So Long 2011, Rock on 2012

2011 was not my favourite year. Frankly, it sucked. My immune system recovered after 6 years of severe sleep apnoea had beaten it into the ground. Sounds like a good thing, right? I thought so too, but it meant scar tissue started forming from injuries during those years & nasty stuff started happening. And that the allergies I thought I had grown out of came back like a bad sequel. Prawns 2: This Time There’s Anaphylaxis!

So 2011 will sadly always be the year in which I suffered 28 shoulder subluxations, 2 full dislocations and the permanent removal of shellfish from the menu. Add to that deaths in the family and I’m sure you understand why I’m glad to see the back of it.

I don’t usually do new year resolutions and certainly not public ones. I’m a big believer that it’s our habits that make us – and habits are best changed one at a time, rather than in the traditional big bang, guilt-inducing approach that is enshrined in crappy magazines across the land. For more on the sustainable habits approach, check out non resolutions advice from Dan Pink via Buster Benson.

That said, I’m going to change some major things in 2012. This is going to be a rocking year.

I am going to:

  • Get back to doing what I love and loving what I do
  • Write more, both code & prose
  • Participate more in my community. Geekfolk, I have missed all y’all. Let’s do lunch/coffee/Barcamps/SXSWs/werewolf/geeks-with-guns/stuff yeah? I’ll be looking for you all on Lanyrd and turning up more. Come say hi!
  • Figure out this hypermobility/EDS thing and *kick its arse*

So 2012? Watch out, I’m coming to get ya!

My Year in Cities (2011)

The year began in Thailand where we were at the tail end of our 100 day sabbatical. I moved roles on our return, so had much more Western Europe-focused work travel than in previous years.

INTERNATIONAL

  • Bangkok, Thailand (right at the end of our sabbatical)
  • Brussels, Belgium
  • Geneva, Switzerland
  • Rome, Italy
  • Stockholm, Sweden
  • Aarschot, Belgium
  • Madrid, Spain
  • Istanbul, Turkey
  • Port de Pollenca, Mallorca (Spain)
  • Cork, Ireland (incl Ballymaloe, Castlemartyr)
  • Bucharest, Romania

UK

  • London
  • Richmond
  • Weybridge
  • Manchester
  • Windsor
  • Matfen
  • Bath
  • Bristol
  • Tiverton

Lessons from Being Hacked

So you might have noticed I was hacked prettily nastily on this site and a couple of others. I’d taken my eye off the ball and not done a really close inspection of my WordPress installs in a while, as well as being a bit lax in updating the moment a new version was out.

So What Actually Happened?

A couple of files have been snuck into theme and plug-in directories that allowed upload and editing of other files. If you find the files r.php or temp.php anywhere in your WordPress install you might want to check on them.

Through these, a file called function.php was added, full of evals and base_64 encrypted code. The regular WordPress functions.php and load.php had been modified to include the function.php file. This then replaced the normal blog content with all manner of spam.

The Cleanup

With the help of the fine folks at Sucuri, all the corrupted files were put back to normal and the backdoors plugged. I also deleted all unused themes & plugins (unfortunately the otherwise very useful Dreamhost One Click Installs do litter the place with “extras” you might neither want nor need).

For anyone investigating similar hacks, the Linux command to find recently edited files is find . -mtime -1. This will show you anything edited in the last day (replace the 1 with a different number to give different number of days). Though there are ways around the Linux file times, a cron job checking for recently modified files is helpful to keep an eye on things.

Useful Links

Gastronomic Cork

We’re in Cork this week, celebrating our anniversary and looking forward to both the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals and a close friend’s wedding at the weekend. We’ve never visited here before so it’s been nice to explore the city … and to eat our way round it!

Food so far has not disappointed, with an excellent pancakes with bacon & banana breakfast at Liberty Grill and a gorgeous ribeye steak at Strasbourg Goose particular highlights. Intending to keep up the gastronomic exploration over the coming days…

My Year in Cities (2010)

2010 was a massive travel year, not least because Elly & I took a three month sabbatical from Oct-Dec. We had an absolutely amazing time travelling and since I bought a proper digital SLR just before going, we are still sorting through the 33,000 (yes, really!) photos I took in those 100 days! Many are already on Flickr with more to follow, and highlights are on our travel blog.

