/* normal CSS */
div.class {
}
/*ie6*/
* html div.class{
}
/*ie7*/
*:first-child+html div.class{
}
Brian Clay set out a new perspective at targeting ie6/7 only by:
1 | #myelement |
I'm using this from now on!!!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
SHORTEST WAY TO TARGET IE6/7!!
OMG before I seen this I did this:
/* normal CSS */
div.class {
}
/*ie6*/
* html div.class{
}
/*ie7*/
*:first-child+html div.class{
}
Brian Clay set out a new perspective at targeting ie6/7 only by:
Amazing... just amazing.
I'm using this from now on!!!
/* normal CSS */
div.class {
}
/*ie6*/
* html div.class{
}
/*ie7*/
*:first-child+html div.class{
}
Brian Clay set out a new perspective at targeting ie6/7 only by:
I'm using this from now on!!!
Friday, December 26, 2008
My Skills for Hire!
Hello prospective customer!
[09/19/2014 update: I am no longer working in this sector, as I'm in medical school]
Allow me to tell you what I am capable of so far.
I am currently working at an online company where my work is about
coding in XHTML/CSS and Javascript/AJAX.
More technically, I have done various AJAX - based id, purchase code checking
mechanisms under both casual and financially sensitive setting (billing pages),
with JSP/PHP based backend engines driving the web applications.
I've also coded for MySpaces pages and am well fluent enough
to do a mirror-like transformation from PSD to HTML/CSS.
CakePHP is not my expertise, but as it is a MVC model I figure it's gonna
be similar to Ruby on Rails, which I have studied and dabbled a bit.
Languages / frameworks I am fluent in :
JSP/Struts/Tomcat (Java based web applications)
jQuery (easy but powerful Javascript library)
XHTML/CSS
Visual C# (windows applications dealing with EXCEL sheets, SQL DBs)
TSQL - SQL Server's language
PHP - raw coding, and Drupal installation/setting up
I hope we can work out a schedule of operations. As I am a full-time student,
I can only allot time when I am off from school, at my home.
Thanks and I look forward to doing business with you.
[09/19/2014 update: I am no longer working in this sector, as I'm in medical school]
Allow me to tell you what I am capable of so far.
I am currently working at an online company where my work is about
coding in XHTML/CSS and Javascript/AJAX.
More technically, I have done various AJAX - based id, purchase code checking
mechanisms under both casual and financially sensitive setting (billing pages),
with JSP/PHP based backend engines driving the web applications.
I've also coded for MySpaces pages and am well fluent enough
to do a mirror-like transformation from PSD to HTML/CSS.
CakePHP is not my expertise, but as it is a MVC model I figure it's gonna
be similar to Ruby on Rails, which I have studied and dabbled a bit.
Languages / frameworks I am fluent in :
JSP/Struts/Tomcat (Java based web applications)
jQuery (easy but powerful Javascript library)
XHTML/CSS
Visual C# (windows applications dealing with EXCEL sheets, SQL DBs)
TSQL - SQL Server's language
PHP - raw coding, and Drupal installation/setting up
I hope we can work out a schedule of operations. As I am a full-time student,
I can only allot time when I am off from school, at my home.
Thanks and I look forward to doing business with you.
Friday, December 19, 2008
favicon ie7 problem
Her's the answer to make IE7 show favicons.
If you put any of these lines:
<link rel="icon" href="http://www.ogplanet.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.ogplanet.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
THEY HAVE TO BE PUT BEFORE any <meta> and RIGHT AFTER <html>!!
Took me couple hours to find out. Thanks!
If you put any of these lines:
<link rel="icon" href="http://www.ogplanet.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.ogplanet.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
THEY HAVE TO BE PUT BEFORE any <meta> and RIGHT AFTER <html>!!
Took me couple hours to find out. Thanks!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Ruby : The Study in Stock Investing
I started to get interested in Ruby. And while I was starting Ruby, I got this idea that I'll make
a program in Ruby that will automate stock investing! From retrieving stock suggestions from
a website to running calculations on it and feeding it to an investor site, the program would automate the whole process.
While coding away I read a book about stock investing and found out there's more to investing then what I had thought prematurely. I thought trading many times frequently would generate revenue, but it turns out the commission fees and tax alone are not small enough to create a good revenue.
To hell with reality! Why not just code first and then think of some ways to make the code useful!?
Yeah I thought so at first. I was 70% done, and my algorithm was actually working to some level,
but then it felt so futile. I have only around 6 months of CS related stuff to do and I wasn't going to make some purposeless code take my time.
But it's that I wrote so much code, and it works relatively to a certain level. Aside from a logical gap between what the code does and how it doesn't fulfill the goal I intended, the code does, in a higher level, is capable of facilitating data transfer between two sites, and even uses WATIR to mimic human interaction with the site.
I am therefore putting the code openly on this blog, in case anyone would find it useful.
Here is the code, as it is.. it's not been cleaned up. It's in its raw state.
To help understand the code, I've written a brief explanation of the logic behind the code,
written below and also as a .doc file:
==============================================================
Here goes:
Before reading the following, there is a terminology conflict that is bound to create confusion among readers – ‘modules’ are not some data structure, they are just conceptual block of functionality. They are actually implemented as classes.
My project which I couldn't end is a test on how a group in a special interest in an area of subject can produce datasets, which are standard enough that unintentionally aid an activity which couldn't have functioned well but with the use of more-than-average resources.
The setting I got inspired from and tried to place in setting was stock trading.
Technology I used was Ruby with a good amount of use of WATIR - the IE handling library for Ruby.
Programming Design Summary:
I set up 3 modules that cover the process of stock trading,
1. Retriever,
2. Strategist,
3. Investor
I'll briefly describe how they were designed and how they function:
1. Retriever
The retriever is a basic scraper of Internet sites.
Basically, this is a scraper/spider of sorts that will gather data
by scraping it from a suggestion website.
I got the idea from this site:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-spider/index.html
The site I scraped was this site:
http://caps.fool.com/Stats.aspx
The target website was Fools.com, and the page lists the recommended stock picks, categorized by certain types of the recommendation – highest rated, newly picked, “watercooler”, to name a few.
The Ruby – based scraper reads the site, does simple parsing of the site to gather the stocks picks, and forms it into an array for the “Strategist” and the “Investor” to use.
The key data are: stock name and rating, along with reference stock prices at the time of the scraping.
2. Strategist
Inside this module lies the heart of the algorithm. It gets the recommendation stock picks, and decides which are the most important characteristics of the given group of stock picks. Afterwards it gives a frame where it provides a place to put an algorithm to run to actually sort out the stock picks. The generic Strategy provided in the code base uses the “Knapsack” algorithm, with optimal goal of making the most value, with limitations being your capital and the price of stocks, which are represented as weight in the algorithm.
Afterwards, the module figures out which stocks should be queued for investing, and puts it into a portfolio file which is read and updated by the Investor module.
3. Investor:
The Investor module talks with the Internet sites that do investing. The generic module in the code base does simulation investing with http://vse.marketwatch.com, a virtual stock exchange site.
The Investor module reads the portfolio file generated by the Strategy module, which then uses that to run the steps as a human would in inserting the investment data to a stock investing site.
The generic module in the code base employs ‘WATIR’, which is a really nice Ruby library that simulates Internet human interaction by using Ruby to control Internet Explorer. It is also possible to control Firefox with ‘WATIR’ but it hasn’t been used in the code base.
It’s kinda neat to see it work – the Internet Explorer works by itself, inserting stock quotes and pushing buttons to actually enter data.
After it enters data, the Investor checks off the stocks it requested to the portfolio file. The Investor module also checks, as when it is called, to check whether the requested stocks have actually finished their transaction and the stocks bought. The portfolio gets updated promptly as a result.
4. Coordinator
The modules are separate, and they only get woken up when scheduled, to increase resource use. Which means, a sort of a “coordinator” is needed to coordinate the sequence of how the modules are run in sequence, along with the passing of data and housekeeping of necessary files – such as a capital file and a portfolio file.
The module has not yet been made into a class. The basic inner workings of the module has been written in the main file – stocker.rb.
5. Test modules
There are some modules that are used for gathering data, to be used in cases when there is a need to collect stock data(ie recommendations) to compare investment results with hindsight and without, the latter being the actual core functionality of this project.
They are either inherited and modified versions of the listed Retriever, Strategist, and Investor modules. They haven’t been finished, and the usage was being tested in stocker.rb file, seen at the top few lines of the file.
LAST WORDS:
The code will not be touched again. It’s provided AS-IS, and I’m sure among the viewers there is bound to be someone that finds the scripts useful, at least partially, to their own use. I hope the code lines spur a new life that way.
Reasons why I’m not pursuing this further:
I have worked on the code for two years off and on, from concept to near-realization. At the time of formulating the idea I didn’t think too much or know much about stock investing, and the amount of excess expenses and rules that would make my project unrealistic. Thing is I found out about this when I got too deep in and things were actually being implemented and tested. After reading some books about stock investing I decided that another big chunk of time would be needed to refactor my logic to make this work beneficial. At the time of this writing, I have six months to pursue some project of my own before I have no spare time at all, and I decided I wouldn’t give it on this project.
I learned a lot about Ruby through this project, and I am rather sulking at the fact that I won’t be able to look into this code at least in the near future. That’s why I’m posting this online.
Thank you!
a program in Ruby that will automate stock investing! From retrieving stock suggestions from
a website to running calculations on it and feeding it to an investor site, the program would automate the whole process.
While coding away I read a book about stock investing and found out there's more to investing then what I had thought prematurely. I thought trading many times frequently would generate revenue, but it turns out the commission fees and tax alone are not small enough to create a good revenue.
To hell with reality! Why not just code first and then think of some ways to make the code useful!?
Yeah I thought so at first. I was 70% done, and my algorithm was actually working to some level,
but then it felt so futile. I have only around 6 months of CS related stuff to do and I wasn't going to make some purposeless code take my time.
But it's that I wrote so much code, and it works relatively to a certain level. Aside from a logical gap between what the code does and how it doesn't fulfill the goal I intended, the code does, in a higher level, is capable of facilitating data transfer between two sites, and even uses WATIR to mimic human interaction with the site.
I am therefore putting the code openly on this blog, in case anyone would find it useful.
Here is the code, as it is.. it's not been cleaned up. It's in its raw state.
To help understand the code, I've written a brief explanation of the logic behind the code,
written below and also as a .doc file:
==============================================================
Here goes:
Before reading the following, there is a terminology conflict that is bound to create confusion among readers – ‘modules’ are not some data structure, they are just conceptual block of functionality. They are actually implemented as classes.
My project which I couldn't end is a test on how a group in a special interest in an area of subject can produce datasets, which are standard enough that unintentionally aid an activity which couldn't have functioned well but with the use of more-than-average resources.
The setting I got inspired from and tried to place in setting was stock trading.
Technology I used was Ruby with a good amount of use of WATIR - the IE handling library for Ruby.
Programming Design Summary:
I set up 3 modules that cover the process of stock trading,
1. Retriever,
2. Strategist,
3. Investor
I'll briefly describe how they were designed and how they function:
1. Retriever
The retriever is a basic scraper of Internet sites.
Basically, this is a scraper/spider of sorts that will gather data
by scraping it from a suggestion website.
I got the idea from this site:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-spider/index.html
The site I scraped was this site:
http://caps.fool.com/Stats.aspx
The target website was Fools.com, and the page lists the recommended stock picks, categorized by certain types of the recommendation – highest rated, newly picked, “watercooler”, to name a few.
