WAMP setup on Win XP Pro
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.
Firefox extensions
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):
Mid-rank Nerd
Followed the link on Heal Your Church Website to take the Nerd Quiz. And here’s the result:
Essential software
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:
- Firefox 1.0 – My favourite browser
- Filezilla – Open source FTP client
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
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
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. Continue Reading »
Christian marketing
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
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).
Notre Dame
When I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, I took a couple of tourist pictures – Notre Dame and the Champs Elysees. Continue Reading »
Getting Things Done
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.