Nearly Midnight And Things To Sleep On

Yup it's more or less midnight right now and as I mentioned yesterday I am taking the pass plus driving course, only it's changed day, it's now this Sunday. So expect an update Sunday evening on what it entailed and how I got on.

After yesterday's post I decided to look into how I will work on my sites along with moving other things forward. As mentioned before I have a whole host of features to bring in. But the real problem there is making use of existing systems, most of which are way too complex for me and most either don't do what I want, or do too much.

You only need to look back at the July 3rd post to see how much of a nightmare it would be to use existing systems.

Here is that list again -

• phpList (Email Newsletter)
• Wordpress (Blogging System)
• Customer Area (Yet to be sorted)
• osTicket (Support Ticketing System)
• Web Hosting Ordering System (Made but needs linking)
• Paypal integration
• Invoicing system
• and more

Looking at the list again made me realise something really important! Nearly all of those make use of or are based on PHP, mostly with a database as a backend like MySQL for example.

Now with PHP and MySQL in mind think about the easy way of getting these to work in a nice and professional way.

Nope not stick it together and hope for the best. But build my own from the ground up.

There are multiple reasons why building my own would be better, for one if there is a problem I will know where it is and (more importantly) how to fix it.

But those are not the only reasons, there are others, like licensing, copyright, branding, etc. And by making my own I can set my own rules.

That also got me thinking about typo3 again. (I think I mentioned it before)
But just incase I havn't, it's a backend control system that allows certain people to edit certain parts. And currently it's too advanced for what is needed. But it sure as hell is an option for the future.

So that brought me back to earth with a bump, lack of coding knowledge means most of these systems won't be any good for me right now. But right now I need to update the sites and get thing's on the move.

With that lack of knowledge in mind I decided to go dig around in my junk room (as mentioned before it has all sorts of stuff)

The best find in the room is web coding books covering all kinds of topics, here is a few.

• PHP5
• MySQL in 21 Days
• Mastering Tomcat Development
• PHP Programming For Windows
• And more

Straight away that got me interested in getting the knowledge and last night I managed to read 55 pages of the MySQL book. Will keep you all posted on my progress.

So that's it for now. More updates soon!

(BTW - It's taken me just over 15 minutes to type this post)

More good news!

So yet again I can post about good news. Things are really looking up now.

Over the past few days since my last post I have chased up insurance and found the best price I can, details as follows.

Company - CIS (Co-operative Insurance)
Yearly Price - £897.43
Total Monthly Price - £957.25
Initial Deposit - £149.65
10 Monthly Payments Of - £80.76
Cover Type - Comprehensive Cover
- Breakdown Cover (UK & Europe)
- Motor Legal Expenses
- Carbon Offsetting
- £500 Electronic Equipment Cover
- £250 Personal Effects Cover
Excess - £100 Standard
- £50 Windscreen Replacement
- £150 Voluntary Excess

And that's for a Fiat Punto 55 SX made in 1996 and fitted with factory installed immobiliser and a 1.1l engine size.

Does that seem good? To me it definantly does, it's £200 cheaper than any other company on the market.

If your interested in a quote from CIS and you're in the UK, give them a call on 08457 46 46 46.

The only thing now is raising the cash to actually go for it. More updates as that happens.

Onto other news now and I have been to see a buisness adviser about my companies, my aim is to pull them all into one company and set them up fully legal and by the book. More updates on that in the next few days.

Now more news again and this comming Monday I am booked in to do Pass Plus, it's an advanced driving course that covers motorway driving amoung other things. More on that on Monday once I complete it.

So is that it? Nope, but right now all hell is breaking loose so gotta dash and get things back under control. More updates tomorrow....

More good news

I can't have more good news can I?

Well of course I can. I passed my driving test today and can now officially drive. Lets bring on the work.

As some of you already know I have taken other tests in the past and unfortunately failed, on one of my failed tests I actually logged the route using GPS, but unfortunately I didn't have the GPS set up correctly for the route I actually passed on. DAMM!!!

But anyway I can now officially drive which means more fun, more options... oh and more finances to think about.

I will be looking into insurance tomorrow and will post all the information about my driving stuff on my main personal site http://www.peter-baker.me.uk

More updates soon!!

IT'S ALIVE!!!

For a change I have a post about good news, amazing isn't it? Okay, it's not that amazing but it still is good. In fact as of earlier today my main PC got resurrected with a replacement PSU and a few tweeks with the BIOS.

Getting the PSU involved a good few hours digging in the spare room which is full of various electrical components (more on that room in a future post) but there was a problem. The PSU seems to have come from a mini ATX case and so the PSU is smaller than standard and it's cables are pretty short. So I went on the dig again and found another dead PSU which I stripped of its power cables and then patched up with an broken fan power hookup. (picture for that soon too)

The result? A fully working PSU which not only does the job but allows a little connector space for add-ons.

Now for the BIOS issue, as I said before it seemed fried as the system when tried with the faulty PSU seemed to stick on the initial post logo. But with the working PSU it still got stuck and after a quick clear CMOS jumper change all went well. The system booted right into the OS like there hadn't been an issue.

So fingers crossed tomorrow I will be able to attempt a few web site updates.

Congrats to me!

Ooops

Well that was a bit of a bad idea. I decided to bring some of my personal site upto date and begin adding links. Then I remembered, Dreamweaver isn't installed, and doing live updates over a web control panel is not only slow, its a royal pain in the butt!

Now here is the other issue, Dreamweaver is installed on a dead PC that really needs bringing to life, the serial number for the installation is also on that dead PC.

So back to the drawing board for now!

Let the fun begin!

Since yesterday I have been looking into ways of expanding the things I do online. Again as before I have a whole range of ideas and one of the newest ones is a kind of download site.

It won't be your usual try and buy rubbish as every single download on the site will be FREE.

So would that mean I will give XP away on the site? Not at all!

The download section of the main company website will be there specifically to promote free software. That includes mobile phone apps, image editing, music apps, etc.

But I can hear you all saying that there are too many sites like it around on the internet. But that is exactly the point. If you want to find high quality free software you tend to spend hours searching these free software sites, most of which fob you off with bull before you even get to what you want. Or even worse they get you to install their app first to download the app you want.

So that is where I will be stepping in. Bringing in a user recommended software list with direct downloads that has no bull, no ads and certainly no strings attached.

(got stuck thinking and not sure how to really move to the next subject)

Well anyway that is one other thing to add the already growing list. So the next thing to look into is linking all my personal stuff together.

As many of you know I am on facebook, bebo and a whole host of others I cant be too bothered in listing. But with all those sites I have one big issue. Which one do I update? Which one do I keep running? Why keep them?

To be honest the more social networking sites, dating sites, etc that I find myself on brings more and more time consuming things I don't really want or need. So as of this post I am going to track down and list every single site which I am a part of so that you guys and of course those guys can see all the different information I have around all the different sites.

Now the next issue, how the hell do I create a link setup for all of them where each one links back. OK well it's not really an issue, why? Simple, this post goes to two websites, the blog itself http://proproductions.blogspot.com and my personal web page http://www.peter-baker.me.uk

So all I really have to do is create the links on these two sites, a sidebar widget on blogspot and a full page on my personal site. Easy eh?

So with that easy part out of the way the next one is to work out which one to really link to first and the answer is? My personal site, for the simple reason that one day (maybe soon) this blog will move right over to my personal site with it's own blogging software.

Infact my entire aim is to have everything I do online condensed into two websites, personal and buisness. And currently I have too many personal places that are not known along with multiple buisness sites. So by condesing those into a smaller number of places and creating links, I can then in effect create a much larger online presense and of course make it easier for people to actually find things.

So those are the ideas and plans as of now and again these are being added to my previous list of things. But some of the ideas in this post would work out better if there were done sooner rather than later.

So make sure you check out http://www.peter-baker.me.uk to find the long list of sites I am on.