A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to put together a Drupal Website framework for Endurobull

This fascinating company manufacture and distribute a fencing composite material that replaces the old fashioned metal fences with something that is indestructible, lighter than air and hotter than the suns surface. Erm... OK... so thats a little bit of exaggeration but it is pretty cool stuff.

The original Endurobull website was already mostly designed and running on a standard template from their web hosts CMS system. It was pretty poor and not very flexible. I'm not saying whose CMS it was but it rhymes with 'Bun & Bun'

My mission was to quickly migrate their data from the old servers over to the Projex Servers, install Drupal and import the basic website layouts. After discussion we decided on using the ASYNC Drupal Theme with only very minor modification: the layout already ticked their boxes and as the mission was to get the website online I fully expect its GUI to evolve over coming months.

I recently stumbled across this fantastic advert for the Triumph Rocket III. Apparently its a real viral advertisement commissioned by Triumph back in 2007. I cant believe I had never seen it. Most amusing, in the style of the old Hitchhikers Guide and just, well, Bloody Good:

"Ever since the dawn of time Triumph have been producing large powerful motorbikes in their Hinckley factory near Leicester. With over 900 years of motorbike building prowess behind them Triumph have created two wheeled motorbike classics.

"What the heck is timshel?" I hear you ask.

timshel is a hebrew word with various meanings depending on the angle at which you read it, or indeed, the number of glasses of red wine you have consumed before trying to explain its meaning. Essentially it means "thou mayest", or implies "rule of control" over something, but mostly it means "Southamptons best rock band". 

So, as I have a weeks downtime I'm looking forward to spending some relaxed time at home, I'm feeding my IT Addiction by building a new website for the fellas. I have a family connection, as my cousin Rob Litten is the drummer for timshel, but it took only minimal bribery to get me excited about revamping their static old html site and building a modern site with online music, videos and shopping cart for buying CD's, MP3's and whatever the future holds.

New site will be evolving over the next couple of days http://www.timshel-band.co.uk

Check them out.

timshel rock!

Wow! It's December already!

After a whirlwind year involving moving the whole family, two dogs and a pile of News 3x/400 magazines to this side of the pond I cant believe it's nearly 2010 already. Two thousand nine has seen us settling into our new life in the US,  focussing mainly on IBMi and I feel that I've reached a kind of career milestone. After a couple of years focusing on other areas, in the IT wilderness, this year has seen my return to the IBM Midrange club and in the immortal words of Gary Glitter “I’m glad to be back”

No. It's a website which millions of people visit every day, or in some cases every hour of the every day so they can satisfy their inherent need to spy on their friends and family.

It's also used to grow crops and bug people in the incredibly annoying Farmthing application.

You can also really annoy people by persistently poking, hugging or smiling at them.

The facility to upload pictures and/or videos of family and friends and tag them as being in the aforementioned hollywood glitz is pretty cool, and just about the only useful thing on there.