Hi everyone,
long time no bloggage I know. The bloggage Blockage has been the result of a whole heap of things. Work, Judo, Life all conspiring to keep me away from this blog.

My pal Chris posted recently that he is clesaning up his digital life, I think I could do with doing that... heck doing it with my analog/real life would be good too.

As some of you know, I have been working for a client since October last year, based an hour or so from home, 5 days a week; with increasingly regular overnight trips around the UK. This is due to come to an end in March and it has had me thinking about momentum.

The new client work has been great, good for my business and challenging work. But it has been all consuming, very little time has been left free to me to keep other aspects of my business rolling and also to pursue other things like open source projects.

So with the end of this client work looming, I have the opportunity to look forward and try and set some direction in my commercial and personal life. For example, I have been working on another language version of my PlanetJudo.com website (French this time). Once that goes live, I want to finish the PlanetJudo iPhone app I have had a varying levels of completeness for months and push it to the Appstore.

I also want to bring the DojoList project to a releasable level. I have started on rudimentary multi-lingual support. Which has been helpful as the next step in PlanetJudo's future is a big refactoring to incorporate languages better and be a single application with language support. Rather than 3 copies of the same app customised to each language as it is now.

Also on the list is a new car (or two), more podcasting, more coaching, more clients. Too much to handle I suspect, so some good planning is required. I am also wanting to do a Judo research project for the next IAJR symposium (and potentially preparing and poster fo the EJU research symposium that may take place in April). I also need to put some time and energy into JudoSpace, the training company I am a director in.

Phew...

And all through this the big issue that ove rthe last few months I have totally lost momentum on pretty much everything except this main client I have.

So the big question/goal/challenge for the next period is this, how do I maintain/develop momentum when faced by the real life day-to-day issues of things to do.

My hope is that once I get free of this project I'll be able to set things up to allow me to do what needs doing whilst also maintaining momentum on my projects.

Any suggestions or experiences in this area would really help me understand the problem better and help guide how I tackle it all. So please do email or comment.

Lance.

p.s. Now that this project is coming to an end, I'm looking for projects to work on. Preferably in Hampshire, but as the past few months have proven, I can cope with commuting (to a degree). Web stuff, Server stuff, Coaching stuff, please let me know.

Some time ago I wrote a post about what is on my iPhone. I thought I'd re-visit the topic, in part because I shall (eventually) be upgrading to the 3GS, or possibly a Palm Pre or Android? But realistically, it'll be the iPhone 3GS as it is still the best phone I've ever owned.

So here is my little bit of FanBoi-ism, hope it's interesting to you.

First and foremost, JAILBREAK YOUR IPHONE!!!!!!
Let me repeat, Jailbreak your iPhone, It's absolutely the best thing you can do, it opens a whole new world to you... as will become apparent in the rest of this blog post.

Winterboard.
This is a silly, but great thing to have on your phone. Winterboard allows you to "Theme" your iPhone. So being a geek, I have the LCARS theme on mine. So it's all Star Trek all the time. (Uhuru tells me when I have voicemail LOL.

EchoFon.
This is from the Apple store and it is my Twitter client of choice. It's was TwitterFon but had a name change. It also has push notifications now, which is great.

Growl for iPhone.
GrIp is fantastic, it's is subtly awesome. If you use Growl on your Mac you'll know what it does. GrIp pops up little pop-up boxes when you get emails, etc. Depending on what modules are installed.

xGPS
I've been driving up and down the country alot lately and I use xGPS exclusively now. There are other navigation apps out there, but xGPS (on Cydia) is free and it works great. So, so far I have not been tempted to the paid options... though it may come.

Ringtone Shuffler
Again on Cydia, this paid for app is great fun. It basically does what it says on the tin. You get a random ringtone everytime someone calls you. Now I have too many ringtones from Cydia and Audiko, so it's always a laugh in the office when the phone rings.

Runkeeper Pro
I don't use this anywhere enough, but it's awesome. Basically it's a GPS tracker. You run, it counts the miles. But it is so much more than that, the website rocks, the Pro version has great audio cues when you hit time and distance markers. Give the free version ago, or go straight to the paid version... you will eventually anyway. :-)

PDAnet
Tethering is a rip off, an absolute rip off. How charging you extra to use your phone as a modem has been allowed by OFCom I do not know! I could do it about a decade ago with my old mobiles, and it didn't cost extra, so why is it costing me extra now???
Well... here is the solution! PDAnet (via Cydia) allows you to use your iPhone to get on the web. The unlicensed only allows HTTP, but spend the $15USD (one off payment) and everything works. Compare that to the what £15/month O2 think they can charge and it's an easy choice!

iComing
I have left my favourite till last. iComing (on Cydia) is, amazing and powerful. And I am only just scratching the surface in what it does so far. iComing is a real innovation, try it!
iComing in simple terms "does stuff" based on your location.
So for example, I send a SMS text message to my wife automatically with it when I take my turn-off on the motorway, so she knows I am almost home. Because iComing sits running in the background, you set it up and it keeps checking where you are and fires of the actions you configure when you are in the right place.
iComing can send Twitter updates, update your Twitter location too. It can also just alarm, send an SMS, ring a phone number, turn your wifi on/off, turn Mail on/off, chaneg your ring tone volume, turn 3G on/off, turn Airplane mode on/off, turn Bluetooth on/off.
I can't wait to see the app develop, it'd be awesome to be able to for example run scripts or open (via curl even) websites. Imagine the possibilities of being able to access any API out there via iComing and "do stuff" when you are in certain places??

