Blog - CMBuckley.co.uk

Blog - CMBuckley.co.uk Shameless self-promotion http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/ Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:38:20 +0100 bBlog 0.7.6 Copyright: © Chris Buckley. All rights reserved. en-gb http://images.scholesmafia.co.uk/rss_logo.png Blog - CMBuckley.co.uk http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/ http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2010/09/08/leeds-festival-2010/ Leeds Festival 2010 http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2010/09/08/leeds-festival-2010/ music Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:00:21 +0100 Just recovered, so thought I’d post some ramblings for this year. Various high points were: Colin; gin jam; Jacob and Alf shopping for nothing but sweets; the wind and its army of shopping bags; back on form with brie and crackers; staying at the main stage missing plenty of good bands; acting like we were 16 again; when gazebos attack; a night of rum leading to much destruction; that man’s dressed all in red; wrestling ring during Limp Bizkit; breaking glasses again; general debauchery and merriment. Roll on next year! <table class="noborder"> <tr> <th>Friday</th> <th>Saturday</th> <th>Sunday</th> </tr> <tr> <td> Bad Religion Arcade Fire The Libertines Cancer Bats Zebrahead The Cribs The Rats (The Gallows) Modest Mouse The Gaslight Anthem Mystery Jets Random Hand Rolo Tomassi </td> <td> blink-182 We Are Scientists Foals Weezer Cypress Hill Limp Bizkit You Me at Six All Time Low The King Blues </td> <td> Guns N’ Roses LCD Soundsystem The Sunshine Underground Against Me Queens of the Stone Age Biffy Clyro Lostprophets NOFX Billy Talent The Skints </td> </tr> </table> <a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=53.861318,-1.382441&sll=53.861318,-1.382441&sspn=0.033863,0.111494&g=53.861318,-1.382441&ie=UTF8&ll=53.867333,-1.380329&spn=0.016929,0.055747&t=k&z=15">Tent location</a> http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/11/08/word-clock-v2/ Word Clock v2 http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/11/08/word-clock-v2/ computing play Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:27:17 +0000 I’ve seen a few nice-looking representations of clocks around, but when I saw <a href="http://gumuz.nl/weblog/javascript-word-clock/">Gumuz’s word clock</a> I though I could make some improvements to it. Here’s a couple of the changes: <ul><li>Rewrote using <a href="http://mootools.net">MooTools</a> (only because I know it better, I’m currently developing in it, and it gave me a chance to play with Google’s JS API)</li> <li>Rewrote some of the JavaScript logic to be a bit tidier</li> <li>Replaced the letters with dots for an arguably prettier output</li> <li>Reordered the hours in the HTML so that “twelve o’clock” wouldn’t be missing the space (I had to combine two and one for this)</li> <li>Highlighted the a in half for quarter-past and quarter-to, as per <a href="http://gumuz.nl/weblog/javascript-word-clock/#comment-18582925">mattatwhoosh’s suggestion</a> </li></ul> The result is tested in IE (5.5–8), Safari, Chrome and Firefox. I hit a slight issue in IE6− (what a surprise) whereby it interprets <code>a.sec.lit</code> as <code>a.lit</code> (<a href="http://www.interfacethis.com/misc/css-test/multiclass.html">example</a>); I got around it by making <code>sec</code> an ID rather than a class (yes, I know it’s dirty). <a href="http://cmbuckley.co.uk/projects/word-clock/">Have a look for yourself</a>. http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/10/23/mootools-hashsetfrompath/ Mootools Hash.setFromPath http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/10/23/mootools-hashsetfrompath/ computing Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:11:01 +0100 <a href="http://mootools.net/docs/more">MooTools More</a> implements a <a href="http://mootools.net/docs/more/Native/Hash.Extras#Hash:getFromPath"><code>getFromPath</code> method in <code>Hash.Extras</code></a>, but doesn’t provide a corresponding setter. Here’s an implementation: <pre> Hash.implement({ setFromPath: function(path, value) { var source = this; var prop = ''; path.replace(/[([^]]+)]|.([^.[]+)|[^[.]+/g, function(match) { if (!source) return; prop = arguments[2] || arguments[1] || arguments[0]; if (!(prop in source)) source[prop] = {}; lastSource = source; source = source[prop]; return match; }); lastSource[prop] = value; return this; } }); </pre> <ins datetime="2009-11-08T22:49:04+00:00">Just to explain the <code>lastSource</code> part, it’s a fudge to maintain object references throughout.</ins> http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/09/16/mlia/ MLIA http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/09/16/mlia/ play Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:08:16 +0100 Today, after reading over 3000 posts on <a href="http://fmylife.com">FML</a> over the the past 6 months, I realised that <a href="http://mylifeisaverage.com/">MLIA</a> is actually more enjoyable than schadenfreude. MLIG is too boring, though. MLIA http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/05/27/spacing-out-camelcase-in-php/ Spacing out CamelCase in PHP http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/05/27/spacing-out-camelcase-in-php/ computing Wed, 27 May 2009 10:54:54 +0100 Here’s a nifty function to put spaces in your CamelCased words: <pre> function spacify($camel, $glue = ' ') { return $camel[0] . substr(implode($glue, array_map('implode', array_chunk(preg_split('/([A-Z])/', ucfirst($camel), -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE), 2))), 1); } echo spacify('CamelCaseWords'); // 'Camel Case Words' </pre> <ins datetime="2009-05-27T12:12:17+01:00">I added in the <code>$glue</code> parameter to be even more nifty, but a bit of thinking made it clear that it wouldn’t work when the first letter was lower-case. Should be fine now!