Mobile d4d™
Posted: Fri 18 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 5 Comments »I can’t deny that this post is utterly sad and geeky, but I’m still obscurely pleased with this. While out at a meeting today, I was able to link in to d4d™ through my mobile and read through to see if anyone had added new comments to anything.
I’ve realised that I need to have a look at what I can do with a CSS sheet for purely mobile use, so that it gets rid of things like the style switcher etc., but for now I’m just ridiculously chuffed that the entire thing worked as advertised. I suppose I’d be less impressed if I had a super-geeky phone or whatever, but it’s just a standard Nokia 7250i.
Security?
Posted: Thu 17 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »Now this is how to do a security audit…
I know that this is an American story, but it’s really international – I’m quite certain that if an auditor in the UK contacted a department in the same way and posed as a technician then a lot of people would give out their passwords without any checking. I know that they would at my last workplace – I had the passwords of about half the IT team, let alone any of the people in, for example, social services.
Twonk
Posted: Wed 16 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 3 Comments »Over the last couple of months, my bandwidth useage has shot through the roof here at d4d™. So much so that I’m nearly at the point of having to pay for some of it. And it’s only just occurred to me why that’s happened.
The smart amongst you will already be saying “it’s because you’ve installed WordPress, you twunt“. And you’d be right. When I was posting through Blogger, all the admin stuff, editing, changing sections etc. was done through Blogger, and thus didn’t affect the bandwidth allocation of d4d™. Now though it’s all contained within the site, and it all comes out through that bandwidth allocation.
It’s no great problem, just something I hadn’t thought of, or realised.
Twunt.
Printable Version
Posted: Tue 15 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 4 Comments »Well, sorting out that printer friendly css style turned out to be a total piece of piss.
And yes, Pix, there’s no fixed size on the text, should someone want to increase it at some point.
</chuffed>
Printable Version
Posted: Mon 14 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 2 Comments »Oooh, new geeky challenge. One thing that came up at a meeting yesterday was how one client’s website doesn’t print out nice and neatly, and instead it lags over the page margins by a just-noticeable amount. So over this week I’m going to come up with a couple of “printer-friendly” CSS files for that client and another couple that could do with it.
I’d not really thought about doing this ’til now, but it should be an interesting little side-project. Conveniently it probably also won’t take long- always a good thing!
Antique
Posted: Mon 14 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »One task I got given over the weekend is to resurrect some data from what turns out to be an exceedingly old PC. Put it this way – the mouse runs off the serial port, the keyboard plug is keffing huge, and the modem runs from the parallel port.
In other words, O-L-D. If Noah had this thing on the ark, he bought it second-hand.
No CD writer, no USB, and I suspect (not having been brave enough to power it up yet) that it runs on either Windows 3.1, or 95 at a push.
The owner of it has wondered whether once the data’s been taken off it, it could be given to one of these charities who send PCs to the third world. I suspect even they might reject the thing…
Development
Posted: Sun 13 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 3 Comments »I’ve been thinking a bit of late about how I work when it comes to programming new modules for client requirements etc. Over the last couple of years, I’ve done a hell of a lot of work with PHP in particular, and learned a lot of new stuff. However, the “problem” with this is that it’s all based on work I’ve done, rather than any form of formalised training, and sometimes that can backfire.
In a couple of interviews I’ve had to go through technical tests on PHP where the people creating the test have obviously come through some kind of course in PHP, and thus know some of the really arcane crap that I’ve never needed to learn. Those tests are what’s made me think about all this.
When I’m writing stuff, I love working it from scratch. For me it’s the best way to learn – I don’t want to go to Hotscripts.com or wherever and use someone else’s code if I can write it myself. I can – and do – help out others with PHP queries on forums like Cre8asite, and also when certain people ask what needs fixing. So I do know a fair bit about developing, yet when I’m faced with a technical test, it all goes to shit because I’ve no idea what !(==*&^) does. Or whatever.
I look at the stuff I’ve written – and the stuff I continue to write – and I know I can do this stuff standing on my head. I just don’t have time for people who seem to want to say “look how comprehensive my knowledge is”. I bet they’ve never used the fucking functions either.