The Ruby – based scraper reads the site, does simple parsing of the site to gather the stocks picks, and forms it into an array for the “Strategist” and the “Investor” to use.
The key data are: stock name and rating, along with reference stock prices at the time of the scraping.
2. Strategist
Inside this module lies the heart of the algorithm. It gets the recommendation stock picks, and decides which are the most important characteristics of the given group of stock picks. Afterwards it gives a frame where it provides a place to put an algorithm to run to actually sort out the stock picks. The generic Strategy provided in the code base uses the “Knapsack” algorithm, with optimal goal of making the most value, with limitations being your capital and the price of stocks, which are represented as weight in the algorithm.
Afterwards, the module figures out which stocks should be queued for investing, and puts it into a portfolio file which is read and updated by the Investor module.
3. Investor:
The Investor module talks with the Internet sites that do investing. The generic module in the code base does simulation investing with http://vse.marketwatch.com, a virtual stock exchange site.
The Investor module reads the portfolio file generated by the Strategy module, which then uses that to run the steps as a human would in inserting the investment data to a stock investing site.
The generic module in the code base employs ‘WATIR’, which is a really nice Ruby library that simulates Internet human interaction by using Ruby to control Internet Explorer. It is also possible to control Firefox with ‘WATIR’ but it hasn’t been used in the code base.
It’s kinda neat to see it work – the Internet Explorer works by itself, inserting stock quotes and pushing buttons to actually enter data.
After it enters data, the Investor checks off the stocks it requested to the portfolio file. The Investor module also checks, as when it is called, to check whether the requested stocks have actually finished their transaction and the stocks bought. The portfolio gets updated promptly as a result.
4. Coordinator
The modules are separate, and they only get woken up when scheduled, to increase resource use. Which means, a sort of a “coordinator” is needed to coordinate the sequence of how the modules are run in sequence, along with the passing of data and housekeeping of necessary files – such as a capital file and a portfolio file.
The module has not yet been made into a class. The basic inner workings of the module has been written in the main file – stocker.rb.
5. Test modules
There are some modules that are used for gathering data, to be used in cases when there is a need to collect stock data(ie recommendations) to compare investment results with hindsight and without, the latter being the actual core functionality of this project.
They are either inherited and modified versions of the listed Retriever, Strategist, and Investor modules. They haven’t been finished, and the usage was being tested in stocker.rb file, seen at the top few lines of the file.
LAST WORDS:
The code will not be touched again. It’s provided AS-IS, and I’m sure among the viewers there is bound to be someone that finds the scripts useful, at least partially, to their own use. I hope the code lines spur a new life that way.
Reasons why I’m not pursuing this further:
I have worked on the code for two years off and on, from concept to near-realization. At the time of formulating the idea I didn’t think too much or know much about stock investing, and the amount of excess expenses and rules that would make my project unrealistic. Thing is I found out about this when I got too deep in and things were actually being implemented and tested. After reading some books about stock investing I decided that another big chunk of time would be needed to refactor my logic to make this work beneficial. At the time of this writing, I have six months to pursue some project of my own before I have no spare time at all, and I decided I wouldn’t give it on this project.
I learned a lot about Ruby through this project, and I am rather sulking at the fact that I won’t be able to look into this code at least in the near future. That’s why I’m posting this online.
Thank you!
Work done in Work so FAR
Before I start my discussion on Ruby and my project,
I'd like to discuss what I have been doing at my work lately.
Finally I have been involved in some pretty heavy coding (webpage that is),
and so far I've coded 4 versions of a game site (teaser, closed beta, open beta, and commercial),
complete with CSS/HTML/JS (specifically, jQuery), almost 95% written by me.
Recently I'm near completion of a facelift version of our main portal site, which give or take
is around 75 web pages. That means a compiled CSS of around 2000 lines and around 300 lines of
Javascript(I should've written more but thanks jQuery!).
I even coded the MySpace page for the game in CSS hack sorta way, to resemble another
game site in MySpace which was designed and made by the actual MySpace team, of which
their work is around 10K a site, because they remove the ad on top. I take pride in that
the commercial, MySpace site of this game is nearly similar in design and layout to this game,
and it was done only by hacking the hell out of a personal MySpace profile!
Now I KNOW when I look at a .PSD file, of how to design the layout in CSS. I just KNOW.
I've even written a C# app to read in game character stats and generate it into HTML (took 3 hours to code it, and used it on 4 characters. So I spent 4 hours to code the data, where otherwise hand-coding would have taken a whole freeggin day).
Here are a list of techniques I employ for webpage coding:
1. CSS
-I use a technique of controlling the deployment of CSS styles on specific sub pages and main page
by listing the parent tags first and making more specific naming further on (details on a separate blog article)
-Targeting IE6 and IE7 CSS hacks specifically by concise hack method of '* html' and '*:first-child+html'
-Extensive use of Firebug inside Firefox to interactively do a WYSIWYG editing of CSS
-Striving to separate content from design. All CSS does is giving the look, and HTML alone just lays out the information clearly and simplies the viewing of it.
-Use of barebone CSS sets. These things are AWESOME! They make default paddings/borders/margins all to non-existent or zero so you don't have to worry about it.
-Standardizing the look of the website by creating what's called a "design theme," or translating it into CSS. For example, a website will have only two type of rounded corner boxes, warning messages are in blocks, always accompany an icon with a yellow text background, etc..
2. HTML
-Care is put into put data appropriately in tags that mostly fit the data. For example, menus or
similar types of a parent type are put into list tags, and written blocks inside paragraphs. That way, CSS can target it better and make it viewable even without CSS.
-NEVER, EVER put design parts into HTML. You don't need to put a
tag to create gaps between a title and paragraph. TABLEs never have background. Heck, images, unless dynamically needed, don't need to have specific image sources in HTML. Make HTML show
almost only content and layout, nothing else!
3. Javascript
- Use jQuery. Even Visual Studio will ship with jQuery, having Intellisense and everything!
It gets the nitty gritty part, especially AJAX and browser compatibility anal pains out of sight for you and sort of makes a setting to create high-level Javascript code. What took 70% overhead of environment setting and 30% functional, actual working algorithm for writing Javascript code is, with jQuery, almost 90% coding working algorithm! It's also sooooo concise. 3 lines of code and you create a content slide down and up. Beat that!
- Use more jQuery! Sure, Prototype, Mootools, Dojo are all significant frameworks to work with, but none can beat the overall simplicity with relatively good response time. I had to do research at work about the 4 frameworks and I didn't know any of them before. After research, I concluded jQuery is THE BEST FRAMEWORK .. for me.
-Bloated Javascript isn't that good. It takes a long time to load, and since Javascript is based half on event-based execution of code, sometimes if you are not careful you will create race conditions where a code will execute faster than the other, unintentionally.
For the past 2 weeks I've stayed up nearly every night to code the 70-plus page main portal.
Sure I think coding pages is a busy-work. With so much content, designers not 100% sure of their "design theme" and constantly changing/editing the .PSD files, the work can be highly
stressful, especially staying up all night and coding.. webpages. However, when everything's done, CSS is all tidied up, and presentation of webpages / UI are as I intended, it gives a satisfaction that trumps the work.
However, coding by itself is such a repetitive action that resembles other menial tasks like
stapling or pasting envelopes. If you fail to strive shortening coding and grow an aversion towards repetition, I don't think growth will happen.
I'd like to discuss what I have been doing at my work lately.
Finally I have been involved in some pretty heavy coding (webpage that is),
and so far I've coded 4 versions of a game site (teaser, closed beta, open beta, and commercial),
complete with CSS/HTML/JS (specifically, jQuery), almost 95% written by me.
Recently I'm near completion of a facelift version of our main portal site, which give or take
is around 75 web pages. That means a compiled CSS of around 2000 lines and around 300 lines of
Javascript(I should've written more but thanks jQuery!).
I even coded the MySpace page for the game in CSS hack sorta way, to resemble another
game site in MySpace which was designed and made by the actual MySpace team, of which
their work is around 10K a site, because they remove the ad on top. I take pride in that
the commercial, MySpace site of this game is nearly similar in design and layout to this game,
and it was done only by hacking the hell out of a personal MySpace profile!
Now I KNOW when I look at a .PSD file, of how to design the layout in CSS. I just KNOW.
I've even written a C# app to read in game character stats and generate it into HTML (took 3 hours to code it, and used it on 4 characters. So I spent 4 hours to code the data, where otherwise hand-coding would have taken a whole freeggin day).
Here are a list of techniques I employ for webpage coding:
1. CSS
-I use a technique of controlling the deployment of CSS styles on specific sub pages and main page
by listing the parent tags first and making more specific naming further on (details on a separate blog article)
-Targeting IE6 and IE7 CSS hacks specifically by concise hack method of '* html' and '*:first-child+html'
-Extensive use of Firebug inside Firefox to interactively do a WYSIWYG editing of CSS
-Striving to separate content from design. All CSS does is giving the look, and HTML alone just lays out the information clearly and simplies the viewing of it.
-Use of barebone CSS sets. These things are AWESOME! They make default paddings/borders/margins all to non-existent or zero so you don't have to worry about it.
-Standardizing the look of the website by creating what's called a "design theme," or translating it into CSS. For example, a website will have only two type of rounded corner boxes, warning messages are in blocks, always accompany an icon with a yellow text background, etc..
2. HTML
-Care is put into put data appropriately in tags that mostly fit the data. For example, menus or
similar types of a parent type are put into list tags, and written blocks inside paragraphs. That way, CSS can target it better and make it viewable even without CSS.
-NEVER, EVER put design parts into HTML. You don't need to put a
tag to create gaps between a title and paragraph. TABLEs never have background. Heck, images, unless dynamically needed, don't need to have specific image sources in HTML. Make HTML show
almost only content and layout, nothing else!
3. Javascript
- Use jQuery. Even Visual Studio will ship with jQuery, having Intellisense and everything!
It gets the nitty gritty part, especially AJAX and browser compatibility anal pains out of sight for you and sort of makes a setting to create high-level Javascript code. What took 70% overhead of environment setting and 30% functional, actual working algorithm for writing Javascript code is, with jQuery, almost 90% coding working algorithm! It's also sooooo concise. 3 lines of code and you create a content slide down and up. Beat that!
- Use more jQuery! Sure, Prototype, Mootools, Dojo are all significant frameworks to work with, but none can beat the overall simplicity with relatively good response time. I had to do research at work about the 4 frameworks and I didn't know any of them before. After research, I concluded jQuery is THE BEST FRAMEWORK .. for me.
-Bloated Javascript isn't that good. It takes a long time to load, and since Javascript is based half on event-based execution of code, sometimes if you are not careful you will create race conditions where a code will execute faster than the other, unintentionally.
For the past 2 weeks I've stayed up nearly every night to code the 70-plus page main portal.
Sure I think coding pages is a busy-work. With so much content, designers not 100% sure of their "design theme" and constantly changing/editing the .PSD files, the work can be highly
stressful, especially staying up all night and coding.. webpages. However, when everything's done, CSS is all tidied up, and presentation of webpages / UI are as I intended, it gives a satisfaction that trumps the work.
However, coding by itself is such a repetitive action that resembles other menial tasks like
stapling or pasting envelopes. If you fail to strive shortening coding and grow an aversion towards repetition, I don't think growth will happen.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Web Coding - Fun with Subversion
WINDOWS Subversion usage for casual Web-Coding team environment
Okay. This is going to be a terse walkthrough in how to set up a version-control
work environment for the web design/coding&UI teams.
Setting: Usually nowadays the trend is that there is a design team and a coding team, not to mention a web-dev team.
