Paul Jenkins

As a website designer/developer most of the pictures I use are from stock photo websites/albums/CDs. Sometimes I’m needed to take a picture for a client, on occasions I have used a professional photographer to do some of the more demanding shots in the past. But I have been learning the past few months how to do them myself, so here is a quick guide of how to take good pictures if you are a web designer. (more…)

Just got back from holiday and we we’re getting DoS attacked on a geo-location project of mine www.iplocatethis.com. Getting over a million and a half hits on the /location.php?ip=127.0.0.1 (But lots of unique IP addresses) which returns XML co-ords and a brief location description, town, country etc. Got in touch with the offending IP’s owner and it turns out to be Microsoft’s Live Search. (more…)

I have just upgraded to Vista Business on my Sony Vaio VGN-C1S and had a few problems installing all the updates. I managed to update everything quite easily but took a day or two finding the right updates as Sony are terrible.

I have put together a Zip file that can be downloaded and easily installed that contains all the drivers, software and updates that can be installed in order to get the brightness working on your Sony Vaio laptop with Microsoft Windows Vista installed. (more…)

I have always wondered how some websites calculate distance between post codes. A new project came along which needed to calculate the distance between 2 post codes.

The solution is basically a database or CSV of post codes, each record will contain the first part of the postcode and the latitude and longitude. What you will need is the SQL file or the CSV file and a bit of old school mathematics. I have also included the county or area in both SQL and CSV, you will not need these, but I have included them anyway as they might help you. (more…)

How to make a transparent flash video using Adobe After Effects 7.0 Pro and Flash 8.

I have seen quite a few flash videos around the internet, but trying to create a transparent flash video for a website proved tricky with not having any experience with video before. I tried a few products out there but i found the most advanced but still easy to use was Adobe After Effects 7.0 Pro + Macromedia Flash 8. There was an option available to export straight to FLV (Flash Video) in After Effects. (more…)

Got the new blog software installed now, all seems to work fine :)