Liam Friel | Glasgow Web Design | Web Development & SEO

I am usually one for raging and speaking very loudly that the modern world and it’s properties are stupid, dumb, silly, pointless and incredibly annoying. One thing I have noticed is what we really hear from are ignorant or uneducated people on the news or on some form of reality TV show.

We have a tendency to hate all that is different from us, in my opinion that has always been the way. There are very few with the clairvoyance to see the story on both sides, and even fewer with the ability to leave those different from us well and truly alone.

This post is not about religion, it is about thoughts and views that others consider “stupid”. There are smart people in the world, not all of them are open minded or have intelligent philosophies, being intelligent makes people ignorant to other peoples views because “they are not smart”.

This is also not a defence of the uneducated. The lack of will to better yourself and the ability to tolerate awful ideas like reality tv, and being loud may get you noticed, but the culture you have immersed yourself in has created a lot of pitfalls and a lot of people will be sniggering behind your back(friend and foe alike).

What is the cause of all this? I concur it is a thing the internet call unwarranted self importance. Modern media and the internet has allowed everyone to think that their opinion is the most important, and that they do not need to be right, simply loud. This means that the most attention goes to whoever is creating the most drama; in turn the soft minded youth of today will follow whatever they are exposed to.

I feel that Jordan, Tila Tequila and Kim Kardashian are a prime example of society gone wrong. These people are famous for no other reason that they entertain by being stupid and creating drama. These are the things that I personally hate. I have tried to see what the attraction is but I cannot fathom. What angers me about these types of people is that quality film/media & music is being back seated to fit in more of this gumph! Shows with original concepts and scripts are being thrown out because they “cannot be adated to reality format”.

It’s so selfishly pointless now, they have invented a new genre – pseudo-reality, which is the most offensive thing I have ever heard of. A show called The Hills is absolutely huge and most it’s drama is people looking awkwardly at each other, this is not entertainment – its just lazy money making off the back of some fame hungry people too weak minded to see another option in life. This endless cycle will create many more fame-junkies and attention seekers.

This is merely my view, and like I said humanity hates. I realise that even though this exists, a few hidden gems of quality TV slip through the reality net. You can completely shut out the things that you hate, allowing more space for the things we love.

Unwarranted self importance is not only accountable for this, but it is also guilty for smart ignorant people too. As I stated previously, intelligence can cause people to see their view as the most important, but they quietly bitch on about how religious people are stupid and the world is all gone to hell. It also creates the illusion they are above “grunt work” since they spent 3 years at university (3 years getting drunk).

There is a surge in the last 20 years in the number of people going to university, universities have made their classes more vague to apply to the widest possible audiences. This creates a gap in what they learn and what is required in industry. Going to university is not as prestigious as it once was and graduating is much simpler than finding a relevant job; studies show that 8 out of 10 people’s jobs are unrelated to their degree.

I wish people in the world will stop feeling the need to be louder than that “idiot”, to be right, and the need to prove it. The simplest most enjoyable thing in your life is not to exclude people, or even belong to an inclusive club, but to experience as much as possible and make your own decisions, if you hate something then keep it to yourself.

Im all about improving myself – but the effort and determination within me has just sucked recently. I read about all these location independent people who have learned to write interesting (and formatted) blog posts about how great their lives are.

It seems they spend roughly an hour on the writing. Here at liam friel you get 10 minutes of my time why? Because I am not determined or focused – I tend to swim and schwey nonsense and people probably get bored reading.

I would like some tips or ideas on how to get motivated.

On an up note my fridge is stocked with mountain dew – like OVERFLOWING, im sure it kills your productivity but…. its mountain freakin dew.

Working on a phpMyDirectory package is just plain annoying – even more so than osCommerce…. why? DOCUMENTATION & SUPPORT!

For osCommerce pretty much anything was available and you could easily read up on how to change it or what files contained what functionality of what box.

I have spent the last day working on one file – I need to start cutting through much more code, more efficiently. Come on you twats!

I was just tweeting when I had a brilliant idea for a short story involving parallel universes and the internet!, I will relish on it some more before I decide to go ahead with it.

Over the weekend – my 4 days off really let me know how lazy I am – I played warcraft watched a LOT of Star Trek ToS(that show just ROCKS). I left the flat about twice in total(the weather was shit, but twice is borderline hermit!)

I sorted out the server on my MacBook, I am getting a 403 error when I try to access my sites folder which is in a seperate folder from apache! anyone for any advice?

As you may see the development category doesnt get updated much – its quite hard to talk about development when there are a hundred million blogs talking about PHP, MySQL and JavasScript a lot better than me.   I have spent a good little while coding and collaborating on Google Wave (for  helping remote developers with code it’s super handy).

In the small town of glasgow the developer scene is pretty small, we have tweetups and barcamps(I really should go to one) but we really get the short end of the stick.

I have cheet cheats and reference cards on my iphone now – whoo hoo pretty awesome stuff.

Anyway in terms of development I have decided to share with you a group of my most common used functions:

Read more…

I have been very pissed at facebook recently – not about the begotten privacy settings(my motto is if you don’t want to make it public don’t post it on the Internet, you also can control who sees what still.),  I agree with “the cost of free“.

