The End of MAX POWER Magazine.

November 12th, 2010

Streetrace wins outstanding contribution to the scene awardI received an official email today at 3:28 pm that Max Power magazine was no more.

Suspended by its publisher Bauer media this sees the end of a much loved yet ever changing era for all modified car enthusiasts.

Working  in the scene at VIBE audio and being involved for over ten years this came as a shock, but not an unexpected one. In fact it is what I predicted 8 months ago (almost to the day) in my blog post ‘Fall of the Magazine’ . The ‘unnamed’ magazine mentioned in the article bares no second guessing.

Most car enthusiasts like myself  have grown up alongside Max Power since it first hit the shelves in 1994. I personally have fond memories of bright yellow Max Power stickers on my wardrobe door and always the mag I’d buy at the airport when heading on holiday. All up until my driving days in 1998 and then further influencing my creation of the UK’s first (and now biggest) modified car club. A club that ran for over ten years spawning many other car clubs that followed, and still ran today handed down by myself to the next generation of motoring enthusiasts. Since the clubs creation it too has grown alongside the magazine, with countless features from winning ‘best car club’ back in 2003 up until this very year where max power awarded the club ‘most outstanding contribution to the scene’.

The reason of its demise could be put on many things, personally I think its a mix of what I predicted in my aforementioned blog article, on top of the mags recent fascination with ‘candy floss rich kids’ cars, that the majority of motoring enthusiasts dont care (for apart from the small division of ‘clicks’) mixed with the crack down on motoring from the police and government, increase of fuel and road tax prices and the ability for the public to post news instantly on the net, often before the magazines have even got wind. There is no doubt times are changing.

The question now is what does this hold for its competitors, as without competition it can either mean great gain, or great loss. The closest competitor FAST CAR have recently been more switched on with what the public want (rather than the small clicks) on top of having a higher reading percentage.. but im sure changes and discussions will be taking place as we speak. I am a good friend with their team through my job (who im sure are reading this now after remarking on my last blog 8 months ago lol.. hey guys) as I was with the Max Power team too.

The official announcement was signed off with the following

‘It is our intention to keep the Max Power brand alive in the future with a series of “one shots” and special issues and some possible exciting new adventures.  Keep your eyes peeled for future new projects and we will endeavour to keep you updated with all the latest news from the Max Power brand.’

So who’s to say its not the end of the end, and going from the last meeting we had with the guys I can see a more mobile / net based media coming from it. Although it will never be the same.

So here’s to all those past and present who have grown up with the timeless magazine as I have, the print may not be on paper.. but it’s legend will certainly live on.

Association of Web Design Professionals

October 20th, 2010

I am currently helping beta test an innovative new scheme aimed and building a network of web design professionals.

The ‘Association of Web Design Professionals’ headed by Rob Cullen is set to bring together a community and database of web developers, freelancers, agencies around the world to join and expand their web presence.

I am hoping this will become a place to help combat all the web cowboys out there and bring true web designers and developers together.

First beta launch coming soon, keep checking back at  http://www.awdp.org/

Webfusion suppport.. promises of a better future

October 20th, 2010

Well after the despondency we had with the hosting provider web fusion during the past week.. (see previous post) we have finally, and thankfully received a glimmer of customer service in the form of a direct phone call from their Manager Craig Ingham.

Craig has apologised directly for the level of service we received and has assured me there is currently a customer service  shake up taking place within the company. They are reviewing and altering their customer service process alongside other various improvements. On top of this they are apparently restructuring the VPS team and engineers (of whom our issue was directly with).

This is a promising start towards the only downfall we have had with an otherwise reliable company. As is a common theme on the net (and life) the public often only discuss their issues and problems, yet when they receive a a good level of service they smile, carry on, and feel no need to blog about it.  I rarely will post bad reviews at any first hurdle.. yet this time it felt enough was enough. This said it appears web-fusion have also realised a peak of customer service issues and are now acting upon this.

So in light off the fact they are aware of an issue (the first step towards any reformation) I personally look forward to seeing an improved level of service and we will be continuing our services with them for the foreseeable future.

I am also grateful for the first ‘customer friendly’ approach I have felt in the entire time of working with them. This is certainly a start! Only time will tell.

Webfusion.. worst level of support I have ever come across!

October 19th, 2010

The company I work for has a virtual private server with webfusion.. Friday the 15th October every single website we have went down, and this is what followed.

