Chris Garrett’s Personal Blog

Am I the greediest man on the planet or is it normal to eat your Christmas chocolate and drink your Christmas booze two whole weeks before Christmas actually arrives?

Me working from home, programming, surrounded by choccies is a really bad combination. Especially as I have been feeling sorry for myself seeing as my illness symptoms [...]

I just realised the many many many hours I have wasted trying to get wifi working with Ubuntu on my laptop probably makes Ubuntu the most expensive desktop operating system I have ever owned.

My new wifi card has been just as much of a pain. I bought it on impulse because I thought it [...]

In todays “web2.0″ environment many applications now require some sort of RSS interaction, even if it is just for a “ping, I have done” notification. IBM has a nice little easy to read tutorial on using RSS with PHP
PHP and RSS: Getting it together

Another “spit your coffee on the computer screen” post for you to read, go right now and read “What code DOESN’T do in real life (that it does in the movies)” over at Drivl.com
A couple of my faves
1. Code does not move
In films and television code is always sailing across the screen at incredible [...]

Every day people complain about PayPals business practices. It’s easy to get upset with a company that can take your money away without your permission and get away with it. Many of these people have a shaky case, they have done something clearly against the PayPal TOS etc, but many more appear to have been [...]

I don’t believe in willpower but I never seem to keep my new years resolutions. My belief is people weigh up costs and benefits and choose the path of greatest immediate reward. Also I believe people have split personalities, “short-term-me” and “long-term-me”. Stay with me here.

Think of most things that people believe require willpower. Dieting, [...]

I have failed. I can’t get my DSLRBlog template to play nice with IE7. Anybody got a clue how I can fix it?

My childhood memories of Santa are sketchy to say the least so when my daughter protested that she was afraid of Santa right from the get-go I thought it was just one of her foibles. It turns out that fear of Santa is a much more common thing (it has even got a name, Hagiophobia, [...]

I saw this post over at drupal.org and had to laugh. It’s one of those “funny cuz it’s true” things but even though it is “drupal hell” it could apply to pretty much any programming endeavour  …
The Road to Drupal Hell

Attensa for a while has been my RSS reader of choice. It runs right in Microsoft Outlook which until recently I would have open all the time. Problem is a lot of the time now it just misses updates. A tool for keeping up to date is no use if it misses new posts. For [...]