Theatons Blog

Book review of ” Cocky - The rise and fall of Curtis Warren - Britains biggest drug barron ” by Tony Barnes, Richard Elias and Peter Walsh.

Overview
…Where to begin with this book.
This is not so much a ’story’ or ‘book’ but more of an outlook of the drug scene wrote by police and customs offerices, specifically noting detail about Curtis Warren from Liverpool.

The book starts of with the opening chapters setting the Scene… The history behind the City of liver pool, the crimincals, violenece and how liverpool came to be the way it is portrayed in the book.

Next section is the book detailing Curtis’ childhood, growing up and background information as to who he is, and his character. This section also details lots of Cocky’s mates and how the drug scene was evolving and changing in liverpool and how Cock got in there and established himself as a prime dealer / supplier.

The book covers failed court cases, and then Cocky takes a run over to Holland to manage his empire from there, where phone taps are admissable as evidence in court. This is where the UK and Dutch authorities accumilate the evidence to convict Cocky.

The final chapter / section is obviously just detailign the court proceedings, how the trial went and what happens.

Read duration

I read this one spaced over 2 months of daily 10 min toilet sessions, followed by a few 1 hour sessions when i had time.

My Thoughts:
I feel like this book makes Cock out to be a nice caring guy who was just trying to run a business. The way the book is written it makes me feel like the author(s) don’t have any kind of grudge against Cocky.
I thought the liverpool history stuff was a bit drawn out, but then again I did learn somthing new I suppose and it helped set the scene.
The story is a good onee, and how much of it is true no one will ever know apart from Cocky.
Everything in this book has to be taken with a pinch of salt as its obviously not a Howard Marks Autobiography, but an account of one’s actions wrote by those people who were tryign to get him charged with everything under the sun.

Rating:
8/10 - Good and worth a read but it be nice to read somthing Cocky has contributed to himself aswell.

Book review of: The Operators by James Rennie

Overview:
The operators is a book detailing one mans journey through the armed forces to join the elite special ops unit operating in northern ireland called ‘14 intelligence company’.
The book spends probably 1/3 detailing how he got into the situation and, ie: growing up, and then his special forces selection process (Always a good read). the other 2/3 of the book is about his jobs / operations in northern ireland.

Read duration:
I will be completly honest here, This book is one of my favrouites, i’ve read it twice and can easily finish of in 2 - 3 days relaxed reading on holiday

My Thoughts:
This is one of my top books in the ‘SAS / Special Forces / Police’ books genre.
I absoloutely love this book. Everything about this book I found has been covered in the perfect amount of detail. Not too much so as to bore you, but enough to let your imagination take hold while following the story. This is a real page turner. Every page just makes you want to continue reading.

I mentally divide the book into 3 sections: Growing up, Selection / Training and finally Work in the Field.
Each one of these is covered brilliantly and if your at all interested in SAS, Police, Special Forces or anything like that, i highly recommend this book.

Rating:
10/10 - No suprises here then, absoloute top quality book, not too long, not too short, really excellent stuff. Highly recommended.

Book review of: Day by Day - by Carlo Lucarelli (Fiction)

Overview:
Set in italy, this is the story of a man who is a hitman / killer who is on the run and turns into a kidnap story towards the end.

Read duration:
Approx 2 days, totallig 10-14 hours - quite short

My Thoughts:
With it being only a short book, it was nice and quick to read. This is one of only a handful of pieces of fiction i’ve read as i’m not much of a fictional book kind of person.
The story started off dramatically and then went into really long winded elaborate descriptive writing about situations and scenes in the book which I thought was over the top. The story also seemed to take on a whole new shift.. sold to me as a story about an assain / hitman, and it started this way, it morphed into a book about a mans way of life, then a police hunt, then a kidnap story.

Rating:
4/10 - While I enjoyed the book, I have definatly read alot better and won’t be badgering any of my friends to pick this one up.

This document Contains information about Installing Ubuntu, Setting up / Configuring: SSH Acces, Apache2, HTTPS, MySQL5, PHP5, XSL / XSLT, Imagick, PDO and Home networking (Although not complete !!)

Ubuntu 7.10, From Installation to Complete Setup - An Idiots guide

Information Covered..

• Initial and Essential Configuration
  • Install
  • Pre Use / Screen Setup
  • Update / Upgrade your new installation
  • Setup SSH Acess
• Setting up the Web Dev Environment
  • Setup Apache2
  • Setup HTTPS / SSL Cert
  • Setup MySQL 5
  • Setup PHP 5
    • Enable XSL / XSLT support
    • Enable Imagick (Image manipulation library
    • Install PDO
• Setting up the home network (SSHFS and NTFS)
  • Installing the Samba Server
  • Connect your Win box to Ubuntu Box

Wordpress’ code is shit… so please read this blog entry / ubuntu how-to on this plain html page.
Click here to read more.

