nickromney.com

WAMP setup on Win XP Pro

February 26, 2005 10:50 am

My web hosting package is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP4), but my laptop runs Windows XP. Here is how I got a WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySql, PHP) environment for development at home.



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Firefox extensions

February 24, 2005 8:07 am

I’ve been using Mozilla’s Firefox browser for over a year now, and it’s my main browser. One of the key reasons is its extensibility, and here are the extensions I use (generated by the Listzilla extension):



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Mid-rank Nerd

January 21, 2005 9:56 pm

Followed the link on Heal Your Church Website to take the Nerd Quiz. And here’s the result:


I am nerdier than 75% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

Essential software

October 6, 2004 11:28 pm

Read one of Photomatt’s articles on essential software, which got me to thinking on some of the more useful pieces of software I use.

Here is an impromptu list:

Web design:

General utilities:

  • Textpad - Very fully featured text editor
  • Jedit - A text editor for programmers. Written in Java, so the same under Windows, OS X, Linux, Unix
  • 7-Zip - A compression utility, which can handle .tgz archives under Windows (very handy)
  • Explorer XP - A replacement for Windows Explorer which has two great features: 1) Folder size is displayed. 2) “Create New Folder” is a button on the toolbar
  • Iso Recorder - For creating images of installation CD’s for your hard disk

Music:

  • CDex - Music compression / file-format changer -.wav to .mp3, and vice versa
  • Audacity - A sound recorder and so much more. Very useful for recording speech
  • Winamp - Music / media player. Small, but perfectly formed

Graphics:

  • IrfanView - Views all images I’ve come across, plus loads of options for reducing file sizes.

I hope that you find them as useful as I do.

Romney is a fraud

11:26 pm

When updating this website caused me to re-install, I checked to see the Google rank of “Nick Romney”. I’m pleased to say that this site came up first. So, with my ego suitably stroked, I decided to do a little more ego-surfing to see where I ranked. I was vaguely aware of the Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, having seen a news report on him years ago, and the name stuck. However, in this election year, it seems as if every man and his dog has a blog, even one by the name of Romney is a fraud. I haven’t read it extensively, but would like to confirm that I am 100% pure Nick Romney!

Snake

July 19, 2004 4:17 pm

At the end of our garden / yard, we have 20-30 feet of untended, overgrown grass and trees. We refer to this as the “snake grass”, as it’s the kind of habitat suited to snakes, of which there are a few in Arkansas.

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Christian marketing

July 12, 2004 11:25 am

I had almost forgotten about Testamints since seeing them in a Christian bookshop / coffee-house some years ago. A quick search on Google, and I found a couple of articles which sum up my attitude to the quasi-Gnosticism of “Christian” anything. I very much enjoyed Dave Meurer’s article detailing his attempts to get his local shop to “get real” and stock something a great deal more useful, otherwise he’ll start his own line of “HarassMints”.

This related article by Joel Miller covers Testamints, and goes further, even detailing a Christian “snack bar”, with a link to his article on Get the Jesus action figure

Unbelievable.

New Car

June 24, 2004 4:49 pm

We live in the land of large cars. Although I considered a pickup truck (and there are plenty around here for sale), a guy who lives at the end of the road was selling a car for a friend, so I felt I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try a Lincoln Town Car - a 4.6 litre V8, with 176,000 miles on the clock. It was a lovely car, very fully-featured, with automatic everything (it even had a compass!), but wouldn’t have been suitable for carrying anything longer than 4 feet long (although the boot was huge).



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Notre Dame

May 14, 2004 6:09 am

When I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, I took a couple of tourist pictures - Notre Dame and the Champs Elysees.

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Getting Things Done

April 6, 2004 4:58 am

I’m a big fan of personal development (Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Tony Buzan, Robert Allen, and Brian Tracy to name but a few), but after years of books and seminars, I had so much going on in my head that the ability to walk on hot coals unharmed (yes, twice) wasn’t great at helping me when drowning in e-mails.



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