Welcome to Nicky Thomas Media
Welcome, my name is Nicky Thomas and I am a Computing undergraduate studying BSc(hons) Computing and Information Systems. This site (www.NickyThomas.net) acts as a personal portfolio where I am able to demonstrate my knowledge and skills to a range of prospectus employers.
Latest from my Blog
2013 Summer Project
Category: HomeWell last summer I set my own Blog & Content Management System as a summer project while learning PHP/MySQL. It is that time of year again, the last week of University is finally here, 2 programming assignments (Data-Centric Windows Programming & Application Design and Development) both due in on Friday (I should really make a start on them today..) and I want to try something non-web based this year, I have decided to become an Android Developer for the summer and create my old game CSR (Crazy Swansea Roads) in to an Android App and become a multi-millionaire by September (One can be hopeful right?)
(P.S. Wish me luck for this weeks assignments!)
My New Passport
Category: HomeNot exactly my actual passport, but on Friday I had a few issues with my Mac, the internal hard drive got corrupt on a disk repair utility and long story short, I done terrible practice of not making regular back-ups of my work, I normally do manual back-ups every week or so to my Dropbox folder or Memory Stick, luckily with the help of my friend Kash who let be borrow is SATA to USB lead and of course his time, we managed to recovery the data and back it up to my brand new WD 1TB My Passport for Mac External Hard Drive - I have never been a fan of them before, but 1TB is future proof for the next few years for myself, I cannot see myself actually ever needing to buy another one in the next 10 years (Although people have spoken too soon in the past and were proven wrong) but for the price, £70.00 I thought it was a steal and it is pretty compact
It measures at 111mm in Length, 82mm Wide and 15mm thick weighing 0.14kg, so it is pretty lightweight!
DaisyDisk
Category: Home
Facebook Home: A response Zuckerberg & Co was probably not expecting
Category: Home
Facebook Home has been with us for a little
under 24 hours now and already the Internet is filled with critical reviews of
Facebooks new product Home. In the official announcement at the start of the
month they seemingly had everything perfect and created a lot of hype with this
beautiful new cover screen but in reality it is absolutely ugly unless your
friends-list is full of professional photographers.
Not only do posts from friends show up but
annoyingly, page spam also clutter what is supposed to be one of the most
social interfaces to date.
It is not surprising that the Home App has
an average market rating of 2.5 stars with over 900 one-star ratings
The seemingly fluid responsive app which
was demonstrated to us at the press launch has a lot of realistic issues, one
of the most annoying things about this is, the Facebook Home Wrapper makes
using your own applications a lot harder and uglier.
The once beautiful Android UI has been
replaced with a dark iOS style menu and another alternate menu, which cramps
all of the devices apps in to one list.
Some user comments from the Play Store
“No widgets, kinda clunky, and petty much just Facebook with access to your apps drawer. Meh, an unimpressive launcher compared to most others.” - Jeremy Noah
“This app adds nothing that I can't get from the regular
Facebook app AND it takes away everything I already love about my Android phone
and the care I've taken to set it up. Uninstalled.” - Rickie Friedberg
Not everyone is
negative about this new app from Facebook
I'm surprised at how well developed this launcher is! I really
don't understand how it's got such a low rating! Great job Fb team! The only
option I would like to see is the ability to disable double tap to like. - Bryan Edens
Conclusion is,
try it, you’ve got nothing to lose and only you will be able to decide whether
you personally like it or not but personally for me, looking at my phone and
seeing a random friend grinning at me is not for me.
Amazing what is stored on the internet
Category: HomeI honestly completely forgot about this, I created it back in 2007 as a fan-site for the Swans, was just doing some general 'research' on Google and I spotted the link, got my curious.. What other sites of mine have been archived online?
Learn2Code
Category: HomeAt the moment I am currently working on my PHP/MySQL Assignment for University, I am creating a Learning Resource called Learn2Code (L2C) which offers free resources to its members, one of the main aspects of the coding is creating a fully functional Administrator Control Panel as well as a membership system. This is a bit like my Creative Content Management System but this is going to feature some more in-dept detail and membership / site statistics for the Administrators to monitor with a nice front-end design. The site is based upon the Bootstrap Framework.
W3 Web Standards
Category: HomeI am glad to say that I have finally got around to clearing up the coding and the site is now compliant to Web Standards, I have tweaked the homepage slightly as I am still uncertain of the actual structure I want, I am hoping to implement a bit more JavaScript for extra goodness over the coming weeks as I am learning more about it, at this stage my knowledge is pretty basic in it, but thankfully what I am lacking in JS is made up with PHP.
Text Here
previous blog post and it validated perfectly.
