Day One 2 is out. I think it's a well rounded app although my first experience wasn't completely smooth. Still worth buying.

After a quick think, being happy with Day One Classic, I bought it assuming that the previous version won't be maintained for much longer even though I'm a very light user.

Everything imported well and quickly. The previous version synced to iCloud but now you must create an account and sync through that. This isn't explained in the interface so I was tapping on the sync preference wondering why no options popped up. Until you sign in it is unable to sync.

The app asks for your location permissions even when not using the app. This is a pet peeve of mine because I'm aware of the additional power consumption this brings. In addition I don't like being followed. When declined any feature that depends on location is still enabled but just won't do anything when tapped. Going into the system settings reveals a third preferred option of only using location when using the app. I prefer being in control of things like this.

Day One doesn't explain what is new in the app although it is instantly apparent that you can have multiple journals. Not sure why I would want this though, because I'm mostly using it to record how long ago it's been since certain events happened (light user).

Conclusion

It's clear this is a premium iOS app and all of the above niggles can be easily addressed. I have removed the classic version as a sign of confidence.

#ios

The UK government had setup the Independent Commision on Freedom of Information with an eye to review the Freedom Of Information Act:

Last year, the government set up a commission to review the law, composed mostly of people who had expressed scepticism or concern about the scope of the FOIA, and with a clear brief to add restrictions to its workings.

Not my definition of independent.

#aside #technology

Jack Arnott writes for Eurogamer in the Football Manager 2016 review:

Anything beyond that, though, and, once again, I'm stumped. It won't tell you whether you've lost because you were closing down too much, or too little. Or because your defensive line was too high, or too low. Would Prozone analysis have helped me tame those pesky Shrews? Not without a hireable in-game performance analyst. This is no panacea for those, like me, who crave some FM feedback.

[...]

Despite a couple of neat additions, Football Manager 2016 is an iterative release that's sadly short on big new ideas.

None of this directly applies to this review or the quality of the game but is a bit more generalist rambling on my part -- I feel SI is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
It's difficult to make a game that is seen as holding realism above all other values and then see it being criticsed for lack of feedback.

The hypothetical version that sorts this out would be surely used by all real world managers as this gives them the winning formula for winning their own leagues! The marketing of FM being used by real world managers only strangthens this conflicted ideal in my mind.

With all features already in the game the developer might be making enourmous investments now to advance the simulation just that little bit, unable to make great leaps as there is no great leap to make.

I used to think that making Football Manager light was the solution to create a more playable game but as people expect "all of the realism with less options" I don't think that is ever going to work either.

As long as it keeps selling though they would be silly to overhaul it, as it would alienate the existing fanbase.

I'm hoping there will sometime be an approximation of the FM lineage but with fun and passion as the core values under a different name, perhaps with fantasy clubs and players, silly things happening, no numbers and passion for the athmosphere of football.

#games

If your website has mod_rewrite enabled but the URL's generated by SilverStripe still contain 'index.php' then SilverStripe is unable to detect mod_rewrite. Adding the following line to /mysite/_config.php will address the issue (Thanks DsX):

Director::setBaseURL('/'); // fixed index.php in the URL's

#aside #silverstripe

I was suffering from lack of concentration later in the workday, until I stumbled upon the Pomodoro focusing technique. I've been a lot more productive and in a better mood since I started using this two weeks ago:

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are known as "pomodori", the plural of the Italian word pomodoro for "tomato".

The method is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility.

I created an AutoHotkey script that uses timers and a global hot-key I set for WinAmp to automatically stop and start the music after instructing me to work / have a break. It works really well for me.

#link #projects

From 2007, but a great video full of advice, and a fantastic example of pechakucha 20x20 presentation style.

#life #link

Steve Gibson pointed me to a guide to setting your desired privacy level in Windows 10. This version of Microsoft's operating system follows the 'always socially connected' footsteps of smartphones and therefore makes privacy assumptions. Using this guide you can check if they match your expectations.

#link #windows

This morning I integrated our PowerShell processes into FogBugz by writing a small module that submits occurrences of all errors to BugzScout. You might want to do something similar so I did this write-up.

Broadly it works similar to BugzScoutLogWriter that I developed previously for integration with SilverStripe CMS. In this case however, we need to do the following things:

1. Set the script to stop on all errors so they can be trapped instead of ending the execution of the script.
2. Capture the error details and submit them to FogBugz
3. Have an error occur. ;)

I've published the code in a Gist for you a have a look. I include the function in every script I use.

#powershell

Hide Trackbacks is a WordPress plugin that hides pingbacks and trackbacks from your website comments.

I've updated the plugin to indicate it works correctly with WordPress 4.2.

