What could be more basic for human existence than food and shelter? Clean safe drinking water! Unfortunately 884 million people around the world don’t have access to clean drinking water.

When I was confronted with this issue I decided to do something about it, that's why I'm organising the Scarborough Walk for Water.

Please support our Walk for Water either by donating, or by joining in and getting others to sponsor you.

How much can you donate?
£4 is all we are asking for. £1 for each mile we walk.
£15 could provide a family of five in Mozambique with access to a borehole
£30 could provide a community in Niger with purpose-built latrine (a loo!)
£40 could provide a family in Liberia with a BioSand Water Filter

Donate on-line now!

If we can get 100 people to do the 4 mile walk, and each of them can get 10 people to sponsor £4, that will raise a total of £4000!

Follow @scarbwalk4water on Twitter.

Magento is a great ecommerce platform that is creating a revolution in the ecommerce world. It has been my pleasure to be involved with it from day 1, although I must admit that there has been a shortage of documentation for developers like me. As a result I'm very glad that there is a new Magento book published that is specifically aimed at developers - Magento 1.3: PHP Developer's Guide.

I'm hoping that my copy will arrive in the post today! As soon as I have had a chance to have a good look at it I will report back with my first impressions. After I have finished reading it I am planning to write up a full review.

Does anyone else have a copy? What were your impressions?

This is a cool video, and a great idea! Find out more and support the "Robin Hood Tax" at robinhoodtax.org.uk

The NIV (or New Internation Version) is the most popular english translation of the Bible, as a result I imagine it is one of the (if not 'the') most sold books in the world - ever! (I think about 300 million copies have been printed).

The other night (09/09/2009) I had quite a special experience that drew me closer to God.

Well I feel like a bit of a luddite waiting this long to join the micro-blogging bandwagon, but I finally have. I guess I found all the hype a bit off-putting.

I am now on Twitter @rosskendall

Also, since I'm an Open Source (and open-data) fan, I have also signed up on Identi.ca - identi.ca/rosskendall
(the two accounts are linked, so all identi.ca posts end up on twitter)

Since I am usually short on time to write proper blog posts, I actually find micro-blogging suits me well. It is also a great way to keep up-to-date with things I am interested in - and pass helpful things on.

I'm going to keep my twitter posts focused on web-development, including: Magento, Drupal, programming (Perl and PHP), design, SEO, etc. I find trivial personal comments a bit distracting, especially if there are lots of them, so I won't be making them myself

I just received an email asking me just that.

I see on your site you mention about open source software like open office etc, can you recommend an opensource web design software that competes with dream weaver etc?

Well, here's my thoughts...

Those who are 'into' the Perl programming language will know about the mammoth project to re-design Perl for Perl 6. Part of that was to develop the Parrot Virtual Machine - a next generation VM specially designed for the unique needs of dynamic languages (in particular Perl 6).

...well, it's been quite a few years now, but I really feel that things are starting to come together. The launch of a shiny new website for Parrot at parrot.org is another thing that helps to confirm this. (As a side note, it's good to see the site running on Drupal, although I doubt they are using PHP on Parrot just yet.)

If you are not using Firefox yet, now is definitely the time. Go check it out, even if it's only for the groovy world map!

If you use Firefox 2 and are wondering why would I be interested in Firefox 3, have a look at this quick video screencast overview.

I have been using SUSE Linux (now openSUSE) on my desktop and laptop computers for a number of years now, and have always found it to be a better desktop that's more to my liking than other Linux distros (although I am more comfortable with Redhat on servers).