about me
06 Jun '09, 17:55
This is the online home for me, Ben Gamblin. Have a look around and find out all about me in my blog, admire my photography in the Photo Gallery or find out about my ventures into the world of broadcasting. Feel free to drop me a line. Just click on 'Contact Me' at the bottom of any page to send me a message or chat to me via MSN Messenger.
I am a '20-something' working as an Administrative Assistant for local government, a position that I was appointed to after working in the section for 15 months as an agency employee.
Away from my full time employment however, I have strong interests in broadcast radio, amateur radio and computing. I have appeared on a number of radio stations ranging from hospital radio through to a small commercial radio on AM and Sky. I have built my own computer systems, including my main PC which runs a version of the open source operating system Linux.
As a radio amateur, I hold a full licence with the callsign M0GKY which I received in January 2007 after passing an exam at the end of a 3 month course. Prior to this licence, I held the Intermediate class callsign 2E1IPA since May 2001 after passing what was at the time the Novice Radio Amateurs Examination (NRAE). My activities on the bands are limited to VHF/UHF operations at present, but I have interests in DX HF communications, satellite operation and digital modes.
about the website
06 Jun '09, 17:48
In 2002; the first proper domain name, bengamblin.co.uk, was purchased but that wasn't the beginning of 'Ben Gamblin Online'.
It had previously existed as a free Geocities site - somewhere that I could learn HTML without drawing too much attention. I soon decided that the untidy form of the Geocities URL, and the limitations imposed by such a service were not suitable so the first of many domain names was purchased.
Domain Names
Although my name isn't that common, I decided that it may be worthwhile buying extra domains as a small form of identity protection. It also meant that I could play with the DNS settings for one domain, whilst not affecting the other. It was for the earlier reason that bengamblin.com and gamblin.eu were purchased, and the latter reason that bengamblin.org.uk was purchased.
bengamblin.org.uk has always been a testbed URL. When decided to host the site myself, it was this URL that had it's settings changed first just in case I messed up. When playing around with mail servers, this URL has been the guineu pig and even when transfering domains between providers this one got there first.
The URL's 2e1ipa.co.uk and m0gky.co.uk where purchased to reflect my amateur radio callsigns. Should I want or need to refer to a personal website in this capacity, it will be either of these that gets mentioned.
Hosting and PC Equipment
The site was originally hosted by my registrar GetDotted.com (part of Freeola and the now defunct Special Reserve). To avoid any monthly charges, I would have to dial-in to the Freeola ISP to upload content to the site - this was in the days before I had access to broadband. After about 6 months, Freeola did become my broadband ISP and the site became much easier to maintain.
It didn't take very long for the idea of doing everything myself cropped into my head. With computers being a hobby, it wasn't too difficult to find a spare machine to use as a server. Unfortunately I have not recorded much detail of the early server machines and the dates that they were in use.
I do know that in July 2004 I obtained an old AMD 400MHz PC which ran Windows 2000 and LAN Suite 2004 which was swapped out for Apache in November of that year.
Mid 2005 saw the server machine be upgraded to a much more capable Windows machine based around an AMD 1GHz Duron chip.
In January of 2007, a failure of that Duron machine forced a change of server and this saw my 2.4GHz Celeron machine which had been a general use PC be employed as the replacement. This machine ran Ubuntu Linux - the first time the website had been hosted on a non-Windows platform since I took over the hosting role. It's on that machine that the site has been on since, although a hard disk failure forced a new Linux installation - this time Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server.
Content
Between 2002 - 2004, content was very limited. Like the Geocities site before it, Ben Gamblin Online continued as a place to practice coding but also to put a small amount of information about myself on to the web. Most content came from sections dedicated to my Hospital Radio shows which would be promoted on-air. Unfortunately these sections have now been lost.
The Blog launched in 2004, billed as a 'Lifeblog' - an area where I would log events in my life both past and present. Initially, the plan was for text based entries to be augmented by pictures, audio and video. This continued for a while, but as time went on text entries grew longer; audio became less frequent and video was almost non-existent. The number of photographs however grew to a point where their inclusion in the Lifeblog was impractical. This prompted the removal of photographs from the Lifeblog and the establishment of the Photography section.
Style, Design and Efficiency
During the first 2-3 years, each new blog entry was appended to the entry before it meaning that each year had one single HTML page containing all the entries for that year. They were hard-coded into this page along with design elements, and design alterations were hard. It was in 2005 that the first of a radical redesign of the way the site worked was implemented. In February of that year I discovered Server Side Includes - a way to combine multiple pages into one larger page. This led to the latest blog entry being visible on the front page, and in the main blog page. Design elements were still hard coded, but I had much more control over where content was placed without duplication of effort.
By this time, the design and efficiency bug was quite well established and within a year the site was being redesigned again but this time with PHP coding and the establishment of an SQL database backend using MySQL. Finally pages could be dynamically created dramatically reducing the amount of housekeeping work that needed to be done should design elements change. The final part in this puzzle was stylesheets which began to be incorporated with the 5th incarnation of the site and their use increased dramatically through version 6. Now most of the design element is controlled by a stylesheet.
Finally
Today, Ben Gamblin Online is quite different from what it was 6 years ago. My blog writings have changed from the "what I did today" style, to the "here's something interesting or useful" style (although the former may still creep in now and again). Since this change, I've noticed hits increase particularly with Linux guides and product reviews. Photography is now a major part, with over 1500 photographs available for viewing. Databases and PHP code make the site instantly updatable from anywhere with an internet connection, and a link to my music players database means my music library is the most up-to-date it can be.
Ultimately though, this site's primary purpose is still that of the early days - a place for me to practice and develop my coding skills. As time goes on, new ideas and new features (often inspired by other sites) will be implemented, or at least attempted. There are still ideas to implement that have been waiting for a long while now such as RSS feeds and it is that aim to continue to develop my skills that will ensure this site continues and improves.
Last.fm: Last played:
03 Sep '10, 19:10
Jimi Hendrix – Bleeding Heart
Last Microblog Post:
22 Aug '10, 21:03 via Identi.ca
m0gky: Got an #XBox today, but having problems with #XBoxLive. Just me or anyone else? Re port forwarding, is incoming on 80 required?