Normally, the workflow starts from the PM (P stands for what I dunno.. production? project?)s that think of what needs to be developed. Designers get sent the raw material and the design barebone layout and start working their magic to turn something with lines to something with graphics.
The UI/Code team gets this and implements the actual HTML version of the normally graphic
format of PSD files.
A couple revisions at this step, and the coded page is worthy of passing on the developers, where it actually gets implemented into Internet-ready pages.
Problem: Too many versions of the same thing.
Let me explain how our company's workflow is:
Do you know how long this takes? 40 minutes.
Do you know how many points of access where I can stupidly delete stuff? ALOT.
So, I decided to try Subversion. Now, I won't explain what Subversion is because that is
documented so well in their site as well as good portion of Google search results.
What I want to describe is exactly how I used scripts and programs to create a easy-learning, transparent, version-controlled work environment.
Here are what each quality means:
Good! Okay. Now there can be 2 problems that might occur with this configuration. First, TortoiseSVN uses a different Subversion client than the Subversion installed with Apache. Meaning, Subversion 1.5.X and 1.4.X are NOT compatible!! Just keep it mind that
At the Tigris Subversion site, the package for Windows for Apache Server comes with 1.4.6 of Subversion, and TortoiseSVN is packed with Subversion 1.5.X
.. which would cause problem for those that has this occured.
Eventually the Subversion 1.5.X installing would make this problem go away.
Anyways, you've checked in your codes, and you feel good.
But how should you deal with making a copy on the networked drive?
Sure, checkout another copy over there too. But.. don't you feel like you'd what it to
automate the update process of the copy on the networked drives?
So you won't have to do the couple clickings of the mouse just to get the codes updated?
Well, onto the next step:
2. Synchronizing via Scheduling Task Manager
It's really simple.
Map the networked folder to a drive. For this example, it'll be W:
Make a batch file (XXXX.bat).
Inside the batch file, type:
That's it! Save and double click. You'll see that the networked folders are updated. Voila~
But don't you think the black command shell box is a bit intrusive? What doesn't need to know, doesn't need to show.
Make a YYYY.vbs file, inside the folder that has the .bat file for simplicity.
Inside, write:
Yep. Double click that, and the same batch file would run, but it would run in the background. No black windows!
3. Scheduling.
Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools has the 'Schedule Tasks' program. Click it.
You know how to manage adding a new schedule right? If you want extra description, ask, I'll do it.
Add a schedule to run, like every 30 minutes. The program to run is the YYYY.vbs file.
4. Done!
I just implemented this workflow with this project I'm working on, and I am totally psyched about it. Now, I don't need to figure out which file to update, which file to leave, which file to copy over, which to just get some code lines from it... NO! I have Subversion and my scripts to do that for me!!
WOOT
Okay. This is going to be a terse walkthrough in how to set up a version-control
work environment for the web design/coding&UI teams.
Setting: Usually nowadays the trend is that there is a design team and a coding team, not to mention a web-dev team.
Normally, the workflow starts from the PM (P stands for what I dunno.. production? project?)s that think of what needs to be developed. Designers get sent the raw material and the design barebone layout and start working their magic to turn something with lines to something with graphics.
The UI/Code team gets this and implements the actual HTML version of the normally graphic
format of PSD files.
A couple revisions at this step, and the coded page is worthy of passing on the developers, where it actually gets implemented into Internet-ready pages.
Problem: Too many versions of the same thing.
Let me explain how our company's workflow is:
- They give me the design. I code.
- I put the finished code for review into the networked drive. So, I have to manage 2 copies.
- Then again, some things are different for the actual deploy version of the code. So I copy again into another folder. 3 copies.
- If the developers put them on the servers, that also is counted, so 4 copies.
Do you know how long this takes? 40 minutes.
Do you know how many points of access where I can stupidly delete stuff? ALOT.
So, I decided to try Subversion. Now, I won't explain what Subversion is because that is
documented so well in their site as well as good portion of Google search results.
What I want to describe is exactly how I used scripts and programs to create a easy-learning, transparent, version-controlled work environment.
Here are what each quality means:
- Easy learning: virtually the implementation speaks for itself.
- Transparent: I don't add another layer of access for version control - the codes are what is seen, the version-control parts are really non-visible and non-intrusive.
- Version-controlled: I'll just say that equals to less than 10 minute maintaining versions and the other free 30 minutes divulging into more fun stuff(er, activities) @ work.
- First, follow this link and do EXACTLY what it says. You'll be installing Subversion, Apache Server, and TortoiseSVN(a GUI client for Subversion). Come back when you are done!
Good! Okay. Now there can be 2 problems that might occur with this configuration. First, TortoiseSVN uses a different Subversion client than the Subversion installed with Apache. Meaning, Subversion 1.5.X and 1.4.X are NOT compatible!! Just keep it mind that
At the Tigris Subversion site, the package for Windows for Apache Server comes with 1.4.6 of Subversion, and TortoiseSVN is packed with Subversion 1.5.X
.. which would cause problem for those that has this occured.
Eventually the Subversion 1.5.X installing would make this problem go away.
Anyways, you've checked in your codes, and you feel good.
But how should you deal with making a copy on the networked drive?
Sure, checkout another copy over there too. But.. don't you feel like you'd what it to
automate the update process of the copy on the networked drives?
So you won't have to do the couple clickings of the mouse just to get the codes updated?
Well, onto the next step:
2. Synchronizing via Scheduling Task Manager
It's really simple.
Map the networked folder to a drive. For this example, it'll be W:
Make a batch file (XXXX.bat).
Inside the batch file, type:
W:
cd Folder1
cd Folder_THAT_HAS_VERSION_CONTROLLING
svn up
That's it! Save and double click. You'll see that the networked folders are updated. Voila~
But don't you think the black command shell box is a bit intrusive? What doesn't need to know, doesn't need to show.
Make a YYYY.vbs file, inside the folder that has the .bat file for simplicity.
Inside, write:
CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run """XXXX.bat""", 0, False
Yep. Double click that, and the same batch file would run, but it would run in the background. No black windows!
3. Scheduling.
Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools has the 'Schedule Tasks' program. Click it.
You know how to manage adding a new schedule right? If you want extra description, ask, I'll do it.
Add a schedule to run, like every 30 minutes. The program to run is the YYYY.vbs file.
4. Done!
I just implemented this workflow with this project I'm working on, and I am totally psyched about it. Now, I don't need to figure out which file to update, which file to leave, which file to copy over, which to just get some code lines from it... NO! I have Subversion and my scripts to do that for me!!
WOOT
Monday, August 04, 2008
How to Code Newsletters with CSS
This method works in following clients:
Yahoo! Mail: all images show
Google Mail: all images show
Outlook/Hotmail: if you allow it, all images show. If not, the text/HTML based newsletter shows!
At work, I had to code newsletters given by designers.
I wanted every possible way of not touching their artwork,
as it is my goal to code for perfection.
I read these good tutorials:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters/2
http://www.reachcustomersonline.com/content/2004/11/11/09.27.00/index.php
My goal in coding this was to provide readability to as much people as possible over
various methods of reading emails.
That meant for those that can, show the newsletter in its original image form, and
for those who block any and all images, show the text-based version, which would be
gracefully replace the images automatically, by them filtering the images.
Let's think about that a moment.
What kind of methods are there to accomplish replacing images with text? Via presentation
filtering images? I will just lay out all the ones that failed first. Let me know if you want to know
how I tried only to fail. For those reasons I won't go into detail.
1. Position:absolute inside a Position:relative block, layering the image on top of text
2. "margin-top:-width" method to cover the text by pulling up the image by its height
3. Variations on these (image tag before div tage, vice versa) to make them work.
I couldn't do it! I mean if I get it working in YahooMail, GoogleMail wouldn't show anything. Outlook/Hotmail always displayed no images, but they showed the text all right. I only focused on those 4 methods of mail-viewing as I assumed they grasped the major market of mail-viewers.
Well, I tried floating the image.
So here are the basic steps I found out after couple tests.
1. Follow the link and read about the basic setup of a newsletter.
2. Follow and make/copy the code so you get rid of all the style tags and make it still work with inline CSS.
3. Basically you'll be using TABLEs to represent content. In a is where you'd show the sliced up newsletter images. Now that has no info whatsoever, and that same place is where you put the text-based content as well.
4. Inside that :
TESTING:
I use this site to send me some test letters: http://www.mailchimp.com
It's a pretty good site, and they are very informative on things.
EVALUATION:
This method works in following clients:
Yahoo! Mail: all images show
Google Mail: all images show
Outlook/Hotmail: if you allow it, all images show. If not, the text/HTML based newsletter shows!
Yahoo! Mail: all images show
Google Mail: all images show
Outlook/Hotmail: if you allow it, all images show. If not, the text/HTML based newsletter shows!
At work, I had to code newsletters given by designers.
I wanted every possible way of not touching their artwork,
as it is my goal to code for perfection.
I read these good tutorials:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters/2
http://www.reachcustomersonline.com/content/2004/11/11/09.27.00/index.php
My goal in coding this was to provide readability to as much people as possible over
various methods of reading emails.
That meant for those that can, show the newsletter in its original image form, and
for those who block any and all images, show the text-based version, which would be
gracefully replace the images automatically, by them filtering the images.
Let's think about that a moment.
What kind of methods are there to accomplish replacing images with text? Via presentation
filtering images? I will just lay out all the ones that failed first. Let me know if you want to know
how I tried only to fail. For those reasons I won't go into detail.
1. Position:absolute inside a Position:relative block, layering the image on top of text
2. "margin-top:-width" method to cover the text by pulling up the image by its height
3. Variations on these (image tag before div tage, vice versa) to make them work.
I couldn't do it! I mean if I get it working in YahooMail, GoogleMail wouldn't show anything. Outlook/Hotmail always displayed no images, but they showed the text all right. I only focused on those 4 methods of mail-viewing as I assumed they grasped the major market of mail-viewers.
Well, I tried floating the image.
So here are the basic steps I found out after couple tests.
1. Follow the link and read about the basic setup of a newsletter.
2. Follow and make/copy the code so you get rid of all the style tags and make it still work with inline CSS.
3. Basically you'll be using TABLEs to represent content. In a is where you'd show the sliced up newsletter images. Now that has no info whatsoever, and that same place is where you put the text-based content as well.
4. Inside that :
- Make a DIV tag, which will be wrapper for your content.
- Inside it, place your image first. Float it, block it.
you don't need to give it dimension. - After the IMG tag, Make a as same height as your image, and put content in.
**make sure the text based content won't be taller than the image. It's gonna show gaps if so. - THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!!!!
TESTING:
I use this site to send me some test letters: http://www.mailchimp.com
It's a pretty good site, and they are very informative on things.
EVALUATION:
This method works in following clients:
Yahoo! Mail: all images show
Google Mail: all images show
Outlook/Hotmail: if you allow it, all images show. If not, the text/HTML based newsletter shows!
Monday, June 09, 2008
My accomplishments so far in OGPlanet.com
I have been working at a small game-publishing company in El Segundo, LA.
Called OGPlanet.com.
I love the job I'm doing. I'm an assistant web programmer, and that's basically what I do all
day.
Code websites all day. It's awesome. I've been dreaming about this kind of lifestyle - the life
of a coder - since the last few months of my last year at UCLA as undergrad.
Let me tell what I do:
Designers design the websites, and based on the producer's intention I have to follow through
and convert the stoic, PSD based files into websites.
Moreover, I get to code/learn Javascript and CSS.
