MCslp

Cheffy 2.0 beta now out!!

I’m pleased to announce that we have release the new version of Cheffy, what we’ve been calling internally, Cheffy 2.0.

The new version comes with a number of new features, some of which I’ll be detaileding over the coming weeks, but as a headline:

• New layout and structure
• New Inspire Me section for quick access to selected recipes
• Your own personal Kitchen area where you can manage your preferences, your cookbooks, recipes, shopping list, and connect with other users.
• Add your own recipes – you can now add a recipe, have the nutrition automatically calculated, and then share that recipe with others.
• RSS feeds for your cookbook, recipes, and Inspire me and automated searches
• Improved searching and nutrition information

And there’s more to come – please start using the site and let us know what you think, or if you find any problems.

Opening up comments (thanks Akismet)

For a long time I disabled comments on the site because I received a huge amount of comment spam. I’ve been running with Akismet now for months (and filtered over 11,000 items in the process), so I’m going to open up the site for comments.

You’re still going to need to register, but otherwise feel free to get involved!

Live Search Plugin

I’ve noticed that a larger number of people come to the site and start searching for a particular entry, so I’ve decided to add the excellent WordPress Live Search Plugin to the site.

Now when you search, you’ll get a live list beneath the search panel of the matching posts, which you can click on to go straight to the post in question.

Installing the plugin itself is easy, download it, put it in your plug-in directory, and enable it. Providing you’ve used the standard search panel, the live component is enabled immediately.

The Live Search plugin has been enabled on the MCslp Coalface and Planet MCslp sites too.

Parallels blogs my Solaris/Parallels post

The team over at Parallels noticed my Working with Solaris 10 in Parallels Desktop piece over on Coalface, and had a few nice words to say about me. In particular:

For those of you unfamiliar with Martin, he’s a well respected tech journalist who contributes to a number of leading tech magazines and all-around computer guru. He just wrote up a great blog post about Parallels Destkop for Computerworld, titled “Parallels Lowers the Impact of Boot Camp.”

Read the short, but sweet, full post

MCslp Coalface is live

I’ve started up a new blog designed to handle the day-to-day thoughts and issues, programming notes, IT tricks and so on that I come across (and use/develop) each day. Called MCslp Coalface, the blog is designed to contain the issues and notes that really do come straight from the work-end of what I do day by day. Expect programs, scripts, and usage notes on what I’m doing, as well as follow up thoughts and notes for certain articles and ideas that don’t fall into the realm of MCslp.

You can find the new site at http://coalface.mcslp.com and there are RSS and Atom feeds available. As with most of my sites, the content is also included as part of Planet MCslp.

You may also have noticed that I’ve changed the theme for the site, now using the excellent Red Train by Vladimir Simovic. The same theme is now used on both the main MCslp and the MCslp Coalface.

Grid Meter mentions Grid/Web Services Series

Greg Nawrocki, over at Grid Meter, has mentioned the convergence of SOA (Service Oriented Architectures) and Grid technology, and points readers to my recent Building a Grid with Web Services series (which I wrote with Tyler Anderson).

I agree 100% with Greg – if you aren’t already working with SOA and want to get into Grid development then you should take a look at SOA now. If you are already working on SOA applications, then you already have a good base for migrating that into Grid tech.

If you want to get the jump, start reading Building a Grid with Web Services right now!

Moving to MySQL

Starting in April I will be a member of the documentation team for MySQL. Among many other projects and responsibilities my main area of focus will be redeveloping on the connector documentation (i.e. the interfaces between MySQL and ODBC, JDBC, perl, python and one or two others).

The new job starts in April, and I’ll be continuing with some of my other work, such as articles for IBM developerWorks, my blogging at Computerworld and, of course, Cheffy.

As always, news, information and updates will be available here, and the collection of all the sites into a single blog and feed is available at Planet MCslp. The other sites that that builds from will probably now be updated, simply because I have more to do them!

Merry Christmas

Best wishes of all the season to all my readers, visitors, associates, friends and family.

Cheffy goes live!

Over the years many of you will have heard me mention things like Foodware, Cheffy and Foodies. All names for essentially the same thing, a recipe site that does more than just provide you with a simple way of finding recipes.