Check out my Facebook Portfolio
Category: HomeI will be doing quite a bit of work on the stylesheet over the next few days so the site may become a bit disfigured, why not check out my Facebook Portfolio at www.facebook.com/nickythomas.net
Todays PHP Code
Category: HomeHere is some code from todays lecture...
Samsung Galaxy Note II
Category: HomeSo I decided to take the plunge and break the mould, after 4 years of owning iPhones (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S) I thought it was time for a change, Apple clearly are running out of ideas with the iPhone 5 in my eyes being a total let down to what should of been expected. I have decided to go Android and get a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and so far.. I do not regret it one bit, this device is absolutely amazing.
Start I.T Solutions
Category: Home
Facebook lock out!
Category: Home
A little re-design on Facebook
Category: HomeSo I decided my previous cover photo and display picture for my Facebook page seemed a bit, cheap and unprofessional. Admittedly I am still a Student but as a Student, I still want to give that IT / Web Professional image as this is a field I feel extremely strong about.
A Fantastic First!
Category: HomeTurned out to be a great day, I have had another First :D 70% for my Project Management Assignment, although I did not expect it, it is more than welcome after the Research and Development Group mark which I had.
Nearly there!
Category: CreativeBeen some fantastic progress on the website, I have decided to take a little break over the next week now to focus on some Assignments which are due in the next month, after these have been submitted I shall be making some minor improvements to the coding and then the other pages will begin to be developed in due course.
Assignment Galore
Category: HomeWont be as active over the next month as it seems to be Assignment Galore for all of Feb - got Data-Centric Windows Programming, Application Design and Development, Database Management Systems & Network Services all due over the coming weeks
All back up and running
Category: HomeEverything is finally back up and running and the corresponding domains go back to their original directories apart from metcs.org. I am still awaiting a reply from the new Society President to whether they want to continue using the domain.
Happy New Year
Category: HomeI would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year :) Hope 2013 turns out a great year for you all, the main domain should be online at the end of the week then the Creative-Designs domain will be redirected to the latest CreativeCMS template which I have drawn up, thinking of a few changes to the overall structure of the site, nothing too drastic, keeping with the same colour schemes and such.
Domain
Category: HomeHey guys, the main domain www.nickythomas.net stopped working from yesterday, I have setup some spare domains such as www.metcs.org and www.creative-designs.net to redirect to here instead. I am hoping to get the domain back at the start of the new year, completely forgot about the expiration and didn't keep money spare for the renewal, doh!
Hello Twitter
Category: UpdatesSo after some inspiration from several sites who have Twitter implementation I decided it would be cool to only feature the latest tweet direct from my profile, I have seen this before, I cannot remember what site it was on but I thought it was a good feature to have :)
- <div id="twit-div">
- <div id="twitter_update_list">
- <p> Loading Twitter Feed </p>
- </div>
- </div>
- <script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script>
- <script type="text/javascript" src="http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/NickyThomas.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=1"></script>
Contact form fixed
Category: HomeWoops, didn't realise there was a problem with the contact form.. From the logs I noticed quite a few people have been trying to use it.. And a certain someone (188.143.232.184) has been trying to bruteforce in to my old blog.. Ah some people these days lol
Status Update Script
Category: UpdatesAs you can see, on the side bar I have added a Status Update feed to the blog, this is something I am hopefully going to add to the Profile System later on, but I am posting the code below hopefully someone will be able to improve on it? If you are able to then please let me know how you get on by either using the contact form or by emailing me at director (at) nickythomas.net
- if(isset($_REQUEST['update_status'])) {
- // The database we will be connecting to
- require_once("my-database.php");
- date_default_timezone_set('BST');
- $datetime = date('Y-m-d h:i:s A');
- $username = $_SESSION['user'];
- $status = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['status']);
- $sql="INSERT INTO status (user, date, status)
- VALUES
- ('$user','$datetime','$status')";
- if (!mysql_query($sql,$con))
- {
- die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
- } else {
- echo "Status added";
- }
- mysql_close($con);
- }
- #Check if user is allowed to post
- $level = check_level();
- # Level to be decreased to member in future releases.
- if ($level == "administrator")
- {
- echo '
- <form action="?update_status" method="post">
- <input type="text" align="right" size="40" name="status" />
- <input type="submit" value="Update Status" />
- </form>';
- }
- else {
- # Do nothing
- }
Status Update Script
Category: UpdatesAs you can see, on the side bar I have added a Status Update feed to the blog, this is something I am hopefully going to add to the Profile System later on, but I am posting the code below hopefully someone will be able to improve on it? If you are able to then please let me know how you get on by either using the contact form or by emailing me at director (at) nickythomas.net
- if(isset($_REQUEST['update_status'])) {
- // The database we will be connecting to
- require_once("my-database.php");
- date_default_timezone_set('BST');
- $datetime = date('Y-m-d h:i:s A');
- $username = $_SESSION['user'];
- $status = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['status']);
- $sql="INSERT INTO status (user, date, status)
- VALUES
- ('$user','$datetime','$status')";
- if (!mysql_query($sql,$con))
- {
- die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
- } else {
- echo "Status added";
- }
- mysql_close($con);
- }
- #Check if user is allowed to post
- $level = check_level();
- # Level to be decreased to member in future releases.
