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Archive for the ‘general’ Category

Small changes

Friday, December 29th, 2006

Today I decided to change the blog a bit.

I added an OpenId header.
I added a Pavatar header
I removed the ‘Add to:’ bar below the posts
I added a page for the Pingerator.
I decided to test the text-ad services: Google AdSense, Text Link Ads and ToboAds.

I added OpenID because I think it’s a really good initiative. If you don’t know much about it go check Simon Willison’s screencast on how to use it and how to add it to your site. I found Pavatar on Brian Ellin’s blog and felt it’s a nice idea – I was thinking about what could replace Gravatar now that it’s down (as did Dave). I also went and removed the ‘Add to:’ links since I didn’t really like them and I just added them to see if they would have any influence on posts actually being bookmarked. The pingerator was added to increase its findability and the ad services will be tested to see how they work and if they work for me. If I get any money it will be invested in software and/or computer books.

Posted in blurps, general | 9 Comments »

Ethernet power on switch

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

Dear internet,

After my laptop’s screen has died I’m looking for an ethernet power switch (one you plug into the ethernet port and uses wake-on-lan to turn on the computer). If you know where to buy one or you are capable of creating it please leave a comment.

Thanks.

UPDATE: It seems that wake-on-ring is much easier since you only need 5V between pin 5 (ground) and pin 9 (ring indicator) to wake the computer up. I got instructions from an expert (thanks!) and will now try to create a prototype.

Posted in blurps, general, technology, thoughts | 1 Comment »

There once was…

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

A few years back there was this web agency that had a sister company that was into online advertising. At about the same time a lot of changes were happening in the advertising market and some innovations were needed. There was also a young web developer that was eager to create something impressive. Something cross-browser which wasn’t as easy then as it is today with YUI and others.

The developer took on a challenge of creating a new banner format that was already being used on some foreign sites. With a twist – the idea was to make it work on more than just the most popular browser. It was possible but some advance testing and expert “guessing” needed to be done. The challenge proved to be difficult but not unsolvable.

Since the script were to be used on advertising sites that already had their own JavaScript the functions needed to be ‘namespaced’ in order to avoid clashes. The developer wasn’t going to create an object but instead prefixed all his functions with an acronym. The acronym was chosen as an experiment – its meaning was hidden to see if others would just adopt it.

Every now and then I still get a floating banner to implement to a site. Not my primary focus anymore but still. And I always get a smile on my face when I see that the closing function is called “praHide” – “pra” is the acronym and it stands for “Parsek Rich Ad”. The code has changed since the first implementation and different agencies have different JavaScript functions. The name stayed the same though. I guess it became a sort of a standard. As has the 500×500 which we started using back in the day…

Posted in general, javascript, technology, thoughts | 2 Comments »

Dying out

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

Today my laptop decided that it had enough of being carried around and working nicely as it should. The screen now displays a limited number of pixels so it seems the most fragile part of the computer – the only movable part – went sour. When the same happened to my last mobile phone I decided not to buy clamshell phones ever again. Unfortunately with laptops I have no such option.

Hopefully the hardware experts can extend the life of my loyal friend for a few months since this is not really the best time to buy a new one. Until then I’ll only be using the external monitor.

Fortunatelly I’ve been thinking ahead.

Posted in general, technology, thoughts | 1 Comment »

IE7 final but still “broken”

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

I was always a bit sceptic about Microsoft’s products on the day of release (do you remember the media center presentation?). Well since I work in a web agency and Microsoft is scaring us about releasing IE7 to the wild on November 1st I had to install it to see if everything works (no I didn’t install any Betas since I hate Betas and I don’t have another legal version of WinXP to put into a VM).

The install went smoothly, I forgot to turn off my Spybot but I knew I have to allow all the changes to the registry. When I opened the new Explorer I saw something I actually expected – it told me that some of the installed extensions were out of date, that it disabled them and they need to be reinstalled for use. I was redirected to the IEDevToolbar page but unfortunately the download page was down.

The infobar did not go away, so after some time I figured I need to restart Explorer. After starting Explorer in normal mode (I realized later that the first start was obviously “Safe mode” or as Microsoft calls it “(No Add-ons)”) the thing broke imediately. Restarts and restarts and the chrome was disappearing faster and faster.

Fortunately I’m an ‘advanced’ user and ran the IE in safe mode again and disabled all the add-ons that reside in the chrome (toolbars and stuff) and now it seems to work normaly. Pretty annoying though – I have to reinstall them all by hand since I have no idea if it has an auto update feature.

So Microsoft – please change this behaviour or I’ll be getting loads of phonecalls from my relatives after they get IE7 installed and it doesn’t work since they have Yahoo/Google toolbars installed. If I do I’ll be telling them to switch to Firefox. I hear the next version will be out by then.

Posted in general, ie7, technology | No Comments »

Light laptops

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

I’m looking for a small and very lightweight laptop.

I have my old laptop for more than three years (even the extended guarantee expired) and I’m thinking of first getting me a lightweighter that I can really carry around all the time. The idea is that it would let me do little things – corrections really – and also use it instead of my current paper notebook.

I don’t think it should/will replace my current laptop that will probably be changed to another portable workstation (I’m using this term for laptops with more that 3kg that you mostly have on your desk and use for day to day work) sometime next year (before summer if Vista is stable by then).

In any case – do you have one? Why do you (dis)like it? Do you know one that is supposed to be awsome?

Posted in blurps, general | 4 Comments »

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