Dev Dawn

 Windows Live Writer is now fired up on my pc (thanks John, I should have followed your lead a while back), and is kicking.

I’ve changed my entire process twice in the last couple of months.

Until today, Writely was the new blogging tool of choice. However, as readers of previous posts would be aware, I had run into a couple of problems, and had to edit the posts once they were in Dev Dawn (Wordpress Driven).

WLW has none of the same problems, as far as my limited experience tells me.

Inserting Links in WLW uses the same keyboard shortcut (<ctrl>K) as Writely.

One _tiny_ niggle is that when tabbing into the Link URL, I’d like it to not do a Select All, but bring me to the end of the “http://” string. So I can continue to type without moving my hand to the arrow keys. Small niggle, and doesn’t detract from the allure of this system.

Inserting Images is much the same (<ctrl> L).

There’s a couple of points that have me really excited about WLW.

1. It’s back on my harddrive. Now this ramifies (not really a word) into one of the other points below, but it also isn’t necessarily good. One thing I liked about using Writely is that my documents were stored where I could access them anywhere. However, in my current vocation, I’m pretty much using the same laptop 23 hours a day. So that’s not as big a deal as it could be for me.
2. You have a much faster editing process. Not so much load time, but the use of keyboard shortcuts and the layout of WLW allows for a faster composing time. I’ll go over the layout in a moment.
3. And lastly, most importantly for this little black duck .. I can SnagIt, save, and put it in the post STRAIGHT AWAY. Now, of course, this could have kind of happened earlier .. but with far more hassle.  WLW allows me to simply insert the image that I’ve just saved into the post, and at the end, I don’t have to worry about ftp-ing up the images, which is how I used to do it.

See, I’m old school like that. I like to have control over what is going on. Very retentive of me I know .. but still, it takes something of a bolt from the heavens to shake me. Of course, my searching out cool stuff also helps. I’m quite happy to jump in if it’s working. And it seems WLW is working.

As an aside (I should have done this pre-install), but I’m going to read the Licence Agreement you agree to when installing WLW. Hopefully nothing bad in there.

Anyway, moving along.

I’m doing this a little backwards, but here’s WLW with this post in motion.

(more…)

So much information. Over the past couple of weeks there’s been a lot going on in this brain. Mostly web stuff, applications.

Gliffy, as mentioned previously, for which the video review is forthcoming.

ThinkFree, an online Office Document Management system, from which I’m currently scribing this.

NOPE .. as you can see from the two posts below, it didn’t quite work the way I was imaging. Still, was fun trying. Bit disappointing, Writely will have to continue along for now.

DabbleDB, the online database system that wow’d everyone a few months back. If you haven’t heard, just watch a few of their demo movies. Very cool.

Posticky, an online note system. This one is great for myself, when I want to just jot down stuff about something I’m using. Today I was using DabbleDB quite heavily, and realised I needed to take down somewhere my thoughts of the system as I was using it. Posticky is just the thing. Fits very well into, well, created a new process for me. One that is of great benefit. When I come to review DabbleDB, or anything else, I can go back over the notes I wrote while using it. This also means I don’t have to review straight away, but can spend some time mulling over the product while still retaining that initial experience info.

Nice.

As well, I’ve come up with a creative writing blogging experiment. A story for us. Story-telling for the web2.0 world. Not sure if it will go anywhere, we’ll see.

I’m still putting little bits of time into updating DevDawn with the latest Wordpress build and K2 theme. The problem is that I haven’t set my testbed apache/mysql/php server up on here (laptop). That might be a good thing, because I can put the all in one Xampp into play. Will have to do that soon.

Then there is my actual job, which is progessively taking more time. This is not a bad thing so much .. it’s more that I’m investing greater amounts of myself into it at the moment because the part of the project at the moment is so very cool.

I’m finding myself reassessing other aspects. My brain actually thinks on the spot when spending time with the fam that I need to squeeze everything I can out of these times. Not because there will be less, but because it’s too important not to. Work is not my ruler. Work is something I am passionate about, and give a great deal to (and I include all my extra-curricular work in here too, blogging, development, crazy ideas) .. because it’s not my chief end. That’s a bit of a weird statement I guess.

Anyway, it’s late, my brain is heavily mushed, and I still have to watch some taped tv before the amount of stuff to view becomes far greater than my time to view it in .

Finally, my old-school game resurgence continues with Baldur’s Gate 2. It’s still awesome. I’m only putting a couple of hours every couple of days. And now have the added draw of seeing the hype for Neverwinter Nights 2, and having it get me excited about that particular gaming experience.

I even fired up the original with xp’s and took a look into the Toolset. Wish I’d spent a bit of time with it earlier in the piece. It really sparks my imagination .. all these ideas start firing up about story-telling. Seems like a very accessible means. This might be because the idea of scripting and such is no hairy-scary for me anymore.

Anyway, cheers for reading this overly-large piece of ill-formed prose (stupid brain, trying too hard to make up smart sentences).

‘Nuff Said,

Gliffy. Remember the name. It’s gonna change the way you work.

Gliffy is an online drawing program. It’s kind of like SmartDraw, but it’s free. And awesome.

Above is a link generated by making the drawing viewable to the outside world.

A deeper review is coming soon, once my current work-load eases a little.

Edit (28-09-06) ::
NOPE .. had nothing to do with this post. It had a lot to do with the way the sidebar logic gives you a snippet of the post and the way the
tag is morphed with spaces. Nice.
Edit (26-09-06) ::
Unfortunately, it seems to play a little havoc with some of my css. If you’re a Firefox wielder (IE is clean from this, dagnabbit), you can see it in the sidebar .. all but the top post snippet have been bolded. This could be totally unrelated to anything Gliffy. Better do some tests.

A thought occured to me last night as I lay in bed, after a couple of hours of Baldur’s Gate 2 (oh baby, there’s a bundle of love I’d completely forgotten about since playing it a few years back).

Allow me to paint a picture (I’m only good with finger-painting).

As you grow from a bub, you get to play. Playing makes up a big part of being a kid, especially before school. Seeing my kids these days, my oldest is a few months away from school. For them at least, that’s how it is. And it was that way for me and my siblings too.

Playing together is another fundamental skill that comes early, especially if you have more than one kid. The more the merrier. Regardless of that too, sending the kids away to some kind of schooling (or daycare) would definately kick this up a notch.

Playing.

Now I’m going to go back against my original statement.

I wanted to show how computer gaming started backwards, that we begin life playing together, playing tips and hide-e-go-seek and lego and ..

But that’s wrong. We don’t. Playing originates depending on a bunch of stuff, siblings, parents, family life in general.

Let me go back.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been spending a bit of time with BG2 (and the exp, but haven’t got into it’s content yet, still on the original, taking my time). It’s been an utterly enjoyable experience. I’m not rushing, I’m just having fun.

It was built primarily as a single-player game, unlike NWN, which I believe was built to properly allow for dungeon-mastering in the computer land.

Anyway. Single-Player.

These are the first games I played. Single-Player. They consumed much of my early adulthood (and maybe some later too ). The Bard’s Tale games, Ultimas, countless shareware rpgs.

But then I thought, that’s different to how we grow up as kids and then adults. We play together mostly. How do you play brandings by yourself? Or Hide-e-go-seek? Sardines, Tips, Bullrush, Cops/Robbers, Releaso, Fresh .. all AWESOME games ..

.. all of them Multi-Player.

For me, my experience, it’s been most definately Single-Player until the last few years. Multi-Player really kicked it up a notch (for me) with World of Warcraft. Before then, I was kind of scared to go in against real people.

Single-Player obviously gives you something pretty special, otherwise I wouldn’t enjoy it so much. I guess it’s the loner geek buried inside of me.

But Multi-Player is something more. Running around like a mad-man in the dark chasing people is just some of the best fun you’ll ever have. Punishing someone by pulling off the biggest tackle of your life in a rugby match, or outwitting the backline as a prop by stepping when you shouldn’t really be able to step .. computer games mimic these moments, or they try to.

Man alive, this post has gone nothing like I thought it would.

I’m straying deep into non-development territory, plus, most of this is just plain babble. So thanks if you’ve stayed the course thus far.

I guess my original thought has gone through the usual process of change once I put some actual brain-power into thinking it through.

I’m all out of creative-energy .. I’ll leave it here and see how it turns out.

‘Nuff Said Most Definately,

I just had such a blast for the last fifteen minutes. The wonders of Wordpress’s cache folder.

I was getting a wierd error at the top and bottom of the site, something to do with the wp-cache plugin.

Unplugging the plugin didn’t seem to solve the problem.

So naturally, of course, I just ftp’d in a deleted (that’s right, deleted, what a wonderful piece of functionality that I never get tired of using without thought) a couple of folders that looked suspicious.

Namely, the cache folder.

