A Flimsy Pretext: February 2005

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Checking Out

I just wrote my first check since October 2004. Not sure whether I should order new checks or not. I'm down to my last three checks. But at this rate, they should last me until 2008 or so.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Business Cards

actual business card

imaginary business card

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Icon Generator

This is pretty handy.

Put this code in the <head> tag:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" >

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

More Favorite Colors: Queer Eye Colors

The most tasteful rainbow I've seen. These guys -- or their web designer -- has taste:

• Kyan Red (#B2615A)
• Ted Blue (#526A86)
• Carson Purple (#8C7495)
• Jai Orange (#EA7B0D)
• Thom Green (#759B63)

PERMANENT LINK

Monday, February 21, 2005

Favorite Colours

• Faded Parchment (#f3f1eb)
• Coffee Stain (#b5ad95)
• Oxidized Ink (#2C271B)
• Parchment Gray (#F5F2F7)
• Parchment Blue (#6F7DA2)
• Parchment Ink (#746058)
• Parchment Highlight (#C8AD5B)
• Kinnear Green (#919560)

permanent link

Friday, February 18, 2005

Metaphors for Web Hosting

Trying to come up with a metaphor to help explain how webhosting works -- specifically, what someone needs to do to change their webhost. There are three key parts:

1. Domain Name - registered with a company like networksolutions.com
2. Web Site - the folders and html files that make up the site
3. Web Host - the company that hosts the site (e.g. serversanddomains.com)

I was thinking first of using an RV as an example -- but maybe a boat would be a little better, as boats have names. But do you register boats? Assuming you do:

1. You name your ship and register it with a country (like Haiti) so that people know where to get info on it. (Domain registration)
2. You build your ship. (The Web Site)
3. You find a port to dock your boat so people can come and visit it (though that's not really the function of a boat.) (Web Host)

Maybe a business would be a better metaphor:

1. You register your business and take out an ad in Yellow Pages (domain registration)
2. You rent office space (hosting)
3. You move your furniture and employees into the office space (site)

If you want to move you business, you need to lease a new office (the hosting). You need to know where all your furniture and employees currently on (for the analogous small website, this would presumably be on some developers hard drive). And then you need to let the Yellow Pages know your new location.

I guess that works.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Retrieving a Web Page Title

Part I: Open Web Page (PHP Classes, credit: Vedanta Barooah)

function get_webpage($url,$use_include_path=0){
$file = @fopen($url, 'rb', $use_include_path);
if ($file){
if ($fsize = @filesize($filename)){
$data = fread($file, $fsize);
}else{
while (!feof($file)){
$data .= fread($file, 1024);
}
}
fclose($file);
}
return $data;
}

The PHP fopen page

Part II: Extract info between title tags (PHP Freaks)

More Web-Fetching scripts: Hotscripts.com

Encode/Decode HTML Entities

If you need to do this, this site is handy:

http://centricle.com/tools/html-entities/

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Select Text Button

HTML:
<form>
<textarea name="takeout" rows="2" cols="20">some text</textarea>
<input type=button value="highlight code" onClick="javascript:this.form.takeout.focus();this.form.takeout.select();" name="takeout_button" style="background-color: beige; color: brown; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: medium; border: 1 outset #FFFFFF">
</form>

Saturday, February 12, 2005

PHP URL validators

The first one I stumbled across. I'm sure there are more.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Sliding Doors

Just in case I ever need a fancy css button tab navbar.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Human for Sale

Ha. Because you can't have freedom or liberty and not have a price.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Cool Counters

These are kinda cool.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Feedburner

Interesting concept.

How I Learned About Google

I was desperately looking for a good search engine at the time this article came along. Except I remember it being 1998. And there was a part about how Google saved all the queries it received that I can't find in it anymore.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

DIV that auto-sizes

This thread is so bloody geek-wonkish.

A Flimsy Pretext