ABROAD

  • Austin, USA
  • Cincinnati, USA
  • Faro, Portugal
  • Lagos, Portugal
  • Frankfurt, Germany
  • Johannesburg, South Africa
  • Durban, South Africa
  • Port Elizabeth, South Africa
  • Mossel Bay, South Africa
  • Cape Town, South Africa
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • Cairns, Australia
  • Townsville, Australia
  • Airlie Beach, Australia
  • Brisbane, Australia
  • Auckland, New Zealand
  • Paihia, New Zealand
  • Rotorua, New Zealand
  • Napier, New Zealand
  • Wellington, New Zealand
  • Picton, New Zealand
  • Kaikoura, New Zealand
  • Queenstown, New Zealand
  • Dunedin, New Zealand
  • Christchurch, New Zealand
  • Sydney, Australia
  • Bangkok, Thailand
  • Hanoi, Vietnam
  • Hue, Vietnam
  • Hoi An, Vietnam
  • Saigon, Vietnam
  • Phuket, Thailand
  • Ko Phi Phi Don, Thailand

UK

  • Bristol
  • Bath
  • Tiverton
  • Exeter
  • Weybridge
  • London
  • Southampton
  • Marchwood
  • Brighton
  • Cambridge
  • Market Bosworth
  • Reading
  • Richmond / St Margarets

links for 2010-02-07

links for 2010-02-05

Awake After All These Years

Some of you know that I’ve been having trouble sleeping over the past couple of years. Actually, more accurately, having trouble *staying* asleep. Only being able to sleep for an hour or two before waking got annoying enough that last November I checked into hospital overnight for a sleep study for an uncomfortable night covered in electrodes.

What they found astonished me. I wasn’t just waking up every hour or two. I was stopping breathing over 75 times an hour — waking each time so that my breathing restarted, without being aware of it. They have diagnosed severe sleep apnoea. The condition wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise (anyone unfortunate enough to have had to share a room or even house with me knows my snoring is pretty epic – my dad is just the same) but the level of severity was.

They immediately gave me a CPAP machine which forces me to breathe during the night by blowing a gale through a mask at me. The effect has been pretty much immediate — the first morning I felt infinitely more awake and I have a huge amount more energy than I have had in years.

The weird thing? You’d assume that having had no REM in over 18 months, I’d *know* just how tired I was. But I really didn’t. I’d occasionally fall asleep in front of the telly, but otherwise I experienced hardly any daytime sleepiness (one of the key symptoms of the condition). But having had some decent sleep over the last week since I was given the machine, I can suddenly feel the difference. I have more energy, I feel smarter, more awake and much more balanced.

Net, my one and only resolution for 2010: To sleep more and get more done.

Any of this sound familiar, either for you or someone you know? The Sleep Apnoea Trust has a decent FAQ section, more info available at NHS Choices.

My Year in Cities (2009)

ABROAD

  • Faro, Portugal
  • Praia da Rocha, Portugal
  • Fuerteventura, Canaries (Spain)
  • Cape Town, South Africa (incl Blouberg & Durbanville)
  • Buffelsfontein, South Africa
  • Stellenbosch, South Africa

UK

  • Bath
  • Bristol
  • Tiverton
  • Exeter
  • London
  • Manchester
  • Weybridge
  • Market Bosworth
  • Cambridge
  • Loughborough
  • Slough

[This was a post I realised had been stuck as a draft and not published at the time written -- now rectified]

links for 2009-11-12

Support Louis & Willem on SA’s Got Talent!

My best friend from back home, Louis van der Merwe and his brother Willem van der Merwe are through to the final 21 in the first series of South Africa’s Got Talent. They sing opera (although they are both techies in their day jobs) and have absolutely amazing voices.

Please consider helping to support them by checking out www.louisandwillem.com (notably, watch their initial audition), joining their Facebook fan group or if you are in South Africa even voting for them this week when they perform live in the semi-finals. If you’re on Twitter you can follow the craziest week in their lives by following @louisandwillem.

