centricle

Predictions

A month from now, I will be conflicted.

I'll be happy to have spent time with old friends & and glad to have made new ones, but I'll be bummed that it'll be another year before I see most of them again.

I'll have a mind tumbling with new ideas & excitement about what it is that I do for a living, but I'll be unsure what to do with that energy.

I'll have a belly full of Texas BBQ, but it'll be months before the stuff I get 'round these parts tastes right again.

SXSW, here I come!

Is this thing on?

This is my biennial SXSW post.

That is to say, the previous one was about two years ago.

(I've added nine posts since then, which makes me wonder why I continue to pay my hosting bill - but that's another story for another time.)

Anyway, I'm excited to see my friends again, and fully expect to make new ones, so I'm really looking forward to this year's conference. I've touched base with some folks over the past few weeks, but there are a lot of people I haven't talked to. So, ping me if you're gonna be in Austin from March 9-14.

CSS Filters and IE7 Beta 3

Thanks to David Major from the IE team for prodding me to update the filter matrix. Here's the changelog:

Newly applied:

head:first-child+body div
body>div
html[xmlns] div

Newly denied:

* html div
_property: value;

Thanks David!

Screenshot to Photoshop with AppleScript

I'm currently working on a project that requires me to produce a ton of screenshots. Even with a Photoshop action set up to prep, export, and close the image, it's still a tedious task.

So, I wrote this AppleScript to automate the whole thing:


do shell script "screencapture -iWc"
  -- Running interactively, starting in window mode.
  -- Spacebar toggles between window & selection.
  -- `man screencapture` for more options.

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CS"
  activate
  make new document with properties ¬
      {width:1024, height:768}
  paste
  trim current document
  do action "screenshot" from "My Actions"
end tell

Saved as an application, it can be run via Quicksilver with less effort than than invoking ~~Panther's~~ OS X's built-in screenshot utility.

CSS Filters for IE7

If somebody with access to IE7 Beta 1 would be kind enough to run through my filter test pages and let me know what's what, I'd love to post the results in the main table, just for kicks.

Update:

Thanks to Ricky Moorhouse for supplying test results, which show that 7b1 is equivalent to IE6 with respect to these filters. It looks like Beta 2 will be dramatically different, so look for another update once that one sees the light of day.

Tips for debugging PHP

Two things I do to make my life easier when trying to track down bugs in PHP:

First, assuming display_errors is on, adding this to php.ini helps to ensure that you can actually read error messages when they get spit out in the middle of some markup that would otherwise cause the browser to obscure them in the rendered content, forcing you to view the HTML source to figure out what the problem is:


error_prepend_string = "<div style='background: #fff; 
  padding: 25px; color: #000; border: solid 10px #f00; 
  width: 500px; clear: both'>"

error_append_string = "</div>"

If you don't have access to php.ini, those parameters can be set in httpd.conf, (or .htaccess, if AllowOverride is set to 'Options' or 'All') like this:


php_value error_prepend_string "<div style='background: \
  #fff; padding: 25px; color: #000; border: solid 10px \
   #f00; width: 500px; clear: both'>"

php_value error_append_string "</div>"

Second, I include this small function for every project:


function trap ( $var = NULL, $exit = 1 )
  {
  if ( isset ( $var ) )
    {
    echo '<pre>';
    print_r ( $var );
    echo '</pre>';
    if ( $exit ) exit;
    }
  else
    {
    echo '<span style="font: 14px bold 
                sans-serif; color: red">***</span>';
    }
  }

It allows me to quickly & easily determing the content of a variable (including arrays) by adding trap($foo) to the script. Omitting the variable name prints red asterisks wherever the function is used.

Any other tips, tricks, or gotchas?

FIELDSET/LEGEND in XHTML vs. HTML

Here's a subtle difference between HTML & XHTML that's not mentioned on the W3C's list: LEGEND is a required child of the FIELDSET element in HTML 4.01, but not XHTML 1.0:

From the HTML 4.01 Strict DTD:

<!ELEMENT FIELDSET - - (#PCDATA,LEGEND,(%flow;)*) -- form control group -->

And, the corresponding entry for XHTML:

<!ELEMENT fieldset (#PCDATA | legend | %block; | form | %inline; | %misc;)*>

I put together simple test cases, and sure enough, the validator fails HTML version.

blo.gs to be sold, user data to be transferred

It's normally considered rude to reprint the contents of an email without permission, but this one is obviously intended for broad distribution, and its content is displayed at http://blo.gs/. Because it could easily be overlooked by the intended recipients, I'm posting here as a public service announcement:

hello, blo.gs user!

i am in the final stages of completing a sale of blo.gs to a new owner, and expect to hand over the site, along with your user data, sometime on or after june 13, 2005.

so as spelled out in the blo.gs privacy policy, this is your opportunity to have your account deleted before this transfer happens. you can delete your account by going to http://blo.gs/quit.php, or by sending an email to delete@blo.gs.

i'm sorry i can't yet say who it is that will be acquiring blo.gs, but i can pass on the assurance that there will be no change in the privacy policy when they acquire the service and you will be given the opportunity to consent to any future change. they plan to continue providing the same features that exist now, and will be working on making blo.gs even better.

the new owners will be in touch shortly after they've taken over the service next month.

thanks for your support!

jim

Hopefully, the new owners have only honorable intentions, but without knowing anything about them, I'm not comfortable having my data transferred to parties unknown, so have removed myself from the system. I trust Jim to honor his policy and delete my information before handing over the keys.