My favorite Windows utility now fully functional in Vista
© Scott S. Nelson
Useful Google API Article Series
Developer.com has a series on Google integration with PHP at http://www.developer.com/services/article.php/3680076.
I suppose this would be a good time to grouse that they never gave my two series (WSRP and POI) a page of their own 🙂
Between the York District Boy Scouts Spring Wateree Campout and a cold, I have not been posting much lately, so this a is re-tread from Frequently Unasked Questions.
© Scott S. Nelson
Delicious Deviation
If you are like me (and I am realistic to know that the odds are really against that), you could care less about visitors to your blog that have Javascript disabled. There is really just no reason for it, with 99.99% of browsers supporting it. So, if you want to save a few bytes and just have a clickable icon for your Delicious tag, here is my version:
<img    id=”DeliciousIcon1″ title=”Bookmark this on Delicious”
src=”http://static.delicious.com/img/delicious.small.gif”
height=”10″ width=”10″ alt=”Bookmark this on Delicious”
style=”cursor: pointer; vertical-align: middle”
onclick=”window.open(‘http://delicious.com/save?v=5&noui&jump=close&url=’+encodeURIComponent(‘<?php the_permalink() ?>’)+’&title=’+encodeURIComponent(‘<?php the_title() ?>’),’delicious’, ‘toolbar=no,width=550,height=550’); return false;” />
© Scott S. Nelson
Fast WAMP for Wimps
I find balancing my desire to learn with my time available to be an endless source of frustration. Especially as I actually like work with web technologies (I know lots of folks who only do it for a living).
My most recent episode (for those waiting for me to get to the point) is wanting to work on my personal site on my work laptop. This is because I am a traveling consultant, and when I’m on the road this is my only machine. This particular machine does not have IIS installed and the XP Pro disk was not shipped with the laptop (I’m a virtual office, also). So, I needed to set up a WAMP environment with Apache. I generally deal with Java app servers and haven’t touched Apache in seven years. It does not appear to have changed much since then. I’m sure there are lots of improvements, but nothing that I would notice with my casual relationship to it. So casual that, while I mostly remember the tasks to set things up, I don’t remember the actual steps to accomplish the tasks.
I found one site that had a good Quick Start guide. It was a bit outdated, but it is easy enough to find the newer versions following the steps outlined there. Unfortunately, it still takes more free time than I have. While looking up the resolution to one issue I ran into a discussion post pointing to steps for a much easier install. The recommendation was to get an all in one package from SourceForge called Apache2Triad. This has the whole stack in one installer. I didn’t even need the steps on the site where I got the link from. The installation took all of 5 minutes, with another 15 minutes to get my workspace set up and configured. Sweet!
© Scott S. Nelson
It’s Like It’s 1998 Again
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes blog post on ZDNet today reminds me of when Windows 95 users where expecting the next service pack and instead got an ad for an upgrade.
Buying Vista is the biggest mistake I have made since buying Circuit City stock.
© Scott S. Nelson