Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010300075.html
Some controversy but possibly for the wrong reason?:
Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.
Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
…
Jefferson’s copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s;
Even though Mr. Ellison is trying to add a Muslim/Islamic touch to his inauguration, it seems contradictory in a sense because:
The motives of George Sale, who pioneered an English translation of the Holy Quran, were suspect. He makes no secret of his antagonism to the holy book of Islam. In his preface to his translation in 1734 he made it known that it was his avowed intention to expose the man Mohammad and his forgery. He records: “who can apprehend any danger from so manifest a forgery?… The protestants alone are able to attack the koran with success; and for them, I trust, providence has reserved the glory of its overthrow.” George Sale, And he set to work with his prejudiced translation.
Let’s hope the contradictions end here.
Something that bugged me all day, which I managed to fix using an idea from someone else’s code:
With PHP5 being more Object Oriented, we are quick to declare our variables and functions as public, private and protected. But one thing we should also do is declare global variables as global using:
$GLOBALS['nameOfVariable'];
instead of just:
$nameOfVariable;
If you are used to OOP, you’d probably not use global variables at all. But it’s useful to know if you are using a library or piece of code that is not object oriented. For example, I was busy trying to incorporate PhpMathPublisher into Chisimba, and ended up with weird looking formulas. Only by converting the four PhpMathPublisher variables to use $GLOBALS could I get it to work.
If you have a contract phone, you’d probably experience this. You enter a cell phone shop to decide which phone you want, which ones are free, which ones will cost you extra, etc. Besides the many criteria you could choose from, recommendations, adverts, etc., there are times when you are undecided. And the way you tend to decide is by requesting for the demo in the window.
But here comes the problem. The demos in Vodacom, MTN (I experienced both, not sure about Cell C) are just that demos, pieces of plastic crap . In both instances when I requested them to switch on the phone, I got told, “Sorry it’s just a demo.”
A demo of what??? I don’t get to see any of the features. I don’t get to see if it has the features I need. I don’t get to see if the features like taking photos are worth the quality. What happened to don’t judge a book by it’s cover?
And to top it all, the assistants aren’t worth the questions you ask.
Yeah they can go on that it’s easy to steal the phone, but don’t insult our intelligence by showing as a worthless demo. If they really wanted to, they could have:
- Get a Real Phone
- Insert a sim with no airtime
- Attach some security device to the phone or cable it.
- Make the manuals or better documentation on the phone available.
- Teach their assistants to know the products they sell!
As nice as PDF is for distributing books/documents and not withstanding the ability to structure the titles of those documents with bookmarks, the is one thing I really wished for:
The ability to add my own bookmarks. Read, add bookmark, close pdf, open later, continue where I left off.
The are commercial options available for this, but I don’t have the time (and reluctant to spend $$) to see what they offer. Instead I found a solution from the PDF Hacks Book’s Website at: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/h/2358
It’s a script, you download and place in the Reader\Javascripts. For Windows, it will probably be. C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\Javascripts
Works well (source is in javascript), though pity it is limited interface wise. If Adobe includes Ajax and CSS support, it could be improved 
I recently switched to PHP5, and thought they had to have an updated manual. They did, and in fact I had to trash my 2002 version. The new phpZ skin is a must. The display is much better than the previous skins and separates the user contributed notes from the manual in a tab version.
Today I got sick and tired of a php reference error in phpPgAdmin, so I checked if a new version was out. phpPgAdmin 4.01 was out, so I could trash my 3.5 version.
What else should we regularly check for? My Quick List:
- PHP – http://www.php.net
- Xampp – http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
- phpMyAdmin – http://www.phpmyadmin.net/
- phpPgAdmin – http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/
- Notepad Plus – http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/
Manuals
- PHP
- Pear
Ever tried to install a pear library like MDB2_Driver_pgsql, only to find out that it refuses to download because the PGSQL extension is not enabled. So assuming XAMPP is installed in C:\Xampp, you hop over to C:\Xampp\Apache\bin\php.ini and enable it, switch back to C:\Xampp\php\ and go: pear install MDB2_Driver_pgsql.
