Author: Joe

Categories
Development

Automatic WordPress Backup

I just downloaded and installed the very cool Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. It automatically backups your WordPress blog to the Amazon S3 service. Since I already have an S3 account (which is awesome too by the way), this was an ideal solution for me.

Downloaded, install and setup took no more that 5 minutes tops. Not only was this incredibly easy to setup and manage, but it’s great to have backups not on the same server as my host or kept locally either. The only potential drawback would be that your host must be a Linux server, but this of course is not a problem for me.

If you have WordPress blog and an Amazon S3 account then this is most highly recommended.

Categories
Design

Building a Lego Sculpture Tips

I’ve recently completed a life size Lego sculpture of a Jack Russell Terrier as well as the head of a capybara. Using Legos as a creative platform has turned out to be even more fun than I anticipated it would be. However it can be a lot of work and get expensive rather quickly, so I will share my tips on how to build a Lego sculpture.

  1. Like any project you need to have a plan in place before you begin. Give it some good thought about what you would like to construct. Sketch something out on paper first or use the Lego Digital Designer to help you prototype before actual building. Discovering that something might not work in the planning phase could save you much time and money.
  2. Color – there is a limited color palette that is at hand. For instance, you’re going to find it to be very difficult if not impossible to find certain brick colors (good luck with purple). So be sure to be aware of any color limitations that you might run into.
  3. Amount of bricks necessary. This can be very difficult to gauge. I highly recommend using the Lego Digital Designer to assist you in figuring out just how many bricks might be necessary. I find that no matter how many bricks you have, you always somehow seem to need more.
  4. Next you’ll need to acquire bricks. You might want to start off asking people if they have some lying around that they wouldn’t mind parting with. This didn’t work out so great when I attempted, but free bricks is worth a shot. If you’re really serious you’re going to have to stock up at a Lego Store or online using the Pick a Brick. Stocking up of Brick Buckets always helps too.
  5. Now I begin the fun part, building. I tend to start with the area that will be the most detailed, then build around that. I found that approach to work best for me. Also be sure to give much thought to strength and stability when stacking bricks.
  6. That’s really it. I will ask others for their opinions and then make any adjustments if necessary. Usually end up needing to scrounge up even more smaller bricks to get more detail into the sculpture.
  7. Have fun and show off your masterpiece to everyone you know!
Categories
Development

YUI 3 Awesomeness

I’ve been a huge fan of the YUI Library for quite some time now, using it in some form in almost all of my web projects done over the last 2+ years. Every now and then, I’m pleasantly surprised in just how useful it can be to me as a developer.

For instance, recently I’ve been working on building an application that will need an easy to use sortable list, that will fire off an event upon the list order changing. As simple as this sounds, it would require a lot of coding and cross browser testing to pull this one off with just javascript alone.

YUI 3 allowed me to accomplish the above in just a few minutes. I’m not even going to try to guess just how much time it’d of taken me to do on my own.

I made use of the Sortable Utility to make and unordered list sortable in just a few lines of code.

First I just added the YUI seed file to my page:

<script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.1.1/build/yui/yui-min.js" type="text/javascript"><!--mce:0--></script>

Then just added a simple div and unordered list to my page:

 

Things I want

    • puppy dog

 

  • ice cream

 

 

  • G.I. Joe USS Flagg Aircraft Carrier

 

 

  • Lego bricks

 

 

  • iPad

 

 

  • Infinity Gauntlet

 

 

  • world peace

 

 

  • Star Scream

 

 

  • waffles

 

 

  • pb&j sandwich

 

 

And added the script that brings the unordered list to life:

YUI().use('sortable', function(Y) {
    var sortable = new Y.Sortable({
        container: '#want-list',
        nodes: 'li',
        opacity: '.1'
    });
});

That was it, a fully user sortable list!

I also needed this list to fire an event when a list item order had been changed. The Drag & Drop (DD) Utility has some nifty events that conveniently work with the Sortable Utility. So, I just added the following to my above script:

var doSomething = function() {
    	alert('do something');
	};
	Y.DD.DDM.on('drop:hit', doSomething);

When a drop:hit event occurs, it calls the doSomething function. In this case the doSomething function fires up an alert that says “do something”. It’s pretty basic and a rather useless alert, but it does demo what I’m working to do.

Again, YUI 3 is so awesome, that I easily spent more time writing up this little post than I did in making my above requirements happen. That’s really amazing to me. YUI 3 documentation is great, tons of examples there too.

Categories
Adventure Video Games

Day of Many Adventures

Lego Polar BearYesterday turned out to be one of my more adventurous days in quite a bit. I guess I was a bit overdue for some adventure since I really haven’t gotten the chance to leave the house much yet this summer due to some bad luck with some unkind viruses and such.

The day began with me making some yummy waffles for breakfast, then heading over to the Philadelphia Zoo. The Zoo was awesome as always and had a really cool Lego exhibit going on. I’ve been working on a Lego sculpture myself recently, so this was a treat for me to check out. The polar bear made of Legos there was amazing, I can’t imagine just how many bricks must’ve gone into making it. Also, the weather wasn’t really that bad while I was there, glad I got there a little on the early side as later in the day it would get extremely hot and humid.

Wall of BricksNext I embarked towards the King of Prussia Mall in search of the Lego Store. I really need some more individual bricks for my sculpture, and I was truly a kid in a candy store in the Lego Store. I figured out a system to most efficiently pack as many bricks as possible into a container. You pay by the container not the brick here, so maximizing brick placement was key.

