Feb 18
Seriously, I thought this was long gone!
http://www.geocities.ws/skeatermedia/
I was googling "skeatermedia" and "skeater" to see which one did better for me, and that old geocities site came up!
It's mad. Also it has a picture of my 15 year old bottom on their. Does that make it porn?
Good times. I haven't read through it all, it may be very offensive in places. If it is, please, do let me know.
Feb 17
This seems like a very odd situation, but Railo has stopped supporting column aliases by default - well it's the JDBC database driver I think... I'm not too good at all this back end java/database stuff.
But basically it all worked fine, now I've upgraded Railo, and things like this will throw an error.
I don't see why, this is such a common thing to do... Anyway, some one else has had the exact same problem not that long ago, and Google very kindly found me their blog post so I could fix it.
You just have to set "Alias Handling" to "true" for your datasources in the Railo Server Administrator. Then every thing works fine again.
I think the point of it is something to do with being able to grab the true column name and get hold of better metadata, but at the moment that's no use to me!
I really hope Adobe don't start doing this with Coldfusion!
Credit has to go to Anuj Gakhar for this fix: http://www.anujgakhar.com/2012/01/11/railo-mysql-and-column-aliases/
Feb 14
Front man Tom Riley, of famous band http://tomriley.net, gave me the gift of cassetteboy today. Well he at least pointed out his website to me after we watched one of his videos at lunch.
Cassetteboy (who is actually 2 people I believe) have made some albums, which I've not listened to, but have been played on Adam and Joe's BBC 6 Music show, but they've also made some very funny mash-up style videos of various TV shows, in a Chris Morris/Armando Ianucci/Time Trumpet kind of way.
Check out his/their website here: http://cassetteboy.wordpress.com/ And more importantly, their/his youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/cassetteboy
I'm a big Adobe fan, I use a lot of their software. But if you want to download anything, you have to log in. If you don't have a log in, then you have to register.
Now as I like to support software manufacturers, I usually allow a few minutes faff just to download something. As long as I don't have to do it every time.
So I wanted to download Coldfusion Builder 2. I logged into the Adobe site and found the download link. But apparently they hadn't yet horded enough of my company information.
As I was logging in as Willshaw Media I filled in all the company information I had... mainly just that I am one person who makes websites. I also had to fill in my address and other rubbish.
Anyway, I filled in the form, submitted it and it failed. I'd missed out a user name. So I filled that in, submitted it and it failed.
WTF mate! That's 2 already. Turns out on the second submission the "Tick this box to confirm some nonsense" box had become unticked.
So I ticked it again, submitted it, and if failed.
SERIOUSLY! 3 fucking times already! So I was angry. The error message just said "Please correct the following problems: an error has occoured".
Oh. Good problem. An "error". No shit sherlock.
I think I tried to submit the form 8 times. I persisted for so long because I've download Adobe software many times in the past. But I just got sick of it this time.
So I Googled "coldfusion builder direct download" and boom, I found this little gem.
http://technolux.blogspot.com/2011/02/adobe-direct-download-links-less-akamai.html
A link to download every Adobe product, no registration. THis isn't piracy, this is just to download the demo installers. Just the stuff Adobe give away for free anyway. You just don't have to submit crappy forms first! Woohoo!
Also, I emailed the guy that runs that blog to say thanks and he replied back, he's saying he's in the process of updating the list right now, all for free. What a nice guy. Double bonus to use the site!
One quick disclaimer... I haven't checked that there are actually links to EVERY adobe product, but there sure are alot, and they work fine!
When something website development based annoys me, I usually just write some sort of hack or fix for it, and do that over and over again until I really get sick of it before I come up with a proper solution.
That point in time arrived today, with respect to the issue of setting a single width to all inputs and textareas in a form, and watching the browser render them all with different widths! It happens and it's stupid.
"What in shitting crikey are you talking about?!" you may be shouting at the screen. Well I'll show you, check dis code:
I've added the red line in to show you, the form elements don't line up.
This situation can only be described as a shitting bastard
In the past, I've just done stupid things like set the submit button to 100% and the text area to 95% and the text input to 98% or used 3 different exact pixel widths. I've been a moron about it but it's got me through.
I got sick of doing that today... so I just googled the problem and almost immediately found the answer.
box-sizing
This is a new CSS3 rule, but it works on IE8+, and recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. It's a good rule, and anyone using IE7 and IE6, shouldn't be. And you'll get wonky forms.
But good people, will see nice neat form edges! AND THAT MATTERS TO ME! Look, by changing the CSS slightly:
Holy muntpants batman it works! Look at the lovely neat lined up inputs! Yes, the button is maybe a pixel off, but you can't really see that without that red line there.