I am running ubuntu 7.10

I had previously installed php with pdo, and added the pdo_mysql and pdo
extension into the /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini file.

Once i then tried to install php5-mysql via apt-get php segfaulted and
apache refused to restart.

With the pdo and pdo_mysql extension in php.ini i was getting the
following error from /var/log/apache2/error.log..

PHP Warning:  Module ‘PDO’ already loaded in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning:  Module ‘pdo_mysql’ already loaded in Unknown on line 0
/usr/sbin/apache2: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/php5/20060613
+lfs/pdo_mysql.so: undefined symbol: php_pdo_get_dbh_ce

Once i commented out the pdo extension, this got rid of the first PHP
warning, and pdo is in phpinfo but no pdo drivers..

If i comment out pdo_mysql in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and also
commented it out from /etc/php5/conf.d/pdo_mysql.ini and restarted
apache then it worked.

Bottom line is, if anywhere at all you have pdo_mysql.so in any
configuration, you get the error:

/usr/sbin/apache2: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/php5/20060613
+lfs/pdo_mysql.so: undefined symbol: php_pdo_get_dbh_ce

and apache fails to load.

Server version: Apache/2.2.4 (Ubuntu)

I was recently browsing around looking for information about PHP SPL apart from the standard info on the php manual website.

I came across the following website: http://www.phpro.org 

This website has some really quality written articles about php and also about the php spl library.

If you a up and coming php developer, or already consider yourself a guru then still check the articles, tutorials as its definatly worth a good look as theres lots of information still to be learnt..

Every tried modifying wordpress code ?

After I had an inital look I have been put off. Unfortunatly today work has forced me to get into the guts of wordpress and this stuff is grotesque !

Here is a sample of some code: http://devpipe.pastebin.com/f42a541d2

Please digg / comment if you agree that wordpress is such a messy piece of work it needs a compete ground up re-write and some kind of templating engine used to cut out all this embedded inline php shit.

This thing needs binning a proper application where code is separate from content written.

To Clients

Tell me, when you hire a plumber, do you tell him how to do his job ?

When you hire and electrician do you tell him to change from the red wire to a green one or let him being the expert make the right decisions ?

To Web Developers / Designers

Don’t let clients tell you how they want there website. You the one that knows the SEO, your the one that knows what designs work and what dont.

Sure, take on board the comments, but my all means, if what there saying is shit, tell them so and if they don’t want to know, tell them about the plumber and electrician (see above “To Clients”).

Flow Chart

Here is a simple flow chart i have put together to help determine projects cost and get a bit of a feel for the client.

Its by no means complete, but to plan for everything would mean always to fail and it would only take 1 mis match to screw up everything.

Please leave your thoughts and comments, rel=nofollow is disabled, but if you have a spammy name like “Web design Coventry” i will change your name to ‘Jack’ ..etc and remove your link for being a spammy bastard.

Hello,

I recently did some work for Patrick at Valley Security.

He had a disgusting attitude, with a filthy mouth and was very rude.

For anyone else out there who is planning on contacting valley security services, I would like to offer you this advice:

Save your time, save yourself the trouble, go elsewhere, and don’t even give this tosser a second of your time.

Oh, and Patrick, when you read this, i’d just like to let you know that i was perfectly willing to help resolve the issue you created, but your rude attitude, and disgusting language used to me has just made me think of you, and your company, as not being worth more than the dog shit stuck to the bottom of my shoe, so in no uncertain terms, Fuck you.

For anyone wanting to see the Valley Security Services website, i won’t link and give him any PR juice, but instead it should be #1 here.. Click to see google search for valley security

If you have link power, and feel sorry for another ‘web guy’ being ranted at buy a stupid moron client, please link to me with ‘valley security’ or ’security services’ to make a stand. 

Kind regards,

Tom Taylor

Want to know how to install Imagemagick on ubuntu ?

No problem if you want to install imagemagick on your pc, ubuntu makes this very easy for you with only a few simple commands..

• Make sure u have pear install ( ’sudo apt-get install php-pear’ )
• Then run: sudo apt-get install imagemagick
• And then: sudo pecl install imagick
  **if you get an error which looks like this: configure: error: Cannot locate configuration program Wand-config

  then no problem, simply run the following command: sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev
  Now re-run sudo pecl install imagick

All sorted ? Good, now simply add extension=imagick.so to your php.ini and your done

Incidently, if you want to get serious about PHP and Imagemagick, i highly recommend you check out mikko’s imagemagick blog which details lots of examples of using imagemagick and pushing it to the limit. cool stuff.