I cannot be bothered to type our paragraphs of the exact arrogance and stupidity of their support staff and engineers.. so I have summarised it below in bullet points of events, but rest assured throughout each person spoken to has been useless and have been on hold for up to 20 minutes at a time.

Log of phone calls and contact throughout this entire time support ticket was being continuously updated by myself, and rarely by webfusion.

Day 1 – Friday :

- Check out control panel and see apache is not running, unable to restart.. notice engineers have done an update at 1am

- Call up and told to restart the container (which we have already tried) told that they will restart the server so to try again in 10 minutes

- 10 minutes later login to see that they have also just simply restarted the container (not the entire server) nothing changed

- Call back and told there appears to be some corruption on the system files (following their update!) after explaining am told that it will be passed to engineers to fix.

- Call back 2 hours later.. told engineers still working on it, login to plesk and logs show that it has not even been accessed

- 2 hours later, call back and told the same thing again and that it will be back up by the weekend. Login at 5pm and see that still no access from engineers in the logs

Day 2 – Saturday :

- Called up.. was assured engineers were working on the issue as we speak

- Called up again and told the same

Day 3 – Sunday :

- Called up.. told engineers working on it again (even though a few months ago we were informed engineers do not work at weekends?)

Day 4 – Monday :

- Called up and told engineers have got to reset the entire server as it cannot be fixed any other way.. and that we will have to re-upload all files and backup databases, told them this was implausible as it was them that caused the problem and they need to fix it.. informed they would do.

- called again and told engineers were working on it, asked them to send a copy of our terms of contract to my email address and promised this would be done

- Called again and told that there was no way around it and that a reset is the only way to fix it.. again asked for the terms of contract, and again promised it would be sent now

- Went with this decision to reset the server out of the sense of urgency but asked them to make sure they back up ALL web files and databases, told them we could get in to files ok to backup, but not into databases so we was unable to backup databases. Was told they would do this and would also backup the files for us too and put them both in /old folder when it was done. This was all re-iterated in the support ticket.

- Had previously asked for this to be done by 2pm, rang up at 2pm and was told they were doing it now..

- rang up at 3pm and told they were doing it, once again asked for the contract to be sent and this time told it was not possible and just told to get it off the T’s & C’s on the website.. asked to speak to a manager and told there was non available.

- rang up at 4pm and told they were working on it

- rang up at 5pm and told it would be done by morning (5 hours to move some folders and backup database??)

Day 5 – Tuesday

- Logged in and noticed that server had been reset at last, (but unable to login as had a new password) although we had not been informed that this had been done! Only by chance we noticed for our self.

- Rang up to get password and also asked why we had not been informed.. told that it was not done until 5.30 last night and engineers hadn’t updated ticket to inform us

- Logged in and found that NONE of our website files had been backed up into the /old folder as requested.. although the databases had been.

- Rang up to ask why they hadn’t done this as promised, put on hold for 15 minutes then told to read the update on the ticket (which had just been updated) this was just a paragraph of complete fabrication with over explained simple terms about them being unable to get into the www folders due to them being corrupt, we know this was a lie as we could see them ourselves before they did the reset.

The new server after being reset is also missing a second IP address that we had before, and they had not even bothered to fill out the few fields after resetting to enter the domain name and default IP.

5 days later we are now left to upload ALL our files again from our own personal backups (taking twice as long) reset all domains back up and upload databases accordingly due to their error in the first place.

A simple Google search for webfusion support also finds similar results to mine! On the good side at least I have a case study now when talking to clients about the importance of customer service!

UPDATE : Received a phone call from customer services management with apology and promises of a better future.. see here

Banksy iPad graphic

October 7th, 2010

Made a funk Banksy decal for my iPad today :)




New Theory of Fraternization – Where electrons go.

October 1st, 2010

Let me just start off by saying, I’m not a physicist. Although I do follow and practice theoretical physics in my own time on a basic level. I do follow science papers and new scientist, but I am not up to date with the latest papers released so bare with me.

Much like Einstein in his early years, I have the ideas.. just not capable of working out the math to back it up.

I am currently seeking a physics mathematician to help me out with this. If you think you can help… contact me –>

Prologue

Starting with the basics, its know electrons move in a wave pattern, jumping in and out of what we perceive as reality. We don’t know where they go when they disappear, only that they reappear again thus creating the ‘wave like’ pattern. Proven in the double slit experiment.