They were featured in YOU and Huisgenoot this week so hopefully there’s a good swell of support for them already building back home :)

links for 2009-09-06

links for 2009-06-20

links for 2009-06-13

links for 2009-06-11

Useful Links For Buying A Car

Our poor old Polo died over Xmas and so we found ourselves looking for a newish second-hand car in what is definitely a buyer’s market.

Here were some of the useful sites we found:

  • The Which? Car Buying Guide is useful, particularly if you haven’t yet fully absorbed every Top Gear episode in existence. Worth signing up for a 1 pound month trial.
  • The reliability stats are also useful, though I’m sure it won’t be too much of a spoiler if I tell you basically you should buy Japanese if you don’t want it to die. If you insist on European, go Skoda.
  • Parker’s is great for used car values. I put together some depreciation charts that were a great tool when bargaining with dealers who assume women will buy anything so long as it’s the right colour.
  • WhatCar? generally has a refreshingly different take from the very sensible Which? reviews, with the added bonus that there is no gate fee to view. The valuations are a good rule of thumb as well.
  • The Motley Fool Loan Calculator is a nice simple tool to check much your payments will be and for how long.
  • In the UK, I find AutoTrader a good place to look for listings.
  • Once you’ve shortlisted some options, your money is well spent doing an HPI check. I tried a couple of places and found that the cheap and cheerful offering from MyCarCheck was perfectly sufficient and highlighted that two of the cars we were considering really were too good to be true.

Any other suggestions? Add them in the comments :)

For those interested, we were deciding between a Toyota Yaris, a Skoda Fabia and a Honda Jazz. Found the Yaris cramped and not particularly fun to drive, the Fabia pretty much a carbon copy of our Polo and the Jazz spacious and engaging to drive. Went for a Jazz but likely would have been happy with a Fabia if we didn’t want to have as much back seat / boot room for cross country Xmas trips.

My Year in Cities (2008)

This year was full of work-related travel — a lot in the South West of the UK as I was leading P&G’s recruitment team down there, as well as Cincinnati, Brussels and Philly for the IT projects I was leading. I managed to get a week in Mallorca when Elly was busy studying & so sadly couldn’t accompany me — we then had a great holiday in South Africa visiting with family & friends. There are many photos on Flickr.

ABROAD

  • Brussels, Belgium
  • Port de Pollenca, Mallorca
  • Cape Town, South Africa
  • Stellenbosch, South Africa
  • Mossel Bay, South Africa
  • Port Elizabeth, South Africa
  • St Francis Bay, South Africa
  • Cincinnati, USA
  • Philadelphia, USA

UK

  • London
  • Cambridge
  • Bath
  • Bristol
  • Exeter
  • Tiverton
  • Weybridge
  • Egham
  • Basingstoke
  • Maidenhead
  • Woking
  • Walsall
  • Market Bosworth

[This was a post I realised had been stuck as a draft and not published at the time written -- now rectified]

links for 2008-08-28

links for 2008-06-06

My New Book!

(Cross-posting from Geek | Manager)

Principles of Project Management cover I’m pleased to announce that one of my own projects has just come to fruition. My new book, The Principles of Project Management has just been published by SitePoint. It’s a short book aimed at folks like myself who have come from a technical background and are increasingly finding themselves in need of project management skills — whether to officially take that role or to help make the hard work they put in as developers or designers actually mean something, by ensuring the project is delivered properly.

The book was expert reviewed by Kevin Lawver and Drew McLellan who both did an admirable job of ensuring that the content stayed applicable to all sorts of projects and teams, both big and small. They also bravely took on the role of managementese-weeding and survived with remarkably few lasting scars ;-) Drew has written some thoughts on the book on his own blog. I thoroughly enjoyed working with both Drew & Kevin, as well as the team at SitePoint.

If your interest is piqued, then check out The Principles of Project Management book page or download a sample chapter.

In the interests of full disclosure, I would highlight that all the links are affiliate links — i.e. if you buy the book via that link I will both be able to track it and get something back :)