Well thats the last Bank holiday for 2009, spent doing the lawn, getting annoyed with the rude neighbors and making cider.

So I had little bit more in between but thats the round up. My parents popped in after getting back from holiday Friday to say hello, give us some tasty Belgium choc’s and to receive a great big bag of veg (cucumbers, tomatoes and dwarf beans). As mentioned today I made my cider after going through the various steps and waiting hours for the apple juice, hot water and sugar to cool down so I could add yeast to start my fermentation process. I popped into Ruxley manor to check out the plants and to see if there was any fruit trees me and Gemma could buy. The trees where slightly too expensive! so we are going to buy some online and get them delivered to house instead.

Lastly and the bit I wanted to forget was working on IE6 issues for a work project and then onto my special CodeIgniter extension to create a light weight fast version of CodeIgniter. The plug in is going great and is really working well so far which is great, but, there is always a but in life, I have loads of little features to go which will take ages but the foundation is what I was mainly interested in to be honest.

Well another manic week ahead me thinks……..

Gemma’s proper coffee!

Ok so the punch line is a bit of a tease, I have not fully redeveloped CI, in fact I have not yet finished my lite version of CI. But I am making a lean, redeveloped mini version of the CI framework to allow fast loading in a simple manor. It starts with a few key and simple concept.

1. No classes loaded unless they are core essential classes, trying to keep the loading of core classes to less than 256K or just 5 small classes in total.
2. Each class should be deconstructed after use.
3. Each class should not load every other class and should act independently unless other classes are required for it to function. IE, models will be default extend the MYSQL class but every other class is individual in its own right.
4. The ability to add new custom classes and the newly rebuilt PHP5 classes which I have built. It should be able to work along side existing minified CI classes. Core classes will be added and then users can either use a special call  to load CI classes or minify the classes they require from CI and then chuck them in my lite classes folder.
5. Classes should be small and to the point. If needed they should be broken down into subclasses which extend the parent class. For instance, MYSQL core classes could have SELECT, WHERE, LIKE and so on as core functions and a sub-class for complicated sub query generation as they wont be needed every time.
6. The ability to follow strict MVC format and also the ability to ignore this procedure when the use OF MVC is just too complex for the task at hand. IE, if we only want to display a JSON array which is done in the controller using a JSON class then why not just output it there and DIE().
7. When using it with AJAX and IFRAMES we need to keep response times for core functionality in the ms rather than CI’s seconds it takes for standard calls.
8. Documentation to be separate from the code so that the pages are lean and free of mess.
9. Functions should be as close to CI ’s current way of thinking as this is meant to help users keep to one way of doing things and any improvements should be worked to work along side the original so code does not have to be reworked but new code can use new features in the plugin.
10. Had to make it to ten, not sure I have a ten but this is for every one to use and is open source.

My thinking……

My biggest grip with CI is that its php4 first off but secondly is the shear size of the base classes and preloaded / loaded classes makes simple ajax calls far to bloated. I know if you load nothing and go for simple simple it might get a bit faster but nothing nearly as dramatic / responsive enough to speed the app up to a point where I am happy with it.

When thinking how to solve this I decided that PHP5,  clever auto-loading, function, method testing and a touch of alex magic to get a simple plugin that will solve the issue and improve on the CI framework.

Will keep you posted…..

Well thats it for now, keep coming pack for staged realises and tests! previews and progress. Oh and my name for the plugin!

I will update this post with my full review this week. I thought I would put this in place and let you have it very soon!

Sample image for you to get excited over! well, enjoy, I get excited seeing the full res version as its very good.

This week is yet another eventful week for me. I have the first of the beans, both dwaf and runner beans growing really well with one dwaf bean at least 7-8 inches long! beat that Sainsburys!

I have also got around 10 – 20 green bell peppers growing and three chillies which is really good as I thought they would never start growing. The greenhouse is doing really well and the contents is doing really well. The heat today might be too much but I have opened it a few times to let alot of it out and with the greenhouse next to the wall and our house should have plenty of shade to keep the temperature just right. This gallery is obviously very much like all my galleries so far with shots of the plants and of the produce that I have harvested today. But I have been using my shiny new Panasonic HDC-TM300 to shoot the pictures and they are really sweet. This is a camcorder but it is top dollar as it produces outstanding still images too, might not beat the better SLR’s but I think once you see the results you will agree its very good. It takes 10.6M pixel pictures with great color balance and the AI mode does all the hard work, for perfect balance the manual mode might prove better but the average photographer, ie, me, really wont need more than AI mode to keep the shots great.

Before I forget, I, by accident pulled out our first potato, it looked good, as for taste, well, will find out soon enough, tonight is a roast dinner but pot’s where already done so next time a new pot is needed its for the chop!

The cucumbers and tomatoes taste great. Not sure if I mentioned it before but they are awesome and really fresh, I hate tomatoes but the garden ones taste really nice. I don’t like the wateriness of tomatoes but these tom’s are perfect, really are. They are watery but they are so packed with flavor it makes up for it.
     

Gallery

     
By the way, Image 15 is my favorite of all of them. The bee in the middle framed nicely by the  surrounding flowers. Enjoy!
     

weeds-flowers-two

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random artist flower / weeds using new camcorder

Whats next??? fruit trees, cider and more…..

     
Me and Gemma have decided that we want to try out potted trees and get some apples, berries and lemon trees up and running. That is phase two of the good life plan and phase one is to make my own cider! at home I am going to have my own kit and make cider the good old fashioned way! myself. I will post up some images of my kit, the processes I take to brew my own and the mistakes and successes along the way so check back for that! will be interesting, if nice, Magners, Strongbow, Bulmers move over, Akass cider is on its way!