Friday, March 26, 2004

Well after almost a week offline Freaksauce is back up and running, my ISP had a few problems, but hey they provide me with CFMX, PHP and MySQL hosting for $7/month so I can't really complain!

My brother found this article on the BBC website about a game called 'Mind Balance' in which the character is controlled directly from a player's brain using a new wireless headset! Impressive stuff, the next step is that this game could help researchers develop brain-computer interfaces for those with limited body movement.

Jon 8:57 AM Permalink

Thursday, March 25, 2004

My ISP is down and therefore Freaksauce is currently unavailable, I'm not even sure if aggregators will be able to read this message but I thought it was worth a try.

Jon 9:08 AM Permalink

Friday, March 19, 2004

After just reading a comment on my blog I visited his (Jim Cheng) personal weblog, Psalterego. On reading, I saw this article, Jim has ported David Joham and Scott Severtson's Javascript SAX parser to Actionscript 2. There is a download available but he is still working on documentation and code samples, however apparently much of the Javascript version's documentation is valid.

Jon 2:02 PM Permalink

Having almost completed my first PHP site I have come to the conclusion that PHP is a very similar way to programming as actionscript which I think is why I have found the transition from Coldfusion so easy. I have in the past not attempted PHP as the code seemed more complex to the untrained eye. Somebody left a comment recommending the 'SAMS teach yourself PHP...' book which I bought, read and digested most of it in a weekend it is an excellent starting point with enough advanced contents to be a reference until you get completely comfortable with the language.

Okay so that is CF and PHP covered...do I attempt ASP.NET next? well...we'll see.

Jon 10:26 AM Permalink

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

I have a crisis situation, I have just been informed that my contract is coming to an abrupt end due to financial problems, added to the fact that I am sponsored by Freespirit in Sydney and have to have back to back contracts or else my visa is cancelled, I am in trouble. I have put a copy of my Resume at this address, if anyone in Sydney needs a web designer/developer with 5 years commercial experience and excellent Flash/xhtml/css knowledge and an ever-expanding knowledge of Coldfusion, PHP and MySQL please let me know. My rates are incredibly reasonable due to desperation.

:(

Jon 11:33 AM Permalink

Monday, March 15, 2004

It seems that the US military have developed a bionic exoskeleton.

"The Bleex exoskeleton has a small, purpose-built combustion engine built into it. On a full tank the system should be able to run for up to two hours.

The device's leg braces are attached to a modified pair of army boots and connected to the user's legs.

In the lab, subjects have walked around in the 45kg (100lbs) exoskeleton plus a 31.5kg (70lbs) backpack and reported that it felt like they were carrying little over 2kg (5lbs)."

I could have used a pair of those when I was moving house last weekend!!

Jon 2:00 PM Permalink

Thursday, March 11, 2004

After a brief blog commentary with my bro I decided to share this story...

I was recently at a bar with a few friends in Sydney who were discussing the upcoming Survivor Allstars and mentioned they were organising a betting syndicate for fun, this would include a weekly email update to keep everyone informed of the performance of players. I mentioned they should set up a weblog so people could just check the info when they had a few minutes free. So I set up a weblog, put some graphics on it (hosted on freaksauce) set my friend up as administrator and sent her the link. Seemingly minutes later there was a post on the site and it hasn't stopped since. I think it is great that people who thought it impossible to publish web content due to knowledge limitations can now use tools such as Blogger for their own needs.

Jon 2:11 PM Permalink

I have just started a new project for which I am going to use PHP for the first time, for starters here is some help for people wishing to run PHP on OS X courtesy of Minh Huynh of Macromedia. I followed the instructions to enable PHP and it worked first time, very useful. Also for a list of useful resources on PHP head over to PHP.net

I am new to server-side development and I chose Coldfusion initially as the learning curve was in a different league to PHP or ASP, then when I really got going with it realised that just because it is simple to code basic web applications doesn't mean that it isn't powerful or fast as CF'ers around the globe are currently proving. Unfortunately Coldfusion hosting is still a little pricey compared to PHP as this is open source and sometimes clients just don't want to move their site to a more expensive host and don't want to hear about CF, PHP or ASP they just want a solution...now please! So here I am trapped in world that I have to understand in 3 weeks or else...

So far I have been using Dreamweaver (MX) extensively to build my queries and looking at the code it creates and then going to resources such as HotScripts and comparing the code there. It is definitely more complicated code created for server connections and passing form and URL variables but as someone told me the other day if you are building sites in Coldfusion then you already understand the logic... true and although I am struggling at times as I haven't managed to get the O'reilly book yet, I have managed to create what I want so far. I'm not dissing Coldfusion and I'm not biggin' up the PHP massive, I am merely stating that it is possible to cross over without too much pain providing you understand what is going on behind the scenes.

Jon 1:07 PM Permalink

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

I just found this really useful tutorial on creating a simple form submission page in Flash using PHP. Seeing as most ISP's provide free PHP hosting and most of my clients don't want to move hosts for CFMX it is an essential little snippet!

Jon 2:46 PM Permalink

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Today 2 of my sites went live both using Flash for different reasons. First up was Saladworks opening soon on Hunter Street in Sydney's CBD, this called for a simple site and quick turnaround so I used Flash to create a site similar to the menu's and branding all designed in house here at One Of A Kind.

Second was the new One Of A Kind website which uses Flash Remoting (my first attempt!) to relay news articles and ticker messages from a MySQL database, I have included a simple CMS for these 2 pieces of functionality so anyone in the studio can update the site with fresh news content. I also used Remoting for the contact us email form and mailing list submission, simple remoting is pretty easy if you know how to build CFC's and if you don't check out Macromedia's CFC resource page.

Jon 4:00 PM Permalink