Michael Henley

Just reading an interesting article in Fast Company on what they dub GenerationFlux. Worth a read.

It mentions that the opening cover of the magazine had the words

Work is Personal. Computing is Social. Knowledge is Power

A quick thought: The punctuation needs rejigging and a word needs to go

Work is Personal Computing. Social Knowledge is Power

I think that is a better description of where we find ourselves today.

I am always quite pleased when I walk past this to see that College list the German member that also died in the war.

I love the sharpness and clarity of the Retina Display on my 4S but I would appreciate some fresh eyes. Is there a gradient in screen brightness? This is taken with my 450D at full brightness. Also, is there anything different about the top left of the screen (as seen in this picture, top right in portrait)?

For comparison, here is a screenshot of the same:

I’ve set up an about.me page. Interesting concept and I’m quite tempted to get a batch of the Moo cards I’ve been promising myself for years. Check it out.

Hello all! It’s been a while… I have just read this article on the fantastic new Guardian Science Blog. If you are in any way interested in the sciences I would recommend wholeheartedly that you subscribe.

I was interested by the question posed towards the end: to paraphrase ‘How is moving to a less popular, albeit BBC, channel going to increase viewership?’. The first thing that really springs to mind is that, provided licensing has been done properly, this often brilliant series of lectures will appear on iPlayer. We all love iPlayer. It makes TV catch up a dream, it doesn’t have any ads. To steal a characteristic often attributed to Apple: It just works. I have lost count of the number of rather interesting programmes I have stumbled up on there whilst avoiding doing something ‘practical’ so the addition of these lectures to the repertoire would be rather welcome.

YouTube or an individual site’s player are grand, but discovery of these things falls outside the usual range of many non-social-media (read: normal human being) types. If we want more people to end up watching the lectures then perhaps having them show up as part of the boredom-avoidance iPlayer-scouring might not be a bad idea. Thoughts?

I just bought a Gomadic AA iPhone 3G Backup battery through Amazon to use as a backup for the bus journey to Tignes for the Varsity Ski Trip in a few weeks time. This was bought as a replacement for a similar, if easier to mount, Belkin AA backup I have had since My iPod 3rd Gen but which doesn’t work with the iPhone since 3G or iPod touch since version 2. I assume Apple have changed the pins it uses to charge or something. As the photo shows it makes the iPhone (in this case a 3GS) think that it is connected to the mains although not having had chance to test it I am not sure how long it can power the phone for on a set of batteries (It takes 4xAA), or whether it is able to resurrect a totally discharged phone. Hopefully it works or I will have a decidedly quiet long coach journey…

Tightrope Player from Michael Henley on Vimeo.

This guide continues from a previous post which can be found here, which details the steps required to download, arrange, and set the permissions required to install MovableType onto a NFS-hosted site. The same disclaimers as posted there apply to this post.

In a web browser navigate to http://domainname/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi , where domainname is the domain name of your blog.

Here you will be presented with a box where you will configure the static path of the MT installation:

As with the page URL, replace domainname with the domain name of your blog, then click ‘Begin’.

If everything is as it should be you should see the following screen:

Continue to the Database config page.

Here, select MySQL Database:

Once you have selected the Database type, the window will expand to give you more options. At this point we must set a few things up on the NearlyFreeSpeech end. Don’t navigate away from the MT set up page, but in a new tab log into your NFS member area, and then click the ‘mysql’ tab. If you already have a MySQL process set up then we can just use that. If you do not, then click ‘Create a new MySQL Process’ and follow the on screen instructions.

Once created, click ‘open phpMyAdmin’ and log in with the details emailed to you by NFS when you created the process.

I like to create a new user for each database I create. This helps to keep it more secure. From the main page, click the Priviledges tab:

Then click ‘Create a New User’, and you will be presented with the new user window:

I am going to give my MT installation the username ‘moveabletype’ and have generated a secure password for it. Take note of the username and password you create as you will need to enter these into MovableType later. Select the ‘Create Database with same name’ radio button below the user credentials, and then click ‘Go’ at the bottom right. The page should refresh showing you a colourful box at the top informing you that the new user has been created. If you were to go into the databases tab of  phpMyAdmin you should also see that a new database has been created called, in my case, ‘moveabletype’. You can now log out of phpMyAdmin and head back to the MovableType installation page.

Once you clicked MySQL Database some new options will have appeared. You must fill them in as follows:

For Database Server, you must enter the process name you created at NFS. If you did not take note of this, it can be found on your NFS mysql page, and is listed as DSN. Fill in the other fields with the info you entered in phpMyAdmin when you created the new user and database. The click ‘Test Connection’. If everything goes as planned you should see the following window:

After clicking Continue, you are presented with the Mail configuration page. At this time I have not figured out how to make this work with Google Apps where I host my email on michaelhenley.co.uk, and so have chosen to skip this step simply by clicking continue. My issue is that Google Apps requires me to authenticate before they will pass on email, but the MT installation does not present me with a way to enter user details. I will update with a plugin later if I find one to make it work.

Simply clicking Continue allows you to skip this step.

[Update]: Thanks to commenter Kevin Doyon for informing me on how to make this work. Select the option to send email via sendmail, and set the path to

/usr/bin/sendmail

The test email will now send correctly even from a GoogleApps Address. If, like me, you had already skipped over this step then follow the instructions here to configure sendmail from outside the wizard.

If you have done everything correctly your MovableType installation should now be set up and you will be presented with the following window:

Once you click Continue you must set up a user for yourself:

Click Continue, and then enter your blog title, and change the paths so they point to the ‘blog’ directory:

Once you click ‘Finish install’ you will see the system initialise the database, and then you will see the Installation Complete! Screen:

Congratulations! You have now successfully installed MovableType onto your NFS-hosted site. I hope these two guides have been useful.