Sure I don't get paid much($30,000 a year), but I'm actually doing what I wanted to do.
I've coded so much CSS styles that now I'm getting better and better at making neat,readable
stylesheets. I pretty much memorized hacks for FF, IE6, and IE7 and use them. I know,
I should create code that shouldn't use hacks. But I'm thinking I'm getting better at it.
I got to know jQuery - the best duct tape tool for Javascript. It makes coding in Javascript
what Ruby does to scripting languages - super easy, focus on logic rather than syntax.
... aside from assignments, I have a lot of time for idle developments, and this is what
is best about this job! I normally get around a day a week of nothing to do except acting busy.
So since this is my first job, I never would allow myself to actually do NOTHING. I took upon
myself to enforce a habit of coding - you know, like the policy they have at Google, where
you are required to use 20% of work time for research/project of your own.
Here are some of the little side projects I've made so far:
1. Music Album via Buzz and Linux based Music Studio(UbuntuStudio)
2. Team-based employment site
3. Stock - related research
God I love my life!
Called OGPlanet.com.
I love the job I'm doing. I'm an assistant web programmer, and that's basically what I do all
day.
Code websites all day. It's awesome. I've been dreaming about this kind of lifestyle - the life
of a coder - since the last few months of my last year at UCLA as undergrad.
Let me tell what I do:
Designers design the websites, and based on the producer's intention I have to follow through
and convert the stoic, PSD based files into websites.
Moreover, I get to code/learn Javascript and CSS.
Sure I don't get paid much($30,000 a year), but I'm actually doing what I wanted to do.
I've coded so much CSS styles that now I'm getting better and better at making neat,readable
stylesheets. I pretty much memorized hacks for FF, IE6, and IE7 and use them. I know,
I should create code that shouldn't use hacks. But I'm thinking I'm getting better at it.
I got to know jQuery - the best duct tape tool for Javascript. It makes coding in Javascript
what Ruby does to scripting languages - super easy, focus on logic rather than syntax.
... aside from assignments, I have a lot of time for idle developments, and this is what
is best about this job! I normally get around a day a week of nothing to do except acting busy.
So since this is my first job, I never would allow myself to actually do NOTHING. I took upon
myself to enforce a habit of coding - you know, like the policy they have at Google, where
you are required to use 20% of work time for research/project of your own.
Here are some of the little side projects I've made so far:
- In our company we send newsletters weekly to the registered users that play our games. So, the designers always send me little zipped files to process. Without going into details, I made a Visual C# Windows application that would automatically process the files, upload it to the server, and open up the browser for me to check. I'm sure this will be beneficial to the designers and also it'll free up my time considerably - in the area of 20 minutes.
- Anyone know Processing? It's a language used by media artists for artsy projects using databases. Sort of a visualization language for Java applets. Well, I overheard a PM (Project Manager) wishing there would be a real-time sales display of sales made in games, like in a bar chart that is constantly updating. I've made the thing using Eclipse and Processing - where it would function both using logged sales history and also in realtime. It is really nice - nice colored bar chart that moves every second, and basic graphical aesthetics (jittering, zooming, color fading, alpha blending) for cool effects. It's like a prototype for the big display-based system I'm having in mind. Since Applets can increase in size by setting window dimensions, a 42" display on a plasma screen is plausible.
- I've noticed the company manages a lot of game sites - a game site would have from 20 to 30 pages. Every week there are 4,5 image/flash files that need to be uploaded to the static file server and sometimes links should be changed to the javascript that handles menus. I've made a Visual C# Windows app where I can drag the file to upload, select which of our sites it belongs to, which context it is - eg) left_ad_banner - and the filename should one want to change the default filename. I press upload, and voila! It shortened the task which took around 20 minute down to 2 minutes and relieved me of the anxiety of manual uploading which is possible to make mistakes due to high freedom of access.
- Each Visual C# apps are password protected, and object-oriented - meaning I made classes that are in namespaces so if I want to make more company-related apps, I can easily inject the inner workings of access - since it's already object oriented.
1. Music Album via Buzz and Linux based Music Studio(UbuntuStudio)
2. Team-based employment site
3. Stock - related research
God I love my life!
Thursday, May 01, 2008
3 New Projects
First of all, I got hired at www.ogplanet.com as an Assistant Web Programmer,
and the job is as I have expected: coding websites.
I got a chance to use and learn cool new script libraries such as jQuery,
and the job is pretty fun and the thrill of coding on the clock is just mind-blowing!! :)
The project development flow was pretty cool too. I am experiencing
real-life execution of website developing that includes powerpoint based
functionality overview by the producer, and getting the design by the designers,
and finally coding the entire thing by yours truly.
As a side project and to regurgitate what I have learned in terms of project management,
I hereby announce, to myself and whatever random people that will see this post,
3 Projects that I intend to finish within one year.
[1]: Music band site
==============
My good friend Bang and I go a long way back, and that includes million what-ifs of
forming a band. Our dreams, even though we live in separate continents now, never
sorta phased out. I have my stockpile of lyrics, and he has his poems.
This will be like our 4th attempt at making something using the Internet, and this time
it will be something, as our school-years ended for the time being.
It will host a multi-genre band, comprised of me and .. Bang, with songs of Christian and secular.
We are both Christians, whether it's up to God and people if I am devout or not,
and personally for me what fuels my lyrics is all my relationship with God and His grace for
a hypocrite like me.
I'm excited and this will be a chance for me to use CSS/JS(jQuery)/Open Source tools for
web development,
and LINUX - based music production environment that I've always wanted to make an excuse
for learning :).
Ghetto - style music production setup in my dorm room.........using donated used laptops...
..........how more cool can this get!!?!
So, that's that and let's see where this goes!! ^.^
[2]:"Gig".com
==========
My friend from college and I thought this one up. I've lost him to a very rich and evil company
but hopefully he won't sell his soul there. haha.
Anyways, this is a social-team-based recruiting site where
employers will be looking for a "team", not an individual worker.
This is a new concept because what with the economy so bad as it is,
people will be pressured to outsource whatever things could be,
and those wanting their foot in the job-pool would want more protection,
and a team-based gig proposal, in my opinion is better than an individual.
... Plus it has that reality-zing to it. A website where.. new bonds among members are met..
and old bonds.. broken.
Anyways it's a site for Korean 20's in Korea. You'd think getting a job in the states is bad..
in Korea it's way worse than here. This will be sorta my charity work for Korea.
I'm still pondering whether I should code the whole thing or use Drupal.. I'm gonna have to
see if I really want to code everything by myself. And if by me, I'm gonna use CakePHP - as
people say that is pretty good for OOPHP programming, which I've always wanted to learn.
Hope I can get this baby off the ground soon. The idea was created 1 year ago already.
[3]:Stocker
========
This is a concept I am working on, regarding stock infos and speculations. I would have more
to say if I have more concrete direction of the development but currently I'm stuck
by my lack of knowledge in Ruby.
I'll just say I am using Ruby and making it interact with the Internet ^___^;
--------
So, that is that and I'll try to update faster from now on.. since I would like to see this blog
in high traffic as well.
and the job is as I have expected: coding websites.
I got a chance to use and learn cool new script libraries such as jQuery,
and the job is pretty fun and the thrill of coding on the clock is just mind-blowing!! :)
The project development flow was pretty cool too. I am experiencing
real-life execution of website developing that includes powerpoint based
functionality overview by the producer, and getting the design by the designers,
and finally coding the entire thing by yours truly.
As a side project and to regurgitate what I have learned in terms of project management,
I hereby announce, to myself and whatever random people that will see this post,
3 Projects that I intend to finish within one year.
[1]: Music band site
==============
My good friend Bang and I go a long way back, and that includes million what-ifs of
forming a band. Our dreams, even though we live in separate continents now, never
sorta phased out. I have my stockpile of lyrics, and he has his poems.
This will be like our 4th attempt at making something using the Internet, and this time
it will be something, as our school-years ended for the time being.
It will host a multi-genre band, comprised of me and .. Bang, with songs of Christian and secular.
We are both Christians, whether it's up to God and people if I am devout or not,
and personally for me what fuels my lyrics is all my relationship with God and His grace for
a hypocrite like me.
I'm excited and this will be a chance for me to use CSS/JS(jQuery)/Open Source tools for
web development,
and LINUX - based music production environment that I've always wanted to make an excuse
for learning :).
Ghetto - style music production setup in my dorm room.........using donated used laptops...
..........how more cool can this get!!?!
So, that's that and let's see where this goes!! ^.^
[2]:"Gig".com
==========
My friend from college and I thought this one up. I've lost him to a very rich and evil company
but hopefully he won't sell his soul there. haha.
Anyways, this is a social-team-based recruiting site where
employers will be looking for a "team", not an individual worker.
This is a new concept because what with the economy so bad as it is,
people will be pressured to outsource whatever things could be,
and those wanting their foot in the job-pool would want more protection,
and a team-based gig proposal, in my opinion is better than an individual.
... Plus it has that reality-zing to it. A website where.. new bonds among members are met..
and old bonds.. broken.
Anyways it's a site for Korean 20's in Korea. You'd think getting a job in the states is bad..
in Korea it's way worse than here. This will be sorta my charity work for Korea.
I'm still pondering whether I should code the whole thing or use Drupal.. I'm gonna have to
see if I really want to code everything by myself. And if by me, I'm gonna use CakePHP - as
people say that is pretty good for OOPHP programming, which I've always wanted to learn.
Hope I can get this baby off the ground soon. The idea was created 1 year ago already.
[3]:Stocker
========
This is a concept I am working on, regarding stock infos and speculations. I would have more
to say if I have more concrete direction of the development but currently I'm stuck
by my lack of knowledge in Ruby.
I'll just say I am using Ruby and making it interact with the Internet ^___^;
--------
So, that is that and I'll try to update faster from now on.. since I would like to see this blog
in high traffic as well.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
www.ciyring.com
[ANOTHER failed attempt at lauching a site]
www.ciyring.com was to be the dream of mine.
'Cuz It's Your Ring - a ring customization site.
I'm embarrassed about this experience so I won't really
go into explaining why I made it. Just know that
I had to do it, my friend asked me, and now I ditched it.
Again, I spent way too much time deciding every
single minute detail that went into this design.
Is it going to be like this for every design of websites?
Gosh..
Here's a brief spec:
1. Idea: Ring customization site, in accordance a jewelry shop.
2. Backend: a basic ecommerce, Ruby based app made by yours truly
3. Time: good 3 months from start to disastrous end
Ruby coding was just enhancing the tutorial they had in the book,
Agile Programming in Ruby or something like that. The famous
one by Pragmatic?
I honestly say I have learned alot about Ruby on Rails, but the whole
thing is still new to me and a bit overboard. I don't think I'll have
the balls to implement such a thing again. Why do that when
there are other well developed open source engines?
Here's the image:
If you go to the site, I still left the debugging mode for Ruby open so it's
gonna take time to load.
Sucks cuz I lost the whole thing behind this one because my laptop hdd
failed on me. I really don't know what to do with this one..
Could I possibly sell this on eBay or something?
www.ciyring.com was to be the dream of mine.
'Cuz It's Your Ring - a ring customization site.
I'm embarrassed about this experience so I won't really
go into explaining why I made it. Just know that
I had to do it, my friend asked me, and now I ditched it.
Again, I spent way too much time deciding every
single minute detail that went into this design.
Is it going to be like this for every design of websites?
Gosh..
