24 Hours is not enough

Convert XHTML/CSS To WordPres

Posted by Steve himself - 15/09/09 at 05:09:41 am

Found a good tutorial/explanation of how to convert your XHTML/CSS to a Wordpress Theme. You can find it here.

Quick post

Posted by Steve himself - 26/07/09 at 12:07:30 pm

Just a quick post: came across two cool tutorials I thought I’d share.
Display your latest Twitter update with jQuery
How to Create A Simple Web-based Chat Application

One big list of jQuery – jQueryList.com

Posted by Steve himself - 24/07/09 at 05:07:45 pm

jQuery is awesome! There I said it. I’ve been using it for about 2 months now and it has completely changed the way I do all my web development. Life has become so much easier. In light of this breakthrough in awesomeness I’d like to share with you a site I came across (thanks stumbleupon) called http://jquerylist.com/. It contains a huge list of jQuery examples demonstrating every possible way you would want to convey information to a user. Check it out and happy coding!

Vidz goes live!

Posted by Steve himself - 08/09/08 at 09:09:26 am

I have just launched an Audio and Video sharing site called Vidz. The idea is basic; upload and share videos and audio on the site and you can embed players in your blog/site that will stream media from my site.

Have a look at the site and let me know what you think. Since the site is brand new there isn’t much happening at the moment but that will change pretty soon.

Giving credit where it is due

Now I cant take any credit for development of this site, all I have done is installed it on my site. The guys who are responsible for it are over at PHPMotion who have developed this great open source video sharing script that is available to anyone for free!

Installation is a breeze if you have experience with setting up PHP and MySQL environment and only requires very basic configuration from your (the administrator) side.

Link to Vidz
Thanks in advanced for the support!

Articles and links worth checking out – 15 July 2008

Posted by Steve himself - 16/07/08 at 06:07:59 am

More and more links

Game Programming in J2ME crash course

Effective Code Reviews

8 reasons why XML sucks

The 10 Ultimate SEO Tips of All Time

Handling images with PHP

Building and managing virtual teams

How to be a programmer

Life

How to Write with Style (Kurt Vonnegut)

26 Key Innovations of the last 20 years

Someday is NOW!

101 Dirt Cheap Ways to Enjoy Yourself

Data ‘chunks’ are easier to remember

The income snowball

SQL Injection Example

Posted by Steve himself - 12/07/08 at 02:07:59 am

Here is a good example of how hackers use SQL Injection to access data. The example here is only one of many possible attacks that hackers can use to access (or destroy) information on your site so its very important to implement security measures to protect your site.

More detail on what SQL Injection is:

What is a SQL Injection bug? – Joel on software

SQL Injection walkthrough – SecuriTeam

Protecting Your PHP/MySQL Queries from SQL Injection – Metatitan

SQL Injection – WikiPedia
As a bonus here is an old xkcd cartoon about sanitizing your database inputs:

PHP sucks, no wait it doesn’t , who cares!

Posted by Steve himself - 10/06/08 at 06:06:49 pm

There has been a lot of talk lately about whether PHP sucks or not, in fact its not a new debate at all.
A lot of people say it sucks, a lot of people say it rocks, so which side is right?

I personally DON’T CARE. The reason I use PHP is not because I’m an open source fan boy, or because I think Microsoft is the devil, no I use PHP because it does what I need it to. Yes there are flaws with it, the way the language is written is not consistent but who cares! All I need is to be able write, update and delete data from a database and to be able to display data from a database on a web page. Essentially that’s what all dynamic websites boil down to. Whether it’s a social network or an E-Commerce site, all that is required is data in and data out.

So bottom line is it comes down to personal preference and job you need to do. If you want to develop in ASP.net/ASP, go for it! If you want to develop in Python, why not!? If you want to develop in PHP, what’s stopping you? The same can be said for any other language, irrespective of the environment it runs in. If it gets the job done, run with it.

