Welcome to Simon Philp's Blog

Carrying on from my previous posts:

• 2 subtext skins ready to rock and roll
• 3 Subtext skins in the works

fSpring is now available.  The skin is quite nice.

If you click on the above image you'll get a better view.

Download fSpring Skin

I have enjoyed converting the 3 skins so much that I will be doing another 3.  The plan is to get them all done and do one post about it so keep checking back or subscribe to my feed.

Baz and I decided that we would fire up north Yesterday to the Nevis Range. 

On the morning looked out the window.

Weathers not too bad, checked weather report for Nevis all's well. At 7am we manage to get petrol and start our journey north. Not too far into the trip and voila snow.

Wasn't long before we were within the range.

On arrival around 9.15 we found that there was a problem with the Gondola and that updates were going to be announced hourly. 

We went for a cuppa, got changed, started preparing for heading up and enjoying some white stuff.

At 11.15 ish they announced that due to high winds no boarding   The woman on the ticket box at Nevis was very helpful started calling around the other resorts to see if they were open, Glencoe was.  She gave us directions and a little book with a map incase we some how managed to deviate from the main road. 

Off we set.  At 12.30 we arrived at Glencoe got our boots on etc and went and bought our £20 ticket.  The woman who served us should really sue the college she went to for that "customer relations" course, but never mind.

We headed up and what a great afternoon we had.  The resort was deserted, lucky if there was 25 people there but what'd you expect being a work day.  The upper mountain was where all the action was, but it was possible to board down to the Cliffhanger chairlift and the Wall T-Bar.

The afternoon went quite quickly and the rest of the staff we spoke to were very helpful, and very cheery. 

I was at Glencoe before way back and didn't enjoy it much but yesterday changed it all. Hopefully if there is enough snow next week, might try and plan another trip :)

Thanks to Staff at Nevis and Glencoe for a great afternoon, was worth the 300 mile trip . More pictures will be posted up on my Flickr page

Links:

• Visit Scotland - All Resorts
• Nevis Range
• Glencoe

It's time for another funky house podcast.  This one has to be my best yet.  Very happy with this mix. 

On the last podcast I was running a competition whereby 2 lucky listeners could win hosting and/or Flickr pro accounts. 

Well out of all the entrys the winner of the hosting package goes to Jemma Badstone from Manchester, UK. Congratulations Jemma, details of the hosting should be in your mail box.  When you get your site up and running please make sure you send me the link.  The 2nd winner who wins a  Flickr Pro account goes to Ryan Smeaton of Nottingham, UK. Congratulations to the 2 winners.

Number 8 will be coming with a competition so get subscribing.

Podcast Number 7 - Good Times.

4 hours work over 3 days = 2 skins.  I am fairly confident that the 2 skins, Leia English and CopyBlogger are both ready to be pushed out into the real world.  I am hoping to get another 4, yes 4 skins out over the next 2 weeks that will hopefully result in atleast one of them being shipped as default with subtext. They are both "version 1" which means they are pretty basic. Leia comes with only 1 stylesheet, no javascript files, CopyBlogger I think has 4 style sheets, no javascript.  Andy Kemp is "hacking" the Leia template already of which I am sure he'll be writing more about.

While I have submitted Leia to the appropriate site it would seem the "moderation" process takes a while so for now you can download them below:

• Leia English
• CopyBlogger

If you're using them please try keep the footer/design statements intact as the guys who designed the themes worked hard and deserve the credit. If you start using any of the above themes please fire me a comment as it would be good to know and see these being used in the real world ;)

Any questions, problems please contact me or post a comment. Any skins you have seen that you think deserve being adapted to subtext again get in touch.

We all take our computer, laptop for granted.   We turn them on, we do what ever it is we want to do and then turn it off.  What would happen if it didn't turn back on?  What would happen if the hard drive decided to call it a day or a nasty virus wipes everything? Realisation sets in you remember that you have photo's/iTunes albums on there that you don't have another copy of. It's all happened to us at some point, just depends on the extent of the damage. 

Unfortunately I learned the hard way many years ago, from then on I made sure that everything was backed up to DVD-r and my photo's were backed up to DVD-r and my vault/flickr.  This is where part of this post came from.

Last week I wrote a quick post about the problems I had with BT Vault.  From then I started looking about for alternatives as I need more online space than my "free" 5gb and a quick search revealed that £4.99 extra a month for 50gb is just a rip off.

For anyone not sure of what BT Vault is (info from bt) :

It's important to make sure you keep a copy of any new files on your computer, safe in your vault. That way, if anything happens to your files, you can recover them easily. Also its easy to share your photos, files and more securely online with your friends and family too.

Quick checklist to get you start thinking about what you might miss in the event of a disaster.

• Website files/database
• Pictures
• Videos
• Mp3's
• Documents
• Emails
• Contact list
• Personal projects
• Applications bought via download

I am going to look at a variety of providers compare prices, features and limitations. Some of the providers offer a free account that enables users to store up to ?gb which I will also cover.  If you're looking for a personal backup solution that's not going to cost the earth or even a free provider then keep reading.

alternatives to BT Vault - Mozy backup

iDrive 

Free Space Offered : 2gb free space

Free Space Restrictions :

Encryption : 128bit ssl on transfer, 256-bit AES encryption on storage.