Here's a brief spec:
1. Idea: Ring customization site, in accordance a jewelry shop.
2. Backend: a basic ecommerce, Ruby based app made by yours truly
3. Time: good 3 months from start to disastrous end
Ruby coding was just enhancing the tutorial they had in the book,
Agile Programming in Ruby or something like that. The famous
one by Pragmatic?
I honestly say I have learned alot about Ruby on Rails, but the whole
thing is still new to me and a bit overboard. I don't think I'll have
the balls to implement such a thing again. Why do that when
there are other well developed open source engines?
Here's the image:
If you go to the site, I still left the debugging mode for Ruby open so it's
gonna take time to load.
Sucks cuz I lost the whole thing behind this one because my laptop hdd
failed on me. I really don't know what to do with this one..
Could I possibly sell this on eBay or something?
Onmorie - the newly revamp, rest in my hdd forver.
The design and also the chosen backend system will never see the
light on the Internet, and what the hell am I gonna do with this
highly specialized design? I can't use it on anything else.
I mean, it's not like I have a showcasing site of my own that
displays my web designs.
CRAP.
Well, I will think about that later. Right now, just laying out the
specifics on this site will vent some much-stored steam of mine.
Developing environment:
I went for an offline development this time.
After my past developing experiences with site-development,
The time-consuming step of uploading and editing and uploading again
just seemed, finally, too wasteful for a developer like me that
develops websites as just a hobby.
Hey when you start it, you gotta finish it, and when you finish it,
it's only worthwhile only if it turns out good, right?
So, I searched for some methods to make an offline setup.
I thought about LAMP. But even though Linux is a good environment,
it was too overhead to change a computer setup to make one decent web site.
Then I hit on WAMP - the Windows version of LAMP.
The overall setup turned out to be very concise and easy to manage.
I had a PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Apache-based server running in my
Vista in no time!
Then, I had to choose the backend engine:
My dad's business is teaching how to be creative. He is a guest lecturer,
employed by a Korean personnel training company. Generally, the site
was in focus for creating more lecturing opportunities - a chance
for him to show his ideas on creativity and a place to connect with those
interested or wanting to affiliate.
Therefore, this called for a blogging engine.
Now, if it's in English, I would take no time in choosing the Wordpress engine.
Sure, I even tried the Korean version of Wordpress as the backend in
www.onmorie.com/wordpress.
However, the writing/managing experience was all in English!
I wasn't really a fan for half-baked translation, and plus I wanted this site
to be fully manageable by my dad, so I ditched that idea.
I went for Tattertools - a very good blogging software in Korean.
I'm serious, if there is Wordpress for the Western languages, there is
Tattertools for Korean! It's that good.
And it's based on Korean so all the utf-8 setup is ready from the get go.
It's open source as well, is followed by much devoted coders, bloggers,
and all that,
and the best thing is that all the posts made using the engine gets
an option to be posted to Eolin - the Korean blogosphere-equlivalent
of [Put ur favorite blog-aggregating site here].
Okay, all the ingredients are set. Off I went on designing.
God what a pressure it was to think about a design for a site about creativity.
It has to informative, fluid, and show that concept of "thinking outsite the
box."
I generally start by jotting down notes like above ideas. Well, I jot down 30%
of ideas and the other 70% I just roll it around in my head for a while.
Fluidity. Informative. Creative. Out of the box.
light on the Internet, and what the hell am I gonna do with this
highly specialized design? I can't use it on anything else.
I mean, it's not like I have a showcasing site of my own that
displays my web designs.
CRAP.
Well, I will think about that later. Right now, just laying out the
specifics on this site will vent some much-stored steam of mine.
Developing environment:
I went for an offline development this time.
After my past developing experiences with site-development,
The time-consuming step of uploading and editing and uploading again
just seemed, finally, too wasteful for a developer like me that
develops websites as just a hobby.
Hey when you start it, you gotta finish it, and when you finish it,
it's only worthwhile only if it turns out good, right?
So, I searched for some methods to make an offline setup.
I thought about LAMP. But even though Linux is a good environment,
it was too overhead to change a computer setup to make one decent web site.
Then I hit on WAMP - the Windows version of LAMP.
The overall setup turned out to be very concise and easy to manage.
I had a PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Apache-based server running in my
Vista in no time!
Then, I had to choose the backend engine:
My dad's business is teaching how to be creative. He is a guest lecturer,
employed by a Korean personnel training company. Generally, the site
was in focus for creating more lecturing opportunities - a chance
for him to show his ideas on creativity and a place to connect with those
interested or wanting to affiliate.
Therefore, this called for a blogging engine.
Now, if it's in English, I would take no time in choosing the Wordpress engine.
Sure, I even tried the Korean version of Wordpress as the backend in
www.onmorie.com/wordpress.
However, the writing/managing experience was all in English!
I wasn't really a fan for half-baked translation, and plus I wanted this site
to be fully manageable by my dad, so I ditched that idea.
I went for Tattertools - a very good blogging software in Korean.
I'm serious, if there is Wordpress for the Western languages, there is
Tattertools for Korean! It's that good.
And it's based on Korean so all the utf-8 setup is ready from the get go.
It's open source as well, is followed by much devoted coders, bloggers,
and all that,
and the best thing is that all the posts made using the engine gets
an option to be posted to Eolin - the Korean blogosphere-equlivalent
of [Put ur favorite blog-aggregating site here].
Okay, all the ingredients are set. Off I went on designing.
God what a pressure it was to think about a design for a site about creativity.
It has to informative, fluid, and show that concept of "thinking outsite the
box."
I generally start by jotting down notes like above ideas. Well, I jot down 30%
of ideas and the other 70% I just roll it around in my head for a while.
Fluidity. Informative. Creative. Out of the box.
And I'm just a freakin line-thinkin noob coder.
Here is the train of my thoughts:
out of the box => break out of the borders somewhat
meaning overlayed transparent png..
color: nothing bold, official, office like, but more showing fluid, acceptance, free-living
overall tone of color had to show inceptual concepts, ideas, fountain of ideas
I had to think of a cool logo too.
It had to show the concept of Onmorie - using the right and the left part of brain
to synnergize a new idea, a new creation. Well, I didn't go into researching further.
Creativity is similar to idea to a fluid type font,
Logic is similar to angular type font.
I also wanted to make a trendy statement, so I tried on a Web 2.0 type badge as well.
After a couple more playing around in GIMP, I got this:
Yes.. that was my attempt in making a logo, and well, it's just my biased opinion
but I like it :) Mix of fluid font styles, with the center font of angular, rigidness
shows the concept of the site in somewhat clear voice.
Next up was the overall layout of the site.
I decided on a simple 2 column layout, because that meant less CSS-headaches later on.
Plus, after checking out the engine, the sites that were created by it generally sported a
2-column anyways. Good for me.
God I SPENT 2 FULL DAYS just deciding on the borders of the layout!
2 FULL Days of answering this question: To round or not to round the borders?
If the corners are rounded, that's for the overall outer border of the layout,
my final judgment was that it would mean ideas are finalized, and it wouldn't
reflect the fluidness of ever-evolving creativity as the site was supposed to persuade.
A basic, minimal graduated background color of the layout sounded more
appealing at the time. I have no confidence in this decision. I mean, I'm a perfectionist and an
owner of small balls. I have to set these decisions over 2 days, what can I say :)?
................
God you CANNOT image the sleepless nights and countless aggravation and stress I went
through to decide each and every detail of the design of the site.
Even now, I think I couldn't have done a better job, because I suck at design and color-
coordinating. This is the best I can do. I gained a whole new level of respect for
CSS-web designers like those in CSSZengarden. Cudos for you guys. You guys ROCK!
Here's a shot of my final design:
Rightside top of the design has the outline of a guy lifting his arm, pointing with his
index finger. Yeah, that guy is having a Eureka! moment. My expression of
what creativity is, as is well the balloons exhibiting expressions.
I did my best man, I did my best. And then I chopped this into CSS,
and this time I followed the book I bought from CSSZengarden to
make the CSS as formal and pristine as possible. To make it really
CSS-compliant. I'm really happy how the CSS turned out.
As for putting the skin into backend, it wasn't really a time-consuming
experience as only minimal details needed to be put into the overall
HTML files. And having a local WAMP server to see it didn't hurt the process either.
out of the box => break out of the borders somewhat
meaning overlayed transparent png..
color: nothing bold, official, office like, but more showing fluid, acceptance, free-living
overall tone of color had to show inceptual concepts, ideas, fountain of ideas
I had to think of a cool logo too.
It had to show the concept of Onmorie - using the right and the left part of brain
to synnergize a new idea, a new creation. Well, I didn't go into researching further.
Creativity is similar to idea to a fluid type font,
Logic is similar to angular type font.
I also wanted to make a trendy statement, so I tried on a Web 2.0 type badge as well.
After a couple more playing around in GIMP, I got this:
Yes.. that was my attempt in making a logo, and well, it's just my biased opinion
but I like it :) Mix of fluid font styles, with the center font of angular, rigidness
shows the concept of the site in somewhat clear voice.
Next up was the overall layout of the site.
I decided on a simple 2 column layout, because that meant less CSS-headaches later on.
Plus, after checking out the engine, the sites that were created by it generally sported a
2-column anyways. Good for me.
God I SPENT 2 FULL DAYS just deciding on the borders of the layout!
2 FULL Days of answering this question: To round or not to round the borders?
If the corners are rounded, that's for the overall outer border of the layout,
my final judgment was that it would mean ideas are finalized, and it wouldn't
reflect the fluidness of ever-evolving creativity as the site was supposed to persuade.
A basic, minimal graduated background color of the layout sounded more
appealing at the time. I have no confidence in this decision. I mean, I'm a perfectionist and an
owner of small balls. I have to set these decisions over 2 days, what can I say :)?
................
God you CANNOT image the sleepless nights and countless aggravation and stress I went
through to decide each and every detail of the design of the site.
Even now, I think I couldn't have done a better job, because I suck at design and color-
coordinating. This is the best I can do. I gained a whole new level of respect for
CSS-web designers like those in CSSZengarden. Cudos for you guys. You guys ROCK!
Here's a shot of my final design:
Rightside top of the design has the outline of a guy lifting his arm, pointing with hisindex finger. Yeah, that guy is having a Eureka! moment. My expression of
what creativity is, as is well the balloons exhibiting expressions.
I did my best man, I did my best. And then I chopped this into CSS,
and this time I followed the book I bought from CSSZengarden to
make the CSS as formal and pristine as possible. To make it really
CSS-compliant. I'm really happy how the CSS turned out.
As for putting the skin into backend, it wasn't really a time-consuming
experience as only minimal details needed to be put into the overall
HTML files. And having a local WAMP server to see it didn't hurt the process either.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Hiatus notes - word replacer
Just another source of useful tools in web development/SEO/content generation..
well, ethically this wouldn't be a just way of creating content.
But someone made it for some use, so maybe it'd be useful.
http://www.wordreplacer.com/
go and check it out.
Also.. I should make a mashup site, just to learn AJAX and mashing up.. sites.
Creating self-perpetuating(relatively in my part) content on the web that is
useful for me and visitors.. it would be an interesting project and a milestone to be reached,
I guess in my course of being a serious web developer.
That and making linux from scratch..
well, ethically this wouldn't be a just way of creating content.
But someone made it for some use, so maybe it'd be useful.
http://www.wordreplacer.com/
go and check it out.
Also.. I should make a mashup site, just to learn AJAX and mashing up.. sites.
Creating self-perpetuating(relatively in my part) content on the web that is
useful for me and visitors.. it would be an interesting project and a milestone to be reached,
I guess in my course of being a serious web developer.