Teach your child to program with scratch

Posted by Steve himself - 14/05/08 at 05:05:41 pm

There is a programming language that has been available from MIT for quite a while now called scratch that is aimed at children from the ages of 8 and up. Here is the description from the website:

“Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design”

The IDE (if you can call it that) is very easy to get to grips with. Programs are written by dropping little blocks into the main window which can connect together. Each block represents an action or event that can be executed. If you have ever played with LEGO Mindstorms the same principles apply.

I think it’s a brilliant educational toy for children because it represents itself in a way that is fun to play with and yet at the same time they are learning some basic ideas around programming! Even if they choose to not take programming seriously, at least they will get moreexperience in using a computer as well as exposure to concepts like design, algorithms and creating processes, which are skills which could be used in many other fields.

KISS Development

Posted by Steve himself - 11/05/08 at 05:05:08 pm

I’ve been a programmer for about 5 years now and only recently have I discovered what I believe is the most important aspect of software development that every developer should be aware of, and that is to keep-it-simple-stupid!

It is such a simple and widely used statement yet not many people follow it. I’ve been reading this Book called Enterprise Architecture Planning by Steven Spewak and I came across this passage:

“As an organization grows and becomes more complex, management makes greater demands of their information systems function. They require timely access to data whenever and wherever needed, a useful format for data that can be easily interpreted, accurate and consistent data throughout every department, responsiveness to rapidly changing business conditions, and sharing of data across the enterprise.”

Basically what they are getting at is sharing data with those people that need it at any given time. This book was written a long time ago but the same principle can be applied to modern day development. The need to share data between departments in enterprises is still prevalent today, but since this books conception another platform has emerged where sharing of information is important…the internet. Through the internet we are all able to share information with each other anytime and anywhere, so the need to share it in a manner that is readily available and in a useful format is of the utmost importance.

Let’s take a look at a typical example; social networks. Why are they so popular? Why are there are so many of them out there? The reason is that these networks allow people to share information with people from all over the world. It doesn’t matter whether we actually know each other in “real life” or not, we just share. To most people, the technology behind all these networks doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how facebook manages to scale the way it does or which language it is written in, or how twitter manages to allow millions of people to send in updates about what they are doing. All that matters is they are able to connect and share pictures, video, music and blogs with their friends and family. What’s happening under the bonnet doesn’t matter. And that is where our focus should as developers; giving people the information they need.

Now been able to provide ONLY that which is necessary is not very exciting.  As programmers we always want to try out the latest and (supposedly) greatest tools out there. It’s always fun to play with the latest development framework or language that has come onto the market, but the fact is, we only need to do what is required. What this also boils down to is writing the simplest code possible. Nothing fancy, just that which is required. There are several benefits to this including:

• Code is easier to maintain
• Shorter development cycle
• Less bugs
• Happier users (They can easily do what they need to)
• Happy clients (You deliver an application that does what it needs to)
• You could even see performance improvements, because there is less overhead to deal with from unnecessary components.

Been able to deliver an application that does what it’s supposed to in the simplest way possible is dependant on many factors including good knowledge of data requirements by the users and clients, understanding how the business works, who needs access to which data, etc but that is out of the scope of this article. If those other factors have been addressed prior to the commencement of actual coding, writing the application should be a lot more pleasant process.

Snippet Compiler for .net Developers

Posted by Steve himself - 04/05/08 at 04:05:19 pm

Ever wanted to test out an idea or write a quick POC without having to fire up the old Visual studio? Well here is a cool little tool I found, its called snippet compiler. Its a lightweight text editor that allows you to write and compile your code without having to create a new test solution in Visual studio and all that unneccesary overhead while you are just trying to turn ideas into code. It has syntax highlighting, intellisense and it can compile console or windows applications. It doesn’t seem to have debugging though. They’ve also released a version to work with .net Framework 3.5!

Enjoy

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