Phrixus The olden days version of ShaneMarriott.com

Short Update

As I am being pressured into making an update (you know who you are!), I thought I would post a very short overview of the last 2 weeks and what I will be doing for the next 2 so that if I can’t put an update on, the site wont be too out of date! The big news is that I have sold my car! My new friend Chris travelled overseas to view it and ultimately purchase it so I have spent considerable time recently researching options for getting the car over to him. As a result of the quick sale, I have also been looking for a new car, ‘H’ very kindly found one for me locally and I am picking it up at lunch today… more details on that later though!! Mystere was out racing on Sunday and we won the race which was great fun as the weather was perfect. Amazon have sent me an email stating I need to wait 4-6 weeks before my new camera is sent to me. I thought about looking around for an alternative supplier but as I have just spent a lot of cash on a new car, I have decided to wait till they send it to me. Finally, I am flying to London for 4 days to do some Christmas shopping and visit my Dad.

Been here before

I am sitting at the same computer I used when I was flying out on holiday to Spain. Having missed my connecting flight back to Guernsey due to fog in Amsterdam, I am now having a free beer in the executive lounge of the Gatwick Hilton. When I have fully recovered from my power walk through the north and south terminals, I am going to go and spend some time in the shops!! In fact they will probably be closed so I will just get some food and head back to my room to watch a film!

Amsterdam

I have just spent an evening in central Amsterdam. The group of 60 I was with had a trip around the canals and then a meal where we had a magic show. All in all, quite good fun if you take into account the few beers I managed to drink.

Thanks UH-Hosting

My webhost UH-Hosting.co.uk has doubled all the resources on their reseller accounts. Now that I have double the webspace, I had better find something to fill it with!! This webhost has been the best I have used to date and think they deserve a pat on the back!

Amsterdam Access

I am currently using the internet at the Dorint Sofitel in Amsterdam. I have just been monitoring my download rates and it is about 300kbs!!! Not bad at all!!!

plotMe – New project name

I have decided to call my code plotMe for the time being as it seems a lot more generic and unmarketed as the names I was coming up with previously. I have also added a new category to my Blog!

Clickable Plot

More progress now. On this version you can click a location and the place you click becomes the location of the spot. Now that I have this functionality it should be fairly easy to get some more dynamic information passed to my code. I think a little tidying up is needed and I need to clean up the maths so that I can use real location figures. That will be one of many steps involved in furthering this project! I need to come up with a new name aswell… any ideas??

Progress on GeoCODE

Okay so I have been researching and learning about the PHP GD library. I have managed to make a start on my mapping system with a lot of help from various sources on the net and my trusty PHP book. If you are interested in my prototype system have a look here… comments welcome! I have dubbed it GeoCODE but that will need to be reviewed in the future when I get some inspiration!

My Winter Project

As I am planning to do some travelling at some point in the future, I was considering how to record the journey for people to read about and allow them to communicate back. The obvious way to do this is via a blog like this one. The next feature I felt that would be great, is if people could see my location on a map. Stories about particular areas could be marked on the map and all could be linked together in a harmony of hyperlinks. As this part is the most challenging to build, I have started to plan out how the location could be stored, how it could be displayed and how it could be updated. All manner of ideas are crossing my mind from using emails, text messages, radio broadcasts and even old fashioned phone calls! The next challenge will be to find a way of displaying these on a map. I have a lot of ideas about this aswell but some good ‘old fashioned’ googling will be needed to look at options. I think this could be an interesting winter project for a couple of years. If you have any ideas for this (Or if it has been done before!) let me know!

Young Salts at the ‘Yacht Club’ do

Here is the crew of Mystere after Dave and I collected the ‘William Shearwater Cup’ from Lady Carey.

Crew of Mystere
Left to right: Aidy, Me, Helen, Dave and Leigh