About

About Me

Let’s see. I’m 17 and am just about to do the HSC. I live in Sydney, Australia and am situated near Sydney CBD. Currently I am studying the following subjects (although not for much longer) at sacs:

• Maths
• English
• Physics
• Software Design & Development
• Business Studies
• Information Technology Framework
• Cisco CCNA

My current hobbies include web design and development, although I am mainly focusing on the back end stuff. So Apache, PHP, Mysql. I enjoy bike riding and swimming. Luncheons and movies with friends always goes down well.

I’m also pretty good with computer hardware and networking, although I no longer find it as interesting as coding. Although there is still more things I can learn.

My aim is to go to uni and study computer science and also have some kind of web development job on the side. Currently I do some work for base10solutions. I’m looking forward to spending more time on this as the HSC comes to an end.

About This Site

This site is my personal blog (web log) site. I’ve always had some form of news on my websites, but finally I got around to setting up a blog. So everything here is about me, mwmwhahaha :p As my interests are based around techie stuff that is what you’re likely to find here.

This site is hand coded by myself. It started as a basic news system and has grown into a fairly funky little blog script. This site relies on the following technologies:

• Apache (A PAtCHy)
• mod_rewrite (part of apache)
• PHP
• Mysql

I coded this site in Dream Weaver MX (version 6). I like Dream Weaver as it does syntax highlighting AND also allows for different website profiles. So I also have setup the profile of other websites I work on (ftp access, testing server location etc). It makes it easier to do an update on a static website.
Lately I’ve been moving over to fully PHP dynamically driven websites. So really I just use it for the syntax highlighting.

This site also focuses on accessibility. I have a few different CSS files: One for printing, one for handheld devices and one for normal access. The site is also XHTML 1.1 Valid, funky.

About The Server Setup

This website (along with a few others) is running off my home adsl connection. One day I shall move to something better but considering my website is in a perpetual state of tweaking it is easier to have it hosted locally. Plus the uptime isn’t *too* bad.

The server is a Pentium 4 2.4GHz (533MHz FSB version), with 512mb DDR333 Ram, a 20gb HDD and 6gb HDD. I choose to use Windows 2003, Apache 2.x (currently 2.0.52), PHP 4.3.x (currently 4.3.9), Mysql 4.x (currently 4.0.20) and Kerio Mail Server 6.x (currently 6.0.2). The server is *very* stable and I’ve never had any issues with it.

I use Smoothwall on a Pentium 2 333MHz with 128mb Ram. This handles all routing and firewalling. I’ve had some issues with it, although everything has been hacked and fixed.

I also have a development server which runs pretty much the same software as the production server except it has PHP 5. It is a Dual Pentium 3 650MHz with 640mb Ram. One day it may become a dedicated Mysql database server.

I also happily run a few of my friend’s websites. Some of which are really good and outstrip this site in terms of graphical prowess. I’d like a nice server with more bandwidth as I am currently unable to provide hosting to other friends who have asked.

The Future

After the HSC I hope to write a blog script that I can release to the public. Not that there is really any need for one. Wordpress is a pretty good blogging tool and I am actively looking for bugs and patching them.

My blog script would focus on speed and usability over things such as features. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and playing with code to hopefully start development soon.

A list of possible features can be found here.

I am going to need help with this one. So I maybe on the lookout for coders at some stage.

If you have the urge to know more
More to come….maybe.