter and Google are common language almost anywhere in the world and business are utilizing these and other social platforms, in some cases, as their primary form of attracting their respective target markets. For the first time in history, the world is truly one and geographical boundaries, unless for the purpose of 3-dimensional travel, no longer matter.
So if this is where we are, what is missing from this picture? What doesn’t all of this already provide, where is the gap in the market? Well obviously if I completely knew the answer to this, I would be implementing it right now and in 3-5 years I would sell it to Google and spend the rest of my life wiping my arse with silk.
What I can say is that although social networks have become incredibly sophisticated at connecting us, they still don’t quite understand us, individually. They don’t yet truly know what moves us, what inspires us and what drives us. They certainly allow for this kind of thing to be communicated through various means but they don’t intrinsically know how best to help us change the course of our lives. I think many of us still make our day to day decisions without actually relying on some sort of artificial heuristics engine which has figured out what the best course of action is in any circumstance.
Now if this sounds like AI, then yes it obviously has something to do with that but because social networks are perfectly placed to be the seed of most, if not all, bits of our connected data, then they may be the prime target for aggregation systems to accumulate knowledge on each of us which could in future provide more insights into how each of us think, behave, feel and act then we could ever imagine.
What if the future generations of Facebook type systems could infer from all our connected pieces of data, not just that we have made these certain connections with other people, places and objects in cyberspace but more importantly why. And in doing so, they can accurately map out and predict our path through life based on incalculable (to us) bits and pieces scattered everywhere.
Maybe that information could be used to advise us on situations as and when they happen, be it business, family, relationships or career. Would you trust the advice?
Perhaps systems of this nature could be linked to micro-RFID’s embedded under the skin, so that you and everything about you will be available to all, not just passively though cyberspace but as you traverse the real world…So something like the movie, Minority Report, where you enter a store and as you walk in you are directed to choices that the system is 99.95% sure you will purchase and can afford to purchase….
Good or bad?
Propellerhead announces Record
May 11th
Music production software maker, Propellerhead, have finally got into the audio game and have released their new product, Record, for Beta testing. One of Reason’s critisisms up till now has been the lack of direct support for audio and along with the fact that Reason cannot be used as a VST or VSTi host has somewhat limited its widespread adoption amongst music producers. Well, at least the former issue, now seems to be resolved.
Time will tell if Record can complete with the audio heavyweights but if Propellerheads unique way of thinking is anything to go by, it probably will. Will keep you posted as I give the Beta version a bash.
The worlds greatest and worst invention
May 7th
The Internet. Yes I believe it is both. I am not gonna rant and rave above why it arguably is…connecting the world, breaking all geographical boundaries, the source of all information blah blah yackity schmackity! you know all that that. I am gonna tell you why it’s the world’s worst invention.
Have you noticed over the last 10 years or so since the net really took but in general over the last 50 years of history, that fundamental discoveries, especially those in science, art and music have kind of dried up? Now I do not mean that great works and theories are not occuring, what I am referring to is a general loss in our generations ability to solve fundamental questions? Perhaps it’s just me but where have people of the order of magnitude of Einstein, Mozart and Da Vinci gone? Is it that core understandings of the universe have reached a point where there is little left to discover or that art and music is now something that is so well understood that the universe no longer needs priceless works anymore? Somehow I doubt that concept, instead I argue that the ease of information gathering and transfer, coupled with our generations desire to simply see what Google or Wikipedia says about a topic, has rendered us somewhat limited in our problem solving abilities and in general, quite uninterested in really understanding the core of any issue…
I have noticed this very specifically in my day-to-day as a software developer and project manager. As time goes on, each set of new graduates seem to have less and less ability to problem solve without being hand-held. Now obviously I cannot say for sure what is going on, but I have a suspicion, that as children are being introduced to the pc and Internet at an earier and earlier age, their desire to discover with some manual effort and their ability to really understand something is going down the toilet. I mean in the days of the great scientists, one couldn’t just go to google, type something and get back 1.345 million results. No no, one had to figure that shit out, how ever long it took because there simply wasn’t another way….
Now don’t send me examples of all the Noble prize winners over the last 50 years claiming that more has been discovered in the last 50 years than the last 500 years…you need to look at the quality and magnitude for changing life, of that discovery.
The Internet has made us take everything for granted, everything is easy, everything is about the next big thing, quantity without any quality. I mean take twitter for an example, seriously what’s the point?? It’s just facebook statuses which facebook was already doing well so why is facebook as my friend put it “No longer relevant”? To my mind, we are becoming a society where we are losing respect for the basics of life and I blame the Internet.
Software engineering methodologies
Apr 1st
I am quite frustrated at the moment. Frustrated that the powers that be refrain from learning from the past and realising that changes in technology must go hand in hand with changes in the way the technology is implemented. I am currently contracted to a rather large and well known defence company where I am on a team creating very elaborate and complex military applications. The problem with companies like these, is that they insist on remaining in the dark ages of software development, where the Waterfall model dominated. This, as I see it, is the most ridiculous way to develop software, especially in this environment. I mean this place has these retarded project plans with 5 year time horizons!! This is so stupid, no-one on earth can even begin to predict what the hell is going to happen in 5 years time with respect to anything, so why the hell even try!
An agile methodology is what we should be using, not this archaic system of dividing analysis, design, implementation, testing, deployment etc. into nice little bite size chunks. This will not work in the modern software world where requirements change all the time, new technology progresses at a daily rate and collaboration is needed on a constant basis in order to ensure results. All that the waterfall model affords is permanent frustration because decisions take months to be made, they have to be made by people who have no understanding of software, entire enterprise systems requirements must be completely thought out before the damn thing is even started and managers sit all day looking at their ridiculous 5 year project plans which are impossible to follow, maintain or have any basis in reality…..
The new guard is here and if you choose to accept it, your life will be much easier. Think Agile, think Test-Driven Development, this is the way forward, this is the only way……