Today, 18th December, we went live and we (Suna and myself) would like you to be among the first to visit and try out the site.

The basics of the site are simple; you can search by ingredients, diet, nutrition, a whole range of keywords and you can combine all of this to pick out exactly the recipes you want. When you find the recipe you want, the recipe is fully scalable, up and down, and you can view in any of the available measurements to suit your preferences.

All recipes include full nutritional information, calories, and even the glycemic load and index for each and every recipe.

At the moment we also provide customized viewing preferences (sort order, measurements and quantities), your own cookbook and shopping list functionality.

The site is still officially in beta, but consider the bulk of the site and functionality (as advertised) to be complete and working. We do, of course, appreciate feedback and bug reports on anything that you find that doesn’t look right.

Waiting in the wings, there’s a meal planner, recipe ratings, comments and the ability to add your own recipes – all with full nutrition and searching capabilities from the moment you add it to the database.

Please visit the site: http://cheffy.com

We also have a blog where we are asking for comments in input at http://blog.cheffy.com.

Please feel free to contact me or use the contact form on the sites to convey your views.

And meanwhile, spread the word!

More New Blogs

As part of the ongoing expansion of the work that I do I am adding some further blogs to the range of titles and topics that I currently write about.

Some of the new blogs are merely a way of sensibly dividing up the content I produce so that readers can subscribe to specific areas of interest, without me bombarding them with a single blog covering the wide range of topics I tend to cover and have an interest/expertise in supporting. Some are designed to support new books, and in one case support the content that would have gone into a book if I hadn’t changed my mind about the scope and content. Some are just ways of generating or re-purposing material that I have had for some time, or for which I have had plans to write and develop and never had a suitable outlet.

Until now.

All of my blogs – under which I have direct control at least – now use a consistent format, if not necessarily a consistent theme, although I’ve tried to use themes that reflect the content of the site in question. All of the sites have an About page (unique to each site), a Contact form, and copies of the About MCslp and About MCslp Projects pages. The latter contains a distilled list of sites and their content. All of them are under the MCslp banner and all of them will, for the moment, be managed and supported directly by me (MC).

Many of these sites are still in their infancy – they all have Welcome messages, but may not yet have specific content. Be patient, it’s either already written and not yet posted live, or is coming.

As with this site, and indeed all MCslp sites, all of the new blogs are free to use and completely advert free. Please see the About page for information on how you can contribute and support the sites and their continued existence.

The new blogs I’m announcing today are:

The Writing Biz

New writers and authors often ask questions about the writing business. For example, how it works, the processes behind writing a book, how to promote your book, whether you should have an agent and many others. The Writing.biz condenses and collates all of this information into a single site.

Improve Your Vocab

Words and phrases have interesting meanings, sources and derivations. Improve Your Vocab aims to distill many of the phrases that you hear in films, TV shows, books and other places that you may not recognize and provide information about their definition, sources, and what they mean within the context of the phrase where they were used.

The Linux Professionals

There are many professional users of Linux out there, and there are also Linux Professionals – people who make a living for supporting and consulting using the Linux platform. The Linux Professionals provides interviews and articles with these professionals to find out how they make use of Linux, and why they chose Linux as their area of expertise.

Change The Way You Work

Change the way you work is a blog designed provide information and guidance on ways in which you can change the way you work to make better use of your time. It looks at different methods, for example project management software, or following a particular methodology or technique designed to simplify your work or improve and optimize your efficiency.

MCslp Map Works

Google Maps and Google Earth – among other technologies – provide some amazing technology for building customized, map based, information websites. MCslp Map Works provides examples, help and guidance along the way for your Google Maps and Earth projects, along with How-To guides, news and other information.

MCslp Virtual Computing

Virtual Computing works at many different levels, from providing separate working zones within an operating system designed to compartmentalize different applications or services right through to emulation technology that provide, in software, the equivalent of a complete PC, including virtual drives, network devices and other components. MCslp Virtual Computing provides information and guides on using these technologies.

If you have any questions or want more information, either us the Contact Us link on the site in question, or ask me a question through the Contact Us form on this site.

Thank you for your continued support!