One thing that caught my interest in the Oxford definition, though, is an addendum, which clarified that when used with a modifier like a computer geek, computer geek would mean a knowledgeable and obsessive enthusiast. Surprisingly, The American Heritage gives the following slang terms as synonyms of enthusiast: freak, junkie, nut, groupie, bug, head and fiend, some of which are popular with geek, nerd, hippie or other similar groups.

In my own analysis, a geek, when used with a modifier could mean an odd, ridiculous, unfashionable or socially inept but knowledgeable and self-driven person. This definition has both positive and negative connotations, which can be confusing and may even be irreconcilable to the main stream or more conventional groups. Just like anything else on this planet, words as a component of language have their own origins and evolutions. This means that the original meanings of words can change with time because they also adopt to the circumstances in which they are used. They have to undergo their own evolution so that they do not become extinct.

In the past, nerds, freaks and hippies were frowned at and they were confined to their own groups. With the emergence of the computer industry in the 1990s, the geeks became known as they manned the computers, indicating an exemplary level of their prowess and passion. Computers were not user friendly then and not just anybody could operate them. Human beings, geeks included, have needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs includes the physiological needs and the motivational needs, the latter being the higher needs. I can see that the geeks, with their mastery of computers, have a need for recognition for the milestone they have done for technology. They also have to satisfy their need for esteem and self-actualization to erase the negative role their predecessors have been known for in the past. The present day geeks deserve this and there is nothing wrong with it as long as they don’t kill and rob other people, and respect their rights.

If we are to go by the definition of Oxford, anybody with an expertise can be a geek like a math geek, or an astronomy geek, or a religious geek, or a music geek, or a health geek, or a carpentry geek, and the list could go on. What is this fuss then about contradicting perceptions of geeks? Are they good or are they bad for society? Who knows, being a geek may even be just a fad.

The geek culture is a relatively young movement and it is too early to make a categorical stand at this point. It is said that experience is the best teacher. Maybe, just maybe, we all have a little bit of Geek trying to burst out….

Ah.  Not so quick.  Just went to download for Windows 7 x64.  Downloaded.  Ran the install.

“Internet Explorer 9 – Downloading required updates…”

“Internet Explorer needs an update before installing……go online and install the required update, then return to the Internet Explorer installation page and run setup again.”

Hmm.

I click the ‘Get Update’ button.  The usual, helpful (?) Microsoft page full of stuff I don’t want to know, with the Windows 7 update buried somewhere down the page.

I click the ‘Download the x64 package now’ link.

“We can’t find that page

Make sure the web address is correct, or try using a different link to get to the page you want.”

Thank you so much Microsoft.

Seamless, end to end, joined up thinking….

Back to FF.

Login as Admin, go System > Configuration

Top left you see ‘Current Configuration Scope’ – choose ‘Main Website’ assuming you have a default installation.

Then scroll down on the left till you see ‘Developer’ – hit that.

Then open the panel in the content area that says ‘Debug’ and set Template Path Hints to ‘yes’ (Block Names also if you want them)

Save and done.

Credit to Magento Community guy stevewar for the video here

That (unfortunately) stopped working today.  So I downloaded the 7 beta – this is reported to have much more ‘unobtrusive’ scanning of projects.

Still, my advice, is to install it after work, then let it run overnight….took hours to finish scanning upon first boot – froze up many times, and required Netbeans and javaw.exe to be killed off with Task Manager.

She’s also a bit of a memory-hogger – currently reporting 17% on my CPU’s (AMD Phenom II X6 1055T) and 777Mb Ram.  Maybe that’s just Symfony projects in Netbeans for you.

Makes Windows 7 look like Mother Theresa, and even Vista like a woman-of-not-so-much-ill-repute…

This was pretty straightforward in the end for my Windows 7 x64 machine.

First, download and install Cygwin.  Windows command prompt just won’t do it.

Then go to http://adoxa.110mb.com/index.html and download ANSICON (I used ANSICON 1.32).

Save and extract to C:\ drive, then open command prompt, go to \x64, and type the following:

C:\x64>ansicon.exe -i

Now when you open Cygwin and run tests with or without the –color option, you get your colour output.

Handy little (free again) tool called flux that adjusts the colour balance of your screen for day and night work automatically – sets up your location for you by typing in your country.  Very few options, but very few needed.

And if you need to perform colour-sensitive work you can turn it off for an hour, or disable it.

Our widescreen TV’s, credit cards, and field of vision are some of the manifestations of this ratio that we all know too well.  Come to think of it, I’d bet the last half bottle of Asahi I’m drinking now, that the smile of a beautiful woman on a glorious summer’s day, also conforms to this ratio.  My wife’s smile, of course.

