David Windell's Blog

Baby Windell number 2 @ 12 weeks. Another miracle!

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 07:59:30 +0100

Baby Windell number 2 @ 12 weeks. Another miracle!

This is hillarious!

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:10:48 +0100

This is hillarious!

Using .htaccess to show a maintenence page

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:56:00 +0000

This week I are be mostly working on a live website. Ha, ok enough fast show malarky! Working on a clients site we needed to roll out quite a large patch to their existing website. As the site they use is E-Commerce based we had concerns that a user might try to make a purchase during the upgrade process so we decided to have the site redirect to a maintenance page using the .htaccess file.

That’s all very well, but what about us, we needed to see the changes we were making working live. This nifty little script below does just that, if you replace the 111.111.111.1 with the external IP of your machine it will bypass the rules below that line thus giving you access to the site whilst others are redirect to maintenance.html. Simples.

The .htaccess file

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^111\.111\.111\.111
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/maintenance\.html$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.co.uk/maintenance.html [R=307,L]

23 is the best age to start investing!

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:47:00 +0000

23 is the best age to start investing!:

I’ve been starting to read about and really get into investing recently and found it quite encouraging and rather ironic to find this article on the Motley Fool website, especially considering I’m 23.

Statistics show that a 23 year old investor who puts £100 a month into shares could build a retirement pot that is worth over £500,000 by the age of 65 - nice.

God and the iPhone

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Whilst I was in church this weekend, I began to get distracted by the thought of my shiny new Apple iPhone that my wife had bought me as an “early” birthday present!

I tried to ignore it and focus on God, but I just couldn’t. I’m normally able to tune out my thoughts, so I can honestly say I was getting a little bit annoyed with myself.

Then it struck me, why do people find it so easy to accept how a mobile phone works but so hard to accept that God exists? Today our phones are even able to browse the internet at super fast speeds. There’s no cables, no visible airwaves, nothing to suggest that this little shiny peice of plastic should work or moreso be able to communicate with the outside world. On the other hand with God there’s certainly no cables or airwaves to suggest that we can communicate with him.

How many people have actually visited a mobile phone mast before they believe it exists? Not many right! It’s probably because they can see the signs of its existence when their phone displays some simple bars to demonstrate how strong the signal is.

So, if people can believe that the mast exists without seeing it, why not believe that God exists? Ok, we can’t just see Jesus walking down the street like he did 2000 years ago, but there are so many sign, miracles and wonders that God does every day, if people would take notice they wouldn’t be able to suggest he doesn’t exist!

I’m reminded of the verse in John 20:29 that says:

“Then Jesus told him, You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me”.

As christians we should remember that all it takes is those few bars on someone’s phone that tells them the mobile phone mast exists, so likewise we just need to tune into God and stay connected every day and we will be able to show the world He exists!

Next time you’re worshipping him and struggling to communicate, just remember that he is there, a mast, waiting to recieve your signals and communicate with you. Just send him a message and he’ll turn you from a simple shiny bit of plastic into an all singing, all dancing messenger for him.