Technology Makes Everything Easier!

posted by pope on June 26, 2009 at 12:43 pm

Steps taken to get desktop to be able to use internet in my room of my parents' house:

  1. find old ps/2 clickey-clack keyboard.
  2. lol profusely at silly old ps/2 clickey-clack keyboard.
  3. plug in old ps/2 clickey-clack keyboard because lol.
  4. realize this desktop only has wired internet, and this house only has wires in the basement.
  5. shut down computer.
  6. dig through closet.
  7. discover old memories.
  8. discover old wireless PCI card.
  9. unplug every wire from desktop.
  10. open desktop.
  11. install wireless PCI card into only available PCI slot.
  12. become concerned that wireless PCI card now blocks 90% of $600 graphics card intake vents.
  13. close desktop anyway.
  14. reconnect every wire to desktop.
  15. turn on computer.
  16. note that Windows Update failed to find drivers for the device to use to connect to the internet because it cannot connect to the internet.
  17. lol at flawed logic.
  18. use laptop to search device id on Google.
  19. note that wireless PCI card is one of the most generic pieces of hardware available to man.
  20. search for drivers for Windows 7.
  21. fail to find drivers because it's just too generic and Windows should know how to do it.
  22. search for drivers for Vista.
  23. fail to find drivers because no one has ever had to manually install this driver.
  24. tell Windows 7 to try updating driver again anyway.
  25. watch Windows 7 fail at finding the most generic device driver ever created.
  26. smash old ps/2 clickey-clack keyboard until dead.
  27. shut down computer.
  28. unplug all wires from desktop.
  29. carry desktop down basement stairs.
  30. borrow mouse, keyboard, network, power, and monitor cables from parents' desktop.
  31. turn on computer.
  32. watch monitor remain blank.
  33. remember that integrated VGA port on desktop will not work with $600 graphics card connected.
  34. force shut down computer.
  35. open desktop.
  36. try to remove $600 graphics card.
  37. note that little clip at the end of PCI Express slot is conveniently unreachable due to everything in the world being in the way.
  38. poke at $600 video card with screwdriver until it seems loose.
  39. poke at old ps/2 clickey-clack keyboard with screwdriver until all keys are detached and shattered.
  40. close desktop.
  41. turn on computer.
  42. watch as Windows Update installs wireless PCI card in less than five seconds.
  43. shut down computer.
  44. reinstall $600 graphics card in desktop.
  45. return wires to parents' desktop.
  46. carry desktop upstairs.
  47. trip over dog because you can't see.
  48. almost drop desktop on yourself.
  49. reconnect all wires to desktop.
  50. turn on desktop.
  51. not be able to connect to wireless anyway, because you forgot about MAC filtering.
  52. set remnants of old ps/2 clickey-clack keyboard on fire.
  53. use laptop to add desktop wireless MAC address to allowed list.
  54. connect to wireless network.
  55. go on facebook.
  56. complain that nothing interesting is going on and you're so bored.
  57. go to bed.
  58. dream of ways to dispose of old ps/2 clickey-clack keyboard murder evidence.

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tags: lols, technology, annoying, all tags
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Take Off Your Clothes, It's Naked Day

posted by pope on April 9, 2009 at 1:28 pm

CSS Naked Day, I mean. It's that time of year again where sites shed their CSS coverings and show the world that their beauty is more than skin-deep. Or more than selector-deep in this case.

The general idea is a pretty simple one. Comment out, cut out, create a php function to not even include CSS files on your site today. This should leave your site with nothing but plain HTML and Javascript functionality, a fact that would terrify most less than expert web developers. But those of us who understand and love our job are comfortable leaving our sites out naked in the breeze.

Well-coded and designed sites will handle this just fine, although maybe not look the best while doing it. CSS is, after all, just the pretty icing on the cake, and every site should be entirely usable without it.

The purpose of all this nudity is for awareness and promotion of web standards. Basically, anyone using a screen reader or similar accessibility software never actually uses your CSS anyway, and your site should be able to accommodate such a situation. So today, we're all looking through the eyes of a screen reader.

Also, it's just good form to follow the semantics of the language you're using.

So enjoy CSS Naked Day. We'll be back to our usual habits of hiding our shame after it's over.

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tags: CSS Naked Day, site news, all tags
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A New Day, A New CSS Selector Pattern

posted by pope on March 5, 2009 at 2:41 am

So here I am working on a number of projects (more details on these later), and I inexplicably find myself with both something interesting to write about and the time to do it. Very. Weird.

