Need a tagline!!!
MentalReality is the place where I, Joe Turner, get to rant & rave about all things web. You will also notice some general posts about anything else I take a fancy to, mainly Apple products, cars, and any other cool or geeky stuff.
Now a little about me. I graduated from Aston University in Summer 2005, and since then have
been working commercially in the Web industry. I currently work for top 50 advertising agency
WAA, where I get to work with many household name brands.
My main strengths are PHP5, XHTML, CSS & Javascript, although I also dabble with
Ruby on Rails in my spare time. I also follow Javascript
frameworks such as Script aculous, Moo-Tools
and more recently JQuery.
I have been involved with open-source project PHP-WAX for around 2 years, which is a lightweight PHP5 framework, which allows for development of websites in record time by taking care of all the mundane tasks for you. To go with this is a CMS (Content Management System) plugin called WildFire CMS. This coupled with the PHP-WAX PHP framework allows developers to concentrate on the the finer details of web development.
After much nagging at the management we finally managed to bag a set of new iMacs for the developer team at WAA. Previously we had all been working on a selection of relic machines such as G4 & G5 Towers, and even a G4 iMac (the robot arm style one), so these new machines were very welcome. Since they arrived we have been amazed by the amount of extra space we have on our desks let alone the shear power of the actual machine.
On November 9th 2007 came the official release in the UK of the Apple iPhone. Here in Birmingham the place most people would be heading was the Apple shop in The Bullring. Due to working till 5pm on the day, and the launch of the iPhone at 6pm I had no time to get into Birmingham City Centre to get towards the front of the queues, so I amde the decision to stay in Sutton Coldfield and visit my more local O2 shop.
After many years of attending car shows and spending obscene amounts of money on bodywork, wheels and cleaning products, my partner has finally got her VW Lupo GTi featured in Performance VW. The Group shoot was to show the VW scene how the Lupo is just as popular as the Golfs of this world. I will get scans of the article online ASAP!.
On Monday Apple released details of the last quarters sales. Profits rose 66% to $904 million, which equates to £1. 01 per diluted share, based on sales of $6. 22 billion for the three month period ending September 29th 2007. Steve Jobs said: Apple shipped 2,164,000 computere representing 34% growth on the same quarter last year. The Company sold 10,200,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 17 percent growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone sales were 1,119,000, bringing cumulative fiscal 2007 sales to 1,389,000.
I recently completed a project for a family member who has a holiday let in France, but didn't have a website to advertise it. A basic idea was given to me before starting on what it needed to do, after which a design was drawn up by a talented designer friend, which was quickly approved. From here, I set about building up a skeleton using the fantastic PHP-WAX framework. The CSS & HTML proved a nice challenge with the quite unique layout of the pages.
WAA recently commissioned a new website for a product coming to the world of gardeners. The Aquapod is an automated irrigation system that is designed to be extendable as your garden grows. hozelock-aquapod. com was developed using the PHP-WAX framework and is also taking advantage of Wildfire CMS for administrative purposes. The site uses Google Maps for showing location of users' reviews and also is also used to give an effective illustration of places to buy the Aquapod.
