Monthly Archives: May 2008
Ben’s Mac Powerbook power adapter frayed and fried
So the day after I found out the problem with Ben’s keyboard and found a used Powerbook 12″ keyboard on macrecycling.com, Ben brought up his power adapter and showed me a bit of a disaster. It was unusable, and it could no longer power his computer. You may notice that it had finally died when [...]
Javascript Breadcrumbs
Here is the javascript that I use for the navigation breadcrumb links below the above navigation links. It is a very reliable javascript. I have used this script for years, and I have tweaked it for years. Sorry, I do not remember the original source. If you know, please email me. Create a .js file [...]
Using the MySQL Timestamp Field in Your PHP Code
Start From the MySQL Select Statement It may frustrate you to learn that the MySQL Timestamp is not a UNIX timestamp and must first be converted before you can use the date() function in PHP. Within your SELECT statement, use the MySQL ‘UNIX_TIMESTAMP()’ function to convert your timestamp to a standard timestamp format that PHP [...]
Mac Recycling & Old Computer Repair
Apple’s recycling program A couple of years ago, Apple announced that they would be recycling their old computers. However, it did not even dawn on me that they would be recycling computer parts. Today while looking for a part for Ben’s computer, I stumbled upon the Mac recycling website. They offer used Adapters, Batteries, Boards/Sound, Casing/Body, Displays, Fan/Cooling, Hard Drives, Keyboards, Logic Boards, Memory, Modems, Optical [...]
HTML Coding Tricks for Search Engine Optimization
I have been struggling to get traffic to my blog. I have tried by making sure that my RSS feed works, and it has gone down quite a bit. I have also had trouble with my dream host servers going down, but it looks like they have fixed it so I’m very glad about that. [...]
Web Design Best Practices, Overdoing your CSS
Over-Doing It Tagitis Tagitis is the adding of many useless XHTML tags. This header, for instance, suffers from tagitis: <h3><em>Header</em></h3> You don’t need the extra tag. One line of CSS would give the same effect: h3 { font-style: italic; } Classitis and Divitis A common error of beginning CSS coders is to use far too [...]
Moodle and Second Life
I finally had a chance to sit in on a Second Life training on Sloodle, a mashup between Moodle and Second Life. It is a rather exciting project because it will allow my students who don’t have the hardware to run the Second Life viewer to be able to chat and interact live with those [...]
Web Design Best Practices, Page Layout
Page Layout Most web site templates perform page layout by using a few blocks of content, for instance a header, a left column with the navigation, a right column with the main content, and a footer, as shown below: Any attempt to code this page must start by roughly positioning these four blocks of content. [...]
WordPress Series Plugin
I have found an absolutely awesome plugin for WordPress that allows you to assign blog posts into a series. Since I have nuked my personal web site that held all sorts of technology helps and decided to post them here, this series plugin will help you find the pages. You will find a list of [...]
WordPress Permalinks are a Problem
I have had more problems making the links on my blog look pretty with folder names instead of database row numbers. That has been the root of all evil that slowed this WordPress blog down to a screeching halt. If your blog is slow both on the front end and the back end, try disabling permalinks [...]
Web Design Best Practices, DOCTYPE
Doctypes By using a certain DOCTYPE (strict or transitional) you claim to have correctly implemented a certain (X)HTML flavor: < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> When you declare a DOCTYPE, validators take you at your word. When you validate your pages, they check your code against the syntax that you claim to [...]
Web Design Best Practices, XHTML
Recode for XHTML The best way to start coding a new website is to make a rough sketch on paper. Draw the content blocks, make short notes on the XHTML and CSS you’ll need and try to anticipate the problems you’ll encounter. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll solve all, or even most, problems by this [...]