ian jenkins

On the 21st November 2009, my son, George, will be 1 year old. Just before he was born I had an urge to write down all the things in life I wish I had been told before I embarked on this mad little journey. However, because I’m a lazy arse, I never got round to it.

So now that his first birthday is fast approaching, I’m about to get all philisophical and share my tips for life. In this first post I will list all of my tips, I will then elaborate on each one in subsequent posts.

It is also worth noting that I left out some obvious points such as ‘Live every day as if its your last’ and ‘Life’s too short’, these I consider to be pre-requisites!

I want to give a bit of recognition to an excellent post which inspired this one a little bit. So make sure you check out 100 ways to live a better life.

And finally, here are my tips for life:

1. Silence often says more than any words.
2. Learn something from every single person you meet.
3. Be kind and sharing but ultimately be selfish.
4. Support Liverpool F.C.
5. Don’t take yourself (or anything for that matter) too seriously.
6. If you’re happy, carry on what you’re doing, if you’re unhappy, change whatever it is you’re doing.
7. Be humble.
8. Appreciate how lucky you are.
9. Be confident.
10. Ask questions.
11. Be reflective.
12. See the good in everyone.
13. Rise above adversity.
14. Support Liverpool F.C.
15. Don’t take things personally or get defensive.
16. School will be the best years of your life despite how you feel at the time, but remember school is only a small part of your life.
17. Enjoy being a child/don’t grow up too quickly.
18. Observe.
19. Do things for you.
20. Support Liverpool F.C.
21. If you cant say anything nice dont say anything at all.

Now listen to this classic (lyrics).

I recently started using spotify after I saw someone I was following on twitter rave about it, and all I can say is…awesome.

Spotify is basically a music player, much like itunes, where you can search tracks and listen to music. The greatest thing about spotify is that you can listen to (almost) any track in the world! It is just like having your own personal radio. You even get the annoying adverts, which in actual fact, aren’t nearly as annoying as you might think. You hardly notice a short audio advert, and I much prefer it to having a great big flashing banner hit me in the face whilst searching for tracks.

It’s catalogue of tunes is seriously huge, imagine having an ipod with every song in the world (almost) on it and that’s what spotify is. What makes it even more great, is a sweet ass interface and search.

it even scrobbles!

Yep, after numerous requests and attempted plugins, spotify finally added last.fm scrobbling support. This is a killer feature for me as I am a keen user of last.fm. Would love to see more last.fm integration, such as being able to ‘love’ a track directly form spotify, but then we get in to the realms of just recreating last.fm, which is not what it’s trying to do.

If you haven’t checked out spotify then I urge you to, invite only at the moment for the free version (I got 4 invites left, drop me a comment if you want 1). If, like me, you spend all day at a desk, listening to tunes whilst you tap away at a keyboard, then this is perfect for you.

Firstly, Happy New Year!

In 2006 I graduated, 2007 I got married, 2008 I had my first child….2009 has a lot to live up to!

To make sure it doesn’t go down the pan I thought I’d better make some resolutions, so here they are in all their glory…

exercise more

Ok lets get the obligitories out of the way

eat less

See above

blog more

Having just become a Dad, I’m finding any spare time to be a rarity. However, I need to pull my finger out and blog more often, starting with this one (if this is the latest entry in a months time, then you have my permission to punch me in the stomach)

get more involved

Even simple things like commenting on blog posts and twitter updates. I read so many of the things, but can never normally be bothered to put my 2 cents across, this needs to change, because my opinion is quite frankly, awesome

get motivated

With the run up to Chrimbo, I seemed to lose all motivation for work and the web, I’m sure having a baby had something to do with this as well, but I definately want to get this back in 09 and I will damnit.

frameworkerisation

Want to start developing with a framework, with Zend being preferred choice for PHP and am still musing over a javascript framework to go with, jQuery and MooTools are in pole position at the mo.

get back into css

I use very little html/css these days, with the bulk of what I do being purely php, which is how I prefer it. However, I would like to get back into css and having read Transcending CSS: The Finid Art of Web Design I think I need to get back into it before it all goes completely over my head.

become zend certified

This is like 3rd year on the trot this has been a resolution, but who knows, maybe this year will be the year. Just need to find someone who wants to pay for me to take the exam…

attend a conference

Again this one hinges on someone paying for me, because I’m a tight git. Would love to go to FOWA, PHP conference, PHPNW etc. and hope I get the chance in 09.

