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February 27, 2005
XMLHttpRequest
XMLHttpRequest is a native JavaScript object allowing further HTTP requests to be made from a page which has already loaded. Used to great effect on the Google maps page.
Another useful tool in the web developers toolkit.
Posted by weaver at 02:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Calvin & Hobbes
The entire Calvin & Hobbes collection is now online - There goes Sunday afternoon.
Posted by weaver at 02:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2005
Collateral
A cab driver and a contract killer, one night in LA. An excellent performance from James Foxx lifts this otherwise average thriller. Tom Cruise plays bad guy Tom Cruise with minimal effort in this film. Highly overrated on its cinema release, director, Michael Mann, nevertheless keeps the pace moving sharply along with lots of stylised violence until the final reel where the wheels finally come off.
Overall - OK thriller - 5/10
Posted by weaver at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
State of Fear - Michael Crichton
State of Fear I can safely say that I've read and enjoyed most, if not all, of Crichton's fiction work. This is a creditable addition to his techo-thriller stable. State of Fear revolves around environmental extremists and a plot about global warming. The characters tend to be rather one dimensional but the sharp writing keeps the plot moving along nicely.
Its an extremely well researched book, widening the reader's knowledge of global environmental issues. However, like the Da Vinci Code, it is a work of fiction, no matter how well presented the 'facts' are, and should be treated as such.
If you like any of Crichton's previous works you'll like this one. Recommended
Posted by weaver at 09:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Name Voyager
The World Wide Web is a place of magic, containing many spellbinding gems. The graphical representation of the popularity of first names in Name Voyager, a Java application, is both fascinating and awesome.
In some instances you can almost discover the decade in which someone was born, just due to how the popularity of the names varies over the decades.
A couple of thoughts: its based on US data so might not accurately reflect UK tastes and it (only!) contains 5000 names so if yours is somewhat esoteric it may not appear.
Posted by weaver at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2005
Double bullets
On the current Metheringham page, there is a 2 column table containing the links pertaining to the village. It should be possible to recreate these links as a double bulletted listing using CSS.
Fortuitously, there is a CSS Recipe page that enables this. A few hours pottering with it and its corresponding CSS has proved to be useful in enabling a good cross browser rendering of double column listings.
Posted by weaver at 11:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 21, 2005
Clearing the backlog
The backlog of items awaiting publishing has been growing steadily of late. A concerted effort was made today to clear some of it. December's parish council minutes, the football team pictures for the current season,a new page on a pub that closed between 1871 & 1881 and some style work down on the images, all made for a busy day..
Struggling a bit though with the correct styles to use for the embedded images on pages. Using float looks good in IE at most sizes but looks pants in Firefox at lesser screen resolutions. Next time there's a free hour, it'll be the turn of absolute positioning.
Posted by weaver at 12:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 20, 2005
Spellbound
In a previous post, reference was made to my inability to spell. The solution was to use a desktop client for this blog. Tonight, I discovered a Firefox/ blog solution - Spellbound. An open source extension for Firefox that allows for the spell checking of web forms. Its installed and working. Now there should be no excuse for poor or bad spelling errors.
I've also stumbled across ecto - another desktop client blogging application. Although not free, it seems to have all the good features needed for running multiple blogs. One to consider for the future.
Posted by weaver at 12:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2005
Making someone happy
Its the little things that mean a lot in life.yesterday I made someone very happy. One of M's brothers recently bought a Sony Vaio and wanted to be able to wander the house using it whilst connected to the internet. He'd bought a Belkin wireless adsl router but couldn't figure out how to set it up. I agreed to have a look.
First problem was his desktop Dell PC. No network card. A quick trip to PC World and a £5 network card was installed in less than 5 minutes. Configuring the router took about 30 minutes and 20 of those were wasted before discovering that some klutz has incorrectly spelled his username! Me! Doh!
After another 30 minutes wrestling the firewalls on the desktop and notebook, the wireless setup was complete and surfing from the bottom of the garden was possible. Next trick was to encrypt the connection - 10 minutes. File sharing - a doddle. Enabling printer sharing took somewhat longer - almost an hour. Convinced it was a firewall issue that was preventing the notebook from seeing his printer, I disabled them all only to find that the printer usb cable had become dislodged when the network card was installed.Should have checked that first. Hmmh.
The whole process took about 2 and a half hours. The end result was one connected house and one happy bear. (...and lots of brownie points for yours truly.)
Posted by weaver at 11:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2005
It had to happen.
What a wonderful day.
IMHO, Firefox is currently the best browser around for the PC. Flickr is a great web application for publishing photos and images. It was inevitable that someone would eventually bring the 2 together. - flickrfox
Posted by weaver at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
Web Album Generator
This neat little app allows you to build albums for publishing on your website. I've only just stumbled over it and will have a play with it this weekend.
Posted by weaver at 09:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Caught in the act.
Caught in the act. Web technology at its finest.
Posted by weaver at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thought of the day
“If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.”
Chinese proverb
Posted by weaver at 09:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thunderbird contacts sidebar
Here's an excellent extension that makes Thunderbird an even more useful email client.
Posted by weaver at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Colour Wheel
There are many tools on the web to help web designers select matching colours for a site design. This neat example helps to make life a little easier.
Posted by weaver at 09:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 13, 2005
48 Laws of Power
I wonder if these are the rules the politicians adhere to.
Posted by weaver at 07:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Escher doodling
You could spend hours playing with this fascinating java applet
Posted by weaver at 06:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 11, 2005
Forum woes
In a previous posting, i declared that ignorance is bliss. How right.
When I changed the permissions I failed to spot that the topics had become read only. This caused the date time & number of reply, for each topic that someone tried to write to, to become corrupt. A quick whizz round with the permissions duster with a spot of polish to 4 posts and all is well again.
This web stuff is really humbling. Just when you think all is going well, it rears up and has little nip at your ankles. One day, It'll bite real hard.
Posted by weaver at 09:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 09, 2005
Been away
Been away for a few days. Arrived back home late tonight. Will catch up with more posts laster this week
Posted by weaver at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 04, 2005
Ivan Noble
You've probably never heard of him. His was one of the first web diaries I ever read. It was also one of the most powerful. Ivan started his online diary when he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. Ivan died on Monday. God Bless.
Posted by weaver at 12:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 02, 2005
One step at a time.
Managed a couple of hours tonight on the site. Put the include files (both sidebars and the footer) in an include directory. This means that all the content pages will have to have a php extension if i want to use them. There are other options but this one seems the simplest.
Tidied up the menus and linked them to existing files. Removed the irritating ripple effect using CSS and changed the background colour of hovered links to a green that's more in keeping with the site's overall style.
Started to look at images, how to position them in the content div, border or not, CSS for the captions. Got most of it figured but the positioning is not as easy as it would be if i was using tables.
Made a start on about 3 of the main pages, but with over 500 to go, its going to be a long haul. Could do with a month or two off from my day job to get it completed. Not a realistic prospect.
Posted by weaver at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 01, 2005
Vanity publishing
Considering adding a new category called viewing or personal or some such tag so that the world (well....all 1.005 of you) can share in my viewing pleasures. What films I've gone to see, DVD's I've watched, books I've read. Perhaps even through in a mini review.
It'll be my vanity publishing bit. It it gets too intrusive, then I'll consider ditching it.
I'd also want to add a waiting list for DVDs & books I've bought but not yet watched..
Hmmm, I'll mull this over for the next few days and see what happens.
Posted by weaver at 11:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack