09.26.06

Tech Error - Bangkok Airport

Posted in general at 9:05 am by Clinton

My friend Mark was at Bangkok Airport a few weeks back. He saw this on the monitor and thought I would find it amusing… I thought I would share. :)

Tech Error - Bangkok Airport Style

09.19.06

Tab-Window Switching in OS X

Posted in general at 8:41 pm by Clinton

I’ve been wanting an easier way to un-minimize windows in OS X. Unlike other users i’ve spoken to (yeah, I mean Andrew) I tend to minimize windows rather than use a multiple-window (ie virtue desktop) setup - probably out of habits I developed in windows.

I started looking for a solution by searching for some magic key combination I’ve come to expect from OS X, but no joy there afaik (or at least no standard that I know - let me know if i’ve missed something obvious).

However, I google and found a little app called Witch (Window Switch) by Peter Maurer. Basically, I think it’s great. Now, using alt-tab I can switch to any window of any app - basically, it behaves like Windows does with alt-tab.

I have read that for some people witch is slow to pop-up, but that hasn’t been an issue for me. Setup does require turning on “access for assistive devices” in universal access (designed to allow assistive software to help users navigate other applications - a setup I think is a good design). Check out the website to see screen shots of witch in action.

There are heaps of settings, but I’m still using the plain-vanilla setup and that’s been fine.

09.15.06

My adaptation to the OS X land…

Posted in mac/os x at 10:23 am by Clinton

Okay, in the ever-increasing learning path of doing things the os x way, here’s a few more things I now know that I didn’t know that Andrew hasn’t posted :) …

  • VNC - I’m using “Chicken of the VNC” (GNU) (based on the VNCViewer)
  • SFTP GUI - Fugu (thanks Lucien for that pointer)
  • IR Control (for PowerPoint that is) - iRed Lite (Free beta download - shareware in future). (Thanks Andrew for that one)
  • Date/Calendar from Entourage - MenuCalendarClock
     from Objectpark Software. Free and Pay version.

Installed the os x dev tools… coding time. Screen shots to follow :)

Major frustration - shift+up/down arrow group selection behaviour. Not what I expect, not useful from my pov as is, can’t find a way to make it work the windows way. Yes - windows.

Delphi 7 under parallels runs fine.

09.08.06

Delphi Links

Posted in programming at 11:49 am by Clinton

Been a while since I tapped away at Delphi code (object pascal the Borland/Imprise variety:) but I was tweaking some older programs recently and wanting to note a couple of resource, … for myself if noone else :)

http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/ a great online reference…
http://www.delphiforfun.org/ Lots of cute programs and help for starters
http://www.marcocantu.com/ Writer of the infamouse “Mastering Delphi #” series of books (some good online freebies too).

Is Delphi going to die? …

War on Terror - Bourne shell style

Posted in general at 11:09 am by Clinton

You might have seen this already… I hadn’t. (Followed Lucien’s geek humour post, read the comment… i think its known as “browsing”.)

http://blogs.sun.com/ThinGuy/entry/the_war_on_terror_as

Still laughing. Back to work.

08.30.06

View .chm in OS X

Posted in mac/os x at 8:54 pm by Clinton

I haven’t been as vocal about this as Andrew (parts [1], [2], [3], [4]), but I too have joined the mac world with the use of a nice silver intel-based MacBook Pro replacing my desktop. Now many thoughts have been accumulated during the learning process :) but I guess I wanted have some “well-formed” ideas before posting (and so avoid showing a greater-than-necessary amount of ignorance!). But now I have to post on my fun with .chm viewers…

I have been happily using parallels to get back to the XP/Visual Studio world as needed, and rebooting with bootcamp when I need DirectX 3D acceleration. (I’m sooooo looking forward to a VM that can give me that without a reboot).

However, although I can do all the things I’ve wanted so far, I have been frustrated by the limits, such as not being able to browse to my bootcamp XP partition and just open a windows compiled help file (.chm). So today I started my search.

Here’s my list

My testing process is a bit of a blur, but some programs crashed… to be honest I didn’t care why, I just moved on. However, significantly for me, only xCHM correctly showed (buit?) an index/contents for the DirectX .chm files I wanted to read.

Having the contents/index to look at is essential. Not having it is like reading a book but you can’t turn the pages! Almost useless. I don’t know why the DirectX help files had indexes that didn’t show (I’m sure its something different about those files) but the bottom line is I needed to read those files with indexes and xchm did the job.

So, that’s my pick for the day. ymmv, but it was a good Google/test/win day for me.

08.23.06

Byteclub, Lucien and stuff

Posted in teach, byteclub at 11:15 pm by Clinton

I know this is a late post many days after, however just to let ppl know that as far as I am concerned, Lucien doesn’t get away that easy and any excuse I can find to involve alumni staff, espically officially in his new job, in our byteclub business - it’s happening! Lucien was the founding force - I mostly tried to nod in the right place. Its been great to work with Lucien and i’m really missing that. Lets just say IM chats ease the pain.

Also, knowing my human limitatins I am actively seeking help from other staff with byteclub and making plans. Okay, it’s not “all happening” at the moment the way we wanted, and I honestly (sadly) don’t have enough time for cool stuff here on byteclub as is, but the byteclub project is definitely an on-going and supported venture.

Here’s some ideas I have - and I would really like your help and feedback (easy on the “pain points”).

  • Get the onine registration form happening again. (Mark is ready to help here, so that’s in my entourage todo list after open day!)
  • Actively seek out past and present students - maybe some finders fees are in order? Hm… “Bounty hunters”…
  • We need more than just “online” events. Speakers are good. Food, games nights, videos…
  • game development competition
  • newsletter (any volunteers?)
  • posters/flyers etc
  • online project repository/bug tracking etc to help group members develop projects
  • … others?? let me know

So, do I have any helpers? Comments? Suggestions? Comment or send me emails or just plan knock on my office door and have a chat - that would be nice.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

No Help in Helpdesk

Posted in general at 1:00 pm by Clinton

I recently sent an email to an IT service department (the reason is not important). Knowing that in the past this department had simply been called “helpdesk” (as in “helping” right) I made up the email adress “helpdesk@…” and clicked send.

Then I got an auto-reply, which basically said that the “helpdesk” is no longer the “helpdesk” - it is the “servicedesk@…”.

I must conclude that there is no longer any “help” in helpdesk… and that explains a few things. :)

06.29.06

Speed Cameras and Flames…

Posted in general at 10:29 pm by Clinton

I’m finishing off my marking (almost done!), but came across the following site for those who might occasionally have less-than-friendly thoughts about speed cameras — not that I approve of the following of course.

http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm

Just sharing… now where’s that red pen….

06.08.06

Blogs on Web Levels..

Posted in web dev, teach, learn at 10:07 pm by Clinton

I’m a happy subscriber to the SitePoint techtime newsletter, and the lastest one gave me a solid but enjoyable bit of reading this evening (after following the links in the newsletter).

Emil Stenström : Levels [0 to 6] of CSS Knowledge
(11th Jan 2006)
http://friendlybit.com/css/levels-of-css-knowledge/
0. “CSS? Isn’t that a multiplayer game?”
1. “Yeah, I use it to remove underlines on links sometimes”
2. “No, I don’t like divs; tables are much easier to work with”
3. “Yeah, I’ve heard it’s good, but I can’t use it because…”
4. “CSS? Oh! Yeah, I use divs for all my layouts”
5. “I use CSS for design, it’s better than tables because of…”
6. “What version of CSS? Yes, I do. Did you read my book about…”

(133 comments… good, bad and obvious… I find it funny that some people in comments and trackbacks don’t realise the 0 to 6 levels == 7 levels, but hey, coders know about 0 indexes so that’s okay… :~).