#hidetrackbacks #link #wordpress

In your datamodel you might have a Enum field such as this date-based dropdown:

public static $db = array(
    "Year"        => "Enum('2013, 2014, 2015')"
}

Internally, SilverStripe stores the index, so that when you retrieve the value in methods such as onBeforeWrite, instead of 2013 you will receive 1. Use the function below to retrieve the label of the Enum:

public function EnumLabel($field_name) {
    $enumValues = $this->dbObject($field_name)->enumValues();
    $label    = $enumValues[$this->$field_name];
    return $label;
}

// $year = $this->EnumLabel('Year');

#aside #silverstripe

When adding a filter on a DataList sometimes you need to do a <= rather than a <. Unfortunately the LessThanOrEqual and GreatherThanOrEqual search filters do not exist in SilverStripe 3.0.x, they were added in 3.1.

Therefore we have to write our own where clause like the following example:

// Return all the sessions on or before the $date
$sessions = new DataList('AcademicSession');
$sessions = $sessions->where('"SessionStartDate" <= \'' . $date . '\'');

#aside #silverstripe

Apple blogger John Gruber started off a new debate about these issues recently, when he noted that a 537-word text post on the website iMore.com weighed in at 14 megabytes. (Fourteen megabytes of text should correspond to about 7m words, or about 10 times the combined length of the Old and New Testaments.)

Gruber blamed iMore.com, but really it’s not the website’s fault, since to a very large degree the owner of the website you’re visiting doesn’t actually control what you see, when you see it, how you see it, or even whether you see it. Instead, there are dozens of links in the advertising-technology chain, and every single one of them is optimising for financial value, rather than low-bandwidth user experience. Many pages, if you’re on a slow connection, simply time out; they never load at all.

When you are a website owner, you are responsible for all the content on your site. If you don't have any control over the ads, then that's a process issue that should be addressed.

Why not band together with a few large sites and create a standardised ad submission and review system that advertisers can integrate into their content tools and websites can set criteria about ads on their sites.

Maybe the bigger problem is that those websites cannot afford to reject ads.

#link #web

I've released another SilverStripe add-on called BugzScoutLogWriter that I have been using for several months on some of the sites at work.It supports SS 3.0 and 3.1.

BugzScoutLogWriter is a LogWriter that integrates logs with FogBugz, an integrated web-based project management system featuring bug/issue tracking made by FogCreek.

A LogWriter is attached to errors, warnings and notices that occur in a website due to programming errors or runtime errors and then sends / saves a log of this event. SilverStripe comes with built-in functionality to e-mail or save the logs to a file, however if you use a third party bug reporting system then it's nice to have all the issues collected there instead.

I've used FogBugz for years now and one of the nice features is that multiple occurrences of the same issue get collected in the same ticket. This keeps the whole process manageable. Say, in the event that a mistake that affects all pages on a website, FogBugz collects the first 50 occurrences of that error and lets you close the ticket with one click. This is an improvement to a flood of email.

Anyways let me know if you find it useful and feel free to raise issues.

#link #silverstripe

At some point on your journey through the jungle that is SilverStripe, you will want to create permissions and assign users to them. You might have created a Page Category model admin to categorise your pages, and setup the relations between pages and their category. By default when you create a category as an admin they will not be visible to any content authors and any content authors that can access the model admin can't create any new items.

The solution to this dilemma is to create a new permission (for example PROJECT_CategoryAdmin) and then let people with that permission mange the category items. This is how to go about it:

Create the permission

You will need to tell SilverStripe you are implementing permission by changing the class declaration as follows (changes in bold):

class Category extends DataObject implements PermissionProvider

To create the new permission you will have to write a providePermissions() method for the Category class:

      public function providePermissions() {
        return array(
            "PROJECT_CategoryAdmin" => array(
                'name' => 'Administer categories',
                'category' => 'PROJECT',
                'help' => 'Manage categories.'
            )
        );
    }

Finally, implement the permission by declaring the canCreate, canDelete, canEdit and canView methods to your liking:

    public function canCreate($member = null) {
        return Permission::check('PROJECT_CategoryAdmin');
    }

    public function canDelete($member = null) {
        return Permission::check('PROJECT_CategoryAdmin');
    }

    public function canEdit($member = null) {
        return Permission::check('PROJECT_CategoryAdmin');
    }

    public function canView($member = null) {
        return Permission::check('PROJECT_CategoryAdmin') ;
    }

Don't forget to create a Role and/or assign the permission to the right Group(s), to make sure the right users can manage your categories.

#aside #silverstripe

Schneier explained how, initially, NSA Director General Keith Alexander claimed in 2013 that he had disrupted 54 terrorists plots. A few months later, this was revised down to 13, and then to "one or two." Eventually, the only success that the NSA could point to was the prevention of a San Diego man sending $8,500 to support a Somali militant group.

Doesn't sound like a worthy trade-off.