That and making linux from scratch..
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Someone made a similar app as mine
My program makes rounded cornered content css styles,
his makes just the generic content sheet I think.
http://forwardlogic.net/dev/css.php
also is a real-time Font viewer:
http://www.fonttester.com/
his makes just the generic content sheet I think.
http://forwardlogic.net/dev/css.php
also is a real-time Font viewer:
http://www.fonttester.com/
Friday, November 10, 2006
[Segway Project] YAS: Yet Another Segway
This is another segway from my main goal of designing
a shoe shop for my dad's website (read past posts for more info)
This magazine I read offered me a view of how much
design can affect human behavior. I mean, sure what I am saying
is an inhuman thing to say - telling that design has huge
monetary values as compared to aesthetic values, but I think it's
true. Design isn't something people with a lot of money want
to do, nor is it only done by metrosexual people -
it drives the general population this way or other.
A website can tell do alot :
its functions are limitless, and it's also non-linear.
Non steady-state, and only a transform on paradigm can Web
be seen statistically.
Best thing you can do is start well, document everything.
..............................?
I believe I diverted from why I'm writing this once again! Even from the point of this post!
haha ^^;
This post is about this:
a shoe shop for my dad's website (read past posts for more info)
I have this project in my mind.
but..I am going to start by thinking about the overall purpose
of the website, write them down, and, much like
formulating an essay back in high school, I will try to
gather the main concepts that I will have to focus on to
make this site a successful site.
of the website, write them down, and, much like
formulating an essay back in high school, I will try to
gather the main concepts that I will have to focus on to
make this site a successful site.
This magazine I read offered me a view of how much
design can affect human behavior. I mean, sure what I am saying
is an inhuman thing to say - telling that design has huge
monetary values as compared to aesthetic values, but I think it's
true. Design isn't something people with a lot of money want
to do, nor is it only done by metrosexual people -
it drives the general population this way or other.
A website can tell do alot :
its functions are limitless, and it's also non-linear.
Non steady-state, and only a transform on paradigm can Web
be seen statistically.
Best thing you can do is start well, document everything.
..............................?
I believe I diverted from why I'm writing this once again! Even from the point of this post!
haha ^^;
This post is about this:
A New attept at Web design:
Profiling Statement
This is a new attempt. A way in designing where, maybe people already do this, you first try to focus the group of general public that the site will focus on, by describing the group in any way possible - basically, creating a scrapbook of the general focus of the audience.
Sure you can put photos and stuff, even videotape the market population, etc, if you have time.
I am someone that is pretty much limited to where I can go, but I do have a couple of similar shops to the one I will make the website mall for, so I would have to go there and observe the people's behavior. It will be interesting - a new learning experience.
So, after the research is done, either by thought recollection or by actual foot research, you just try to describe the focus group with much detail as possible. That becomes the profiling statement. This is a springboard of ideas, inspirations, and is also a filter which would eliminate ideas that would seem interesting, and even challenging, but aren't pertinent to the statement.
The overall result would be a more streamlined process of development, all from brainstorming to the last maintenance patch jobs.
Isn't it an interesting concept?
I mean probably people in the advertising field or design firms already do it, for sure, but it's something that hit me today.
I was going to post what I have written so far about my segway project but my client - former roommate of mine - wanted to keep the site a secret so I won't.
I'll post them all in one concise post just like I did for my dad's website(see past post and you'll see what it is).
Profiling Statement
This is a new attempt. A way in designing where, maybe people already do this, you first try to focus the group of general public that the site will focus on, by describing the group in any way possible - basically, creating a scrapbook of the general focus of the audience.
Sure you can put photos and stuff, even videotape the market population, etc, if you have time.
I am someone that is pretty much limited to where I can go, but I do have a couple of similar shops to the one I will make the website mall for, so I would have to go there and observe the people's behavior. It will be interesting - a new learning experience.
So, after the research is done, either by thought recollection or by actual foot research, you just try to describe the focus group with much detail as possible. That becomes the profiling statement. This is a springboard of ideas, inspirations, and is also a filter which would eliminate ideas that would seem interesting, and even challenging, but aren't pertinent to the statement.
The overall result would be a more streamlined process of development, all from brainstorming to the last maintenance patch jobs.
Isn't it an interesting concept?
I mean probably people in the advertising field or design firms already do it, for sure, but it's something that hit me today.
I was going to post what I have written so far about my segway project but my client - former roommate of mine - wanted to keep the site a secret so I won't.
I'll post them all in one concise post just like I did for my dad's website(see past post and you'll see what it is).
Thank you, come again.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Open Source Web Developer's Little Tool
I am a computer science major, but I never had the motivation to actually
program applications, because I am pretty lazy when it comes to initiating, creating, and refining ideas.
Maybe that was one of the reason why I feared Windows app development -
the whole process is a daunting thing to overcome.
However, Winbinder changed all of that!
In short, it allows users to use PHP to develop windows apps, and you would know
how forgiving PHP is when it comes to syntax. Plus, the wrapper functions are much
easier than the actual Windows API!
Main reason why I found this on my Google search was, and this is how this links into the blog,
that I was learning how to make rounded corners by CSS. I came across this idea that
I could make a program that, when given sliced images of the rounded corner design made in GIMP,
the design problems, rather than menial tuning work.
Today I finished the program, and got it to actually create css and html files, and I am loving
WinBinder's simpleness in approaching Windows development. They also have a .exe maker,
since the file you make is actually .phpw (it's like .php), and it uses the php interpreter.
Oh yeah. Did I mention NO COMPILATION TIME?
Anyways.. I'll figure out how to make this into a .exe file and make it available on the blog,
if someone wants it. Email me if you're interested?
http://www.neuroticweb.com/recursos/css-rounded-box/index.php?color=ae4353&fondo=646464
there is also the above app which actually makes!! rounded corners, but it's without images.
Therefore, simple rounded edges can be made, but would be too simple.
program applications, because I am pretty lazy when it comes to initiating, creating, and refining ideas.
Maybe that was one of the reason why I feared Windows app development -
the whole process is a daunting thing to overcome.
However, Winbinder changed all of that!
WinBinder is a new open source extension for PHP, the script programming language. It allows PHP programmers to easily build native Windows applications. Click here for more information.
In short, it allows users to use PHP to develop windows apps, and you would know
how forgiving PHP is when it comes to syntax. Plus, the wrapper functions are much
easier than the actual Windows API!
Main reason why I found this on my Google search was, and this is how this links into the blog,
that I was learning how to make rounded corners by CSS. I came across this idea that
I could make a program that, when given sliced images of the rounded corner design made in GIMP,
would produce the html and stylesheet.
Using the program, preliminary preparation is done, and you only need to worry more about Sure, that wouldn't by itself make an award-winning site, but it would clear away
alot of busywork trying to get it to show correctly even in Firefox, as they do need tuning.
alot of busywork trying to get it to show correctly even in Firefox, as they do need tuning.
the design problems, rather than menial tuning work.
Today I finished the program, and got it to actually create css and html files, and I am loving
WinBinder's simpleness in approaching Windows development. They also have a .exe maker,
since the file you make is actually .phpw (it's like .php), and it uses the php interpreter.
Oh yeah. Did I mention NO COMPILATION TIME?
Anyways.. I'll figure out how to make this into a .exe file and make it available on the blog,
if someone wants it. Email me if you're interested?
http://www.neuroticweb.com/recursos/css-rounded-box/index.php?color=ae4353&fondo=646464
there is also the above app which actually makes!! rounded corners, but it's without images.
Therefore, simple rounded edges can be made, but would be too simple.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Another Segway
| Image | Product | Price | ||
 | MUSTEK Mfr Part# DV-5200 | $64.91 |
..I know, I know. I should start on the shopping mall design part of my dad's site.
But I'm also doing other projects as well:
1. School -
man oh man.. I got midterms tomorrow, I got to make a de-interlacing module in my chip design class, yup, life is hectic.
2. www.yopos.com had a challenge where Chris Jennings gave away his unmaintanable sites. I applied, won www.indieclothingblog.com , so I set up a blueprint of how I'll shape it up. Alas, no reply from him yet.
So this is still in the down part of To-do list.
3. Designing EH, KJH sites.. They are acronyms but I won't tell what they stand for. Anyways, I need to build them a community site, so I was thinking hardcore CSS2.0, since I need the experience.
4. Start a 1-person broadcasting show.
Yeah. Democracy player, Afreeca.tv, YouTube, Vid-casting.. This is the age of 1-person media.
I decided I have to, I HAVE TO start this show in my mind, to follow the footsteps of pioneers like Kevin Rose or Leo Laporte. With my fluency in Korean and in English, and plus still being a college student, I just know I'm ripe to make a good show. I must do this before I graduate.
| Image | Product | Price | ||
| MUSTEK Mfr Part# DV-5200 | $64.91 |
Which is why I just bought this nice camcorder that takes in SD card. This is like the ghetto version of Sony or Canon's HDD camcorder that cost almost 10 times this.
I WILL make a fun, entertaining, smarty show. Any ideas would be nice.
Oh yeah I've checked other cheap camcorders like these - toys, in the eyes of serious A/V guys hehe - but Mustek seems to be the nicest.
I'll let you readers on what will happen later on.
PS - on a side note, I am noticing writing is a skill that is becoming more and more important nowadays, what with the blog gaining more weight in acceptance. I must learn how to write well.. it's really interesting that the academic discipline I once thought as boring and dull is becoming in my life the skillset that is necessary to succeed in the society of blogs.
Monopoly BestBuy dollars are Here!!
After hearing about how you could mail the Game Piece Request centerwith enclosing a self-addressed, stamped envelope to get the $1 to $5 game piece,
I set on a goal to send 100 envelopes.
That cost me:
200 stamps
160 envelopes (I already had 40)
to a total of ~$85.
Yesterday, I collected all the envelopes that came back to me and
neatly piled/organized them and took a picture:
Left green piles are the game pieces - I have 200 game pieces! haha.. I wonder if they are worth any money.
Right, in neat columns, represent $20 each column of BestBuy dollars, to a total of $107.
Next day I went in to BestBuy and bought a nice wireless phone, since we needed on in our house.
Thing is when I presented my $99 worth of BestBuy dollars, the cashier started scanning them in,
one by one. I felt bad but at the same time remembered it's my right to stand and be served, as a customer, so I stayed and never said sorry (plus it's BestBuy.. place of great customer horror stories!).
So, after 10~15 minutes of awkward silence in my part and another cashier coming to help out the counting, he counted them all, scanned them all in, and I got my $99.99 for only $1.07 !! (tax for $.99)
I'm kinda sorry for him cuz he was on his way to his break.. hahaha
But yeah if there's anyone who was skeptical about the whole thing, there you have it! It works!
The game is nearing its end date so I dunno if you guys still have time to try it.. But I think they do it every year.
Friday, September 15, 2006
My Summary of [PROJECT: Dad's SITE] Story 1:Main site
BELOW ARE ALL THE NOTES I TOOK WHILE TRYING TO
DEVELOP MY DAD'S SITE.
They are in chronological order.
Abstract:
Everything is working correctly and the feeling is like
Getting high while having sex and walking around naked around the street.
DEVELOP MY DAD'S SITE.
They are in chronological order.
Abstract:
- I've tried to design this using only open source software.
- I've tried around 3 CMS's before arriving on Etomite to develop the site.
- I have agonized over DIV's, CSS's, and discrepency between IE and Firefox.
Everything is working correctly and the feeling is like
Getting high while having sex and walking around naked around the street.