There were some really cool stores at the mall too, and being in the air condition after on this really hot day turned out to be a nice idea. I got to eat some Chik-fil-A for lunch, which I sorely miss ever since they left the Hamilton Mall. It was one of my favorite lunch spots for the longest time at work.

As great as my day had been thus far, something else ever greater lay in store. As the day was beginning to wind down all the way at the other end of the Mall my eyes caught glance of it. The Wii Games Summer 2010 was in King of Prussia today!!!

It’s a national competition with people competing on various Wii games, and by some amazing coincidence I happened to be there on the day when it was taking place. What amazing luck indeed. I quickly signed up and began competing as the team “Best Team in Town”. I wanted it to be “Best Team in Town 2”, but alas it as too many characters.

My teammate tore it up in bowling and hula hoop on Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus. I did so so on 3 point shoot out on Wii Sports Resort and finished very well on Mario Kart (even though I hit that damn goomba twice). Haha, I actually got tired on my third round in 3 point shooting, it was a very exhausting day and I really needed some water in me at this point.

The final challenge was a 2 player coin grab in Super Mario Bros Wii. I thought we did pretty well in this, it was one of the tougher levels. I was really hoping that Super Mario Galaxy 2 would be part of the competition as I’ve played so much of it recently when I wasn’t feeling well, but oh well the other games were a lot of fun to compete in as well.

“Best Team in Town” finished in a respectable 3rd at the time, and checking the leaderboards just now it looks like we can in 10th place overall out of 48 teams. So that wasn’t too bad considering that neither of us really played these particular games much with the exception of bowling.

After this, finally got a bite to eat then headed home. A truly adventurous day for me, and so nice to be back out doing stuff like a normal person again.

Categories
Development

Indulge in Avalon

Indulge in AvalonLaunched the really cool website www.indulgeinavalon for the folks at the 7 Mile Business Community Association, it’s showcase for businesses in Avalon, NJ. This project was a lot of fun to work on, and the clients were great. They approached me with a very solid plan and and visual design, theyreally knew what they needed done.

Since they needed a site that they would be able to easily maintain, and this is 2010 after all, we decided that building it on the Joomla! CMS would be best for them. I’ve been using Joomla! a great deal recently to meet clients needs, and it’s really worked great for them too. It truly is amazing what open source offers.

The client also had a unique need to manage their properties in a way that didn’t exist in the Joomla! CMS. So I built them a custom component to handle that functionality. It was great, it makes use of Joomla’s built in admin, so it looks completely like the CMS interface, the client didn’t have to learn something completely new.

The component allows the client to add/update/delete business listings, and upload a photo that is automatically resized for them on upload. I used the WideImage library to handle the image resizing. I was thoroughly impressed with WideImage and highly recommend it and will surely be using it again.

The greatest part about this component to me was that I didn’t have to explain how to use it to the client, they just logged in and knew exactly what to do. As a developer, that’s the highest compliment I can think of is when somebody doesn’t notice your work because it just worked.

The site also makes use of the YUI2 CSS Grids for the site layout. I’ve been a huge fan of the YUI library in general, and found myself using them in yet another project (actually can’t think of the last project I haven’t really used YUI).

Since launching, the client has extended the text in the main navigation bar. It’s bumping a link to a new line, so I think I might contact them with a way to improve that. But besides that they’re doing an excellent job managing the site and it was a true pleasure working with them.

Check out www.indulgeinavalon.com

Categories
Uncategorized

The Amazing Healthcare System

I always hear much debate over the flaws of the US Healthcare Industry. Well today, I experienced just how awesome it can be.

I’ve unfortunately been sick, very sick for a very long time. For a week or so I was being falsely treated for strep throat. Not exactly sure when it started, I’m kinda old fashioned and if something hurts you just work through it, so there’s really no telling when this all began.

However, today I experienced just how amazing the system can be. Behold what was done in a single day:

  1. At 10:15 AM made an appointment to see my regular physician at 11:45 AM.
  2. Was promptly seem by my physician with a minimal of wait. Was recommended I see a ear, nose and throat specialist. They set up the appointment for me, same day at 2:00 PM. I also had bloodwork and a chest x-ray setup for me on a walk-in basis, as well as 2 prescriptions made out as well. Cost: $10 co-pay.
  3. 12:20 PM pick up my 2 prescriptions from CVS, then go home and load up on as much fluids as possible. Cost: $6.
  4. 1:50 arrive at the ear, nose and throat doctor. His specialization seems to of paid off in spades with the then mystery of my condition. We agree to take a gamble and he administers a cortisone shot. I do believe there’s enough cortisone in my arm to allow Jamie Moyer to throw a 90+ MPH fastball. I also am written up a prescription that is sent to CVS for me. Cost: $10 co-pay.
  5. 2:30 arrive to get blood work done. It’s amazing how fast the effects of that shot is kicking it, thus far our educated gamble seems to be paying off (thank God, side effects sounded bad). A simple prick in my arm and 2 vials are filled. Cost: $10 co-pay.
  6. 3:00 arrive get a chest x-ray performed. No appointment, I’m in and out in under 20 minutes. Cost: $10 co-pay.
  7. 3:30 arrive at CVS (again!) and pick up my prescription that’s waiting for me. $3.

For a total of $49 and never having to drive more than 7 minutes for any location (that’s with summer traffic mind you), I was able to get incredible health service today! I was so very impressed and so very glad to have solid health insurance as well.