That certainly did the trick. Dev Dawn broke, and broke hard. I couldn’t get do anything.

So I then uploaded the cache folder from the last backup .. bam .. wierd css, no pics, no format .. couldn’t get into admin.

Third try actually worked .. I kept the folder and just cleaned out the directories. It makes sense now, but then .. five minutes ago, I thought it was done.

Anyway, just thought I’d share that little moment with y’all .

Cheers,

For the first time in a while (yeah, it’s been a while between posts too, shame shame) I’m writing within the realms of the Wordpress Admin. Feels kinda strange to not have the flexibility of a full-blown word processor that autosaves what I’m typing (Writely, see This Post), amongst other cool features.

But Writely jigged me. I received an email (as everyone who had a writely account would have) saying I had to migrate across to my google email address .. naturally I did nothing about it until yesterday when I could no longer log in with my old account. Logging into my new Google account (not new really) I realised that none of my documents had come across.

Now, because I only took a cursory glance at the email, I presumed a few things. Presuming is bound to get you into trouble. (more…)

Wow.

A new Tolkien book. Slashdot tipped me off to this article which gives the goss.

“The Children of Hurin” is going to be about, well, Hurin’s kids. (Edit :: stupid, I had something about dwarves in here .. dumbass that I am)

Now let’s not get too excited. I mean, it’s not like Tolkien is one of the greatest fantasy/prose writers of all time. Bzzzzzzt! I haven’t been alive when he’s written something new. So this is kind of cool. So .. get excited! It’s awesome!

I can remember spending long hours pouring over the appendices in The Return of the King, and the wonderful tales/notes in The Silmarillion, my mind sucking in those little details and facts that would help me reach some cool social status .. wait .. that’s not why. I just love reading the stuff .. he created worlds. Awesome places and characters and themes. Themes. Turin Turambar and his tragic life. His cousin Tuor and that big city (Gondolin) in the mountains. The love story of Beren and Luthien. Not to mention, actually .. just the whole book .. so many cool things. The creation. Morgoth, Ungoliant, the Silmarils. Oh baby, the memories are flooding back.

Oh man, the hours I spent curled up in a chair reading those books.

So yeah, I’m looking forward to this one. And I’d reckon a bunch of other people will be too. For most of us, we have grown this massive fan base on the back of books written before we were born. That’s an amazing feat.

Anyway, ’nuff said. I’m gonna go return to the land of wonder I haven’t been in for a few years.

Last night I spent some time working on the design of my new logistics system. I’m developing from the ground up.

One question that I couldn’t easily break open was this .. What the point of an update screen?

Now, that flies in the face of the typical Browse/Update paradigm. At least, it seems to.

What’s the point of an update screen?

I would think, it’s so the user can do two things.

1. Insert/Change/Delete a record (the Delete doesn’t really fall in here)

and,

2. View the Information.

The browse should account for 2. at least a little bit. The more relevant information you have on a browse, the less the user has to go into the update screen just to check on something.

But number one, 1., can be dealt with, at least in some respects, in other ways.

The specific method I’m thinking of is the Right-Click.

A while back Bill showed me the power of the right-click inside a system, and consequently added it into my brain as another “way to get things done”.

—

I’ve had another couple of days to ponder this. A great deal of info gathering will fall on the hands of the browse. Further, many of the methods we traditionally put into the update screen (child records, assignments, linking) can happen via right-click.

The update screen still has it’s uses. Particularly for straight-forward (what people expect) data entry, and information gathering of obtuse little fields that rarely are needed.

That’s my general thoughts on the matter, right or wrong.

We all know that email is insecure…..

But how do you offer some limited protection for plain text email content?

The answer is to encode it as base64 and set the content disposition as inline. This will tell the email client that the section that is inline is plain text encoded to base64….and magically the conversion is done.

What does this mean??? It means that content cannot be easily scraped or siphoned off….that’s all….

Example:

Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”UTF8″
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:34:42 UT
To: jmoore@johnmo.com
From: alert@johnmo.com
Subject: Sales Alert

CgpUaGUgZm9sbG93aW5nIHJlY2VudCBwcm9wZXJ0eSBsaXN0aW5ncyBtYXRjaGVk
bCBFc3RhdGUgQWxlcnQgc2VhcmNoIGNyaXRlcmlhLgoKCgoNLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0t
LS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tLS0tCgo
T2ZmZXJzIG92ZXIgJDYyNS….

The plain text section has been base64 encoded for a little privacy….

ClarionX is a proud contributor to DevDawn.com.