22 Jul
ergh
It’s been a while since i’ve wrote something here and as terribly non-thought provoking as this will be I felt the need just to let you all know what’s been happening and why i’ve been neglecting you all. You see i’ve been in Lebanon saving Australian’s from the violence..No I haven’t and what the fuck is that about anyhow? I mean why save one countries people and not worry about everyone elses…hello compassion? where are you?
Alas though the reason i haven’t been online much lately is because i’ve been sick and in excruciating pain…Well not so much anymore thanks to Neurofen Plus and a chriopractor who could easily become a stage double for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes finally my bad posture and lack of caring about my posture has caught up with me and handed me the sentance for all these bad years. I can’t remeber if it was Tuesday or Wednesday i saw the chiropractor but after a little bit of heat and manipulation i heard just about every bone in my spine crack back into place, bones i didn’t even know existed snapped back into their healthy formation, however it wasnt all over you see as i said above I was being handed a sentancing for all these bad years of posture. Turns out one of my hips sits .5 inches higher than the other and that my back appeared to be out of alignment(shit who’s isnt) so to be on the safe side and to convince me i’d need to spend even more on this dilema i was ordered to have xrays, which i’ve since had and await to hear the results of.
Now just as i thought that was enough i noticed by about thursday that when i swallowed it felt like i was ingesting a builder’s brick and worst of all it tasted as if it had a side dish of flegm to go with it. So once more i seeked the superior skills of a proffessional and it turns out my own self-diagnoses of tonsilitis was wrong and i infact have something different which i can’t remeber the name of but i’m on penacillin to try make the germs pack up shop.
I guess getting sick all at once just means i can sort everything out at once and not worry for a while….or can i?
On other fronts i have recently purchased the AJAX book brought out by sitepoint which you can get here:
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/ajax1/
Should arrive sometime this week or early next. So you can expect a bit of a review from me aswell as goobii getting some AJAX related things added to it even if it is just my experiments etc. I thoroughly am looking foward to jumping on the AJAX band-wagon as i believe with the current state of the web AJAX does make you stand out from the rest and will provide me the tools to make better User driven applications.
Till we meet again,
Take care.
Mat
Filed Under: Rant, random, General
17 Jul
Validation & Goobii Theme
Just finished validating Goobii’s new layout and old posts….now XHTML transitional 1.0 XHTML STRICT 1.0 friendly. So what’s this taught me you ask? Well usually it’d teach me nothing because shit i’ve validated more times than i’ve yawned and believe me I yawn alot.
However much to my suprise something was gained from this process besides the usual feeling of being compliant and therefore adhering to a web standard which increases accessiblity. So without straying too far from the question, here’s what i learnt.
The built in RTE in WP tinyMCE is pathetic hence why long ago i replaced it with HTMLArea however therein lies the rub. You see all RTE’s take the following rules into account.
\n becomes line-break
\r\n becomes paragraph
images are inserted but do not contain alt tags by default.
(space) is replaced by non-break-line-space
So the draw back’s is ill code, you see close tags without open ones. Things are replaced when they don’t need to be which add’s bloat…useless bloat in the database means longer queries and shittier access times.
The solution?
Seems kinda counter-productive but strip the RTE back out and edit everything with manual html. Unless someone can point me to a valid xhtml RTE editor..anyone?
A big thank you must go out to Paola for hacking in the new goobii template’s aswell as designing the final design. I will add my development versions later on as optional themes but for now i’m more than happy with what Paola’s has made compared to my green garbage. hugs thanks Paola.
If i could be arsed i’d code my own blog cms for this because it looks as if everything i use write sub-standard html and that’s just not cool.
Till next time,
Take care
Mat
Filed Under: Rant, code, goobii
14 Jul
Hello from Vietnam
Jennii reporting from Vietnam here! The weather is humid and sticky, but that’s just very typical of Vietnam.
Everything is so different the moment I set foot on Vietnam. Much more modernised. They even have coins now, and their paper money is hella sexy (hear this Mat, the Australians helped designed it!)
They say Vietnam is a developing country, here’s my definition of a "developing country": beside/in front of a modern looking building is a bunch of cows munching grass.
My legs look like polkadots, because the musquitos loves me like I love chocolate. Anyway, departing for Macau/Hong Kong this Sunday (yes! musquitos-free!). I’ll be visiting my grandpa … and the rest of my azn family :)
Oh yeah mat, if you’re reading this: WHAT’S UP? I saw a bootleg lostprophet and Lamb of God CDs at a CD store and thought of you (awww…).
Filed Under: General
10 Jul
On the drawing board.
Well soon I will unveil my design for goobii, i will give you some quick spoilers.