- if ($level == "administrator")
- {
- echo '
- <form action="?update_status" method="post">
- <input type="text" align="right" size="40" name="status" />
- <input type="submit" value="Update Status" />
- </form>';
- }
- else {
- # Do nothing
- }
Site Updates
Category: UpdatesI am currently in the process of tweaking the structure of the website and the database, all pages are working fine but there may be some errors when viewing articles from the side bar.
test
Category: Hometest
My Web Archive
Category: HomeFunny to see how my website has developed over the past year - I have also found a load of websites which I have created over the years but for now here is a small selection on how my portfolio has developed over the past year.
I have also found a very old College project
www.nickythomas.net/archive/startek - Was a project for CWT week in College
www.nickythomas.net/archive/v1 - Created in December 2011 for Web Assignment
Version 2
www.nickythomas.net/archive/v2 - Created it in May 2012 to add some more colour
Version 3
www.nickythomas.net - My Current website which I have been developing along side of www.nickythomas.net/society/index2.php using my own Blog and CMS
Goodbye SMUCS
Category: Home
Home Computer Networks
Category: Home
What is required to connect a home computer to the on-line community is an internet connection. The internet requires a modem and possibly a router (depending on how many computers you have at home wanting to connect) all ISPs (Internet Service Providers) provide their own modem once you have signed the contract with them, some even provide wireless routers as standard now.
You can either connect to these via wireless connection or Ethernet cable which is then plugged in directly to the modem/router and the computer as shown in the example below.
Connecting via Ethernet cable is faster than wireless connection as there are so many different signals around the house or office which could interfere with the wireless signal which can make it unreliable causing the signal to drop out and reducing the speeds due to signal strength, other aspects can also cause wireless to fail or be weak such as the type of building you are in, older buildings were not build with consideration to allow wireless signals to transfer through them, they were build big and strong to last and because the walls are thicker wireless signals have trouble trying to get through, the best place for a wireless router is at the highest possible point in the building because wireless can transfer vertical easier as opposed to horizontal.
Here is a diagram showing what a typical household wireless network might look like with several computers, a laptop and tablet computer within the household.
There is no specific software a computer
requires to connect to the internet, all they need is a wireless or Ethernet
capability and their corresponding drivers and a web browser, all systems have
these are standard. If you do not have a wireless card built in to your home
desktop computer the only alternative which you will have is to connect to the
router via Ethernet cable or having to go out and buy a wireless card to
install on the computer manually, then you would be required to install the
software drivers for the chosen wireless card on to the machine. It is now
uncommon for computers to be sold without an Ethernet or wireless card in
modern computers, they usually have them both.
Before the Computers reach the World Wide Web it bypasses the routers own
firewall before leaving the local network, after leaving the network the data
then travels through the world wide web until it finds the destination server,
after it locates which server it needs to go to, it then attempts to bypass the
servers own firewall (for their security) and after it bypasses the firewall it
receives data and follows the same route back to the source (your computer) to
display the result.
Latests news on the SMU Computer Society
Category: HomeSo I have re-designed (slightly) and simplified the SMU Computer Society website for the time being, I will be publishing it towards the end of 2012 when it is more nearer to completion, theres a few issues with the member management system which need debugging and until demand comes in for a larger website, we are keeping the entire thing to a minimal.
Current Project
Category: HomeHappy to say that V2 is nearly finished :O Been putting in loads of work the last few weeks, having a break at the moment but V2 is fully functional on www.metcs.org - theres some teething issues on the new staff portal I have implemented but it is nothing too serious or difficult to fix.
Progress Update
Category: Home
Integrating V2.0
Category: HomeI am slowly integrating CreativeCMS V2.0 in to the website - some features may be visible but not yet functional, this is perfectly normal.
SMU Enrolment 2012/13
Category: Home
Becoming side tracked, it is a terrible thing
Category: HomeI have become a bit side tracked away from developing the portfolio at the moment, I have been doing some work on Creative Designs and developing Creative CMS a bit further.
Little Update
Category: HomeSorry there has not been much of an update lately, I have been working on Creative Designs and a website for my nephew www.HelpEthanExplore.org.uk - also been doing some research and finishing off things in the house. Quite shocking that it is nearly the end of August already! Yesterday was Sherees birthday and also the day which we got engaged :)
The Internet is back!
