Author: Joe

Categories
Adventure

Most Lost

I had to be at Gloucester for a meeting today at 1:00. Got directions from Google Maps, they always seem to get me where I need to be without a problem. Claim that it should be a 1 hour and 5 minute ride. Just in case I might get lost I gave myself a full hour and 20 minutes extra time, figure if I was really early I could get a bite to eat.

Got to exit 44 on the Expressway a little ahead of schedule, leaving me a full hour and a half to navigate what I expected to be the final 10 minutes of my journey. I don’t know what I did after I took exit 44, but I must’ve taken every wrong turn that was possible. To make matters even worse my stupid cell phone was getting no service. So I couldn’t even call them to let them know I was lost and needed some directions.

I stopped in 2 Walgreens for directions, which at both times seemed pretty good. But still I was lost. Stopped at 3 different Wa-Wa’s. With one guy giving me what sounded like the best directions I’ve ever received. Still lost. This time I found myself 1 mile from the Walt Whitman Bridge. Was on Rt 168, Rt. 41, Rt. 55, Delsea Drive. Couldn’t find the damn place. Finally it was 2:15 and I was supposed to be at a 1:00 appointment, after 4 and a half hours of driving I finally gave up.

Somehow stumbled upon Rt. 30 and decided I better just call it a day and head back home. Did stop at a Popeye’s Chicken for lunch. Never been to one before.

Categories
Adventure

Elvis Arrives

Mom holding ElvisWoke up early this morning to drive up to the Philly Airport to pickup a puppy my brother bought online. Guess you really can buy anything online. The drive there wasn’t too eventful, got there with no problems. Took a little bit to find the cargo place we had to go for pickup, Frank’s not the finest under pressure.

It’s an American Bulldog who will go by the name of Elvis. Seems like a good dog, slept the ride home and has slept for most of the day today actually.

Categories
Development

YUI Menu

Decided to use the YUI Menu to build around for a client’s project. As with all the YUI components I’ve worked with it’s really well documented and has lots of examples that really helped me to implement and customize it for their needs very quickly.

I’m building it on existing markup (it can also be created via Javascript) so that it supports progressive enhancement. Here’s a very raw example of it in use.

Categories
Uncategorized

Talking Puss ‘n Boots

Puss ‘n BootsAt Target on lunch break today I finally picked out something to give my Mom on Mother’s Day. It’s a talking Puss ‘n Boots stuffed animal from the Shrek 3 movie. He’s pretty cool. He talks when you walk by him or scratch his head. Though walking around with him in the store and at checkout was kinda weird when he continued to whistle at whomever was nearby.

Categories
Development

Recent Videos

Thanks to the API provided by YouTube I was able to use a script to make REST calls from my channel on YouTube to automatically post my most recent videos uploaded on this blog.

The REST call is simple:

http://www.youtube.com/api2_rest?method=youtube.videos.list_by_user&dev_id=id&user=user

It returns the following:

  • author
  • id
  • title
  • length in seconds
  • average rating
  • number of ratings
  • description
  • number of views
  • time of upload
  • number of comments
  • tags
  • url
  • thumbnail url
  • embed status

Then I wrote a script using the YUI Connection Manager to call it into the page.

I’ve gotta do some CSS styling still, but the basic functionality is there.

Categories
Development

CSS Attribute Selectors

Attribute selectors which will hopefully become official when CSS 3 is passed are pretty cool. They work on most modern browsers, with the big exception being IE6/Win (not that I’d consider it modern by any means).

Here’s an example that applies a background image to a link only if it contains the pdf extension in it’s href

a[href$=".pdf"] {
background: url(../images/acrobat.png) no-repeat right top;
padding-right: 14px;
}