When it comes to Apple, I don’t really take the time to speculate but I thought now would be a great time with the imminent launch of the 4th generation iPod Touch, it seems like a great time to start.

My iPod history

The launch of the original iPod saw a new era for music. It’s taken an extremely long time for record companies to come around to the idea of music being digital and I feel that consumers are still being ripped of. Ripped of quite a lot since the introduction of Apple’s 3-tier price structure in iTunes.

With the release of the iPod Mini, I found my own way into the iPod market as I needed an affordable storage device but wanted a small factor MP3 player too. The Mini fit perfectly, although it’s 4Gb capacity wasn’t ideal for the video editing projects I embarked on in University.

In 2008, I purchased an iPod Touch after soon after it’s launch. I never got the iPhone and didn’t understand why you’d want all your eggs in one basket. The iPod Touch came along, but I my iPod Mini still did it’s thing and there was no need to replace it. In the build up to the iPod Touch 2G’s release, I had had my Mini’s battery replaced under the extended warranty and it’s 4Gb capacity was just unmanageable now.

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A few months ago I was one of more than 6,000 people to sign a petition that asked the UK Government to encourage departments to upgrade from IE6 to better browsers.

Unfortunately, the response was as expected. Unlike other EU countries that have discouraged the use of IE6, the Government felt it necessary to fall in line with the infinite number of lazy IT departments around the company that feel that the time spending upgrading IE6 to be expensive and unnecessary.

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This article will be posted twice, this version is for version of PHP included with Snow Leopard. The next version will cover MAMP.

I've struggled with this 3 times now (twice on a Mac and once on a PC) and it's time I documented what worked for me!

With MAMP installed, I launched Terminal and typed in:

sudo pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de

then

sudo pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com

and then

sudo pear install phpunit/PHPUnit

My BMW key fob has had an issue for years where the middle button wouldn't lock the car, and as a result the immobiliser wouldn't initialise.

After a quick search on Friday, I couldn't confirm that the key fob could be opened. Today, I took to it with a stanley knife and prized it open and fixed the offending button. A small metal cage had come loose and a flexible piece of metal had made its way to somewhere else in the fob!

Now that everything was back to where it should be, and had to superglue the two parts back together.

If you need to repair or replace the battery, don't be afraid. Attack with a knife, as carefully as possible and you'll be ok. Superglue or the equivalent is necessary to get it back together, but not as hard as I thought it might be!

As part of the Nike+PHP project, I wanted to display the download count for the project. Mainly as a badge of pride, but also as a tool I can use to gauge the popularity of the project.

Google don't offer anything like this on their own site, let alone as a widget, so I launched gCount this week.

Entering your Google Code project name will return a total download count and some JavaScript you can pop onto your website that will display the same count.

I'll post updates to [http://twitter.com/cchana]twitter[/url] if I make any enhancements and maybe even promote projects using the service!

While the code itself still sits over on Google Code, Nike+PHP's support site now has a new look!

I've moved it onto a Wordpress platform which makes administration and updating the site easier.

Version 1 or Nike+PHP has been out for a while and earlier this month I released v1.2.1.

The code has been downloaded over 100 times and I'm extremely proud of that fact! I would love to see how people are using the code, so please add to the Examples page on the wiki.

I also changed the branding for the project a little bit, but need time to work on the site, something I might do in March. The site is a little bright, something I wanted it to be, but I'll be toning it down a bit in the next refresh.

The old logo was dark, plain and, well, just boring!



The new one is lighter, has a bit of depth and contains the Nike logo (hope I don't get into any trouble for that!).

Possibly the best way of pronouncing the new year, 20:10 has already begun and I've already made more changes to http://charanj.it!

My portfolio site now has a slightly better layout, more functionality for the portfolio showcase and more key terms and information about me, as a developer.

I'm looking to improve the twitter situation, because not all my tweets are really suitable for my portfolio site, but I'll decide what to do with that a bit later!

As the world waves it's goodbye to the year that was 2009, I thought I'd write a quick post on how the year went for me.

I got married and achieved a lot of other personal milestones this year.

I got to see Hawaii and an active volcano. Got to see Anfield and sit in the Kop. I got to see Francesco Totti play for Roma at the Olympico while taking my wife around a city I love.

The year has had a few downs, but many many ups and I can't wait for the new year to start. Happy New Year all! :)

It's possible to make text looked blurred using just CSS3. See the examples below, just hover over the first bit of text to see the possibility of using blurred text as a hover state.

Some blurred text

Some blurred text

Example:

HTML:

<h1 class="blurred">Blurred text</h1>

CSS:

h1.blurred {
	color: #FFF;
}
h1.blurred:hover {
	cursor: pointer;
	color: #666!important;
	text-shadow: 0 0 5px #444;
}

The colours need to be selected carefully, as the shadows are often a bit lighter than the foreground text colour. Shadow size also plays a role. 5px seems to be effective, but 10px can wash the colour out.

To apply the effect to a block element, you'll need to use the box-shadow property instead of the text-shadow property, but otherwise it's the the same.

For more effects, you could apply opacity to make the text a little see through and see how that works out!

If you find this useful, please check out my portfolio site.