Anyway many of the people on my facebook whine and moan about relationships and it annoys me – or they complain about very personal things that frankly I don’t know them well enough to care about.  You can remove these people from your feed like this:

Scroll to the bottom of your feed (this  can be quite tricky, as if you scroll far enough it auto reloads more feed info!), Click edit options

You are prompted with a pop up – click the hide box, start typing the friend name – then click the friend and they are added to the hide list, simple!

Note: This wont stop them from seeing or commenting what you post!

As I said not too long ago it was time to step up in the world and get a contract phone and that my first glorious phone would be the new Iphone.  I now possess it but it was a long and dangerous journey.

As soon as it was released I went onto the apple site and reserved the 32Gb Black, then I realised my email me [at] liamfriel.com was not working so I did not receive any conformation nor was there conformation on the site :O sacré bleu!

I went into the shop and double checked my reservation and it was there phew! massive headache avoided.

Cut to the day of release I decide to go in about 10-ish – not too early, on the way I walk past various fones4u and carphone warehouses empty and dull looking putting up the poster hoping to hook some poor sod into getting a phone they cant offer them for a month!

The cue at the apple store was mighty, but there was a reserve cue and a non reserve cue, both of them were okish when I got there, but within the hour they had tripled in length.  They were handing out water and apple umbrellas(which they took back, curse you apple).  I wait for about 2 in a cue to join a cue! then about another hour to get the actual phone.

I cudnt use it as a phone for a whole 24 hours, though my situation was complicated – pay as you go user switching to contract with the same number – it was all good though.  Got tons of apps including streets of rage.

GOODNESS!

TL:DR here is a cute kitten and an iphone

Iphone 4 and kitten

I will be getting my first contract phone and THIS WILL BE IT!

Interesting points about the iPhone 4

The iPhone 4 will incorporate a real time cam-to-cam chat system (like skype) over the wifi.  I know a could of iPhone owners to maybe we will use this feature.  Another exciting revelation is the “Flash” on the Camera, this was one this I believe should always be in a camera and should have been in the first gen (what were you thinking Jobs?).

Another feature the iphone has is multitasking.  I think I will attempt to limit my use of multitasking.  It has its advantages such as being able to stay in an app while you use it as a phone but having 2 or 3 apps open at once is just……. distracting!

Anyway here is the God of Apple himself, sending his son to earth to app away our sins!

video brought to you by the telegraph.

I seem to be one of these people have too many interests and not enough time to fulfil any of them.  I tried reading some blog posts on better time management (doesn’t the internet just have EVERYTHING kids?).  What I found was that many of the people who have excellent time management are sandal loving minimalist hippies.

I understand the idea that minimalists portray, if you have less possessions your passions become more involved in your life.  You also have less distractions and you can manage your possessions more routinely if you only have 50 things opposed to 500.

Their advice was also sound; learning to say no.  I intend to become a brilliant web developer, not brilliant in terms of skill, I can get around pretty well with the knowledge I have, I mean brilliant in terms of what I produce, the final sites, the personal projects, helping those in online communities and being able to concept an idea from start to finish without reaching for a computer.

Although I read a post titled “Plan on Not Planning” what it said was that in modern consumer culture people want it immediately and sometimes it is better to develop off the bat and add to it; this makes you more aware logically of errors that occur (not completely) and how you should code for every contingency.

I wonder if it is possibly my fault – for being awful at taking advice.  I have a routine now where I hang out with my friends a lot and I feel weird when I am not – but when I am around them I can rarely focus on the task at hand or get time away to work on things.
I have recently started a new business venture that I hope will become successful but I have very little done and I have tons still to do – sure starting your own e-shop while workin should never be easy but I feel I am not making enough sacrifices to get where I want to be.  I have a plan, now I need a schedule to accomodate it.

I have been wondering lately about modern browsing habits.  A few years ago “open source” was the way forward in the web industry.  If you want something you simply had to modify something similar to what you wanted to achieve your goal.  This idea of open source had proven generous but not profitable; perfect for Mr Berners Lee’s vision of what the web is supposed to be.

As the limits rise, the software/hardware becomes more fragile and its complexity causes problems, take windows vista for example it had so many sub-programs and could do so much that any additional development and programs caused serious software issues.

Keeping the experience within its scope is vital to an applications success, adding to it unnecessarily will cause the user to deviate from THEIR goals and what THEY hope to achieve from using your application.

Examples of “trimming the fat” include apple, they have restricted most advanced OS operations to the terminal allowing the OS to stay stable for as long as possible.  The programs come in DMG files and be added and removed with a single mouse click.  This allows the user to achieve the goal of installing software easier and running command line actions much more satisfying.

The iphone currently does not have multitasking outside iTunes, and I personally think it should stay that way.  Having only one application open at a time allows the user to fully experience  the application without distraction.  You may notice that if you download games & movies you do not feel like watching or playing them as much as if you bought them.  This is because you have not imposed limits on how many games/movies you own and cannot fully experience them because you have too many options and too many variables.

Twitter is another example of how limits and how they can add to a user experience.  By limiting to 140 characters a person is “challenged” by twitter to summarize important information only.  This attracts many celebrities which attracts millions more users who are interested in summaries of celebrities lives.

In summary, modern computer users like limits because it gives them a guide of what they should and shouldnt do.  Their time is precious and they do not want to run around installing patches and messing with account settings on a website, they want to be able to open a program do their thing and move on.  By limiting the user they make them more productive and the user in turn achieves their goals much quicker and gains a sense of achievement and this is why limited software is much more successful than open source these days.