Desktop Sync software : Yes.

Other Options:

• Personal unlimited * $49.50yr, $4.95mn *see conditions.
• Business 50gb $99.50yr,$9.95mn.
• Business 100gb $199.50yr, $19.95mn.
• Business 500gb $499.50, $49.95mn.

Mozy

Free Space Offered : 2gb free space

Free Space Restrictions :

Encryption : 128bit ssl on transfer, 448-bit blowfish.

Desktop Sync software : Yes

Other Options:

• Personal unlimited * $4.95mn  *see conditions.
• Desktop Licenses: $3.95 + $0.50/GB per month.
• Server Licenses: $6.95 + $1.75/GB per month.

Carbonite

Free Space Offered : None Only 15 day free trial

Free Space Restrictions : N/A

Encryption : Files encrypted twice before leaving PC

Desktop Sync software : Yes

Other Options:

• $49.95 a year.

Others that I found

• PerfectBackup.co.uk - 1gb free with file compression

Even if you just sign up for the free 2gb on the above sites that's 6gb of free online space. I am going to start playing about with the free space on offer so that I can grasp the software that's used, speed and quality of service. Watch this space for a review of the above services. Quick list of the goodies:

• iDrive free 2gb.
• Mozy  free 2gb.

Yesterday I posted an article about contributing to subtext by creating some more skins.

Well this morning I slapped together the 1st one (about 90 mins work).  It's in an early development stage but I think it looks good.  There is only 1 css file (9kb) which means it's a very basic skin. No comment preview, lightbox, xfn, printer friendly or code formatting, however I am sure I will expand on this in the future. There are some little areas that need attention which I will iron out over the week.

One are is that the 2 columns on the original has just been made into one for now while I think of a nice way to do it.  Also the search facility hasn't been touched as I need to go through the CSS thoroughly and get the update panel and search results to display right.

For a live demo please see my friends site Andrew Kemp.  Any suggestions, feedback please contact me.  Once I am happy with the skin overall I will be submitting it for public use on the usual site - http://subtextskins.com/.  Be warned Andy is playing about with it so if it's broken it's him....

If you would like to change the header image then there are header packs over at the authors site http://www.kapikua.com/theme-leia-en/

A couple of days ago Simone Chiaretta posted an article in relation to the progress of the next release of subtext. I can't wait for the next release as it will come with quite a few new features. 

Anyway, until I get my local copy working I am going to contribute a little by creating and uploading 4 themes.  The first one will be my current theme. 

The second one will be a migration of Leia English 1.0 by Kapikua

The third one will be a migration of CopyBlogger by Chris Pearson

The fourth one will be a migration of fSpring  by Fredrik Fahlstad

If you have seen a nice theme and you think it should be migrated to subtext feel free to comment or contact me 

Previously I posted the following item :
Sharing the love - Make it easy for your users.

While the concept of this "widget" was fantastic it seemed that on certain browsers javascript errors were being thrown and that it interfered with lightbox.

Today a comment from a friend of mine Andy Kemp found an alternative that didn't cause conflicts or errors, www.addthis.com.  I have added the new widget below my posts and have yet to customise it, check it out :)

For subtext users it's really the same as before

Sign up, enter details, copy generated code, open <your skin directory>\controls\Sharethispost.asxc

Select everything in

<div class="share">

</div>

delete and past in the code from addthis. Easy.

For word press users checkout the plugin.

This link to customise.

Up until about 2 months ago my "free" BT Vault was running fine to the point that I started to do a little spring clean.  I was deleting zip files that were out dated or duplicated and noticing the amount of space I was using didn't go down. How odd.

I sent an email to support, the "bot" replied with please state username, windows version blah blah blah.  I replied and to this day still have had nothing back. I decided to empty my vault, which you would of thought "hey it'll reset". How I was wrong....  No Files in my vault:

I decided to call last week where the support representative wasn't helpful at all, "I need to escalate it but can't guarantee a call back". This morning I called again to see what was going on if anything? Shock horror nothing, nada, zip.  If you happen to have this problem do what I done, download all your files, phone up and cancel.  Give it a couple of minutes, sign back up and lo and behold a fresh clean vault. Yes I know it kind of defeats the purpose but not many things in life are "free" and it is good knowing your data is duplicated else where. If anyone knows of a good alternative that has better support please let me know. I do use skydrive but the upload file size limitation is a nightmare.

I was so tempted to sign up for the 50gb vault but after all this why would I want to pay for such a poor service? 

Conclusion: BT + Support + fire guard + chocolate + useful as a. 

Related Post: http://www.siphilp.co.uk/archive/2008/04/08/online-storagebackup-alternatives-to-bt-vault.aspx

My previous subscriptions still stand that can be found

• What podcasts do you listen to? - Posted June 2007
• iTunes subscription update - Posted November 2007

Latest Editions

• Jason Boom Podcast - Blogging podcast
• DJ Ted Eiel - Chicago House DJ
• Evil Rabbit UK - Funky House and Chunky Breaks

If you listen to a podcast that I haven't listed please feel free to comment so I can check it out, even if it's your own.