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Articles from: July 2009

Soon on my way to Belgium!

Date: July 29, 2009  Author: Ross Stone Leave a comment

This coming Friday, I will be leaving in the morning to catch a train to London, and then the Eurostar to Brussels. Can’t wait, as its been a while since I last had a holiday break.

Its for a Volition Cult Gathering in Antwerp, Belgium hosted by a few friends I know out there. I will only be there for 4 days, but it will no doubt be a great trip.

One thing I always like is the fact I get to travel to Europe via the Eurostar. If you think about what is involved… Its the idea that we built train lines under the English Channel. Its just some impressive engineering. It is not exactly expensive either… Booking in advance at the right time, I managed to pick up the return part of a Eurostar Ticket from Brussels to London for only £29.50 travelling back Monday evening.

As for what we are getting up to in Belgium… We have been promised a BBQ, Tour, and some Party’s so should be a busy weekend. There will no doubt be photo’s and videos posted soon after.

Bath, Eve, Art, AAT and PHP Updates

Date: July 19, 2009  Author: Ross Stone 1 Comment

Another busy few days, I managed to find a little more time to continue work on that sketch I was working on, but I quickly got distracted by a awesome find…

A very helpful and awesome person called Alex has created a very large resource of video tutorials about PHP. He runs a YouTube page here, which basically has a massive collection of videos where he talks viewers through PHP one step at a time. Its been a useful resource for me, along side the large number of reference books I have.

Meanwhile, I also managed to get someone to visit at lunch, and take a large number of photos while I posed so that I could place my body over the top of another person… With a little tweaking, and a fair amount of photo editing this was the result.

I spent most of Saturday preparing for the evenings VC Academy course that I run twice a week. Its basically where I talk for just over 2 Hours, about the Combat Thoery of Eve Online, helping new players that join our cyberculture get over the Learning Cliff. I had not expected for it to be so popular, or get such good feedback, so at least I am doing some good, even if its just helping people enjoy there free time more.

Sunday I got taken out with my Grandad who took me to the “Living Cavalcade of Costume” event in the The Octagon at Milsom Street. The building interested me more than the costumes, although the people there made for an interesting day.

More interesting was also taking time to see “Art for Life 2009″ event in Queen Square. There were some really good pieces of art on display and sale, but at the same time some poor pieces. Perhaps I am too critical though?

That did give me some inspiration actually, for something else I wanted to sketch. I would like to do something on the City of the Ancients from Final Fantasy 7, but no idea how yet.

Also, my Grandad insisted again that there is some “card” you can get if your a resident of Bath, so you don’t have to pay to go into some of the museums in Bath, but I have never ever heard of that from any paperwork from the council, or from others…

But, I opened up Google and did some Searching, Searching, Searching, Searching, Searching, and more Searching… Which lead to the Thermae Bath mentioning something called a Discovery Card they recommended people to use. So my final search, and I arrived at this page. How hidden away is that!

Finally, AAT have been pestering me about membership renewal as well. I can’t really afford to renew, and there is no need for me to do so as I am not working in the Accounts Industry at present, so apparently I can’t have my MAAT letters after my name in 4 weeks time I guess.

Think that’s all I can type for now, as I have some other paperwork to get sorted before the day is over.

Creative endeavours

Date: July 15, 2009  Author: Ross Stone Leave a comment

As I am not feeling down now, so back to my usual emotionless self. I wanted to share a few things that you can expect to see published soon on the site. As I have a number of artistic or creative projects on the go at present keeping me busy. From photo editing and sketching, to some php programming. (programming is art too)

One of these projects is a new poster I have been working on. Normally the images I create on the computer have a distinct amateur feel, or “MS Paint” look to them, so I spent some time with Photoshop working out how to do things professionally.

I actually had to make it look more amateur looking than what it was, so that the style will make people laugh and read what it was trying to promote.

To finish it, all I need is someone in Bath to spare a few minutes of there time to take a photo of me in a specific pose, and I can crop myself, past it in, tweak the layers in the image and job done.

Failing that, I will reluctantly do the “photo shoot” in the office at work… But walking through Bath with a Star Trek uniform is not something I would want to do too often.

I have also decided to try and pick up my sketching again, although I often get distracted… Its not great as its been a long time since I did this kind of thing, but still. I do love the architecture and culture around Kyoto.

Finally, the php stuff, which I mentioned in my last blog entry, so I won’t mention it in detail again. So yeah, I hope to have a few new things shared soon when I get them finished.

Beating the Recession with PHP

Date: July 13, 2009  Author: Ross Stone 1 Comment

As well as a bit of self control, and more awareness of my spending. Actually, I am not too effected by this so called recession either to be honest, I am just spending too much money, so something that allows me to manage my money better, and learn coding more is a good thing.

I have been feeling a little down lately, so this helps keep my mind busy too, but I digress. So the plan!

Create a website written in PHP to track my finances, and present the information in easy to read reports.

  • Web Based Application
  • Import Natwest CSV Files
  • Automatically Parse Data
  • Display Cash Flow Report
  • Display Outgoing Summary

So lets say once a month I log into my online banking website and download my credit card and current account statements as .csv files. Then I upload them into my app and it processes all of the months transactions.

Now when I view the information from my app, I will be able to see my outgoings by category easily. So I will quickly see how much money I spent on food, as it automatically adds together all of my cash withdraws, and supermarket transactions for example.

The end result will be that I can both easily see how well I am doing with my self control, and also be able to see my cash flow hopefully increase month after month as I start to save money.

Such information would be formatted in a way where I could quickly spot areas, or categories where I think I am spending too much and could save more money, by keeping things in perspective and allowing you too maintain seeing the bigger picture.

  1. Learn PHP Properly, Back to the basics to learn how to code well, and to a high standard.
  2. Design Specification, Decide on everything it should do.
  3. Write Application, Spend time working on writing the application.
  4. Profit, Enjoy the benefits of more controlled spending.

Granted, by the time I finish, this recession may be over but at least I will then have something I can use to quickly monitor my finances for the foreseeable future.