Category: HomeSo Mr Virgin Media guy was around doing his awesome wiz-technical stuff which put the house back in to the 21st Century, I would like to welcome back Mr TiVo, Mr Internet and Mr House Phone, woohoo!
Quick Update
Category: HomeJust a quick update, I will not be able to do any work on the website over the next week or two, will be getting the keys to our new house tomorrow and will spend the next week or two decorating and then moving in. Hopefully when we get the internet there I will be able to post about any ideas which I have got the for Content Management System.
Site Stamp
Category: HomeI am not the best person when it comes to creating logos, especially for myself there are so many great designs out there which people already use, its difficult to create your own unique stamp online, just had a play about in photoshop for a few minutes and came up with this - it extremely basic until I can get some ideas drawn up to incorporate it to some sort of site logo/banner.
Terms and Conditions outlined
Category: HomeIt had to be done sooner rather than later to protect the content of my site and of course myself
Control Panel Cosmetic tweaks
Category: HomeSo I have been doing some minor tweaking on the control panel, just making it that little bit more user friendly.
What you see is what you get
Category: HomeSo - to save myself time and so I don't get too bored when writing Blog Posts I have opted to install a WYSIWYG Editor called NicEdit
"NicEdit is a Javascript that integrates into any web page easily. It can turns any element/div to become editable or convert standard textareas to rich text editing."
Hopefully in the future when the time calls I will look in to creating my own but at the moment this does the job, it is free to use and it looks smart in the New Blog post screen.
It's brightening up!
Category: HomeNo, I am not on about the British Weather, sorry if I got your hopes up! :P
I have changed the background to a lighter noise effect for now until something can be thought of to go with the colour scheme of the website, but it sort of works with the dark navigation and white section box. I am planning on adding a theme option at the bottom of the pages when I finally have finished them all, its low on my priority list at the moment.
I have not had much of a chance the past few days to do any more work on the website and by the looks of it the next 2-3 weeks might be the same as by next week we will hopefully be in the process of moving to our new house
Mysterious end tag found
Category: HomeAfter failing to find the actual tag within the coding and the fact that the stray end tag was only within one article, I decided to check the MySQL database entry for the content column - and to my surprise, somehow there were 4 stray end tags!
Also I have been doing work on the navigation - for some apparent reason when I was creating it I decided to get lazy with the positioning of links by using the following padding method
padding: 15px 0px 15px 950px;
Basically what it done was add padding to the Top, Bottom and Left 15px from top, 15px from bottom and 950 from left (which pushed it to the right)
The Mysterious End Tag
Category: HomeSo I was validating the updates to the homepage just now because I am attempting to make the CSS & HTML strictly validated - and to my surprise, there were 3 errors, but two of them seem to be mysterious
Line 53, Column 83: No p element in scope but a p end tag seen.
The progress of the new website
Author: Nicky Thomas
So it shows it after the Content, yet only one end tag is there..
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo "
" . $row['Title'] . "
";
echo "Category: " . $row['Tags'] . "
";
echo "Date: " . $dt->format('d M Y') . "";
echo "" . $row['Content'] . "
";
echo "Author: " . $row['Author'] . "
";
echo "
";
}
mysql_close($con); ?>Not sure if I am overlooking something simple, but I am going to be taking a break from some of the development for tonight and will continue with it tomorrow
Some minor tweaks
Category: UpdatesDone a minor tweak in the AdminCP - instead of displaying the full post when clicking on the page I have opted to just display the Title & Author with the options to Edit or Remove the article.
Welcome to CREATIVE Blog V1.0!
Category: UpdatesSo its finished, well sort of, it is still lacking some features which I will add in near future updates but heres how the AdminCP looks! I have not yet added a way of commenting, I am debating whether I should or not.
Login
Dashboard
New Post
Current Posts
Edit Post
Still in early stage, hoping to add a lot more in the future :)
Some more updates
Category: HomeI have finally completed the custom blog page! Check it out now in the navigation, also the AdminCP is nearing completion just doing some fine tweaking and I think it will be ready!
I will attempt to keep this updated with the progress of the new website
Latest News
Category: HomeI have finally given up trying to make V2.0 of CSS3 work around the website so I have started making a website work around CSS3. I am not entirely sure when it will be finished as I am planning on adding some other cool features.
I am hoping to have it up and running again by the next Academic year with the following features
- Properly coded and validated HTML5 and CSS3
- Custom User & Admin portals
- Custom PHP/MySQL Blog
- Better social networking integration
- And more!
I will attempt to keep this updated with the progress of the new website
Social Media
Twitter Feed
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