Charanjit Chana

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! :)

I haven't had the time to work on receeve.it properly for a few weeks, but I am looking to release the following things in the near future:

1. Nike+PHP v0.9.1
2. A mobile poker site (trying some revenue ideas out)
3. Migrating the odd blog post from the old Be Unequaled blog

As you may be aware, Be Unequaled is no longer around as a fashion site, but will return in the future in a different form. I feel that the blog had some decent content so I'll be migrating that over bit by bit to this blog.

Simply type each letter of the alphabet, one at a time and see what URL comes up in your address bar. Post them up and you're taking part in the game!

a: http://angela.sky.com
b: http://www.bbc.co.uk/football
c: http://charanj.it
d: http://digg.com
e: http://expedia.co.uk
f: http://flickr.com
g: http://gmail.com
h: http://hotukdeals.com
i: http://icanhascheezburger.com
j: http://jonquirk.com
k: http://karmaloop.com/index.asp?rcode=CA7004
l: http://liverpoolfc.tv
m: http://maps.google.com
n: http://news.bbc.co.uk
o: http://odeon.co.uk
p: http://picasaweb.google.com
q: //
r: http://reader.google.com
s: http://www.skyarts.co.uk
t: http://twitter.com
u: http://upnextinsports.com
v: http://validator.w3.org/check
w: http://wave.google.com
x: //
y: http://youtube.com
z: //

I took these results from Chrome at work, so the first result was often a well used search term!

So I am a lover of Nike+ and have had a Nike+ stat widget on the side of my blog for quite a while now. The project can be found at http://nikeplusphp.org.

It came to my attention that the method used wasn't the easiest and certainly wasn't up to date. Looks like something changed on Nike's end and that has broken the API I was using.

Looking around for an alternative, I was inspired to build my own class and am now firmly at version 0.7 with it. I've created a small website for the project where you can grab the code and there's some documentation to help you get started.

The project is called Nike+PHP and all you need is a Nike+ account, PHP5 and SimpleXML installed.

[ read more... ]

So my wedding is less than a week away! Keep an eye on my Flickr wedding set over the coming weeks and I hope to post up videos from both the wedding and our honeymoon too.

I've been uploading some photos throughout the day here at FOWD. Take a look at the slideshow below, or check out my Flickr set.

As we speak only photos I could Bluetooth to my phone have been added, will upload some more from my More photos added from my minimo later!

Over the weekend I ordered the Toshiba Camelio H29 camera and it arrived yesterday. The quality is great in good light and not so amazing in low light, but at £165 I don't really expect a HD camera with every bell and whistle.

It is a little dissapointing that it wasn't slightly better, but it's small, plastic and full HD so there's not much to complain about!

Check out my YouTube playlist which I'll update with more HD content soon!

Tomorrow is the Future Of Web Design conference and I really can't wait to go!

There are a few topics I'll be really interested in and I am looking forward to learning lots more about the industry and where things are headed.

I'm still debating, but I think I'll be taking my laptop. All I'll be doing is taking notes, but I'll have my iPod and hopefully there'll be wifi so I'll be able to check in on emails too!

I've been looking for a decent HD camcorder since January after seeing a number of offerings from both Toshiba and Samsung. Samsung's DMX-R10 looked like it was going to win the battle, but with a US release date for early May, I have yet to see a European date and that pushes me too close to the honeymoon to allow me to wait for it.

My next choice, up until this morning, was the Toshiba Camileo P30 which is a small form, full HD (1080p) pistol grip camcorder that was well priced for it's feature set. However, some reviews have put me off and I am now looking at the Toshiba H20 instead. A more traditional looking camcorder that has a similar ability, but the following example on YouTube has really put this at the top of my list.

If possible, please watch these videos in HD!

(Toshiba Camileo H20)

After a bit more research, the P30 wasn't far behind, but the quality difference is enough to make me stump up the extra cash:

(Toshiba Camileo P30)

Not sure when I'll be getting either as I have to sort some finances out, but hopefully I'll be posting some test footage soon!