WATCH OUT FOR STORY 2: SHOPPING MALL!!
coming soon..
coming soon..
ENJOY:
====================================================
onmorie.com
made initial logo and rough design.
fired up gimp to see how i could use it
while trying to change language setting
gimp got fried, and could not get that pango error away
after 10 reinstallations, found out:
I had to install gtk without windows components,
it worked,
reinstall gtk with windows components.
as my XP was in korean, the GIMP showed in Korean.
It seems that won't change.. OH it changed to English as I changed "ko"folder in Locale folder to "ko_tmp"(some other name so GIMP won't recognize korean)
ALL IN ALL I AM READY TO DELVE IN GIMP
I found out GIMPShop, a morphed version that makes GIMP as close as Photoshop, but it gave the same error.
However, fixing this meant reinstalling gimp and..
frankly I wasn't going to do that.
What added to my decision to give up GIMPShop was that I figured getting the pirate-warez taint off my brain should start at learning a new software and a new interface.
So, although it's gonna take more time, I decided to use and learn the default GIMP.
[5:04 pm] "Learning it by tutorial" has started.
tutorials I viewed:
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/
[8:37 pm] made a generic outline of how the main page will look like. now to learn how to use Drupal...
will look at the Drupal site to see how to make a Drupal-run site..
[9:23 pm] I notice Drupal, the one I downloaded doesn't have an installer. WTF? I don't care how good their CMS is. This is so snobbish.
But then I do remember one that does have an installer..I did install it some time ago.. I am searching my hdd for it.
[9:37 pm] Finally realized that it was done using an online installer by the host, under my request.. can't remember what free webhost it was under, though. MMMPH I hate it when I can't search for it..
So, I decided to rather go to DragonflyCMS.
Can anyone help me get the Drupal set up?
[12:11 pm] turns out the hostname was "database" not "localhost".. anyways, even so, Drupal gave this error:
Table 'onmorie.sessions' doesn't exist query: SELECT u.*, s.* FROM users u INNER JOIN sessions s ON u.uid = s.uid WHERE s.sid = 'c98e18443f5e2c5409fe7993330d36c6' AND u.status < 3 LIMIT 0, 1 in
the hell I care. Don't have time to troubleshoot this..
Since I've gotten Dragonfly to install and entered the admin page, I decided to just develop using Dragonfly.
Whatever "shopping" capability the site would require would be done by another small e-commerce CMS.
[12:31 pm] Looking at Dragonfly CMS Wiki tells me that I can do this. But for today, I am done. Night night.
[9:51 am] Dragonflycms site goes down, leaving me no choice but to halt learning process of dragonfly..
[10:00 am] Put a hold on Dragonfly CMS learning.
I noticed a lot of CMS's have a similarity, that the menus are segmented, probably to easily make the engine know where things are located.
Problem with this is that it makes the whole site look segmented, there is no focus, no main theme that the user could be used to. Design seems to be lesser in importance than organization, which could sell for tech-savvy viewers but not the ordinary people.
Sure, I could hack the menu so it would look exactly as I want it to be.
But the backend input support would still lack from what I want.
Should I just use Zeroboard Forum engine and hack its SQL database to pull things what I want? make it as the content holder and use it to populate content?
Oh well I decided to just go ahead with Dragonfly.
But for now, I must install Nvu, to use it for preliminary design assistance(CSS etc).
[8:45 pm] been designing the layout for the site, and still trying to get the layout in CSS show well in IE. Again I hate IE.
[10:16 pm] selected and adjusted a usable list menu. Of course, I'm gonna have to change this so DragonflyCMS can "touch" it(php).
[11:31 pm] implemented the "shop" page link image to go to the Lumberjack part of the site (e-commerce)
I am getting pissed at the 10 pixel difference between Firefox and IE. I just can't let it go...
[11:57 pm] I am almost done with the positioning of data.
Now I have to see how to actually build the theme in DragonflyCMS.
[1:06 am] Still trying to figure out DragonflyCMS theme design.. something about ThemeCP that might be helpful in making my own theme?
http://www.treasurecoastdesigns.com/index.php?name=Downloads&get=44&mirror=45
..a very good tutorial on theme design. VIDEO!
[1:40 am] too sleepy and tired to carry on. save for tommorrow..
[9:37 am] back on the computer again~! Now today's goal is to make the theme of my designed beautiful layout.
http://www.dfaddons.com/ <-good site.
but God... I have no fucking idea where to start. Thing is DragonflyCMS has a new version coming up very soon in the works.. so no one wants to write a tut for anything!
Gawd..
[10:43 am] looking at other possible CMSes at www.opensourcecms.com
Etomite looks okay.. role-based user, good design, good editing capability, image gallery
XOOPS? don't know much about it.. But I look at all these cool sites and I wonder.. maybe this is an easier one to implement..
Design of backend is crucial. It inspired the updaters. So
in that aspect, Etomite is the best one of all.
Ah hell.. I'll just install all of them.
[11:55 am]Etomite seems to be really easy to use and configure.
You make pages and then just click the parent page, and voila! the menu gets updated..
I'm gonna try XOOPS tho. If all fails, I can still revert to Etomite and make myself an easy CMS to use and maintain.
Thus have I found the goal for today... XOOPS learning.
http://xoopsdocs.net/modules/docs/en/xn-103/online/ch02.html
[1:39 pm] took a break.. almost back to learning.
[5:20 pm] cleaned the house for 2 hours, cuz heard someone will come over tomorrow. Back to learning.
[6:29 pm] http://www.macambridge.com/dummies/
good site to learn XOOPS.
[8:58 pm] finally know how to get things to show. Decided to show the menus, hardcoded, as that won't change for a while.
[10:03 pm] almost done with module selection.. Found out XOOPS can use Wordpress as a module!! amazing..
Just need to find a good article writing thingy..
[10:17 am] fuck.. I can't take more of this XOOPS bullshit.
Almost done with tuning it but CSS layer is giving me royal pain.. fuckin 100px!Q!
[11:02 am] FIXED IT! AHHAHAHA now to add more section shtuff..modules..
[12:22 pm] all the modules required to build this (save RSS) have been made.
Shopping capability will be made via whole separate CMS, and be shown in this site via RSS (thus the module)
Besides the RSS, all modules are in place and working.
Need to do: Integrated design of overall site, and template redesign of all
[skipped a day]
[6:06 am] back to work again: design integration, template redesigning, setting color scheme
for some reason smartsection started to create error when installed with wordpress. had to remove smartsection in search of better one..
[9:48 am] noticed all blog modules have a conflict with the articles module. Now, they have a conflict and bounce the login status right out, saying I have no access to the Blocks admin
So, I gave up and chose to just put Blog capability be in another Blog app, namely Tattertools - a really good blog app made in Korea (since this is a Korean site I didn't use Wordpress)
..Fuck that it won't install. APM errors. So I got myself a
koreanized Wordpress
....installed beautifully.
I have to edit a block so it would randomly show a story, with prev/next.. maybe for next edition of the site.
[12:15 pm] Okay. Made all links and organizations done. What needs to be done are now the overal design and some translation for modules(forum and what not)
color scheme I chose: http://beta.dailycolorscheme.com/archive/2006/09/04
[9:09 pm] been a couple days of despair. I found out it's only my fucked up server that is making xoops logout whenever you select blocks. I don't think I wanna contact my host tho - they charge $1 for each support tickets. MuthaFuckas.
...Which is why I decided to just cut the lost time and more frustration with xoops and my host to a minimal and just switch to Etomite. It seems like it's gonna be suitable for me.
I mean, I moved the blog to be handled by Wordpress already..
If I could make Etomite take care of image gallery, articles, and bbs, I'll be okay..
but FUCK.
[12:26 am]Well.. Etomite's layout is much better. Simpler tho.
The CMS puts database in id# to the database.
Modules are the 'Snippets': mostly used to access db using php. I guess the simplest is the best way to solve CMS.
This gives a lot of power for me, as I could install like a Zeroboard BB manager to manage each "sections of the website." That would be independent of the content management.. GAWD
But if I am able to make the articles thingy using PHP?
need:
sectional static content management
forum
articles capability
frontpage blocks a plus
[5:25 pm] on course with newly edited schedule.
development with ETOMITE is a BREEZE!!!!
Their layout and methodology is so crisp and clear.
Each "page" can have limitless positions of snippets, ie modules, and unlike the cumbersome XOOPS, snippets are actually "snippets" of php code.
Therefore, creating small teaser portions of the snippets for mainpage is also possible if the snippet supports it.
I love it! Albeit the template I am temporarily using screams of being a generic template.. I love how simple and elegant the backend portion of the CMS is.
[7:01 pm] gave up modifying EtoGal snippet to make a custom error page when image is too big. Wait.. I could do it if I check at that portion of the snippet.. hm.. wait a sec..
[8:22 pm]
FUCKIT. Too hard. My host is so stingy I guess. I'd have to actually go into php folder and manually change the limit upload size value.
Instead, I'll just go ahead and put this
(javasript to check size dimension of image when uploading - only possible in IE)
into my todo-list for later versions of the site.
current todo-list:
implement better articles method
image dimension js checking
prettier template that reeks more of originality
[9:53 pm]
Okay.. Articles section will be implemented by:
ListDocuments snippet, along with the Main article page, which lists, using ListDocuments, of all the sections in the article(Bio story)
BBS will be done using 제로보드 i guess.. now to get some dinner
[1:13 am]
Something wrong with DIV is messing the display of snippet.
It's pissing me off.
I mean isn't CSS supposed to help the design?
But then a slight error in layout makes drastically bizarre presentations and it just FUCKIN PISSES me off
CUZ I CAN'T FIND OUT WHY!!!
WHY DOES IT DISPLAY WELL WITH three columns and weirdly on one column! FUCK!
[7:22 pm] found out why. Problem was my edited version of a perfect css was wrong in that I ordered the DIVs wrong..
Looks nice. My website is finally FINISHED in terms of layout and what not.
Still gotta do refining touches on the overall look of it(color selection and stuff) but it's coming real nicely. It should be, I mean I am giving it almost a week's input now..
[2:00pm ] A GLORIOUS DAY
I have finally succeeded in finishing the layout part of the project.
Now I have everything working as I want!
HAHAHAHAHA
oh SHIT there was one more thing.. another DIV Portion error?!
me saaaad hahhaa
[9:40 pm] OK NOW ALL THE LAYOUT IS FINALLY DONE. I've decided the design is, well, okay. It doesn't hurt the eye.
Site ver 0.1 BETA is almost done!!!!
NOW FOR CONTENT UPLOAD AND USER ACTIVATION!
...
AND THAT's DONE TOO!
====================================================
onmorie.com
made initial logo and rough design.
fired up gimp to see how i could use it
while trying to change language setting
gimp got fried, and could not get that pango error away
after 10 reinstallations, found out:
I had to install gtk without windows components,
it worked,
reinstall gtk with windows components.
as my XP was in korean, the GIMP showed in Korean.
It seems that won't change.. OH it changed to English as I changed "ko"folder in Locale folder to "ko_tmp"(some other name so GIMP won't recognize korean)
ALL IN ALL I AM READY TO DELVE IN GIMP
I found out GIMPShop, a morphed version that makes GIMP as close as Photoshop, but it gave the same error.
However, fixing this meant reinstalling gimp and..
frankly I wasn't going to do that.
What added to my decision to give up GIMPShop was that I figured getting the pirate-warez taint off my brain should start at learning a new software and a new interface.
So, although it's gonna take more time, I decided to use and learn the default GIMP.