The key point to hold in mind here is (as ever is the interesting point of the double slit experiment) that when observed rather than behaving in a wave pattern they go back to behaving regular, how we would expect. The simple act of observing changes how the electrons behave.

As we know things don’t just tend to disappear to nowhere, energy cannot be destroyed and everything must go somewhere, hence why so far this has supported the theory of multiple universes and other such theory’s. Also causing some physicists to suggest we create our own reality. So nothing ‘exists’ until we look at it thus then when we turn away it turns back into wave of possibilities.

My theory is a simple one, and at first probably seems nonsense until delving deeper.

The Theory of fraternization

This theory states that when the electrons disappear they do not move to an alternate reality, or simply ‘disappear’, nor do they travel to any form of parallel universe (in fact I set about to disprove multiple universes entirely). The electrons simply move to another lifeforms reality. A life form being a specific individual, plant, animal or any living energy. The reality from ones life has then a direct effect an an-others reality, thus an electron moves between all ‘individuals’ realities respectively.

We already know the results of the ‘butterfly effect’ when our realities react with each other it has an ongoing effect. When measuring a process such as this in practical physics it can be a laborious task but easily proven… for example a guys wife leaves him in the morning, he’s in a bad mood at work at the bank and doesn’t offer a loan to someone, their life is changed as a consequence and so on and so on.

But could this effect take place behind the scenes? For example… unknowingly step on an ant and its reality is suddenly changed and so is every other ants life that it would have met that day having a knock on effect to the whole colony, be it an important effect or not. Meanwhile you are blissfully unaware, how could that be measured? What changes this reality between one life force and another?

What building block forms this reaction of change? This has never been even asked or measured and this is where I propose the electrons movement come in. These are the building blocks of change, every action has a reaction.. electrons are the vehicle of this reaction through time thus creating the illusion of time itself, whether it be from across the room or across the planet, something is being affected by what we do.

Example: A man is sitting on a space station orbiting the earth, whilst back on earth his wife gets hit by a bus. The man doesn’t know it yet but his life HAS changed, the electrons respond to this change, if he’s sensitive he may feel something is wrong. The electrons have already began the domino effect of change throughout all other respective realities.

We’ve all heard the unexplained stories of how twins can communicate and know each others feelings across rooms and even continents, how people can have an unseen bond. The exchange of electrons taking responsibility as the building blocks of reality would explain this, being the mode of transport for not only consequence but feelings.

Now consider the theory of Shrodingers cat.. without looking inside the box we don’t know if the cat is dead or alive, but in the cats reality.. he knows. Replace the cat for a human and the argument of who knows what state the contents are in is answered… the poor bloke in the box! His reality is affected whether we know it or not, and that reality has to have a mode of transport. Electrons

This has enormous consequences in putting us, and life at the forefront of responsibility for creating the reality, but not only that in effecting one an-others. .

So if electrons jump between our reality this must mean they can only jump between the entire scope of realities that the creators of the original reality are aware of… a domino effect on a massive scale. For example if I break a window, electrons are not going to jump between my reality and that of an alien life form on another planet somewhere who has no clue of my existence and nor I of his.

They are held within the boundaries of the knowledge of their creators, although they are expandable and ever growing when they need to be, much like the universe itself. So are we creating the universe? Are there others already aware of this and that we are simply a reaction of their creation of whom we aren’t aware of, but they are of us. Anyway I digress.

The simple and what seems obvious explanation is that we are the creators of our own reality but from our actions and reactions as well as the combined reactions of every life form around us, and the mode of transport for these reactions is the jumping and transportation if electrons between each of our individual realities. Making us as humans one singular combined life force. Working together, much like all the bacteria, protein and living cells in our body to make us.. we are doing the same to make the world

It is also with noting how this can tie in with other recent popular theories such as noetics and the intention experiment. All of which could be calculated by this theory (or not calculated as the case may be given the calculations to workout an unseen butterfly effect would be enormous).

This would also explain why random event generators surge on the brink of something big happening, as if all the humans and life in the world are predicting it? Not predicting it… creating it! How group medication can change a cities crime rate. Not change… but create!

The effects of change from an electron leap would be instant, and I mean instant… the exact same time in two different places, not bound by time itself.