I've added a very interesting new item to my CSS toolbox. The ~= selector. In an effort to combat class-itis and make my code more elegant, readable, and generally awesome, I find myself in a situation that goes a little something like this. In various places, on various pages, I will have simple Ajax forms that, once they've been submitted, nicely fade into some sort of a spinner and status message like, "working on it..." However, depending on the area, there will be different styles associated with this new message, due to differing background colors, font styles, etc. I could define a class for each possibility and have my Javascript add the appropriate class depending on the form. But what if I don't want to have to bother getting to know which form I'm submitting before I do so, and I just have one function that adds a "thinking" class to whatever form it happens to be dealing with at the moment. You might think that I'll have to use some sort of poorly-anti-aliased .gif transparency to accommodate any background or maybe add a helper function that will add the "right" thinking class. But you'd be wrong. This is where this neat new trick comes in. I can just add my thinking class to any area that I want, but still allow myself differentiation in the CSS, using the ~= selector. In the W3C Selectors documentation, it's defined as follows.

E[foo~="warning"] Matches any E element whose "foo" attribute value is a list of space-separated values, one of which is exactly equal to "warning".

This allows me to select the element that uses any specific list of classes together, sort of like an AND for CSS. While the ~= notation is the formal definition of this selector type, the much easier shorthand to use this with classes is using connective periods between the class names, which makes this much more readable. So now, in my example, I'll end up wanting to individually select elements that look like this:


<div class="formOne thinking"></div>
<div class="formTwo thinking"></div>

Which is something I now can do, using the ~= selector, shortened using the daisy-chained periods notation, like this:


div.thinking{
	height:100px;
}
div.formOne.thinking{
	background:url('images/darkSpinner.gif');
}
div.formTwo.thinking{
	background:url('images/lightSpinner.gif');
}

While there may be some shared styles applied in a standalone thinking class, I still want to find these two divs and apply a different backrgound to each of them. The selector div.formOne.thinking allows me to select only divs that have both the classes formOne and thinking, making my life a whole lot simpler.

There are some limitations to this, though. As usual, IE 6 thinks it's a tough guy or something and doesn't want to follow this standard either, providing broken functionality for this selector pattern. This is, as always, very annoying, but I'll continue searching for a solution, because this tool is just too good to ignore.

PS Check out my new twitter sidebar, featuring the sarcastic cardinal, by Luc Latulippe. I find it to be awesome.

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tags: CSS, coding, web design, all tags
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Projects!

posted by pope on February 11, 2009 at 4:34 am

Project number one: The Chris Wayne Random "Fact" Generator
chrismwayne.info
Chris Wayne decided to buy a .info domain for himself, and needed something to put up there, so I thought I could help out with this. Thus, the generator was born. It's also worthy of being added to my projects because it very quietly shows off my Ajax skills. The generator itself runs on this server, choosing a random entry from a MySQL database, and then producing some JSON of the "fact" itself, and some other information. The chrismwayne.info site uses a PHP proxy to call this functionality from my server and grab that JSON, updating the page for the client. Sort of unnecessarily complicated, yeah, but it's a cool way to show off all these technologies working together well.

Project number two: Three Pound Universe
/projects/3lbuniverse
This has been an ongoing project with my brother (like All the Questions, but on a much more massive and useful scale), and I thought it was absolutely time for a much better design, which is what I've just posted up there in the project. Details on this project itself will follow, when the time comes.

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tags: site news, projects, all tags
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Making Progress

posted by pope on February 9, 2009 at 1:31 pm

Guess which part of my to do list fell through the cracks? That's right. The blog gets disrespected as usual. But at least be happy to know that while the content is still lacking, the blog itself got a little attention. A few small problems that have been bugging me for a while are no longer problems, and I have a couple more targeted for solving before Wednesday.

Also, check out my new portfolio entry for All the Questions. A few paragraphs about what the site's purpose is, how I designed it, how I built the code behind it, and how things turned out for it are all in the details, along with a link to the site itself. It's one of my favorite sites yet; check it out!

Next up is a transfer of all my JACKED sugarfree files onto this server, so that they can be listed in my projects, and I'll be trying to get rid of some of the suck on my about/contact page.

For a little while I'll admit I was planning on doing a full redesign of this site, but the more I looked into it, the more I realized I still really like this design. Sure, the code is messy and half duct taped together, and there are a few more leaks to patch, but I really do like it as-is.

Plus now I have more time to work on portfolio and projects.

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tags: site news, all tags
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Go back to AIR Tyler.
posted by pope on February 10, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Don't hire this man
posted by Bad person on February 10, 2009 at 3:44 pm

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