ThingyMaJig

Thingy Ma Jig is the blog of Nicholas Thompson and contains any useful tips, sites and general blog-stuff which are considered interesting or handy!

Connect

LinkedIn GitHub

Topics

announcement 25 apache 3 Apple 1 bash 8 code 7 cool 30 Days Out 8 Dark Basic Pro 4 design 12 doctor who 1 Drupal 74 E4600 1 EOS 400D 3 firefox 2 Flickr 3 free 21 games 5 geek 38 git 2 GreaseMonkey 1 hardware 7 Homebrew 1 How to 37 humour 5 iphone 1 javascript 1 jquery 1 K800i 6 k850i 4 lighttpd 3 linux 33 mac 9 miscellaneous 4 mobile phone 9 music 4 mysql 8 n73 1 n95 1 New Relic 1 Ogre3D 1 OS X 2 performance 3 photos 10 programming 40 Quicksilver 1 review 19 security 3 SEO 6 software 12 svn 2 technology 4 tip 7 tips 10 tv 3 video 3 vim 7 webdev 2 websites 33 wii 1 windows 1 YADS 10

review

Every now and again I like to review things like pubs, games, hardware/software and websites.

Drupal and SEO: A comparison

04 February 2008
SEO review geek Drupal

I've recently been noticing a trend in how other websites are handling Clean URLs and it isn't good! Most websites don't appear to have the same luxury we have with Drupal (a concrete URL Alias system provided by the Path module). Although the URL Aliases can sometimes be a bit of a burden on larger sites, as the table can easily enter the tens or evey hundreds of thousands of entries, it provides (if used correctly) a very effective 1:1 relationship.

My Sony Ericsson k850i

23 October 2007
review mobile phone k850i K800i

Well it arrived last week and so far I've been nothing but impressed - 10/10!

I've also fairly recently moved home and thus my old commute to Canon Street is no more! I now (if I walk) get to go past tourist attractions such as St Pauls, Blackfriars Bridge and down towards Waterloo (where the internationally famous London Eye stands tall). During this walk I took some photos with my 'old' k800i and was reasonably impressed with them (factoring in that it is primarily a phone). After getting my new k850i I decided to walk the route again and take some more shots - a like-for-like comparison!

Canon EOS 400D : Nikon E4600 : Sony Ericsson K800i

12 June 2007
technology review photos mobile phone K800i Flickr EOS 400D E4600

I bought my girlfriend a Canon EOS 400D a few months back and I'm impressed with every photo that comes out of it - but I recently wondered if that was just because I KNEW it was a good camera. How good is it really? I mean, my Sony Ericsson K800i has a FANTASTIC camera on it (considering its a phone) and the Nikon E4600 I have (and my girlfriend had before her 'upgrade') took great photo's considering its price and it was VERY rugged. How could I test this... So I took all 3 camera's out and took 2 sets of photo's with each camera. Guess who won?

Girlfriend + Camera = playing with fire!

07 May 2007
review photos Flickr EOS 400D cool

After my girlfriend started showing an interest in photography I decided to buy her a new camera as a surprise. I chose the Canon EOS 400D and she has had it for almost 3 weeks now and already she has come up with some STUNNING photo's.

Her first shots with it were wildlife and nature based…

The Woodman

11 February 2007
review Days Out

This evening I went out to a pub called The Woodman in Ide Hill with my Uncle and his friend. Its been a while since I've been out to a nice pub and this one certainly is a nice pub!

You can see from the photo (click to enlarge) that the interior makes for a very warm and inviting environment. The staff are friendly and polite. There is a wide variety of drinks and the ale selection is, although limited to 3 pumps, good quality. They were serving Old Speckled Hen, Bombardier & Youngs Special.

YAFC as an FTP Client

02 February 2007
review linux How to

Firstly - YAFC? "What on earth is YAFC?" I hear you say. YAFC is a command line FTP tool which, unfortunately, only comes in source code which means you need to know how to compile it. Fortunately, compiling it is easy - it required very few dependencies and most of those I could install using yum on my linux box (Redhat Fedora).

1000 Damn good icons!

17 January 2007
websites review free design cool

I have a never ending quest to find good free stuff. Finding free stuff is easy - its the GOOD bit that stumps me…

Often I dont even mind paying for something if its quality, but obviously free is better!

Quality Icons are something I am always on the lookout for and I have been a member of Icon Buffet for a long time now — I'm a big fan of the free deliveries — and, although I've purchased a few packs (Oslo, Oslo Buzz and Soho), they are very expensive for a "bedroom programmer" such as myself.

WinTV Nova-T Stick Review

31 December 2006
tv review hardware

Christmas is over and, as usual, I think of a really good present to ask for too late… But I don't mind if I give myself a late present ;-)

I used to use an old WinTV Theatre PCI Card but I watched so little telly that I decided to remove it and use the space for making the computer lighter. My new toy is USB (2.0). It means I can also use it on my Mac Book Pro (once I get it back from Apple - they're still repairing my broken hard disk!).

Mac Book Pro Hard Disk Failure

30 December 2006
review mac hardware

A sad day for me… My prized Mac Book Pro just died only 6 weeks after arriving. I powered it up the day after boxing day to hear the lovely noise a Mac makes when you power it up… Followed by a rather unusual noise… A noise I've heard before… A noise that brought back memories of data loss… anger… and regret that I hadn't backed up…