Real Dimensions

The Social graph trumps features…..

Thats all for now.

It’s official, I’m an apple fan boy. It started out when I switched to a MacBook Pro laptop at my previous employer, and I loved it. I just works fantastic, not to mention how much easier it is to develop Ruby on Rails applications on it over a Windows box. Then I got a new MacBook Pro for my current job and Freelance work. I’ve since stopped all use of windows, with the exception of parallels for testing. And now, the closer on the fan boy claim…..

I bought an iPhone!!

Yes, I love it, it works fantastic. There are to many good point to list, but I will say one thing, it is extremely easy to use. I had a Blackberry from my old company and I really had to look around to figure out how to do things or search on Google for info. With the iPhone, I have been able to use almost all it’s features with out reading the manual or searching on-line.

Before anyone goes commenting about how ridiculous it is to spend $600 on a phone (yes I got the 8 gig) , let me explain why I got it (besides the fact that it is amazing). With my new job I commute into NY City several days a week, this requires me spending two plus hours on a train each time I go into the office (round trip total). My old iPod Mini died a few weeks ago so I’ve been looking to get a new iPod, plus, with my freelance work I really wanted to get a new phone that I could check my e-mail on. So, I could spend $250 to $350 on a new iPod and another $200 to $300 on a good smart-phone that does email and Wifi or spend that money on one device that does it all. I opted for the one device, the iPhone, believe me, I am not disappointed.

I’m not going to do any kind of review since there are tons of them out there done by better writers than myself, but if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask and I will try my best to answer.

GrandCentral is a service that allows you to have one number to control several other phone numbers (cell, home, office). You put all your contacts into groups, and then choose which number you want each group to ring to. You can also use different voice mail recordings for each group and choose a different ring for each group. When someone calls you on your GrandCentral number you have the option to screen your calls, you can actually listen to them as they are leaving a voice mail on your computer. If it’s someone you want to talk to you can answer the phone. If it’s someone you never want to talk to you can send their number to a spam group, like the spam you get in your email. Now thats a really useful feature!!!

Since being acquired by Google Inc. (fantastic job and congrats to all the GrandCentral Team) they’re not currently accepting new users but you can sign up on the list to get one, hopefully sooner rather than later. I’ve put my name on the list, once I get an invite I will be sure you share so leave a comment in you would like one after I get some. Or if you have invites please send me one and I will be sure you pass along the favor.

EDIT: I got an invite (thanks TJL) so if you’re interested in one as well, I have 10 to give away!! Also, I will have a new review of GrandCentral coming soon.

I’ve added a new category, Firefox Plugins. I often getasked what tools I use when developing websites or what Firefox plugins I use to make development easier. So I’m starting a new category to list Pugins I use, and I will start it out with one I use almost every day, the Web Developer Plugin.
The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools like disabling elements, cookies handling, forms, viewing and editing CSS style sheets, managing images, displaying and outlining page elements, resizing your window and more. One I use very often is View Generated Source (under View Source). This lets you see what the source code looks like after it has been manipulated by JavaScript, like for instance by an AJAX call or a DOM manipulation. If your a web developer this is a must have.

Get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

When I’m developing I often lookup things on PHP.net. So a little while back I decided to write a search engine plugin for Firefox that would give me the ability to search PHP.net from that search bar in the top right corner of Firefox.

I just finished updating it to work in Firefox 2. I thought I would share….

http://michaelnoga.com/labs/ff/

There are a few others but the PHP.net one is probably the most relevant one you my readers.

In playing around with Dashboard Widgets I decided to try and make on myself. I created a simple RSS reader that displays the articles I write on here. No big deal but it was interesting to do as a starter widget.

It’s still not quite finished but it works. Let me know if you have any suggestions and or comments to make it better.

Download here

Also, let me know if you have any ideas for a new Widget, I would like to make one that is actually useful (rather than promoting my own blog).

I signed up for an account with IconBuffet, it’s a great resource for high quality Icons and illustrations for use in Website, Applications and software.

They have a great feature called Free Delivery where once a month you will get a free set of Icons. But not everyone gets the same Icons. They do allow you to share them with up to five other people per set.

So I would like to start a trading session for Icons, I will list the ones I have and you can post a reply to this telling me what set you want an what set you can give me, now I would really appreciate getting a set in return but if you ask really nicely maybe I will send you the set you want for nothing in return.

Update:

I received a duplicate set of Icons so I am posting the link to claim the Blinksale set here.
This one is Taken

http://www.iconbuffet.com/deliveries/fb655751fc67f7ee

Here are a few more;

Yuletide Snow - http://www.iconbuffet.com/deliveries/131d7924653f3926

Alexandria Cosmonauts - http://www.iconbuffet.com/deliveries/7b3cd949951df60a

Dresden Auto - http://www.iconbuffet.com/deliveries/91e96a60dd6c62f6

I just want to see how long it will take someone to claim it. All I
ask is that you leave me a comment, nothing big just a simple thanks
will do.

I recently came a cross an issues that I needed to test in Safari (on a Mac obviously). I needed to see how a page looked with a cookie present. But I only had the page in a development environment and the page that created the cookie was in a production environment, for various reasons I was not able to hit the page that created the cookie in my development environment.

So, I had to find a way to manually create the cookie in Safari, a quick Google search for a Safari Web Developer tool bar or something that would allow me to manually create cookies yielded nothing useful. So I took a walk to get a cup of Joe and thought about it a bit. This is what I came up with….

Run some JavaScript in the address bar!!! Now others may have done this already, I’m not claiming I came up with the idea but it was the first time I thought of doing it. So this is what I wrote (the values have been changed to protect the innocent).

Simple copy that whole line and past it into your address bar and hit enter. Now you have a cookie called user with a value of me. Wahoo!!!! This works in Firefox as well as Safari, I have not tested in IE since I don’t have a Windows box near me right now.

Safari does nothing after you hit enter to run the code but the cookie is created, Firefox will show a page with the cookie info.

You can test it by using this code in the address bar;

Look through the list you will see the cookie you just created, most likely at the end of the list if you did not go surfing after you created it.

Popular front has agreed to donate to The Salvation Army based on how many Snow Flakes are created. They are giving up to $25,000 to be split among the four territories.

So lets make sure the Salvation Army gets the full $25,000!!!!

Here is a link to the snowflake I made if you would like to post a message to it.

And click the banner below to make your own!!!

So it looks like all things went well with my hosting move. I have had some problems with my old hosting company for a long time but nothing big enough to get me to actually move to a new host. That all changed last week when I found out that none of my forms were working. Anything that used the php mail() function just stopped working. So anyone that tried to contact me or signed up for Comment notices never got any email. I get a good amount of people that contact me so it was a big deal. This along with some other issues I was having for a long time made me realize I really needed to do something.

I looked around a lot and checked out a lot of other people’s blogs and found TextDrive a company by Joyent. These are some smart guys  and they offer some really great stuff (PHP, RoR, SVN, WebDev SFTP, to name some) at a great price, so I signed up for one year. It’s only been about a week so far but I’m impressed. And now I can start playing more with Ruby on Rails. Does anyone know of a good Ruby on Rails Blogging Software?