I wrote ages ago about how I thought location/context was the future. That dropped down on my priority list, but iComing reminds me how cool location/context on your phone will/could be.

So there you have it, a short list of the stuff on my iPhone that I love. There are about 7 pages of apps on my iPhone, but these are the key ones for me at the moment... okay and the Facebook app I admit it! ;-)

Lance

Those of you who follow this blog or my Twitter stream will be aware of my DojoList project. DojoList is quickly morphing from a quick hack I started writing to create a Google Map for the Hampshire Judo Association website to a real "Software Project".

After initially starting with all my own PHP, I quickly moved to a MVC Framework (LimonadePHP). This meant that I did not have to "Re-invent the wheel" structuring the code. And it has been helping keep my code more modular and tidy.

I started from the beginning using version control, which is something I do on virtually anything I type now. So I have been using GitHub to host my source code. Git is great as I can commit changes even when offline. I don't use 99% of Git and the more I use it the more I love it.

Due to my original target server being an icky WIndows IIS server, I made the decision to keep the application simple with the bare minimum of dependencies. So rather than using MySQL or similar to store the data, I decided to use files. Specifically, I am storing the data in XML. XML is parsed from bog standard PHP and also gives you structured data that is nice and portable.

As the project has reached a certain level of usability and completeness, I have had the opportunity to do some refactoring. Specifically, I have moved some code from within my controllers to the model for the Dojo. It's a small refactoring, but there is a great feeling when you look at your code and can go "yep that's much cleaner". It also meant that when I wanted to add a view for an individual Dojo, it was less than an hours work as the code was all seperately and tidy.

I have started using the PHP_CodeSniffer tool. I have always liked the Perl::Critic and Perl::Tidy tool in Perl, so using PHP_CodeSniffer to push myself to the PEAR Coding Standards is great and I hope it will mean that it'll make the code more friendly to others who want to use the code or better yet contributing to it.

Last, but not least, I am using the AGPL license for the project. WHich like it's brother/sister the GPL is an Open Source license that protects the code and also gives others permission to use the software, to change the software, to improve it, etc etc. JUST AS LONG AS YOU SHARE! I'm no expert on licensing, but I like the fact that the AGPL protects my effort and still give you permission to hack. Better yet it means if you improve it, you need to share your improvements, so everyone benefits!

I recently rolled DOjoList out into "production" and have a couple of organisations that have already expressed interest in using it on their websites! (WOW!) I just setup http://www.DojoList.org (ORG not COM, don't go to the .COM version, go to the .ORG domain ok). I want to use it as a home for the project, but may also use it as a service for those people who don't want to install it on their website (for some reason).

As you can see from the length of this post, the transition from a quick hack to a proper project is interesting and exciting and I am learning a lot. I hope that the interest in the project continues to grow and that will drive me to improve not only the code by my own ability to create it.

Lance

Woohoo!

The Guild series/season three is online!
I love this show, check it out asap fellow geeks.

http://www.watchtheguild.com/

Lance

p.s. Yes, I am WAY nehind the curve on this series.
p.p.s. Having MSN video on my site does make me feel dirty!

HI All,
so you may have noticed that the blog has been quiet lately. There are several reasons for this, including lots of $client work at the moment. I am also in the midst of arranging a Judo training camp, starting a new business venture and (getting to the point) starting a new open source project.

DojoList
DojoList is my new project, which aims to provide an open source web application that allows someone to maintain a list of (Judo) dojo. The project started as aprt of my taking over maintenance of the Hampshire Judo Association website, and wanting to put a Google Map of where all the clubs are on there.

Then someone else wanted something similar and I had the experience of trying to use the British Judo Association's web based list of clubs. So I decided to polish up my little hack and try and make it worth sharing.

The project is being shared and hosted at http://github.com/lancew/DojoList where you can download the source code and use it. It is licensed under a AGPL license, which basically means it is free and open but you have to share any change you might make to the code that improve it.

I have a demo installation installed and working at http://www.lancewicks.com/dojolist/

The system as it stands needs no database (I wanted to host this on the lowest possible spec host server possible). It uses PHP and the Limonade PHP framework for it's core MVC structure. jQuery and Mapstraction javascript libraries are used too.

The system has an admin interface where you can add a dojo, including importantly, the longitude and latitude of the dojo. All the information you add gets stored in an XML file and a KML file is created as well as a plain text (well plain HTML) version also.

The KML is overlayed over a Map to provide the markers for the map. Click on a map and you get the details about the club.

All pretty simple really.

It is very much at the starting stages, it is only today that I added a simple (and rather by-passable) authemtication system. Today also with the help of Fabrice the developer of Limonade I was able to get it all to work on the target IIS server for the first time.

Microsoft's IIS server is, I might add, a pain in the butt to work with compared to my local LAMP stack and all the other Linux based servers I test on. Thanks Microsoft for being totally non standard, it really makes us need to learn how to cope with quirks that get in the way of getting the job done!

Anyway... please do take a look at the project over on GitHub and if you have any bright ideas, or want to contribute please do let me know!

Lance