My Writings. My Thoughts.

Another iPad Giveaway

July 22nd, 2010 | Comments Off | Uncategorized

I ran across an iPad giveaway today on Where Does All My Money Go. I really hope I win this time… seeing as I didn’t win last time :(

iPad Giveaway

May 26th, 2010 | Comments Off | Uncategorized

I ran across an iPad giveaway today on Where Does All My Money Go. I really hope I win!

Now to start reading more of the blog to see if it’s worth adding to Google Reader or not…

Displaying alerts on external links with JQuery

October 20th, 2009 | Comments Off | Uncategorized

JQuery LogoRaymond Camden posted an article this morning on displaying an alert to the user when you click a link that would leave/exit the website. In his example, he suggests adding an extra class to the links that require this feature. In my experience this kind of pop-up confirmation alert when clicking the link is often used by old-school, monolithic institutions or government agencies. But, if you really want or need to annoy your users, here’s a different way to do it that would work on ALL external links from your web page.

First, make sure you’re using relative or absolute paths for your internal links (instead of fully qualified urls). This technique won’t work if you code every link on your site with the http:// in the href attribute.
Next, make sure you’re including the JQuery library on your page.
Then in a <script>, use the following function to target your external links:

$(document).ready(function () {
	$('a[href^="http"]').click(function() {
		return confirm("Are you sure you want to do this?")
	}
});

Here we’re using a JQuery selector to target external links with this by looking for every instance of “http” in the href attribute of an anchor tag.

This way you do NOT have to add unnecessary, non-semantic code to target external links.

Alternately, if you HAVE coded your links with fully qualified urls, you can substitute the JQuery selector I used above with this one:

	$('a[href^=http]:not("[href*=://' + document.domain + ']")');

SlickPlan – Online Sitemap Builder

September 25th, 2009 | Comments Off | Web Design

SlickPlanI found a nice new tool to build sitemaps this morning [via WebAppers]. It’s got a nice Web 2.0 style interface. BUT, and it’s a big but, it’s not yet ready for prime time. I’ve identified at least three problems in using it to build a sitemap for one of the websites I’ve built:

  1. Export PDF feature is not working. When I selected this option, an inline-window opens with a graphic that makes one think something is happening (animated GIF FTW!). After a few seconds the window closes. No file download window is offered. No download link appears. No PDF. FAIL!
  2. Email link not working properly. I received an email of my sitemap (a simple unordered list in text format) with an SQL statement in the email. Definitely a security issue.
  3. Site map not saved when save clicked. After spending half an hour building a site map for one of the websites I’ve built at work, it is really disappointing to not have my work available.

I wouldn’t want to rely on this service at this point. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now that these problems will be resolved and will check back in a week or two.

Clearing a Windows 7 Print Queue

August 21st, 2009 | Comments Off | Computers

Win7_Ultimate_webProblem: You have a print job that you want to cancel. You cancel it or delete it, but it doesn’t go away. You try to Cancel All Documents. Rebooting the computer doesn’t help. Power cycling the printer doesn’t help.

Solution: Follow these simple steps to clear your Windows 7 Print Queue.
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Sunflowers and Morning Glories

April 1st, 2009 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous

Sunflowers and Morning GloriesTwenty one of the Sunflowers and 3 of the Morning Glories are so tall that I had to remove them from the plastic dome of my seedling greenhouse. I also have at least two tomatoes peeking out, and a bunch of marigolds.

Seeds have sprouted

March 30th, 2009 | Comments Off | Gardening

IMGP5093The seeds have started sprouting – about 36 hours after planting! Mainly the sunflowers so far….

Seeds Started

March 28th, 2009 | Comments Off | Gardening

Today I planted 64 Jiffy peat pods with seeds. Peat Pods planted with seeds

  • 4 Glacier Tomatoes (West Coast Seeds)
  • 4 Polish Linguisa Tomatoes – Roma style (West Coast Seeds)
  • 8 Brocade Marigolds (West Coast Seeds)
  • 24 Sunflowers – mixed (West Coast Seeds)
  • 8 Pansy
  • 8 Morning Glory

I have 8 remaining peat pods for my Zucchini (4 yellow, 4 green) which I will plan in a couple of weeks.
The Jiffy seed starting kit I purchased included a heating pad which is underneath the seeds. This is supposed to help germination – we’ll see what happens.

This year, Tammy and I chose to purchase seeds from West Coast Seeds – seeds that are acclimatized to conditions in our area.

Micro-hypermiling

August 14th, 2008 | Comments Off | Miscellaneous

Fuel GaugeOver on TreeHugger, Sami Grover has suggested a new term: micro-hypermiling. Micro-hypermiling is hypermiling on a pre-defined route with which the drive is intimately familiar.
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Reset the Root Password on MySQL

August 11th, 2008 | Comments Off | Development

From time to time, you may run across a MySQL database where you don’t have the root password, but you require it to perform some task or another. In my case, I inherited a MySQL installation but no root password was available. The root password in the records did not work. Here’s a quick lesson in resetting the root password.
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