James' Blog

So, last week, I progressed in my career. I was in my previous, and first, job for over two years - first as an apprentice and then as a full time staff member. Whilst in this job, I learnt a lot. It gave me the experience I needed to move onto something better. I want to encourage others to always be on the look out for new opportunities. For one, always look at what other employers in your industry are paying people in similar roles. My former employer was underpaying me, and continues to underpay its staff, given what recruiters have told me. So, make sure to keep comparing your salary with others. Moving on could really benefit you, as it has me. No names to be named, but the pay I was on was awful - and the company should be ashamed for paying people such horrendous pay for the jobs that they do. It’s despicable. Secondly, don’t move on too quickly unless you really need to. You should stay in a job for a year or two, unless something really bad happens that means that you can’

Given the situation with COVID-19 I thought now would be a decent time to talk about how lockdown has been for me, so that you can compare to how it has been for you. Working from home Even before the lockdown I was working from home - we started the week before Boris announced the lockdown. I found that it was easy for me to adapt to as I had worked from home previously, however not for as long as the lockdown of course. The lockdown itself has been a long and boring time, and working from home has definitely kept me occupied during the days. I have been working my usual hours, relying on remote connections. Boris Walks Ah yes, the good old Boris Walk. A key part of the lockdown was how people were describing the walks that they were going on during the lockdown. I did many of these, going out most days depending on the weather. I found that these were useful because otherwise I would have been sitting at a screen for months on end without actually going out and getting fresh air. Sit

Do you have a hobby? Do you want to share things with the world? A personal website for you, your family, or a small group of friends with shared interests is a great way to acheive this. I'd like to go through some of the things that you might want in such a website. Simple Design Everyone has been on websites that are confusing. Clumsy layouts, hidden links, overuse of advertising. The best way to keep an audience is to keep it simple. Make it clear where links to pages are and where the content is - and don't over do it with ads (if you do, people are less likely to come back). Using Wordpress, or one of my templates, you can create a website that is a breeze to navigate, and that your audience will want to come back to. And they'll want to recommend it to their friends and family too. A blog A blog is a great way to keep your audience engaged. Make posts about the topic of your website, give them updates on your projects and more. They'll want to come back

Following on from my previous post talking about the changes that I have made to the Jadweb Studio software since the release of 2020 r1, I also feel that it is appropriate to talk about how I go about testing my software, just to give you more of an insight. Newest Windows Versions I test my software on the latest version of Windows all the time. I develop using Windows 10 and I have multiple devices that I can test on - a desktop and more than one laptop. This ensures compatibility with the different versions of Windows (my devices don't all have the same release of Windows 10 on). Old laptop and virtual machines I have recently acquired an early 2000s Dell Latitude laptop. This allows me to test the software on Windows XP. I use virtual machines for testing software on Windows Vista and Windows 7. So, there is a small insight into a how I do software testing.

As you may have noticed, the Jadweb website now directs to my main website. However, the software pages will be remaining on the Jadweb domain. I am doing this so that I don't have to focus as much on maintaining two websites that in some ways overlap. This gives me additional time to develop Studio and give it new features. Since the 2020 r1 release I have changed a few things around. In the r1 release, for example, the snippets were accessed from their own window. This has now been changed so that there is a sidebar where these are accessed. This will make accessing the snippets simpler. Not only that, I have now made all of the included templates as well as the code provided when "New" is selected contain code that forces all versions of IE to render using the latest version possible. This was due to an issue with the preview window, which uses an embedded control and unless forced will run in an IE7 only mode. This new code forces it to run as the latest version i

As the world is currently in uncertain times, I thought it would be suitable to make a post about the coronavirus pandemic. I personally, as of Saturday, will bbe staying in mostly - I may go to the shop, or walk to the park on a Sunday evening when it is quiet, but I am staying away from crowds of people. As it is, I am already working from home and have experienced first hand the amount of people that are now working from home. Now, as is well known, I travel a lot and I am stopping that until we are through this pandemic. I want to ensure that key workers, as well as those that don't have the option to work from home, are given the best possible chance at safety. This is something that I recommend all do and everyone keeps as safe as possible. In the meantime, what to do whilst at home practicing social distancing? Well, use social media - keep in touch essentially, whilst doing a mix of learning, playing games and working on indoor hobbies (oh, and working). Anyway guys

Yet again, it seems like I haven't posted in forever! So, in my latest post I will be talking about my custom desktop PC. Now, I didn't build this myself as I was on a budget - however it is a brand new PC. I purchased it in March and it arrived two weeks later. I purchased it from AWD-IT. Now, first things first, when I take you through the specifications you are going to notice one thing very clearly. It has an AMD CPU. This is something that I would never have considered for a brand new computer in the past, however I had to due to the budget that I was on. In addition to the AMD CPU, it also has an AMD Radeon GPU. Clearly a very AMD based machine then, isn't it. Specs: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 6 Core CPU 16GB of  Memory AMD Radeon  RX580 from PowerColor with 8GB of VRAM. 512GB SSD 1TB HD (taken from my old desktop PC) So, how does it feel to be using a brand new desktop PC? Well, firstly, I have never actually owned one before. I have owned brand new laptops, but