One of the downsides of working in Central Hawke's Bay is that internet access has been slower than other parts of the country. We still had dial up only long after most of the country had moved to ADSL. It was quite a relief when ADSL was introduced. It actually made it possible for us to change the way we ran our business and move towards doing more online.
We are in the process of replacing our main server at the moment. We have decided to make the move to a virtualised system built on the free version of VMWare's hypervisor, ESXi 5.0. There are a number of reasons we are making this move but one of the main reasons is separation of function.
CLAD Services has been working with the E.C. Read'N Committee to develop a website for their annual reading programmes. EC Read'N run four programmes each year designed to draw children and young people into reading and libraries. They required a website to provide some basic information about the programmes and to provide an area where librarians can access materials and resources for promoting the programmes in their areas.
There is a lot of discussion on the web about whether to use a contact form or provide an email address on your website. I usually lean towards forms but currently have only an email address on our contact page. During our CMS upgrade our forms module broke and none of our forms (Certificate in Business Ownership Interest, Online CPD Contact, and Your Business Question) worked. I had to remove the forms and replace them with email addresses until I had time to fix the module.
I have just upgraded this site to the latest version of Silverstripe. I also upgraded to the latest versions of the various modules we use. The blog module is a lot better than it was as it now uses the tinymce editor which means you have full access to the usual editing facilities - no more entering tedious blog code like [url=http://blah.blah.com] Go here [/url]. This is a big plus.
I recently upgraded my mobile phone from a Nokia E75 to a Samsung Galaxy S (or Samsung i9000t) running the Android operating system. The E75 was a good phone but it was getting a little rundown in some ways and I was having increasing difficulty in staying online with it as I have been using it as a modem for my laptops. I decided that I wanted an android phone as I am very comfortable with Linux and wanted an operating system that I could bend to my own needs rather than what the phone vendor thought I needed.
I have a lot of technical manuals and other reading material which I refer to fairly frequently. A year or so ago I abandoned buying paper versions of them and instead bought PDF copies of the books. However I found that flicking between different application screens while working was more than a bit annoying and so made the decision to purchase an e-reader. I decided to buy a Sony PRS-650 as a person I work with had tested every available e-reader and had decided this model was the best.
We had a powerful thunderstorm pass over today. As it looked like it was going to pass directly overhead I powered down our entire computer system and disconnected them from wall sockets, power sockets etc. - phones, desktops, laptops, servers and so on.
One of the websites we host is for Sanctuary Sounds. Sanctuary Sounds is a Hawke's Bay based music initiative which holds music workshops, festivals and alternative events in Central Hawke's Bay. They have announced their next event, a music festival themed "Into The Atmosphere". You can find out more information about Sanctuary Sounds and Into The Atmosphere on their website: Sanctuary Sounds: Music Festivals and Other Events.
One of our clients, the New Zealand Institute of Dental Technologists, has just launched its new website. CLAD Services was commissioned to redesign their website to give it a fresh look, new functionality and better management.