#link #technology

Download VisualSvn Server, open a command prompt and type svn resolved -R . to resolve all conflicts, then commit again.

#aside #subversion

Manton Reece has been having very interesting discussions about microblogging and content ownership recently. He's working on an unannounced project in this area and I've been following his progress.

A few days ago he wrote a post about Microblogging with Wordpress in which he describes most of the process of writing your status updates on your own blog first. As I had to adapt his process for it to work with my configuration of WordPress and as I am using Twitter instead of App.net I thought it would be useful to detail how I went about, based on Manton's write-up.

Requirements

• A theme that supports post-formats.
• an IFTTT and Twitter account.
• A self-hosted WordPress installation, hosted using Apache.
• (optionally) the DoNote app from IFTTT for your mobile device.

Step 1: Link a status updates feed to Twitter

In order to post only the status updates to twitter, we have to identify them in both WordPress and for IFTTT.

Create a dedicated category

In Wordpress, if you do not have a category for status updates, create a Snippets category (with the slug snippets). Note the category ID. In addition, create a new category called ifttt-status if you plan to post to Wordpresss from your mobile device later, as I did (this is a workaround to allow WordPress to convert from this category to the status post format).

Setup the RSS feed endpoints

With the category ID, we can now create a new feed by editing the .htaccess file in your WordPress installation directory, see my gist comment on manton's configuration. I had redirection issues with Manton's original setup so I amended it. What we do here is create two endpoints, one for posts without status updates (rss.xml); and one for only status updates (snippets.xml). We then point any requests to /feed (the default WordPress endpoint) to the first endpoint.

Update (26 June): I updated the gist comment after identifying issues in initial configuration. Please reread the gist if you had problems using the initial configuration.

Post new status updates to Twitter

Now create a new recipe that is triggered from the snippets RSS feed, with the action to post a tweet with the tweet text EntryContent.

You can now blog from WordPress to twitter (just leave the title empty).

Step 2: Post status updates from your mobile device

I'm using DoNote to post to IFTTT which then posts to WordPress.

Setup WordPress

Login to your WordPress blog and in the users section create a ifttt user with the role of Author (this allows the user to create posts).

Install the "IFTTT Post Formats & Post Types" plugin, it will convert posts with the ifttt-status category to the status post-format. It will also hide the ifttt-status category from showing up in your template for example.

Link DoNote to WordPress using IFTTT

Back in IFTTT, In the My Recipe's DoNote section, create a new recipe for WordPress (you might get asked to provide the WordPress username and password you created for this purpose) with the action to create a post with the following values:

• Title: (leave empty)
• Body: NoteText
• Categories: Snippets,ifttt-status
• Tags: (leave empty)
• Post status: Publish immediately

You are not limited to using DoNote if there is a trigger for your service, and you are not limited to usin IFTTT at all if there are WordPress plugins for your status update service and WordPress support for your writing app, but these will require similar configuration as detailed in this post.

Hope this helps!

#link #web

Wesley Yin-Pool, writing for Eurogamer:

You will become a digital god, Molyneux proclaims in the video, of 22Cans' next game, Godus. And, you will receive a cut of the money made by Godus from the start of your reign to its end.

18 months later, as Bryan Henderson approaches his 21st birthday, he has yet to become God of Gods, he has yet to receive the "riches" Molyneux promised him, and it's looking increasingly likely he never will.

The core issue with promising such a fantastic reward is that it depends on a future that hasn't materialised:

"But we can't have the God of Gods role without the ability for people to challenge the God of Gods role, and the God of Gods role can't be challenged without combat, and we can't implement the combat without sorting out the server issues, which are being sorted out as of last week. It's just a maelstrom."

It looks to me that the whole team is continually rushed into firefighting the next feature development, with never enough revenue coming in to take a breather and plan things out properly.

He confirms the Godus development team has shrunk considerably to just a few people as resources are diverted to a new game, called The Trail.

Trust me, by the time the server issues are sorted; the combat is implemented; the multiplayer is developed and the God of God feature is finished there will be no players left to make any money from. 22Cans would do better to offer some kind of goodwill gesture to restore the morale of its staff and its fans before this PR opportunity turned completely toxic.

#games #link

I've switched this site to HTTPS, a secure connection, using a ssl proxy service provided for free by Cloudflare, for reasons. Let me know if you come across any issues.

For those using WordPress, changing the settings Site Address and WordPress Address to HTTPS may make your site unavailable. FYI, the solution I settled on is to install the WordPress HTTPS plugin. Then I set the Site Address to HTTPS. Finally, I cleared the cache. All is working fine now.

Update (06/02/15):
I've moved away from Cloudflare as my DNS provider and as a side-effect this means I'm no longer HTTPS for now. Sorry.

#aside #web

So tempted to start a bbc news truth correction account, but don’t think it’s good for my health. Wish there was more choice than it and sky

#status #status