All Forces

View my “Be Right Back” page

Enough of this blank “Be Right Back” pages we usually throw together when we need to do website updates. It is time for a nicer, more web 2.0 savvy under construction. Next time I do an update to WordPress, I’ll be replacing my index.php file with this one, and then switch back when all is ready to go.

Here’s what I have:

1. Links to my other web sites and web services.

2. Flickr gallery via the flickr.com’s Make a Badge tool

3. Twitter updates via twitter.com’s Make a Badge tool

4. Last.fm gallery via Jeroen’s Last.fm Records standalone version which grabs images from amazon.com. I actually copied the whole script and included it in the PHP file so that it is not dependent in other files. I also disabled album art caching since this page is really going to be up for a few minutes. If you are going to use it for longer, then you should consider enabling caching the images. Consult the original script for more info on this.

To do this yourself:

1. Download my “Be Right Back”. Note, PHP 5 is required for the Last.fm portion to work. 

2. Open it in a file editor and change the following items:

• The page title
• The site links should point to your of course
• The Flickr user number in the Flickr javascript link. It might be best to create your own Flickr badge, grab the javascript and replace this one.
• The Twitter username in the javascript url.
• The last.fm username in the PHP code, right after $lfm->username.
• The footer info.

Multiple Languages is a feature in Leopard most people don’t know about. Having access to this is great but it can be rather tedious  to switch your spellchecker back and forth between multiple languages. Leopard introduced a Multilingual feature that makes the spellchecker check against multiple languages instead of just one.

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On my subway ride home I noticed one bodyguard. Then two. Then three. I mind my own business continuing to read my AS3 book and eventually get ready my phone to take a picture just in case. I look up and there he was– mayor Bloomberg taking the subway just like the rest of us. I had heard he has always been an avid subway rider but you sometimes hear things and never know how much of it is true. It was a very New York experience– seing him doing the same thing I was doing, just minding his own business reading his newspaper.

I got this new shirt on Broadway just a couple of blocks north of Canal St. at a new store that is shared by several artisans. Dante was crushed he didn’t get one. But daddy needed this shirt. :-)

Tomorrow will be a big day in politics as most US states get to vote for a candidate in the primaries. Today I was chatting with my friend online only to realize we were having an avatar battle. He’s a huge Hillary supporter and I’m backing Obama. Rock The Vote!  

With the latest software update for the iPhone and iPod touch, users can now save webclips to their springboard(desktop). These act as a shortcut to a website. Now, the iphone/touch will remember exactly the crop and zoom that you saved and will create an icon automatically but the icon is not always the most desired visual representation of the site. For example, if I want a webclip of CNN’s latest news, it will show a screenshot of the news, not a CNN icon. And if I zoom into the icon just for the logo and then save the webclip, when i click on the webclip it will take me to the zoom in of the icon and not the news. Fortunately, the iPhone/Touch can use a predetermined icon provided by the website. Here’s how to create a custom webclip icon for the the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Save your 57×57px icon as a PNG, name it “apple-touch-icon.png” and upload to the root folder of your site files(where you index file is). The iPhone/Touch will automatically look for it here. It will also automatically round the edges and make give it that gloss look so you don’t need to worry about that.

If you want to name it differently, or place the file somewhere else, you need to specify it in the html file as a header item like this:

<head>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/pathto/mywebclipicon.jpg"/>
</head>

ps. thanks to abraham for letting me borrow his camera at work

p.s. Drew McLellan at All In The Head has posted a bookmarklet that dynamically adds the icon code to any page. This makes it possible for you to design your own icons for any website. Very clever Mr. Drew. Via Rob.

My current book stack is growing thanks to some new additions added on christmas day(thanks Lilia and Ari). Here’s the list with some Amazon link love.

• The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso
  Dante Alighieri
• Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• El Amor en Los Tiempos de Colera (Love in the Time of Colera)
  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Magic Lantern Guides: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
  Michael Guncheon
• La Quinta Montana (The Fifth Mountain)
  Paulo Coelho
• America (The Book)
  Jon Stewart and The Daily Show
• ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook
  Joey Lott, Darron Schall and Keith Pete
• How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques
  Steven Raichlen
• Upgrading to PHP 5
  Adam Trachtenberg

One of the new features of Mac OS 10.5, a.k.a. Leopard, is .Mac’s Back to My Mac, a way to connect to your computer at home remotely. Back to My Mac allows a user log into another Mac remotely via internet. This is a great feature but it is only available if you are a .Mac subscriber. However, the new iChat supports Screen Sharing, so the only thing to figure out is how to auto-accept a Screen Share invitation and how to do it securely. This quick tutorial will show you how set up iChat to do just that.

Requirements:

This set up requires that both computers run Leopard. If you don’t have it yet, here’s the Amazon link to buy it. It is well worth the price. You also need two separate iChat supported IM accounts, one for each computer. This could be AIM, .Mac or Jabber accounts.

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And the countdown begins. Apple announced today it will be shipping Leopard, it’s next version of Mac OSX on October 26th. That is only 10 days away! I’m particularly looking forward to the new Mail, Spaces, Quick Look and the new Finder. Oh and of course, one of my most used and beloved apps, TextEdit, which will have OpenDocument and Word 2007 Formats support. I know Apple is touting Time Machine as the killer feature, but we’ll see how many people end up using it.

Referral Link: Pre-Order from amazon.com

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhjgGBiqPDM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKA0gUMEIKM[/youtube]

These are my kids looking very impressive solving the Rubik’s Cube. Now, if you are a cuber, you wouldn’t be as impressed since you know the “Cube” move is the most basic of all moves and can be learned in just a few minutes. And yes, I did set it up so that all they needed to do is apply the move to finish it. But man, they look so smart doing this. I’m sure most parents think their kids are special, but I’m just saying…. My kids are special.