Again it tells you, cannot download driver until pgsql is enabled! WTF. Look at the bloody php.ini file, it is enabled, apache was restarted, and heck, it even appears in phpinfo().
Take a deep breath and relax. Now go to C:\Xampp\php and open the php.ini file there. Enable the PGSQL extension and retry the pear install command.
Now you are probably thinking “This is not the php.ini file that Apache uses”. You are right, but it is the php.ini file that PEAR uses. {Roll your eyes}
BTW, if you sick of this issue and just want the flippin PEAR libraries, you could always do a force install.
pear install -f MDB2_Driver_pgsql
Further to my old entry on blogging being a perpetual charity, I received two thank you messages yesterday for entries people found useful on this blog. The two main issues being:
It’s a real pleasure, and thanks for the messages. But the main point about this entry should be:
Simplicity rules the web. Give people what they want in the fastest and easiest way you in recognition of their humanity. May what they learn from you increase their humanity so that others can learn from them too…
FCKEditor is a nice free WYSIWYG editor, highly customizable. Occasionally, however, especially when used with a div that shows/hides or JavaScript doesn’t want to focus properly in Firefox. Here’s a way I found around about it.
function wakeUpFireFoxFckeditor()
{
var oEditor = FCKeditorAPI.GetInstance(‘myinstanceoffckeditor’) ;
try
{
oEditor.MakeEditable();
}
catch (e) {}
oEditor.Focus();
}
Just to add:
- It’s best to call FCKeditorAPI – in fact you’d get an error if you did – after the page is loaded. Hence it’s in a function. You could probably tie it to a body onload, or onclick=”", etc.
- Use the try/catch approach. IE complains that you are waking up Firefox, so this is just a way to gracefully make both of them happy.
- Focus for usability. More commands available at: http://wiki.fckeditor.net/Developer%27s_Guide/Javascript_API
Am I anti-pictures on the web or not? I’m very fond of saying that, “A picture is worth a thousand words, but the internet it is with nothing”. Take any page, and you’d probably be bombarded by 20 pics, excluding the 1px transparent ones for layout 
.
Looking at those pics, can you really come up with 20,000 words in that 20 seconds that you ‘scan’ the page.
Well, images can also be useful in helping users to get around. Recently I wanted to look at the features of my bank account. Now I know the marketese glorified name given (its printed on the card), but trying to locate it on the Standard Bank website left me with the uncomfortable feeling that hopefully Im right, maybe I’m not.
Firstly, there are a range of cards in that category, and they give an overview of the category, but do not tell you the range.
But hey, on one of the pages that actually have a picture of how the card looks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t mine. But imagine if they did this for all the cards they offer. Browse for the features of your account by choosing a picture that looks similar to yours. Alas! People cannot appreciate what they do not know, says a Yoruba anecdote.
Just something that caught my eye when browsing the Internet. Ubuntu wins Best Distribution Award, but when you click on the link, it takes you to a page not found with the Microsoft details.
Whats the fuss – nothing. They needed to run Cold Fusion thats all. But for all their anti-this, anti-that rants, why the slip up.
On tech, a group of students were required to do a website for some Open Source Okes. They were so ‘Open Source’, the group was told to even create the graphics using an open source program. A silly imposition because this shouldn’t matter in the creation process. The group had been using Windows all the years, had the programs installed – but the Open Source okes wanted them to get a distro, (probably) reformat their pc, and learn to use GIMP.
Now calculate whether it’s worthwhile. Once the Open Source oke client was gone, they’d naturally switch back to Windows where their ‘other programs’ were.
But from people promoting Linux, I would have expected more!
I'm a Web Developer living in Cape Town, South Africa. Interests include: PHP, JQuery, ExtJS, Adobe AIR, Linux, Ubuntu, WordPress, Human Rights, Usability, Multimedia