Therefore this even has implications on time itself. If time is said not to be real, then how do we live through it and be bound by it day in day out. Again it is created by us, the knock on effect of election leaps and time being the very track along which these ‘vehicles of change’ travel. This may be one of the biggest implications of this theory of all, creating time and relativity itself as the domino’s fall.

As I said, the idea is solid and I have thought into it’s implications as far as can fathom, I just need some little ‘outside of the box’ thinking, and a lot of faith from a physics based mathematician to work on this with me.

Please contact me if you are interested on working the math into this, or may have enlightenment on ideas or theories i have mentioned that may have already been proven or disproved, anything that may help.

Thanks

Quantum biogs

September 19th, 2010

I’ve dedicated a new section of my site to future predictions, sounds a little weird I know.. but if the way I believe things are heading pan out, it may be a nice future reference ;)

So this category of future predictions is really here because of this first post.

The first prediction is that with the advancements of quantum computing, and I mean true quantum computing, or even biological, that it will be possible in the distant future for everything past and present to be precisely mapped, and all appear in the simplest of forms.

Much in the way that google maps now allows us to view over the entire globe and see into peoples back gardens and walk down their street from the other side of the globe. If we had said that to our ancestors a few hundred years ago they would have perceived us as gods.

In the future I believe quantum computing advancements will some day allow us to look back into the past at every single persons life in immaculate detail, especially throughout today’s world and onwards where everything is logged digitally from what we’ve bought at the supermarket, where we’ve been with the gps and every single thing we’ve typed, miss typed and posted on the web even to mapping our exact personalities and feelings with a build up of social interactions and ‘digital psychology’

This will allow people to map us, yes us, and the entire human population precisely. Allowing them to produce a quantum biography on anyone they may of found led an interesting life. No longer will history only remember those who logged their great lives with biased stories, or from what we can build up from ancient scripts and markings. Now every single person throughout time will have an entire bio available through a quick quantum computer search, and were already working on it every day. Every email you send, every text message, every facebook status or tweet!. It’s all building our quantum biography.

This will probably even become a new form of TV or pass time like big brother, delving into the lives a few who have lead a remarkable journey. Or even used in history lessons, making use of mapping everyones biogs together to work on questions like why the recession really happened, or even how we evolve.

Through quantum computing this would be a simple and quick search. Much like google map.

This will be another step forward into what I believe will become a ‘forced’ open and honest world thanks to echoing the web world.

So time will tell, and if someones reading this in my future quantum bio.. hi :) stay positive, and remember where it was wrote first.

Project IRIS (Smart Home) – First stages

September 18th, 2010

Im currently working on a bit of a sideline project I have dubbed as IRIS (inLIFE Reactional Inhabitant System).

IRIS is a Smart Home system built into my house that responds to voice commands, remote commands and other built in macros that can control everything from boiling the kettle at a certain time to dimming the lights to 50% and more. Similar to the smart home ‘SARAH‘ from the popular fiction TV show Eureka.

IRIS will be eventually hidden behind the scenes and pick up voice commands from anywhere in the house, as well as accessibale remotley via the iPAD, iPhone and iPod as remotes also. She can also be accessed via voice command using the iPhone as a wireless remote from the garden.

The video below is a quick guide to the development stages of IRIS so far and beta testing. IRIS is built with a compilation of a number of things including X10 Home Automation Kit, BVC Software, ActiveHomePro Software Dev Kit and Weather aloud. Future enhancements will include the use of Bluetooth detection and recognition.

I will post more video updates as IRIS development progresses. Here is the first sample..

How do these people run a business?

September 6th, 2010

Through my time ive seen certain ‘types’ of people running a business and often thought to myself.. how do these people even get out of bed in the morning, let alone manage to run a business!

Well today I had a text message from one of these people running a business seminar.. yes a BUSINESS SEMINAR (see the text below) it speaks for itself!  My replies are in green.

That last message was just being polite… I mean seriously?.. your running a business seminar and expect people to attend just by simply sending out random text messages with the words ‘Hi interested in a free business opportunity seminar tonight at the village regards James’ ?

.. why yes sir.. I dont know who the hell James is, or where or what ‘the village’ is but you seem to have a business head on you so count me in!

It’s beyond me!

Mmm

August 25th, 2010

Just showing off how to update my blog and upload images from the iPhone.. at a web design meet (in a pub.. always the best place for a meet I think!)