I got one of those cards the post office drops off when you get a package, printed on it was the charge of R12.50. Now I wondered to myself, what did I order internationally that would need me to pay? Was it a DVD? No I buy those from Kalahari…Was it a book I might of ordered? No don’t think I ordered one…Was it a super awesome prize that I had somehow won in some online competition? YES! It has to be that! Yay! But wait…I ordered that copy of Ubuntu, but that’s free? It is isn’t it?

So I went to the post office hoping to pick up a monster package with some awesome prize in it, only to find…shock horror! It was my copy of Ubuntu! And I had to pay for it!

Now who exactly is to blame for me having to pay for my copy of Ubuntu? Short answer…South African customs. They obviously are illiterate and could not read the nice letter Canonical wrote them on the back of the package. The one saying that what was inside was free and not for sale. The one explaining what opensource is and what the purpose of it was. The one that asked that if the reader did not understand to please not to hesitate to contact Canonical.

Oh well, guess we all know what goes on these days. R12.50 was still nothing to pay for this great operating system. And just a big thanks to the guys at Ubuntu for making such a great product.

Hi,

Thought I’d write an update on my ChinesePod experience. Well, it has been as about a month now and I have done around 30 lessons. I have been through lessons on various topics such as colours, ordering food, counting, directions and many more. I must say that I am really enjoying the diverse topics. I had a look at the Last.fm ChinesePod profile and it seems that the topics get even more interesting with the most random conversations you could ever think of. These topics have most definitely kept learning Mandarin interesting and helps expand your vocab nicely.

One of the lessons was a short story, which they read through and then translated. I must say that I enjoyed that and I am hoping there will be more lessons like that in the future.

A nice touch, I thought, was that they replied to listener who wanted to learn a particular topic in a lesson. I also hope that there are more of those in the future, as chances are there are listeners with similar concerns to you. But I guess there is nothing stopping me from emailing them.

Anyway, just thought I would post an update for whoever is interested.

I personally think the best way to start any sort of coding to have some sort of ‘stamp’ at the top of what the project is, who created the file, when it was last changed etc. Quite often you will be working on more than one project at a time and files have a nasty way of getting muddled (well at least for me anyway heheh). A stamp will help you know exactly what the file is for.

So let’s create a comment with a stamp right at the top of your CSS file:

[CSS filename or purpose]
Project:    Project name
Version:    Version number
Last change:    DD/MM/YYYY [What you last changed]
Assigned to:    Name of web developer

With the above stamp we can see who made the CSS file, for which project, which version the file is (you may have multiple versions of a CSS file to show clients), the date it was last changed, what the last change was and the purpose of the CSS file (For example a master stylesheet of a stylesheet for the menus).

Next I like to comment in a list of colour codes. The main reason is because I am colour blind, but also think about it…looking at the colours of a website you have just made, do you know the values for every colour? Most likely not. It also helps the poor guy who may need to take over from you at a later stage.
So let’s create a comment with a list of colour codes:

[List of colour codes]
Background:    #ffffff (white)
Borders:     #000000 (black)
Elemet:        Colour code and name.

Next I like to make a list of the CSS files contents. This will be a list of your classes elements etc. When structuring your CSS file you should follow this list and also follow good coding principals such as listing the elements as they are found in the HTML or as they are seen in a web browser (So head above body etc.)

So let’s comment that list:

[List of contents]
1. html, body
2. Next element

As you can see that makes a great little reference, we can see what is in the file and pretty much gather what the file is for and the order of its contents.
As you can see from the List of contents the first CSS content of the file is ‘html, body’, I like to do all my setting right in the beginning. This will usually be resetting the padding and margin, specifying spacing and specifying a font family. You may also want to include directly under any browser hacks you are using.

So your first bit of CSS content would look something like this:

html, body
{
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;

}

That’s that for making a good starting template. Feel free to download the example bellow and make any comments. Thanks for reading!

I have been looking at learning how to use a PHP framework for some time now. There are many of them, which can be found here: http://phpframeworks.com . I have chosen CodeIgniter as my first framework to learn as it was recommended by peers and its features seemed to be exactly what I have been looking for.

A quick look at some of the features CodeIgniter has to offer:

Like Ruby on Rails, CodeIgniter allows the user to interface with the database using active records and encourages use of the model-view-controller architectural pattern.