As Craig David once sang, follow me…

http://twitter.com/jenqo

I’ve been blogging now for a few months (albeit quite sparsely!) and I think it’s about time I write the obligatory dev tools post. These are tools that I use day in, day out and couldn’t imagine developing without. If you have any which you would like to add, please do so in the comments below…

editor/ide

Texpad – love its flexibility and simplicity. Does everything I need, never crashes and has loads of settings.

ftp

Smart FTP – ok, so you have to pay for it, but it really is the best ftp client out there.

honourable mention

FileZilla – a nice, simple, free solution. Seems to update all the time, which is a bit annoying, but other than that a very nice alternative to smart FTP.

database management

PHPMyAdmin – Was torn between this and Navicat for the main spot, but went for this because it’s free.

honourable mention

Navicat – This has some really nice features and is a lot more enterprisey than PHPMyAdmin, but then you have to pay for it

browser

Firefox – at the time of writing Google Chrome has just been released and so far it looks good, however firefox is still number 1. Everything about it just feels right, and the add ons take it to a different level.

honourable mention

Google Chrome – just released, but looks by far the next best thing after firefox, and who knows, could even surpass firefox one day (Tangent: isn’t google developing a browser a bit of a conflict of interests, considering the money they plough into firefox?!)

firefox extensions

Web Developer – the mother of all firefox webdev extensions. If you’re a web developer and you don’t have this plugin, you may as well go home.

Firebug – Another plugin I couldn’t live without. The inspect function is awesome, the javascript console and debugging is incredible, again this is a must have.

HTML Validator – Validates pages as they load and has some nice features like tidying up the html.

Color Zilla – Lets you instantly get any colour from any web page with the handy colour picker.

Screengrab – Allows you to easily take a screengrab of the page, visible portion or just a selection.

YSlow – A plugin for firebug this allows you to see how fast your page is and where you could improve.

Delicious Bookmarks – Allows me to easily bookmark pages and also gives me access to my bookmarks at the click of a mouse.

Bloglines Notifier – A bit naughty this one, but when you love bloglines as much as me it makes sense.

version control

Tortoise SVN – If you’re using subversion then you need to have this gui tool (if working in windows).

regex

Regex Builder – There are loads of online ones, but I like this one for its simplicity and quickness. Shame it requires the .net framework though.

misc

Stickies – Very useful when having to log time. These handy sticky notes sit on your desktop so you can easily record what your working on and between what hours.

Ok, so that’s my list. If you would like to add to it, or feel there’s a tool out there which you can’t believe I don’t use then please point me toward it.

This is my first blog post, numero uno. This is the post that nobody will ever read, apart from me. Despite that I will try and outline what I aim to achieve with this blog.

I am a Web Developer based in South Wales, UK. Check this page to find out even more guff about me.. The reason I decided to make a blog is because I wanted somewhere to note down my experiences and technical bits and bobs as I continue my career in this web development stuff.

I am a big fan of blogs and find myself reading Bloglines way more than I should. I consider myself to be a fairly competent developer. Certainly not an expert and hopefully not a novice.

As a web developer I go for a classic LAMP setup with the obvious mix of Javascript, XHTML and CSS thrown in to the mix. (not another one, right?)

I would love for some people to find this blog useful but I know the chances are that the blog will get 1 subscriber and that will be a certain Ian Jenkins. If you do find anything I post useful, would be awesome if you joined in and chucked a couple of comments down. Even if its abuse telling me how bad a programmer I am, its all part of the fun.

Thats pretty much all I want to say in this debut post. I look forward to being the sole reader of it!