We don’t need to work it out for ourselves, we get the math done for us with this cool golden ratio tool.

Well, this free little clipboard manager from xNeat allows you to copy multiple items, then paste from the list.

Dead handy if you need to copy database names/usernames/passwords and probably a zillion other day to day uses too.

**Note – if you’re using Windows 7 x64, I’ve had problems with xNeat – you could try Ditto Clipboard Manager instead – that’s working for me on my 7 x64 box.

See it at Tortoise Tools.

Alternatively, go to Tortoise documentation for free manuals.

1. Close Wamp
2. Open Skype
3. Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Connection
4. Uncheck ‘Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections’
5. Save and restart Skype
6. Start Wamp
7. Hey presto

That should fix any conflict between Wamp Server and Skype.

These new tools may well help to combat just a little bit of the carbon footprint we leave behind.  Features of CSS 3, including gradients and rounded corners could just save tons of bandwidth.  Consider a website that uses rounded corners for all of its content areas and images for all of its gradients.

What may seem small changes to a webpage could over time, have dramatic impact on the amount of power being used by Web servers globally.  I don’t know what the figures are the amount of electricity being used by Web servers globally, but I’ll bet the number of web servers is growing at an incredible rate daily as the number of websites all over the world explodes.  If we reduce the size of webpages just buy a few kilobytes this can have a huge effect

multiply those few kilobytes by thousands of users visiting webpages over a year and multiply that by the number of websites in the UK alone.  If you then expand those figures globally and take into consideration, not just the web servers, but the data centres and telecommunication backbones, which feed the information to our PCs and laptops, which in turn, consume more power to view online information.  Heck, even my router is probably chewing up more power just downloading simple webpages.  Feel the hot air blowing out of the back of your PC, or from the top of your flat screen monitor.  Now imagine the heat from rack upon rack of servers in a data warehouse…

I’ve read recently about a data centre that is looking to utilise some new web server technology.  Although previously the emphasis has been on having a lot of redundancy to cope with peaks and profs in demand for webpages, now the focus seems to be shifting to try to optimise power usage a little.   I was speaking to a chap recently who told me of a deployment his company had carried out for a medium sized UK business.  They reduced the number of servers the company had from 20/30….to 2.

Yep, sounds extroadinary, but following the move from Mainframe, to Client-Server based models in the past, we now have another shift – the cloud.  Optimisation and virtualisation seem to be some key concepts here, and can obviously lead to massive savings both in carbon*, and in redundant hardware.

*disclaimer: I live in Bournemouth, therefore I have a pretty good reason for wanting to keep CO2 levels down – along with sea levels….

Location has played an important part in search engine optimisation and services that businesses offer to local areas for some time now.

Location is also becoming more important for people searching with mobile phones, pda’s and laptops.  Both twitter and Facebook already have features related to location or are expected to have them at a point close in the future.

Location, location, location.  That seems to be the way things will be going in 2010 with around 30% of searches from mobile devices being related to location in some way.

To help small businesses get their first step on the internet ladder, 123 Web Design Bournemouth are offering to set up, completely free a blog-based website for their clients.  With only a small annual fee for the client to pay for web hosting, the offer provides an easy, inexpensive way for local businesses to get themselves online.

Darren, owner of 123 Web Design Bournemouth said “Small businesses are often squeezed out of the market for website design and development in the Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch areas.  We are aiming to help smaller businesses in the area with their website needs and we hope the service proves useful in and around the Dorset and Hampshire areas.”

To find out more about the offer, visit our free bournemouth website page.  A more detailed explanation of the offer is available on the website, or you can call on 07734 069480 for more information.

Pure and Simple Web Design (http://www.123webdesignbournemouth.co.uk) has now moved over to the new server and business name 123 Web Design Bournemouth at http://www.123webdesignbournemouth.co.uk.

Work on the blog customisation is cracking away to tie in with the new branding as we speak

Candidate required for a full time sales person ote 30k + good basic salary.

Contact 01202 757747 for details.

Now, while he didn’t know what “SEO” meant or how it could help his business in Bournemouth when we first started talking, it only took a moment for him to learn that search engine optimisation is the process of getting a website noticed in the search engines.  There has been a big turnaround in the last few years – this chap actually asked me about his website – nowadays I’m not so shocked, but a few years back in this part of the world, you couldn’t have given free websites away with a case of beer to most skilled tradesmen & women!  They just would not have been interested.  Now, most people in the area have an idea at least of what a website is, what a search engine is, and have at least heard of search engine optimisation and/or online marketing.

