From the deep
Jul 25
Do Web designers need a body?
I consider myself a “Web developer”, but what does that really mean nowadays? Titles in the Web are a dime-a-dozen: “designer”, “developer”, “engineer”, “creative”, “producer”, “webmaster” and many more. Whenever I respond to someone that I’m a “Web developer” they instinctively think I singularly design Web sites. But they’re wrong. So very, very wrong. I actually program more than I design these days for Centation.
Jul 20
MySQL is 24 seconds too slow
1246402800. A perfectly valid UNIX timestamp, but one that created some confusion and head scratching in our office for one of our latest internal projects. The problem came around when converting the timestamp into a MySQL date using the FROM_UNIXTIME function which produced the wrong output. The timestamp is perfectly valid, it’s the timestamp for 1st June 2009, 00:00:00 (check it, if you don’t believe me).
Jul 12
PHP __auoload
PHP5 reared it’s head mid 2004, 5 long years ago and all PHP developers rejoiced. Especially me. It gave us lots of new shiny tools to play with, including the obvious improved OO support and my particular favourite: the __autoload function. For all you Java developers out there you know that you never have to include or require files, the Java language instinctively knows where to find them thanks to the…
Jul 4
A new beginning
It’s been a long time coming. I’ve even tweeted about it a few times. But it’s finally here. My new personal blog. Its predecessor was built on a system I constructed myself back in 2007—which is old in Web years. I started with good intentions of continuing to develop it and adding the features it needed. However as I grew busier and busier with Centation I just couldn’t spare the time.
From the journal
From the deep
Obligatory links
Create simple UML diagrams on-the-fly
yUML is an online tool for creating and publishing simple UML diagrams. It’s makes it really easy for you to: Embed UML diagrams in blogs, emails and wikis, Post UML diagrams in forums and blog comments, Use directly within your web based bug tracking tool and Copy and paste UML diagrams into MS Word documents and Powerpoint presentations.
Javascript Tidy
One thing I often need to do is to tidy javascript from it’s packed state. Often to fix the developers bugs, add new features or to modify it slightly. I give you, the Javascript Tidy, a tool I couldn’t live without.
jQuery Slider plugin (Safari style)
A pretty awesome slider. Haven’t tried it out yet but the new version seems pretty easy to skin, so you can style it however-the-hell you want (note: click the ‘jQuery Slider update’ link).