A few credits:

I have put this guide together based on information found at the following sites:

1. http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2007/01/28/writing-files-in-php/
2. http://wiki.movabletype.org/Main_Page
3. http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/installation/quick-start.html

I have just headed down to San Diego from New York after spending a few days there. It was my first time in New York and I had a lot of fun there. Not quite as I expected, but that is hardly surprising considering it is one of those cities that is a little different to everyone who goes there, and considering that my preconceptions were borne out of Will & Grace, Friends, and the countless movies and other TV shows set in New York.

My first impression of New York was that it was amazing, awe-inspiring, but lacked the character that a city like London has. I feel that as efficient and easy as the grid system is as a method of city planning, it makes the whole place feel a lot more sterile, at least for an outsider. One street truly does look like all the rest, at least once you get uptown of 14th street. Even after spending a few days there I stand by that initial impression. It was an amazing place to visit, and I reckon that if you lived there and began to understand the dynamics of how it all worked that this would change, but from my very superficial visit I left feeling impressed, but not gob-smacked.

I cannot recommend the Pod Hotel on E51st St, between 2nd and 3rd Avenue, enough. Amazing location in Midtown Manhattan, with pretty reasonably priced rooms; @alexmuller and I shared a bunk room and the final bill was $660 for the two of us for four nights. The rooms have no en suite, and are fairly basic, but they are clean have a sink, and there is free wifi provided too. All in all it did exactly what we expected, and was exactly what we needed.

Following the advice of @therealdvorak, via No Agenda, we took the AirTrain to Jamaica Station, and then caught the E train subway to 53rd & Lexington. We bought an unlimited subway MetroCard on the first day and although a little pricey at $27, I felt it was well worth it. We walked a lot considering how close the Hotel was to most of the places we wanted to visit, but the luxury of being able to escape the downpours into the subway to get back to the hotel without worrying was very nice. This method of getting from the airport into the city was a lot quicker than a yellow cab, and was a lot cheaper too.

The subway was a mixed bag. The trains themselves are air-conditioned, which coming from London was a lovely change and considering that their lines are about as deep as the cut-and-cover lines in London really did make me wonder about why we haven’t seen that yet, at least on those lines. I was really quite shocked at how poorly the infrastructure was maintained. Every station we went into had rusted steel, a leaking roof, and looked so blackened as to suggest that there had been a recent fire. Also, in stark contrast to the trains, the stations were baking hot at this time of year. My only real complaint about the subway was the inability to change platform directions once within the barriers at a lot of stations. Many times we would dash into the nearest entrance without reading to avoid the rain, and only realise once we were on the train side of the barriers that we were in fact facing the wrong direction meaning we needed to go out and back onto the street. While for us with our unlimited tickets this wasn’t a major issue and only a minor inconvenience, but it is worth thinking about if you only have a normal ticket.

As well as the standard touristy attractions, I would highly recommend taking a tour bus, at least around Downtown Manhattan. While a little expensive you see an awful lot, learn a lot, and if the weather is nice then it is just a genuinely pleasant way to see the city. As I say, highly recommended.

New York was, for us at least, a very expensive place to visit and I have some major grievances about the american service charge and donations culture. While in the UK a tip is for service, and averages at around 10%, there it seemed to be more a fee for them serving the table, and expected regardless of the quality of service. The percentage was also double which meant some pretty outrageous charges for service. While they are still technically optional, we felt fairly unsure about how to act and pretty rude if we didn’t tip to the expected level. One other thing to be aware of is that in those states like New York which charge sales tax, often the menu prices are shown without this and so the bill ends up being a fair bit more than you expect. Coupled with tipping this can make meals pretty expensive. We did find an amazing little sushi restaurant – Matsu Sushi – a few blocks away on 52nd st and 1st avenue, which served very generous amounts of fish on their nigiri, offer a $23 all-you-can-eat sushi option, and a highly recommended $17 dinner bento box. Our best meal of the trip was undoubtedly a steak at Houstons on 3rd Avenue. While more expensive at around $32 each without drinks, the quality was second to none and even despite the lack of a bottle of red – the higher drinking age here saw to that – it was really very excellent.

All our flights this trip are with Delta, and they have been ok so far. The London flight was fine, but cramped, while the check in at JFK was absolute madness. @alexmuller was stood at the front of the queue for over 40 minutes without having his bag checked. Once we finally did clear the security we would have been almost too late for the flight, had it not been delayed for 40 minutes. That being said, the flight was fine, we had more room and everything arrived. Plus there was wifi on board, and those who follow me on twitter would have seen a few bursts of tweets going on about this. A great novelty, and at $8 for the flight it was pretty over-priced, but it is certainly the way of the future. I was getting a better bandwidth at 37,000 feet than I do in Oxshott, and at one point I had a skype conversation with @alexmuller. While admittedly he was in the next seat it was impressive that it would sustain the connection and it worked really very well.

Now I am chilling at a friend’s place in Coronado, California enjoying the beautiful weather. So far the USA has been really good fun so heres hoping it lasts!

Was riding the tube up to High St Ken on Monday to meet @alexmuller and having forgotten my headphones was staring blankly into space. We were joined by a really very impressive busker who hopped on and for two or three stops played some very entertaining and impressive Irish/Scottish jiggy-sort music. Seeing as I often can’t stand easily on the moving train his feat of playing (well!) while it was on the move was all the more impressive. Big thanks to the random busker for brightening up our day. Check out a short clip.

The District Line Player from Michael Henley on Vimeo.