[5:04 pm] "Learning it by tutorial" has started.
tutorials I viewed:
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/
[8:37 pm] made a generic outline of how the main page will look like. now to learn how to use Drupal...
will look at the Drupal site to see how to make a Drupal-run site..
[9:23 pm] I notice Drupal, the one I downloaded doesn't have an installer. WTF? I don't care how good their CMS is. This is so snobbish.
But then I do remember one that does have an installer..I did install it some time ago.. I am searching my hdd for it.
[9:37 pm] Finally realized that it was done using an online installer by the host, under my request.. can't remember what free webhost it was under, though. MMMPH I hate it when I can't search for it..
So, I decided to rather go to DragonflyCMS.
Can anyone help me get the Drupal set up?
[12:11 pm] turns out the hostname was "database" not "localhost".. anyways, even so, Drupal gave this error:
Table 'onmorie.sessions' doesn't exist query: SELECT u.*, s.* FROM users u INNER JOIN sessions s ON u.uid = s.uid WHERE s.sid = 'c98e18443f5e2c5409fe7993330d36c6' AND u.status < 3 LIMIT 0, 1 in
the hell I care. Don't have time to troubleshoot this..
Since I've gotten Dragonfly to install and entered the admin page, I decided to just develop using Dragonfly.
Whatever "shopping" capability the site would require would be done by another small e-commerce CMS.
[12:31 pm] Looking at Dragonfly CMS Wiki tells me that I can do this. But for today, I am done. Night night.
[9:51 am] Dragonflycms site goes down, leaving me no choice but to halt learning process of dragonfly..
[10:00 am] Put a hold on Dragonfly CMS learning.
I noticed a lot of CMS's have a similarity, that the menus are segmented, probably to easily make the engine know where things are located.
Problem with this is that it makes the whole site look segmented, there is no focus, no main theme that the user could be used to. Design seems to be lesser in importance than organization, which could sell for tech-savvy viewers but not the ordinary people.
Sure, I could hack the menu so it would look exactly as I want it to be.
But the backend input support would still lack from what I want.
Should I just use Zeroboard Forum engine and hack its SQL database to pull things what I want? make it as the content holder and use it to populate content?
Oh well I decided to just go ahead with Dragonfly.
But for now, I must install Nvu, to use it for preliminary design assistance(CSS etc).
[8:45 pm] been designing the layout for the site, and still trying to get the layout in CSS show well in IE. Again I hate IE.
[10:16 pm] selected and adjusted a usable list menu. Of course, I'm gonna have to change this so DragonflyCMS can "touch" it(php).
[11:31 pm] implemented the "shop" page link image to go to the Lumberjack part of the site (e-commerce)
I am getting pissed at the 10 pixel difference between Firefox and IE. I just can't let it go...
[11:57 pm] I am almost done with the positioning of data.
Now I have to see how to actually build the theme in DragonflyCMS.
[1:06 am] Still trying to figure out DragonflyCMS theme design.. something about ThemeCP that might be helpful in making my own theme?
http://www.treasurecoastdesigns.com/index.php?name=Downloads&get=44&mirror=45
..a very good tutorial on theme design. VIDEO!
[1:40 am] too sleepy and tired to carry on. save for tommorrow..
[9:37 am] back on the computer again~! Now today's goal is to make the theme of my designed beautiful layout.
http://www.dfaddons.com/ <-good site.
but God... I have no fucking idea where to start. Thing is DragonflyCMS has a new version coming up very soon in the works.. so no one wants to write a tut for anything!
Gawd..
[10:43 am] looking at other possible CMSes at www.opensourcecms.com
Etomite looks okay.. role-based user, good design, good editing capability, image gallery
XOOPS? don't know much about it.. But I look at all these cool sites and I wonder.. maybe this is an easier one to implement..
Design of backend is crucial. It inspired the updaters. So
in that aspect, Etomite is the best one of all.
Ah hell.. I'll just install all of them.
[11:55 am]Etomite seems to be really easy to use and configure.
You make pages and then just click the parent page, and voila! the menu gets updated..
I'm gonna try XOOPS tho. If all fails, I can still revert to Etomite and make myself an easy CMS to use and maintain.
Thus have I found the goal for today... XOOPS learning.
http://xoopsdocs.net/modules/docs/en/xn-103/online/ch02.html
[1:39 pm] took a break.. almost back to learning.
[5:20 pm] cleaned the house for 2 hours, cuz heard someone will come over tomorrow. Back to learning.
[6:29 pm] http://www.macambridge.com/dummies/
good site to learn XOOPS.
[8:58 pm] finally know how to get things to show. Decided to show the menus, hardcoded, as that won't change for a while.
[10:03 pm] almost done with module selection.. Found out XOOPS can use Wordpress as a module!! amazing..
Just need to find a good article writing thingy..
[10:17 am] fuck.. I can't take more of this XOOPS bullshit.
Almost done with tuning it but CSS layer is giving me royal pain.. fuckin 100px!Q!
[11:02 am] FIXED IT! AHHAHAHA now to add more section shtuff..modules..
[12:22 pm] all the modules required to build this (save RSS) have been made.
Shopping capability will be made via whole separate CMS, and be shown in this site via RSS (thus the module)
Besides the RSS, all modules are in place and working.
Need to do: Integrated design of overall site, and template redesign of all
[skipped a day]
[6:06 am] back to work again: design integration, template redesigning, setting color scheme
for some reason smartsection started to create error when installed with wordpress. had to remove smartsection in search of better one..
[9:48 am] noticed all blog modules have a conflict with the articles module. Now, they have a conflict and bounce the login status right out, saying I have no access to the Blocks admin
So, I gave up and chose to just put Blog capability be in another Blog app, namely Tattertools - a really good blog app made in Korea (since this is a Korean site I didn't use Wordpress)
..Fuck that it won't install. APM errors. So I got myself a
koreanized Wordpress
....installed beautifully.
I have to edit a block so it would randomly show a story, with prev/next.. maybe for next edition of the site.
[12:15 pm] Okay. Made all links and organizations done. What needs to be done are now the overal design and some translation for modules(forum and what not)
color scheme I chose: http://beta.dailycolorscheme.com/archive/2006/09/04
[9:09 pm] been a couple days of despair. I found out it's only my fucked up server that is making xoops logout whenever you select blocks. I don't think I wanna contact my host tho - they charge $1 for each support tickets. MuthaFuckas.
...Which is why I decided to just cut the lost time and more frustration with xoops and my host to a minimal and just switch to Etomite. It seems like it's gonna be suitable for me.
I mean, I moved the blog to be handled by Wordpress already..
If I could make Etomite take care of image gallery, articles, and bbs, I'll be okay..
but FUCK.
[12:26 am]Well.. Etomite's layout is much better. Simpler tho.
The CMS puts database in id# to the database.
Modules are the 'Snippets': mostly used to access db using php. I guess the simplest is the best way to solve CMS.
This gives a lot of power for me, as I could install like a Zeroboard BB manager to manage each "sections of the website." That would be independent of the content management.. GAWD
But if I am able to make the articles thingy using PHP?
need:
sectional static content management
forum
articles capability
frontpage blocks a plus
[5:25 pm] on course with newly edited schedule.
development with ETOMITE is a BREEZE!!!!
Their layout and methodology is so crisp and clear.
Each "page" can have limitless positions of snippets, ie modules, and unlike the cumbersome XOOPS, snippets are actually "snippets" of php code.
Therefore, creating small teaser portions of the snippets for mainpage is also possible if the snippet supports it.
I love it! Albeit the template I am temporarily using screams of being a generic template.. I love how simple and elegant the backend portion of the CMS is.
[7:01 pm] gave up modifying EtoGal snippet to make a custom error page when image is too big. Wait.. I could do it if I check at that portion of the snippet.. hm.. wait a sec..
[8:22 pm]
FUCKIT. Too hard. My host is so stingy I guess. I'd have to actually go into php folder and manually change the limit upload size value.
Instead, I'll just go ahead and put this
(javasript to check size dimension of image when uploading - only possible in IE)
into my todo-list for later versions of the site.
current todo-list:
implement better articles method
image dimension js checking
prettier template that reeks more of originality
[9:53 pm]
Okay.. Articles section will be implemented by:
ListDocuments snippet, along with the Main article page, which lists, using ListDocuments, of all the sections in the article(Bio story)
BBS will be done using 제로보드 i guess.. now to get some dinner
[1:13 am]
Something wrong with DIV is messing the display of snippet.
It's pissing me off.
I mean isn't CSS supposed to help the design?
But then a slight error in layout makes drastically bizarre presentations and it just FUCKIN PISSES me off
CUZ I CAN'T FIND OUT WHY!!!
WHY DOES IT DISPLAY WELL WITH three columns and weirdly on one column! FUCK!
[7:22 pm] found out why. Problem was my edited version of a perfect css was wrong in that I ordered the DIVs wrong..
Looks nice. My website is finally FINISHED in terms of layout and what not.
Still gotta do refining touches on the overall look of it(color selection and stuff) but it's coming real nicely. It should be, I mean I am giving it almost a week's input now..
[2:00pm ] A GLORIOUS DAY
I have finally succeeded in finishing the layout part of the project.
Now I have everything working as I want!
HAHAHAHAHA
oh SHIT there was one more thing.. another DIV Portion error?!
me saaaad hahhaa
[9:40 pm] OK NOW ALL THE LAYOUT IS FINALLY DONE. I've decided the design is, well, okay. It doesn't hurt the eye.
Site ver 0.1 BETA is almost done!!!!
NOW FOR CONTENT UPLOAD AND USER ACTIVATION!
...
AND THAT's DONE TOO!
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
[Open Source Adventure #1] Dad's Site
My dad wanted me to create a site for him.
I wanted to make it my first try to do it using all open source tools.
Might as well tell why I'm doing it?
Well I guess I am speaking on behalf of a group where they like
things more challenging, and a tad bit sensitive on the moral issues of
computing/IT field.
Well I guess I am speaking on behalf of a group where they like
things more challenging, and a tad bit sensitive on the moral issues of
computing/IT field.
And plus, it's something special. I stand out if I start supporting open source.
I like that idea. Standing out. And plus, if I do make the site look as professional
as those using pirated top-notch softwares - speaking of the college going part time
web developers - I can say I am a "superman"(Niche), and I like that idea.
Yup, so~ intentions aside, I will describe how I will ponder this meritable idea!
Oh and I do have to mention I never have even used these tools before hand.
So if I make a site that is awesome using them, I am going to be aroused and get high, immensely.
Yes my writing sucks.
Facts:
Site: www.onmorie.comTimeframe:
- 1st Milestone: within 24 hours - basic layout and rough draft goes online
- 2nd Milestone: within this week - Web 2.0 look and feel, redesigning.
Capabilities:
- Ease of backend management - i.e. uploading files, updating entries. Code-free mng.
- Blogging
- CMS
- Shopping Mall
- Forum
- Static hard data management
Tools I'll use:
1) Nvu:
best rated, of ones I know, webpage developing IDE-ish tool.Yes.. this platform independent piece of tool is thought to be the open-source counterpart of Dreamweaver. So let's see how good it'll be!
2) Gimp:
who wouldn't know this awesome counterpart of Photoshop.Singlehandedly the best in free graphic editing field, cross platform. Again, no deep experience with it.
3) FTP: Smartftp
Well.. I use this alot of times.
4) CMS: Drupal
It seems rightful that I start learning this thing already! One of the most recommended open-source Content Management System.==============================================================
So.. let's go on forth this adventure!!!
***update will be in a summation blog entry,***
after reaching the milestones.***
after reaching the milestones.***
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