Throughout my whole degree, I kept a blog. I posted at least once a month for the whole of the three of my academic years. There is some good stuff on there and it still gets a fair few hits from search engines:
If your interested in undergraduate study, learning technologies, action research, reflective practice and the mindless ramblings of a student under pressure then there might just be something for you there!
I have had this site running for a while now and it has more than served its purpose. I have had job offers through it, networked all over the world and had a single home on the internet to link to all the other occasional residencies I have. Over the past week or so, I have been tweaking under the hood and have made a few modifications to the base technology of the site.
The site is still hosted by the tremendously amazing and awesome x10Hosting who have recently supercharged their hosting platform, but that is not the only reason that this site is now 96% faster than all other sites tested with Pingdom. I am using Cloudflare as a Content Distribution Network (CDN) for the site. This means that while the site is still hosted with x10, Cloudflare basically caches most aspects of it and delivers that to visitors through its global web of servers. This is done by DNS magic, whereby Cloudflare is essentially providing DNS services for my domain as my registrar now points to Cloudflare and they do the rest.
The best thing about all of this is that it is all at the low low price of free! If you own a domain (You can even use this to speed up your sites on massive platforms like Tumblr and WordPress.com!) then I suggest you give it a try.
A man who started life without prior privileges such as money or even a stable home or family, and ended it having made an impact on the world like few others ever have. A controversial, but universally inspirational leader who we can all take inspiration from ourselves.
Though not about himself, I feel these words, spoken by himself sum him up rather aptly:
BBC Obituary:
I am always impressed when I come across a school (or any other organisation for that matter) website and see that they are activley using social media to engage their current and prospective audiences. It dawned on me last week that my own school did not currently offer such services and I then set out to change that.
I was expecting a battle with senior leadership over the matter as generally there is much trepidation among senior staff about technological change and/or development. Somehow, with a bit of persuasion and encouragement, I created both @leighacademy on Twitter and The Leigh Technology Academy on Facebook.
Whilst these pages are still in their infancy, I do hope that they develop a following and really form part of my School’s online presence.
I wanted to create a business / calling card for people to contact me. It was almost exclusively for conceptual design experimentation, but perhaps it will come in handy. I have a few in my wallet, just in case.
Who plays video games in their living room anymore? I don’t, and have not done so for years. It’s all about mobile these days when it comes to gaming, so where does that leave the box under your TV? I bought a PlayStation 3 just after Christmas and have probably played games on it for a total of about 10 hours since I bought it, I have however used it primarily as a media client and DVD/Blu-Ray player.
DVD/Blu-ray is fairly self explanatory, put the disc in and away you go, but using the device as a means to getting the stuff you downloaded onto your TV is a different story. The way to do it is DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) which is a standardised technology that gets media streamed around your home network. The catch I came across is finding a good way of getting the media off the computer and making it available to the PlayStation.
The solution I have found is Yazsoft Playback (above). This simple, lightweight and well maintained piece of OS X software makes the process as simple as I have come accross so far. I have tried a number of other alternative solutions, but this software takes the biscuit. It’s simplicity is coupled with automation features such as MKV file detection and conversion, very handy with the growing popularity of this file format for video, especially in the Hight Definition arena.
Yazsoft offer up a demo of this software and I strongly recommend you try it if you have media on your Mac and own either a PS3 or and Xbox.
Happy streaming 
There is just something so simple and tactile about QR codes. I had never played with, or investigated them or their underlying technology until now.
Scan me!
As I am sure you can see, I was amazed as to just how much data you can fit into one of these lille things. Oh the possibilities…
I am no diehard Lady Gaga fan or anything, but I do think she is one of the most inspirational and talented musicians on the pop scene right now. Her influence runs deeper than just her music, her whole image has millions of people entranced. A big part of this image is portrayed by her music videos and they have been absolutely revolutionary thus far, until The Edge of Glory (below).
The Edge of Glory does not have just one video though, Google used the track to launch an advertising campaign for its Chrome Web Browser a few months ago (below), and I believe this could have been a better video altogether than the ‘Official video’. I like how the video crowd sourced dance moves and performances from ammeters, professionals, everyday internet folk, women, men and children- there was a real mix which is what I think the song is all about.
What do you think?
So, you have found my website. I hope that it has given you a small insight to who I am through the links it provides to my various on-line profiles and my seemingly random blog posts. I had always wanted my own website ever since I ventured onto the web back in the late 90′s, but until tobyadams.tk was born, I never really had my own. If you were to count the sites I have for educational, business and support purposes, I am a man of many websites, but none of these are just mine. I want to show here, how and what tobyadams.tk is and what makes it tick.
I am someone that does not like to pay for anything. I am afraid the internet and cyber culture has made me this way and its hard to snap out of. So when looking for somewhere to host my website, I wanted it un-comprimised and free. I started my search at Free Web Hosting where there are a fair few recommendations for hosting providers with a range of features and services. At the time x10Hosting was at the top, so that was who I went with. The main attraction was that the free service provided the cPanel interface for administering the site, something that is desirable when looking at web hosting for many reasons. This of course in addition to having a generous monthly limit with more than enough webspace.
To the technology itself:
All free! Amazing.
All shot, edited and exported to YouTube with an iPhone 4. Amazing.