It written well enough (+grain salt) but this one really got me starting to think about teaching, learning and where our students may be at with web dev and CSS and how we reach them. (I’ve now got Blooms taxonomy levels and everything else zooming in my head after that one.)

anyway, that last post then then inspired …

Roger Johansson : Levels [0 to 6] of HTML Knowledge
(30th May 2006) http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200605/levels_of_html_knowledge/
The levels have headings like “HTML LEVEL 3″, but the typical quotes are nice…
0. “Age-tee-em-what?”
1. “HTML? It’s those tags you use to make text bold or italic.”
2. “The controls I drag and drop in my IDE work fine in Internet Explorer, so why should I have to even look at the HTML?”
3. “Yeah yeah, I’ve heard about those fancy new ul and h1 tags, but I’m doing just fine with my trusty old table, img, and br tags.”
4. “How can I create a data table with divs and spans instead of tables?”
5. “Hmm. I wonder which type of list is the most semantic way to mark up this part of my document.”
6. “I think the HTML 4.01 and XHTML 2 specs are too semantically limited, so I am working on a new markup language.”
(178 comments, although #comment94 is a kicker… :~)

I like the writing style, and the points are very good but again some of the points (and especially the quotes i just listed) may not be understood properly unless the reader is somewhere down the list of levels and they know when to engauge “sarcasm” or “smug” mode while reading. Mind you, third paragraph is …

This is all written in a tongue-in-cheek way and is just my personal opinion. Please don’t over-react if you don’t agree or think some of the descriptions are a bit harsh. Try laughing instead.

Good advice for lots of post. I am always amazed when people go balistix on peoples post, like its their duty to correct the injustice of the world… from their point of view. Anyway, i’ll just start ranting, so on to…

Joe Clark : Levels [0 to 7] of Accessibility Knowledge
(2nd June 2006) http://blog.fawny.org/2006/06/02/niveaux/
Headings are just “Accessibility Level 3″ etc, so here’s my take on his points…
(I’m just trying to capture the points, not make my own)…
0. User level, not developer. Use common (MS) products, and don’t really think about how disabled users might go
1. Developers (FrontPage) who know that alt value = tooltips. Knows blind people will ask to “feel you face” (’cause that’s what they always do on TV).
2. Developers who know enough to be even more dangerous …
3. CSS is so good you don’t have to worry about poor HTML layout. Owns GoLive4.
4. jab at someone (who doesn’t “do” what they “preach” aka hypocrite issue?)
5. jab at someone (who doesn’t evangelise enough?)
6. jab at someone (who networks with publishers/people, suffers from 4 and 5, and looks down on mortals?)
7. jab at .. self? (interested in obscure subtopics, grating personality quirks… X in village).

No comments (doesn’t want them?). Eloquent writter, but my interest fades with my comprehension, so I get/smirk at most of the early points, but don’t see the point in wasting electrons for the rest - and I’m pretty sure Joe would think the same about my take - doesn’t care if i get it because it wasn’t meant for me. Hey, maybe that’s the subtle accessiblity point… :) nope. I still don’t get it.

Roger (Levels of HTML) then also inspired

Dean Edwards : Levels [1 to 6] of JavaScript
(2nd June 2006) http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2006/06/levels/
Written in JavaScript of course! I had to repeat this one…

  1. alert(“Hello World”);
  2. var WORLD = “World”;
function hello(who) {
    alert(“Hello “ + who);
};
hello(WORLD);
  3. <button onclick=“hello(WORLD)”>Say Hello</button>
  4. <button id=“hello”>Say Hello</button>
    var button = document.all.hello;
button.onclick = function() {
    hello(WORLD);
};
  5. var button = document.getElementById(“hello”);
button.addEventListener(“click”, function(event) {
    hello(WORLD);
}, false);
  6. var Hello = new Binding({
    greet: function(who) {
        alert(“Hello “ + who);
    },

    onclick: function() {
        this.greet(Hello.WORLD)
    }
}, {
    WORLD: “World”
});
document.bind(“#hello”, Hello);

On a related note, has anyone else tried FireBug with Firefox for js debugging? Giving it a burl now… hmm. http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/

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