• PHP 4 Compatible

• Extremely Light Weight

• Support for Multiple Database Platforms

• Form and Data Validation

• Security and XSS Filtering

• Session Management

• Email Sending Class. Supports Attachments, HTML/Text email, multiple protocols (sendmail, SMTP, and Mail) and more.

• Image Manipulation Library (cropping, resizing, rotating, etc.). Supports GD, ImageMagick, and NetPBM

• File Uploading Class

• FTP Class

• Localization

• Pagination

• Data Encryption

• Benchmarking

• Full Page Caching

• Error Logging

• Application Profiling

• Scaffolding

• Calendaring Class

• User Agent Class

• Zip Encoding Class

• Template Engine Class

• Trackback Class

• XML-RPC Library

• Unit Testing Class

• Search-engine Friendly URLs

• Flexible URI Routing

• Support for Hooks, Class Extensions, and Plugins

• Large library of “helper” functions

When extracted CodeIgniter takes up just over 2MB of disk space which to me seems quite hefty. However, after doing some research it seems that most other frameworks are a lot bigger. CodeIgniter promises to reduce development time and aid developers to conform to a common standard.

Having a look inside the extracted folder, developers will do most of their coding inside system->application. Inside the application folder there are the view and controller folders where you will most likely spend most of your time coding. The controller folder is where you will program your functions and classes. The view folder is where you will code the actual design and call in data processed in the controller folder. There are also a few other folders that mainly serve the purpose of configuration of your web application.

After my first use of CodeIgniter I was fairly impressed. I was able to make a moderately complex application in not a lot of time. I liked how everything was separated in a nice and easy to find way. I made use of a few of the provided libraries and was impressed at how easily they worked.

I did run into a few issues however, but I won’t highlight them in this article as I’m sure its just because I am still not that experienced with some of CodeIgniter’s workings.

Thanks for reading this article and keep a look out for more about CodeIgniter in the near future.

I think its so funny how something as simple as an office chair can make you day enjoyable, are these boring times? No I don’t think so. Its just something about that comfy ‘just right’ feeling that a good office chair can give you. These ones we got are nothing amazing really, but they do look smart…infact they give you the feeling of sitting in a Subaru sports car, and boy are they comfortable. Well, I guess in reality you spend a good part of your life sitting in one so it makes sense to have a good chair.

I like to research all interesting things that are new to me, and thought it would be interesting to find out more about what makes a good office chair. These are my findings:

• A good ergonomic office chair can reduce shoulder, back, and neck strain.

• An average worker sits more than 7 hours a day.

• A seat should be adjustable to your unique body type this should include adjustable height and back support.

• It’s important to choose a chair that matches your occupation. A chair that is more open allows you to move around more freely, a chair that is more ‘hugging’will keep you comfy when sitting in the same position for hours.

• Your feet should be flat on the floor at all times (not too high).

• The back support should go with the contour of your back.

Oh yeah assembly is fun to ^^

I have always been a fan of dragons ^^, ever since childhood! I came across this photoshop brush pack on deviant art and had to make a link to it. All credit goes to the creator hawksmont at deviant art.

Wikipedia: The Chinese dragon is depicted as a long, scaled, snake-like creature with five claws. In contrast to the Western dragon which stands on four legs and which is usually portrayed as evil, the Chinese dragon has long been a potent symbol of auspicious power in Chinese folklore and art. The Chinese dragon is traditionally also the embodiment of the concept of yang (male) and associated with the weather as the bringer of rain and water in an agriculturally water-driven nation. Its female counterpart is the Fenghuang.

Link to Chinese and Dragon Brushes

Picture source

Another picture in the creepy pic series. This of a tree formation, it might be photoshopped…but still sooooo creepy!

Enjoy!

A friend of mine downloaded the Beta of Ubuntu 8.04 to have a look at whats new. To quote him “…no massive changes in hardy, but lots of nice little ones”. I must say I think the first thing everyone noticed was the new default wallpaper, its pretty funky! Let’s hope this means the guys at Ubuntu are going to start taking design a little more seriously. There seem to be a number of improvements and compatibility fixes, but no new major differences. There seems to be a feature that lets Windows users install it through Windows but we haven’t had a chance to look at that just yet, we will most likely wait for the final version to be released, which is only 24 days away ^^, Enjoy the screenshot, and leave comments!