Ok, ok there is some vendor specific guff in there, but to be honest that might have gone by now... I stole that code from a year old blog post. Oh and it really does work on IE8.
So I've learnt a couple of lessons from this experience.
So there you have it, CSS3 box-sizing. Wonderful.
You can have a play here using jsFiddle, which is a wonderful site: box-sizing test
I should also give credit to the guy's blog post that I found this on and also the official W3C documentation on it
I've been using Chrome as my main browser for a while now, but I've always had to nip in and out of Firefox to use Firebug.
I don't really like Opera's dragon fly, some say it's great but it's too different for me to bother learning. The web tools in Safari and Chrome have some good features, but don't (well didn't) beat Firebug. And IE... Well, it's IE. so it is just worse all round. So much worse.
Chrome has had a
pretty big update now though and they've added some cool features to the developer tools that make it more on a par with Firebug.
It's much easier to edit styles on an element in the page, FB was always good at this and Chrome made it into an awkward and annoying hassle, but that's been fixed.
They've also introduced box model highlighting on the page, that activates when you inspect an element in the DOM browser. It also shows the pixel size whilst highlighting the element. I would say this feature beats FB's equivalent.
The Chrome toolbar also features tue Javascript debugger, like FB again, and they are almost the same in functionality but Chrome seems to just have a few more features, like "contiune to here" which FB doesn't seem to have.
I still think the UI in Chrome is better than Firefox, it's cleaner and easier to customize, and Firefox is slow and clunky, even without plug ins. Firefox needs lots of plugins to make it useful, Chrome has more features built in. These extra plugins in Firefox slow it down far too much, and without them it's nomise - Firebug is one of these plugins.
Chrome Apps are nice too, although alot of them are pointless, silly and rubbish... You can get Angry Birds as a Chrome App, now that's awesome.
Finally, to make Chrome completly amazing I did have to add a few of plugins for it. One was awesome screenshot, which is a really easy way to take screen shots of pages you're on and save them as files or upload them to certain web services. Another one is the evernote app, which lets me "clip" web pages and text to my evernote account, and finally I installed Speed Dial 2 which replaces the Chrome Home screen.
The Chrome homescreen is pretty bad, and Google keep updating it and changing the way I've got ot set up. Speed Dial 2 lets you add links to your favourite web pages and apps, add a link while you're browsing the site, rearrange the links on your home screen, change the picture for the link or let you use the view from the web page, as well as many many other things. It really is very useful.
Anyway, I've always loved Chrome and now I love it even more. Those wonderful apps/plugins I was talking about are
Nov 7
Long ago someone recommended I tried a Graze Box, as I like to snack a lot at my desk.
I had a look at it, and it was all nuts and rubbish, so I just kept buying lots of biscuits.
Recently, I had a look again at the site and they've added lots of chocolate to the menu, including some tasty flap jacks. There's lots of other cool stuff too like herby breads with tomato dips, the component ingredients of many nice things, tasty oriental snacks, it's all much better now.
So I'm buying one a week at the moment. I haven't paid full price for one in a while, Graze seem to have lots of deals to make each box cheaper for me, which is pretty good.
One of those deals, is that I get a quid off a box everytime someone else signs up with the following link: http://www.graze.com/p/H1ZNPFQ.
So you should sign up, get your snacks delivered to work, feel healthy and good about it (it's all very recyclable and green) and save me a pound a week!
They also have a pretty decent website, and they seem to have lots of jobs on offer too.
So that title might be a little harsh, but let me explain why that keeps jumping into my head.
This morning I was reading about an API (which for any non techie types is just a service that returns some data to programmers) available that returns as much possible information as can be found on the internet based on a persons email address.
So if I put in mine, it just returns the Gravatar I use for the comments here. If I put in my Willshaw Media email, it gives back the Twitter account picture and username. So neither of those return much data. Also it told me I'm a female living in Arizona. So not always accurate.
But I've tried it with a few other email address, and some of the results are quite impressive. Depending on how you've set yourself up on the internet, if you've used the same email address and made it public, it can find twitter, facebook, lastfm, myspace profiles, associated images, homepages, your sex, full name, address, phone number etc.
It all depends on how public you've been, but if you've been a bit lax here and there, then this site pulls it all together and makes it really easy to get hold of a lot of information. So that's why it scares me a little.
The thing is though this information is all publicly available already, and Google does a pretty good job with it's results page of piecing together bits of information just based on a persons name. I had 6 people over for dinner the other night, and I went around the table, Googled there names and read out various bits of info on them, addresses, flat mates, previous occupants of their homes, phone numbers and job titles. The best one was a very vulgar and rude definition of a friend on UrbanDictionary.com
So I suppose it's not really scary, yet, but the thought of services out there that just make it so free and easy to get hold of consolidated data about people and there lives seems weird to me.
