As I have hopefully blogged about a little bit, I have been working a lot lately with Ajax stuff and writing a lot of my course content in HTML. Consequently, I am constantly bouncing from Javascript to CSS to HTML to Java to PHP, etc.... Add to this, I have never been that great at remembering syntax. So I often carry around a number of the O'Reilly quick reference books with me. Cause I know what I need to do, but I can't remember correct idiom (References to Monty Python and the Holy Grail welcome). :)
So I often find myself carrying around a bunch of books that I don't really want to carry around. At the Rails conference this really began to bug me cause I'm sure my books were heavier than my laptop.
So at said Rails conference I chit chatted with the nice O'Reilly lady at their booth. This problem came up during the conversion and she mentioned that a number of their books were available as PDFs.
Well I looked into it this weekend and sure enough, most of their books (especially the new ones) have a PDF version. I found replacements for all my quick references: the CSS, HTML, Regex, JavaScript, and SQL. In addition, I found PDF versions of the PHP Cookbook and Mats' Ruby book. My laptop bag has just dropped about 2 or 3 pounds!
The quick references cost between $7 and $10 each. The regular books from $20 to about $35, only a slight discount off the print book. I do think O'Reilly should consider lowering the price of the PDFs a bit. I think they would sell better.
The PDFs themselves have no passwords or DRM on them. Plus they are indexed and searchable!!! Woo hoo! So if you want to lighten that load, head over to their store and check it out: http://oreilly.com/store/
I have written up a little how to on using PHP objects. The article is by no means comprehensive and only covers some of the basics. But I did learn quite a bit trying to write it. The PHP __call method is very interesting and I had no idea it even existed.
Since I bounce between languages so much, I needed a simple summary example showing standard syntax for regular and static objects. The static syntax always throws me off and I was getting tired of having to repeatedly look that stuff up.
Here is another great link from Ajaxian. A short tutorial on Sitepen on how to use Dojo with Flickr.
If you get the chance, go see Kung Fu Panda. It is one of the funnest films I have seen in quite some time. Definitely fun for the whole family.
Jack Black is great. The animation is wonderful. The movie is on par with the first Shrek movie. Go see it, you will be glad you did.
My friend Scott posted this link and so shall I!
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord
The Mozilla dudes are trying to set a record for the most downloads in 24hrs. Firefox 3 is out, so what better reason to help out!
I have been using both FF3 and FF2 side by side for about 2 weeks. FF3 seems to work great. They have also come out with a beat version of Firebug so I can actually use it now.
Well after getting transferred 3 times, the first two people didn't know what a 2133 was, I finally got someone who "attempted" to "solve" my problem. I explained that there seemed to be no network repository for packages installed with Suse Linux 10 and was wondering what the URL was for one I could use. This is the answer I got:
I pointed out to the nice HP support lady that I received no Suse OS disk with the system. Where could I find such a disk? She restated 1 and reiterated 2.
Well at this point, there is no point in wasting anymore of her or my time. I thanked her and hung up. I had pretty low expectations but this exceeded them. Wow! Thanks a lot HP.
Since I have had the 2133, it seems to randomly lock up occasionally (its the software config, not the hardware). After one of these crashes, the Suse auto login stopped working and now I have to log in from the command prompt and do a "startx". In addition, the shutdown features no longer seem to work from inside the desktop (Have to drop to root. Shutdown and then do an init 0 from single user mode). This started happening while I was waiting on hold. It's setups like this that give Linux a bad name. Crap like this used to happen when I tried to use Redhat and never happen now that I use Ubuntu.
The moral of the story, only use a Linux that you can get community support for. Looks like its Ubuntu time. Installation instructions for Ubuntu and the HP2133 can be found at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/HP2133. So much for trying Suse Linux. :(
I don't have time at the moment to setup Ubuntu. This will probably have to wait until early July when I have some vacation. But at least I know I will get support from that community.
I purchased an HP mini note 2133 laptop just before I left for my trip. This is an ultra notebook about the size of your standard tech paperback book and weighs about 3lbs. It is pretty nice. The 9" screen is small but readable with a resolution of 1280x768. Much better than what you will find with most ultra portables like it. In addition, the keyboard is 90% of the normal size so it is still pretty big. Having seen an eee pc at Rails Conf, I am not sure I could type on that. The keyboard on the mini note is not a problem.
