Seth posted a request for people to send pictures of themselves for the cover of his next book. What a genius idea! So sure enough, I whipped off a headshot. You never know, I might be immortalised in print!
Which begs the question, will I have to buy the book to find out? Is that part [...]
Tag Archives: Callum
I might be on Seth’s book!
Installed a sitemap
I’m on a mission to take the top spot when searching for “Callum”. I’m currently number 2 on Scroogle and number 21 on Yahoo. In my continuing efforts for worldwide Callum domination, I’ve installed the XML Sitemap Plugin. Hopefully this will help these search engines to realise the error of their ways and promote me [...]
Posted in Fun, Techy Also tagged scroogle, seo, WordPress-Plugins, world domination, xml sitemap plugin, yahoo 3 Comments
I finally joined Flickr
Somewhat begrudgingly, I have finally joined flickr. I was delighted to discover that I got the url flickr.com/photos/chmac – my usual username. It’s somewhat confusing, I log into flickr with my yahoo account callum_macdonald then my flickr username is callummacdonald (no underscore) and my url is chmac. Oh well, the chmac part is the important [...]
Good Morning Toronto
This is the view I awoke to this morning…
Nothing like a little snow to make me glad I work from home!
Open source and adding value
There has been an interesting shift in Intellectual Property over the last few years. Particularly, the rise in popularity of open-source software. Companies like MySQL, Zend, RedHat, and others are pioneering a new way of doing business. Their core “product”, the software, is freely available. Not only is the product free to use, but you’re [...]
Risen to Number 2
In a scroogle search for “Callum” I have risen from the mirky depths of around 15 to second place! For the past few weeks I’ve been on a concerted effort to litter the web with my calling card as simply “Callum” instead of my full name. The aim was to increase my exposure to the [...]
Montreal Breakfast
Big thanks to Morgan for an awesome Quebecoise breakfast this morning. Fresh croissants, pastries and other French goodies. I’m loving Canada so far.
Upgrade to 2.3
I successfully upgraded to WordPress 2.3 today. There were one or two glitches to start with, thankfully I had a full backup and was able to restore it quickly. Second time round it went fine. I’m now using WordPress’s own tagging system. Alas my tag cloud is not quite as pretty as it used to [...]
Leaving Do: Sunday 8pm, Dragonfly
I’m leaving Edinburgh next week so having a farewell soiree on Sunday from 8pm at Dragonfly Bar. All welcome.
I’m Going to Montreal
It’s confirmed. The contracts are signed, the flights are booked, I’m going to Montreal. I fly on Monday 8 October. I’ll be working with ReflexCRM on SmartHippo, a social network for financial products.
I’m Sticking with PHP
Thanks to an article by Derek Sivers, I’m sticking with PHP. I’ve dabbled with Ruby on Rails, but in the end, I just can’t be bothered learning a whole new language just because it’s cool and new.
Here’s my favourite quote from the article:
#7 – PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ARE LIKE GIRLFRIENDS: THE NEW ONE IS BETTER BECAUSE [...]
Is the traditional relational database dead?
Just read a fascinating paper on relational databases. Aside from being filled with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) the paper was pretty accessible to the non-expert (me) and thought provoking for anyone interested in the field of databases, scalability, technology evolution, and so on. I’ve read a few interesting articles on High Scalability recently.
Posted in Techy Also tagged H-Store, High-Scalability, RDBMS, Relational-Databases, Technology-Evolution 2 Comments
Ragging on OpenID
Stefan Brands wrote a post slating OpenID and talking about why his company’s proprietary software is unlikely to ever be OpenID compatible. He raises a few valid points amongst the provocative language. Most his arguments are, in my view, either non-issues, untrue (no list of OpenID consumers) or true of any single sign on system.
I [...]
Social Networking Rights
After talking about member rights on CouchSurfing, I was interested to see this article that Dante forwarded about creating a bill of rights for members of the social web. I’m strongly in favour of outlining exactly what rights users of social networks should have. I’m really pleased to see an increasing level of awareness and [...]
Posted in Predictions, Techy Also tagged CouchSurfing, OpenSocialWeb, Social-Networking-Rights Leave a comment
Burn Your Feeds, Burn Your Profits
I’m surprised by the continued success of Feedburner, the popular blog feed stats service. On the one hand, you get a great stats package, offload some traffic from your blog server, and it’s free. However, for those benefits, you give up control of your feed and you give up a share or all of the [...]
Posted in Techy, WordPress Also tagged Feed-Advertising, Feed-Stats, FeedBurner, Google, Google-AdSense, WordPress Leave a comment
WP Mail SMTP v0.3
A few people reported problems with the WP Mail SMTP plugin. I’ve resolved a few bugs and added a new feature that allows you to set the From name and email address of all mail sent by the wp_mail() function. I’ve thoroughly tested this version (unlike previous versions, oops!) and I’ve released it for immediate [...]
Posted in Techy, WordPress Also tagged Callum-Macdonald, Callums-Plugins, WordPress, WordPress-Plugins, WP-Mail-SMTP 1 Comment
WordPress Optimisation
I’ve written an article on WordPress Optimisation on the WordPress Codex (Wiki). It covers the general areas where WordPress performance can be improved. I plan to expand on the work with more detailed discussions of the individual areas.
Posted in Techy, WordPress Also tagged WordPress, WordPress-Codex, WordPress-Optimisation, WordPress-Optimization, WordPress-Wiki Leave a comment
More Time instead of More Cash
What if, instead of giving financial bonuses, a company offered holiday bonuses? If the company increases performance, staff leave 10 minutes earlier each day, or take one half day a month, or get an extra 3 days holiday each year.
I was considering the motivation of offering people more money if they work harder. I think [...]
First Published WordPress Plugin
I just whipped up a very simple little WordPress plugin called WP Mail SMTP. It’s not my first plugin, I’ve created quite a few for clients, but it’s the first one that I’ve published in my own name. It’s already listed on WP-Plugins.net and I’ve submitted it to WordPress.org, how very exciting!
Posted in Techy Also tagged phpmailer, WordPress, WordPress-Plugin, WordPress-Plugins, WP-Mail-SMTP Leave a comment
Review: Fuerzabruta
I went to see Fuerzabruta this evening. It’s a truly awesome show. It’s hard to describe exactly why or what the show is, but it’s definitely spectacular. I believe Fuerza means Force and bruta means Brute, so the literal translation of the name is brute force.
It’s an immensely physical show with some amazing staging, lighting [...]
Posted in Reviews Also tagged EdFringe, Edinburgh-Fringe, Fringe-Reviews, Fuerzabruta, Fuerzabruta-Review Leave a comment
Sophisticated Spam
I received the most sophisticated spam email I’ve seen this weekend. The text of the message was:
Man you have got to tell me where you picked her up. I saw this on the web, it has to be you. see for yourself… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKfyzCIq1ls
Cunning readers will notice that although it looks like a link to a [...]
New Business Cards
I’m considering getting some new business cards printed. They’ll cost about £10 for 100 or £16 for 250. But here’s the all important question, do they look good?
Comments on a postcard…
Affiliate Revenue Sharing
A friend recently told me about rakeback poker sites. When you play poker, you pay a small fee to the casino for the use of the table, this is called a rake. If I introduce you to Poker Website X, they will pay me a percentage of your rake. The latest affiliates offer to share [...]
Posted in Business, Ideas, Techy Also tagged Affiliate, Affiliate-Revenue, Callum-Macdonald, Facebook, MySpace, Rakeback, Revenue-Share 1 Comment