But with the internet, that's just going to become more and more prominent. I've accepted the fact that I'm now immersed in a world of free range information, that I can't keep control of even if it is about me.
Anyway, it's quite a cool service, FullContact.com, and I could see it being useful by helping to integrate the back end of a website with others, making life easier for the user by having data pre-populated and stored, so you don't have to log in again or retype information out on every site you go to.
You can test out the service, I think your first 1000 requests are free, then you have to start paying.
The data get sent back as JSON, XML or HTML, and the HTML creates a nice little profile box with links to all the websites it's managed to find data on.
Anyway, it's getting bloody late and I'm probably not making much sense, so I'll go now.
Oct 13
I didn't discover Dropbox myself, it was Tom Riley who showed it to me, so I should first off say thanks to Tom.
Thanks Tom.
Ever since I've become aware of it however, I've been a huge fan, and have recommended it at every occasion. I've got 6 other people using it so far, that's worth 1.5 GB (I'll explain why later)!
You install Dropbox on your PC/Mac and/or iOS/Android device, and start saving files (photos, videos, documents etc) into it, and each devic that you've connected up has access to that file, instantly!
This is assuming you've got Internet access of course. I think Dropbox still caches local copies on your device/computer and then syncs them up when it gets access back.
Anyway, just using it like that is brilliant, being able to use, create and view files across all my devices is very useful. I don't have to copy and paste between emails or use USB sticks or attach things to email. I just save a file, then read it later in in bed away from my PC!
But you can go so much further with it, you can share folders with people, I use it a lot to work on collaborative documents, or share photos with Holly. I sorted out my brother with an account and backed up his important docs before reinstalling windows on his PC, then we just put Dropbox back on and BOOM! all his files were just there.
And another good thing, is you can use it through a web browser, to upload and download, or just view files. You can even make files public to anyway if you want to.
Oh and there is built in version control, so if you change or delete a file by mistake, you can always go back to the previous version and restore that one, or the one before, or the one before...
There are a couple of snags though. Saving a big file or a complex folder structure can take a while to sync, as when it 'saves' it's uploading to the Dropbox servers, and as all upload speeds are stupidly slow, this can take a while sometimes.
The other issue is it's only free for 2GB. You can 250MB extra everytime ou refer someone, but that's capped at about 8GB - this is where those referrals I mentioned really pay off, I've gone up to 3.5GB. You can pay for more space, but it's a bit pricey and doesn't get you that much, I think 50GB or 100GB are the 2 options at the moment, or very expensive enterprise accounts for hundreds of pounds.
You can work around it, multiple accounts help and it integrates well with the OS (at least it does with Windows 7) to tell you when it's run if low on space so you can free some, so it's not terrible.
But these two flaws in it are not that bad at all, and they are both easy to overlook or get around.
I couldn't live without Dropbox now though. Well I could, but I'd just be spending all my time releasing my own version.
You could steal my hard disk now, I wouldn't care (well i would, I be pissed right off, but that's not the point). I'd just put a new one in, put my Windows install back on, download all my free software and Dropbox would have all my docs!
I love Dropbox, I love it so much I barely even think about the fact that someone else somewhere in the world has access to all my work and personal documents.
Fingers crossed they don't go bust/get hacked/explode. If they haven't, then get it here: http://dropbox.com
Oct 13
I'm really not that great at finishing things off. If I've been paid to do something, then sure I'll plough on with it and be dedicated and focused on finishing it.
But like most others, I suck at getting my own projects done. I've got 25k words written of my novel, about 5 empty websites floating around the internet, a pencil outline on a canvas of an oil painting and a cardboard mess that should be a paper mâché table.
However I am starting to get things done, by making use of very spare minute of time and making simple tasks take seconds instead of minutes. This is all thanks to a variety of services available on my PC, phone and browser. They only really help me with the website and writing though... The craft stuf will still take a while.
The following amazing products make my life so much easier and help me get the right info in the right place at the right time.
To add to those are some brilliant programs for my PC (and sort of sometimes the Mac too) that make the actual work I do, when I get round to it, much easier and quicker to finish.
They're all so good though, I'm going to review them all individually.
Also I haven't put Eclipse in that list, and I feel I should do, but what makes Eclipse so good is all the plug-ins I use with it, like MyLyn, CFEclipse, Coldfusion Builder, Aptana etc. So that's going to have to be a whole separate entry as well.
Anyway, coming up first is drop box...