I purchased the Linux version with 1gig of ram and a 120G hard drive from newegg for about $550 like the one you see below. Apparently Amazon is going to get a few of these in sometime.
The main problem I have to date is the Suze Linux installed with the system looks for a DVD ROM drive for additional software packages. This is a bit humorous since the mini note has no DVD or CDROM drive. HP. Don't you think it would be better for this system to look at some network repository for packages? Maybe? lol. You can't make this stuff up.
I found a DVD image on the HP support site. I am downloading that to see if it has some of the packages I want. Really, I just want to add Apache, PHP5, and Ruby. Maybe Thunderbird, SQLite. Just stuff I can play around with when I am bored. Gonna call too to see if they can give me some sort of network URL.
Now I know most Linux geeks are gonna say, just wipe the sucker and install Ubuntu. I have thought about that, but I'm not that good of a Linux geek and I don't really want to take the time. Heck it would be nice to use another distro just to see what it is like.
I will update you on my progress.
You will notice a few cosmetic changes to this blog over the past couple of days. After a little thought, I decided that I might as well make this blog the main index page for http://www.blueskyworkshop.com. I was using the Google Ajax proxy to redisplay the posts, which is a little slow. So in there end, there was only a couple of differences between this page and that one.
You will notice a Google search bar for my site has been added to the bottom of the page. In addition, on the top right, some site wide navigation links along with topical links to my how-to's have been added.
Blogger allows you to totally tweak the CSS for your blog. Notice I have changed the Link List boxes in the right sidebar. The light blue background and the border makes them stand out a bit more. There is also now a ruler after each post to give each entry a little more separation.
In addition, I dropped the Amazon MP3 widget and Adsense skyscraper ad from the right sidebar as well. They seemed to be slowing down the page loading a bit. Instead, I have opted to insert an ad inline after every other post. I think this will provide more focused ads without affecting usability or performance.
In the end, http://blueskyworkshop.blogspot.com, http://blueskyworkshop.com, and http://blueskyworkshop.com/blog are all going to point to the same blogger page. I thought about removing the last URL in the list, but I see no harm in leaving it. If I take it out, I might break links to it, which I don't want to do.
The more I work with it, the more I like Blogger as a tool. The folks at Google have made a really useful, easy to use tool. It scales well for power users like me. Often tools like this are useless because they are crippled and can not be extended or modified. I am so glad I am using this and not upgrading Wordpress every other month. Woo hoo!
Currently I use Coda for the Mac as my main content editing software for my Web sites. I would like to use NetBeans 6 for that too if I could, but it currently does not support word wrap, which makes writing large chunks of content impossible.
I was Googling around a bit to see if that feature had been added, and I found this blog post. If you dig into the comments at the bottom you will find a discussion of word wrap. Looks like the feature is targeted for NetBeans 7.
Update May 2011: The Word Wrap feature has indeed been added in NetBeans 7. Choose: Tools --> Options --> Editor --> Formatting.
I'm stealing that comment from Stephen Covey apparently, but I wanted to discuss it in regard to technical training or writing of any kind. When you are writing a book or an article or giving a presentation, try to stay focused on the concept you are trying to convey.
For example, if I wanted to teach you about addition, I might start with an example like this:
1 + 1 = 2
Simple, easy to understand, to the point.
Often with technical materials I run across something like this.
1 + 1 + (3 * 2) + ((1 * 2) / 2) = 9
"Above is a simple example of addition. Notice I can add two numbers like 1 and 1. But if I include multiplication and division, that is where you can see the real power of addition!"
Multiplication and division are really cool concepts. But if I am trying to teach addition, they are just distractions. And, if my audience does not understand multiplication or division, I have just lost them.
Feature completeness does not equal clarity. Keep the main thing the main thing. Stick to the addition.
Keep track of all the latest Euro 2008 action from your desktop. This gadget shows the latest scores and schedules from the upcoming 2008 UEFA European Football Championship. You can also customize the gadget to match your favorite team's colors.I was just doing some troubleshooting on an old Solaris box from my Mac. After sshing in, I tried to use vi to edit a file and the system told me it didn't understand my terminal. By default, OS X sets the terminal to TERM=xterm-color.
To get vi working, simply set the term to an old terminal type like a vt100. That was a pretty standard type back in the day. To do this at the command line type (i'm using the bash shell):export TERM=vt100
That seems to fix things up. I think the ansi terminal is based on a vt100. Not sure though. If anyone knows, please post a comment.