</ins> http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/05/18/2b-or-not-2b/ 2B or not 2B http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/05/18/2b-or-not-2b/ computing Mon, 18 May 2009 16:17:34 +0100 …that is the question. The answer? <code>FF</code>. http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/04/10/paying-the-price-for-bad-grammar/ Paying the Price for Bad Grammar http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/04/10/paying-the-price-for-bad-grammar/ play Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:16:45 +0100 This is why we need Grammar Nazis: <blockquote>Today, I was flirting via text with a coworker. Things started getting heated, and I wanted to send her a sexy picture. I asked if she had any suggestions. She said, “Your nuts!” She meant, “YOU’RE nuts.” I sent her a photo of my junk. I offended a co-worker with incriminating evidence. FML<cite>blizzard_of_77 on <a href="http://www.fmylife.com/sex/869850">FMyLife</a></cite></blockquote> Ahh, grammar… http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/03/30/things-i-learnt-today/ Things I Learnt Today http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/03/30/things-i-learnt-today/ computing play Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:58:46 +0100 <ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li>That Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2579800">a goon</a>;</li> <li>that his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYQLR7dE5k4">early</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWS9_nrKOPA">stuff</a> is, if anything, funnier than his paid stuff for <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/">The Escapist</a>;</li> <li>that I there will always be something on the Internet that I haven’t seen, and that someone will think I have been living under a rock to have missed it.</li> </ol> http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/02/17/get-a-grid-for-transparent-images-in-firefox/ Get a Grid for Transparent Images in Firefox http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/02/17/get-a-grid-for-transparent-images-in-firefox/ computing Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:30:28 +0000 Here’s a useful bit of <a href="http://getfirefox.com/">Firefox</a> hackery for you all. It puts a checkerboard (or chequerboard, for you elitists) image as the background for your transparent images. It works for any image when viewed directly in Firefox, by checking for a HTML page containing a single <code>img</code> tag. If you reproduce this structure manually, then you’ll see the checkerboard, but there’s very little chance that a legitimate HTML page would match these selectors. It works by adding some content to your <code>userContent.css</code>: <ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li>Lifehacker has a <a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/customize-firefox-with-userchromecss-197715.php">guide</a> to finding your <code>userChrome.css</code> file — your <code>userContent.css</code> resides in the same folder.</li> <li>You may not have a <code>userContent.css</code> file; if not, you should create it. In some instances you may have a <code>userContent-example.css</code> file, which you can rename to get the idea of what goes in this file.</li> <li>Open the file and insert the following CSS: <pre> /* * Image from <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Checker-16x16.png?oldid=19631383">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Checker-16x16.png?oldid=19631383</a> */ html > body > img:only-child { background: url('http://starsquare.co.uk/images/checkerboard') repeat; } html > body > img:only-child:hover { background: none; } </pre> With the above CSS, viewing an image directly displays the checkerboard at all times, unless you hover over the image, in which case it reverts back to show the normal image. If you want it the other way round, so the checkerboard only shows when you hover over the image, insert the following CSS: <pre> /* * Image from <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Checker-16x16.png?oldid=19631383">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Checker-16x16.png?oldid=19631383</a> */ html > body > img:only-child:hover { background: url('http://starsquare.co.uk/images/checkerboard') repeat; } </pre> </li> <li>Save the file. If you had Firefox open, you should restart your browser. If not, simply start it up.</li> <li>Find an image that contains transparency and open it in your browser; a good example is <a href="http://starsquare.co.uk/images/transparent">this image</a>.</li> <li>Pretend you’re in your favourite image editor!</li> </ol> <ins datetime="2009-02-18T11:29:51+00:00">I removed the <code>body:only-child</code> selector, since nightly builds of Minefield include a <code>head</code> tag to specify the page title.</ins> http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/01/30/a-message-to-tinchy-strider/ A Message to Tinchy Strider http://blog.cmbuckley.co.uk/2009/01/30/a-message-to-tinchy-strider/ music Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:01:13 +0000 It’s misled. I don’t care if you made it up to rhyme with mistreated, or if you use an 8-bit–style riff to appeal to my geekiness — The word is misled. That is all.