Ok, its that time of the year again. The gut is back and I need to get rid of it. Being opposed to exercise of all varieties, I need something to help me forget how much exercising hurts.

What I am after is an mp3 player. No, I don’t want an IPod, as I don’t want to spend too much as I am a colossal tight arse. I have seen several, (make that a gazillion) mp3 players from unknown to household brands. Where on earth do you begin?

I do like the Philips SA2326, its only 2GB. Taking into account my level of fitness a 32MB player would suffice. The other thing I like about it is that it comes with its own FM transmitter so I can have it in the car.

Any recommendations?

In an earlier post I talked about how great Eclipse was as an all purpose IDE. Then it decides to let me down in the most spectacular way possible.

I was working on a project for a client, deadline was 2pm. Managed to get the last bit done at 2.05pm. Excellent I thought, all I need to do is upload and we’re done. In Eclipse I had two files open. One of which needed uploading which took me several hours to code and test. I switched to my FTP client to upload, surprisingly, I couldn’t find the file in the file explorer part of the FTP client. Strange… So I switched back to Eclipse, the file had disappeared from the list of open files. Several panicky searches later and the worst possible thing had happened. The file had simply “disappeared”. WTF?!?! As you can imagine, I wasn’t best pleased. Many many many four letter words later I decided to re-code the page. By the time I was finished it was 5pm. OK, only a few hours late.

Searching forums I discovered that this had happened to other Eclipse users. This to me seems like a MAJOR issue which needs addressing.

It has finally happened, I have managed to shake myself free from Dreamweaver. No more 100% cpu’s and general all round sluggishness. To be blunt, it has become a hot steaming pile of shit.

Even with the newer version which I trialed, hoping it would have fixed said issues, the anger which normally ensues once I have clicked on the little DW icon was still there.

I needed an editor that supported as many languages as I often develop in. Languages such as PHP, CFML, XML/XSL, HTML, CSS and several others. Having trawled through a few free and commercial ones I decided to give one I had used before another go.

Eclipse is a open source IDE which supports most of the languages I use through its plug-in architecture. Most developers are already aware of Eclipse, it wasn’t until I was forced to look elsewhere that I realised how superior to Dreamweaver it had become.

Plugins I use so far:
CFEclipse
C#
PHPEclipse
Aptana (Js, Html, Css)
SFTP
SQL Explorer

If you want to just download a version of eclipse already bundled with plugins then give EasyEclipse a go.

If you have any suggestions of plugins for web developers then let me know.

One of my most used gadgets is my sat nav system. Initially, I purchased a PDA and installed TOMTOM software and had it sat in a GPS enabled holder. I was skeptical to begin with but soon realised what a sweet piece of kit a sat nav system was. No longer pulling over trying to remember road names or whether it was the first or second left. Opening up an A-Z to have your brain take that mental picture was beginning to be a thing of the past.

But are we relying too much on sat nav systems? The problem I found was waiting for it to catch up. When suddenly doing a U-turn, for example, to avoid traffic and waiting for it to calculate a new route resulted in my driving, literally, taking a back seat. I would, in a state of obliviousness, sit between two lanes taking glances at the sat nav waiting for it to tell me where to go next. Then realising it was not going to happen as quick as I would have liked, begin to slow down hoping that it would direct me down a new route.

Research seems to suggest that using a sat nav has been the root cause of a percentage of road accidents and is considered to be as distracting as a mobile phone.

Typical causes have been:

1. Programming the sat nav whilst driving
2. Believed the sat nav rather than your own eyes
3. Put the sat nav in a position obscuring vision
4. Watched the sat nav whilst going round a roundabout to help identify the correct exit
5. Over reliance on a sat nav making you think that the road you are being directed down is suitable for your vehicle. E.g. lorries, caravans.

When we purchased our new car, it came with a built in sat nav system. Not as slick as the TOMTOM but did a good enough job. Its biggest drawback was not being able to program a destination using a postcode alone. Another problem was the time it took to calculate a new route, to the point where I had to pull over and wait for it to catch up.

Depsite its obvious risks, if used sensibly, can it (or has it) replaced the A to Z? In time, I believe it will. How can reading a map, remember the route, forgetting it, pulling over, remembering the route, forgetting it…etc compete?

Saying that, I needed to make use of my A-Z when the missus drove off with the car with the built in sat nav. Hated it.