1) It’s very green
2) It’s 2 column
3) It contains a header image
4) Similar edit boxes to those of the Dimension2k theme you see now (thanks kle)
Guess you’ll just have to wait around and see for yourself uh.
Filed Under: goobii
09 Jul
Shopping in Hell.
Well it’s not really hell but it is shopping none the less. So Dee and i woke about 11′ish had showers then went to grab some breakfast ingrediants from the shop up the road.
-1 block of cheese
-1 jar of jam
-1.25 litres of coke
-1.25 litres of diet coke
-1 newspaper (herald sun)
-1 litre of milk
-1 loaf of bread
20 something dollars later we were on our way, you have to love individual inflation, right?
So loaded with all the goodies to make a champions breakfast we headed on home and eventually into the kitchen.
While Dee got her groove on with the toaster i decided to relax a bit and stretched out in my chair while perusing through the paper.
Sport throws at the other side of the table
the weekend throws
ahhh politics and current events, normally i avoid these sections because well….the world is too damn depressing and it just makes me feel crap. Seeing as i was in a good mood i dived into them with haste. Some wanker moaning about howard having to step down for costello next Some idiot bitching about the issues with the Big brother house next Inflation costs of petrol and how hydrogen fueled cars could be the answer, yes let’s all dirve around in little hydrogen bombs. throws paper
So i went to grab a coffee and make my toast.. glancing at Dee’s plate which was now held two slices of toast with jam on them and cheese laid over the top. At one point i would of thought this was weird but a week before hand i tasted this exact combination and i must say it’s better than it looks and sounds…try it.
Finding the biggest mug we own which Dee refered to as a ‘bucket’ i proceded to fill it with 3 teaspoon’s of coffee and 5 teaspoons of sugar (the winning ratio).
Fast foward
Being as bored and cool as I am I began folding an origami ninja star out of a teared of section of the classifieds, note to anyone who admires paper folding. Newspaper is pathetic and won’t hold your crease lines without flapping about like an 80 yr old’s labia. Feeling i should share the experience with someone i motioned Dee to tear off a section and make a square and follow what i was doing but reverse it…well she messed up the last fold but meh, i did the same when i started.
Feeling confident i figured i’d show Dee how to make a flaping crane.
Step by step we folded:
lengthwise
acrosswise
diagonal
diagonal
open out
diagonal
inverted diagonal - this one is tricky so i had to show her.
flip over
same inverted diagonal..
Several folds later we came to the big kahuna fold and i’ll admit when i first made a flapping crane i had no fucking clue how this fold was supposed to work..well at that point i took over because i think Dee’s patience for my shitty directions were wearing thin.
Fast foward
Tax to train station - direct the driver cos he cant read a map or something.
Wait for train
Listen to Dee’s ipod shuffle in distate at her music collection.. but hey everyone hates my music lol.
fast foward 40 minutes
Arrive at Flinders Street
walk down 2 blocks headed toward the metal store
Like arnold shwazenger and indiana jones i walked into the store with a defined mission of returning with something sacred, like treasure they loomed high over my head in all their black glory on coat hangers standing tall. With sniper like precission i begn glancing over them rejecting those not worthy enough of touching my naked body.
"i really like that cannibal corpse one"
"yeah its nice, i like the thing on the back"
"it looks sorta small though right?"
"yeah it does"
"ill get it down, im feeling lucky"
Stretching high up i tried to grasp the wonderous treasure laiden before my eyes.
"Ergh i cant reach it (standing on tip toes). I’ll have to get the guy to get it down"
Dee looking like she was enduring hell from within waited back while i approached the desk. Two people before me bought some stupid finger rings as i waited for the store worker to attend to me.
"well its been a hard choice but…"
"hold on a sec dude i jsut need to write these down"
"no problems, looks like the shipment was big"
"yeah dude we always buy in bulk in cheaper and the shipping times on this shit sucks"
"yeah i’d imagine"
"so what are you interested in bro?"
"well theres a nice cannibal corpse hoodie back there and a Nile one at the front"
"sure thing dude"
Armed with his trusty piece of wood with a hook affixed to the one end we walked toward the black beauty. Like a champion fisherman he had it hooked and dropped it into my eager hands…that’ll fit easy.
"wheres the other one dude, theres so many"
walking right up to the front of the store with Dee following behind
"Yeah its that Nile one there"
"Sure thing bro, thats a nice choice i like that one myself"
"thanks"
so $195.00 later i was on my way with my new found treasures.
"I’m so stealing that zip-up cannibal corpse one Mat"
"hahaha..u wish babe"
There’s way more to this story but because breakfast took up nearly like 1page alone i’ve decided to cut it short.
my puchases, so you can all drool at their awesomeness:
and
