Big 33 Scholarship Foundation

Posted June 23, 2009, under Computers, Finished, Portfolio

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Big 33 Scholarship Foundation

Who:

Big 33 Scholarship Foundation

Tech Stack:

Apache Web server, PHP, MySQL, CSS, XHTML, Javascript, XML

Open Source:

WordPress.org

Theme:

I’m not sure what theme we ended up using, we hacked it apart into something that became virtually Big 33′s own theme.

Extremely basic site, just trying to maintain the focus on the content.

Features:

Manageable
Re-organization of the content (slightly more structured)
Search-able file repository (WordPress media)
Javascript slide shows, previously they had Flash and had no way of updating/editing them.
Under their control and well-documented information on domain registrations and passwords etc.

Link:

Big 33

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Messiah Men’s Volleyball

Posted , under Computers, Finished, Portfolio

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MCVBC

Who:

Messiah College Men’s Volleyball Team

Tech Stack:

Apache Web server, PHP, MySQL, CSS, XHTML, Javascript, XML

Open Source:

WordPress.org

Theme:

Re-colored (blue) Gravel by Noonnoo which can also be found at http://www.noonnoo.com/things/gravel_1-4/

Features:

Photos via Next Gen Gallery (wordpress plug-in) written by Ruben Boelinger
Results/Schedules/Scores laid out in nice tabular format, used WP-Table (wordpress plug-in) again by Ruben Boelinger

Link:

Messiah Men’s Volleyball Team

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Here we go…

Posted June 22, 2009, under Computers, Programming, Servers, Web Design

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I absolutely hate Java and Javascript, for a variety of indefensible and poor reasons as most people would see it, but nonetheless I am annoyed by and scared of, Java and Javascript.

Therefore… I am about to disembark on my most ambitious project yet to date. To make a fully functional app from bottom to top using:

MySQL database -> Java servlets -> AJAX front-end (Using GWT)

This will not be simple, this will not be fast, this will not be fun.

Ready…set…go!

Edit: Crap I jumped the gun, need to learn more about GWT RPC and servlets and how to implement them, hooray!

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Best IE hack/fix

Posted June 18, 2009, under Computers, Web Design

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I’m totally blown away by the stupidity of IE.

A huge percentage of stupid IE “bugs” can be fixed by adding:

zoom:1;

to whatever element isn’t functioning properly.

See previous blog post for a link that explains IE’s “hasLayout” functionality.

Absolutely brilliant Microsoft, just inexplicably the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.

Makes things relatively easy to fix though (not that I should have to fix them in the first place).

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JPEG file format

Posted , under Computers, Web Design

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From Wikipedia:

“The JPEG compression algorithm is at its best on photographs and paintings of realistic scenes with smooth variations of tone and color. For web usage, where the bandwidth used by an image is important, JPEG is very popular. JPEG/Exif is also the most common format saved by digital cameras.

On the other hand, JPEG is not as well suited for line drawings and other textual or iconic graphics, where the sharp contrasts between adjacent pixels cause noticeable artifacts. Such images are better saved in a lossless graphics format such as TIFF, GIF, PNG, or a raw image format.”

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IE strikes again

Posted June 17, 2009, under Computers, Web Design

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Not a big fan of IE bugs but I found a good article explaining at a higher level how to make IE perform more standards friendly without applying gross hacks everywhere.

http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html

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Too many stacks

Posted , under Computers

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Sometimes I feel a little bit like a hamster running on one of those damned wheels.

I keep running and running but I’m never, really, getting that far.

Just within computers itself… the different stacks of technologies… the vast number of options for a … career.

Microsoft’s .Net -> Windows server, MS SQL, ASP.net, ADO.net, C#/Visual Basic/C++

Open Source -> Linux servers running Apache/Tomcat, My SQL, JSP, PHP, Java, Ruby, Python

Adobe -> Flex, Flash, Actionscript

Different data types -> JSON, XML, CSV
Parsing, traversing, and writing to each

Design layer -> XHTML, CSS, Javascript/AJAX fits in there somewhere but it seems to be used differently depending on who you are and what your main goal is.

Frameworks and IDE’s at every turn:

PHP – Zend, Symfony, Yii and others
Visual Studio Express
Adobe Flex
Microsoft Silverlight I’m sure has it’s own setup
Javascript libraries – DOJO, jquery, several others I can’t remember
Eclipse can encompass anything from Java to GWT (Google Web Toolkit, aka GoogleAjax)
Ruby on Rails ? I haven’t gotten to this one yet

To be honest it’s quite overwhelming… where the hell do you start?

And that’s just computers… what about life :grimace:

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GWT and Vaadin

Posted June 12, 2009, under Computers, Programming, Web Design

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Today I got eclipse setup and running and did one of the GWT (Google Web Toolkit) tutorials.

I did this more-so in anticipation for making a Google Wave Robot or Gadget but I may try to use GWT to make something now, prior to Wave being released.

GWT

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