And of course, anyone out there with the time, and the inclination, can now find a wealth of resources out there to help distil the years of seo-juice into concentrated seo-fuel!  Google Webmaster tools are provided by the guys over at the big G to try to clarify what to do, and what not to do when optimising your website.  Some good pointers here, and a great place to start if you’ve done a little web design and online marketing.

Also the guys over at SEOmoz have been pumping out some sweet SEO resources for a long time now.   This blog is updated regularly with articles and resources covering a wide range of search engine optimization topics.  They also run the odd seminar too if you like to get your geeky-butt out once in a while to meet ‘real people’!

Another place it seems daft not to check out from time to time is Matt Cutts’ seo blog – this is for many people the human face of google – while other employees at google do publish (for example see Greg Grothaus video or presentation on the implications for duplicate content related to seo) the guy that people are most familiar with is Monsiuer Cutts.  He’s been running outreach from Google for donkeys years now, and there is a ton of information over there on his blog.  While he won’t tell you how to a top search engine position in Google tomorrow, he will tell you the ‘stoopid-stuff’ to avoid, the best practices that Google and other search engines like to see, and how to avoid getting kicked out of Google for bad seo.

And all at a highly competitive costing, giving new local businesses the power to have a professional website and business brand – all under one roof.

• Stage Payment Plan
• Graphic Design
• Logo Creation
• Web Design (including Flash, xhtml, css)
• Website Validation
• Company Web Address
• Web Hosting
• Copywriting
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
• Letterhead design & Headed paper template
• Business Cards – graphic design double sided full colour

The guys over at Design Reviver have put together an informative little piece on the most common types of xhtml error.  A good starting place to peruse the most common offences, before going deeper into the rabbit hole!  This all ties in with the general principles of (World Wide Web Consortium) W3C compliant web design, discussed on the main website briefly.

This brand new page to our website  contains all sorts of information about website startup offers in Bournemouth,  just follow the link to see the info.

Adios, D

How to find a Bournemouth web design company?  There are the traditional options of  finding businesses: the Yellow Pages, Thomson Directory, calling the operator (now 118 118 etc) and asking for a web design company in Bournemouth.  You can also try asking around, friends or colleagues you know might have come across a company who have produced a web design in the Bournemouth area for them.  And recommendations always have been and always will be a great way to make new connections.  Of course, we’re looking for a web design company here, so you might even be able to find one by searching Google.  It’s a long shot, but it might just work.

We’ll be following up with a quick run through on the sort of qualities you might want to look for when choosing a web design company.

This little addition to the Pure and Simple Web Design Bournemouth site is all about our Bournemouth Online Marketing services, and soon to be joined by a few more lil’ brothers and sisters….

We’re tying in here with the general information being built up on the website to try to give clear and simple explanations of things like our Bournemouth SEO services and Pay Per Click campaigns in simple English.

Speak soon, D

I’ve become more attuned to the language used on web-pages by web designers themselves -  the spelling, punctuation and grammar, tone and structure of the wording, and also the vocabulary and terminology which is sometimes specific to a given field of expertise or business.

Spelling, punctuation and grammar, you would think are all perfect these days due to the advent of spell-checkers.  If anything, I think it’s getting worse – spend a few minutes taking a cursory glance at any newspaper, be it a broadsheet or a tabloid, and you’re sure to find mistakes-a-plenty.  You wouldn’t have to look too far through this blog to find the odd error…

An explosion of texting culture combined with the falling importance of the Queen’s English, rising importance and celebration of urban culture and regional dialects, all club together with the ability of anyone near a computer to publish live online and give us the situation we’re in now.  That situation is a society which publishes more than at any other time in history.  Never have so many words been written and published by so many.  The power of huge publishers has started to give way to the billions of words written online by the general public.

And surely the important thing isn’t the perfection of spelling for spelling’s sake, but the ability to use the letters and words of the language to convey meaning, emotion and communicate with others.

The above information and more concerning our Bournemouth website design services can be found at the Pure and Simple Web Design homepage.  Part 2 of this post here.

Very little done to the graphic design of the website over the last week or so – we’ve got to the point now where we’re reasonably happy with the graphic theme, so it’s just been tightening up here and there, and losing what isn’t needed to prepare for the fresh content to be uploaded soon.

The blog itself has had a little customisation done now to the header image, individual page formats, tags and categories shown etc.  We need a bit more tweaking here yet, but it’s coming on nicely so far, and is starting to mirror the bournemouth web design well, while still maintaining a different, ‘bloggy’ feel.

The tweaks to the website and the blog should be ready by the end of this week for us to upload some more fresh content for the website and start online marketing in earnest!