Matthew Knott

I've been working on version 2 of the iPhone version of my blog. I love writing webapps for a device like the iPhone because your code is so much more direct and streamlined with out all that cross browser malarkey.

I've used the sliding tab interface that I've described in a previous post. It's a bit shaker but I'm going to work on optimizing it somewhat. Also, search, comments, categories, tags and progressive article loading have yet to be implemented.

On a side note I was really happy to have found the blog of Sacha Chua, an IBM web 2.0 specialist and evangelist. I love reading her posts, they're always engaging and insightful, and I'm supprised she hasn't featured on "a list apart yet.

Tags: Blog iPhone Sacha Chua

Always trying to do something to stimulate the grey cells, I have started applying the slide demo I developed a few weeks ago to a calendar object. I'm going to be using it in a personal application I'm developing to help track my finances (The green box denotes a bit, should be red).

 

The screenshot is in fact just a fireworks mockup. When it's finished I'm going to integrate it into the blog navigation, sweet.

Tags: Javascript Blog Calendar Slide Fireworks Date Time Cal Demo Mockup

It's been hard to find time to get much done this week outside of work, what with rugby and spending time with Michael and Lisa, but the ideas and output are still trickling through.

Digita Solutions

Every time I look at the v3 design for Digita Solutions, I come up against the same brick wall, what do we want to offer. I keep bouncing off the web design question, do we? don't we?

It's very frustrating not having the confidence in yourself to commit to an area of the business, my initial fears were over making it pay, but I think if the quality is there then you make it pay through competitive charging for the product, but not selling yourself short.

I really do believe that once we've finished the products we have in development then we'll have the capital to start looking at different services like web design.

This site

I'm planning something revolving around a photo gallery Silverlight application, and also setting this blog software up to post to multiple blogs simultaneously. With dual posting I can post items of consequence to other sites I maintain such as the digita solutions site. Would be great to do it form a single admin suite.

Life

After I was deeply disappointed with the shortages of Wii's when they first came out, a few years on we've finally bought one. Lisa want's a Wii fit, which frustratingly are in as short supply as the Wii's were. Very frustrating that Nintendo seem to want to create demand for the product even greater by not supplying in sufficient quantities, and then we end up with a situation like this, where hoarders buy up a large volume of the item and sell for £120 plus on eBay. Rediculous profiteering.

I've got dentist Friday, argh, no fillings please.

Work

It's been a slow week, but looks like things will really pick up tomorrow, may be a late night on the cards, I stayed on a little tonight, but the flexi will be useful for a long lunch in town next week I'm sure.

Tags: Rugby Work Blog Site Digita Solutions Lisa Webparts Wii Nintendo Business Plans Dentist Slow Moodle

With the summer spluttering into action slowly, I felt like redesigning the site slightly.

I say slightly, the redesign was the first job, I'm also going to be adding a few new features:

• Twitter / facebook status style feed. 
• Featured articles
• Expanded article lists

 

Status Feed

I want to add a personal status to my site. But more than just listing things I'm doing or have done, I want to break it down by location (Home, Work, In-Laws, Mums etc.) and I want to create a timeline view for the week, month etc.

 

Featured Articles

I will also be adding a featured article flag to my posts to make it easier to find recent how-to's etc.

 

Expanded Article Lists

Just a small addition to let me add some greater detail to article lists such as most read posts etc.

 

All in all not really any ground breaking changes happening, but I want to keep the site evolving at some pace. Now I'm off to overheat in the garden.

Tags: Blog Site Redesign Update Add-on

It's actually been a busy day. I've been out and about, went for a hot chocolate in the Civic Centre in Swansea, then went to pick up Lisas pay packet, got stuck in traffic a few times, and finally watch both of todays Heineken Cup games.

Between that I've found the time to finish the comments system, add an RSS feed (Which needs a bit of work) and a search feature (which needs a lot of work) but as always the foundations are in place for something bigger and better.

The search currently only runs a full text index against the post content, but will shortly include tags, comments, and titles.

Night night.

Tags: Blog Comments RSS Search

I've added a comments system so feel free to add your 2 cents.

I plan on integrating it a bit better with the site over the coming weeks.

Tags: Blog Comments

Bit of a quick update tonight. Continued refining the site, changing the font again.

Also added the first non-blog page, about me. I couldn't resist the urge to write it in the third person.

Another small addition is a poorly implemented digg option. I wanted to get it live before going to bed and will improve on it tomorrow. The styling is the problem, and the fact that I only added it to the static articles at this stage.

Tags: Blog Site Changes Style Digg Me

As the site expands, it becomes increasingly more restricted in what it can do.

I need to think about what I want to do with the site.

The blog will remain at the core, but I want to bring in additional pages around it. The blog serves more as a service for me than a window to the world. Aside from the odd rant, it helps me keep track of code discoveries and other interesting things.

I want to add:

 

• Links repository
• Gallery (Not that I take many photos)
• CV (I'm looking if you're offering)
• About the site
• About me
• Work gallery (Site designs etc.)

 

In addition to this, there are a number of features left to implement on the blog:

 

• Search
• Archive listing
• Comments
• Link / Email / Digg article

It's a long term project at any rate and has gifted some learning opportunities.

 

Tags: Blog Site Plan Features

I've just been dabbling with Apache's mod_rewrite functionality and it is super-sweet. It's one of those techniques that you just see everywhere these days.

I followed this example, which was easy to follow, to control the redirect.

I've implemented it on the tag system and also the categories and I'm really impressed with the results. Give it a try.

Tags: PHP Tags Blog Apache mod_rewrite .htaccess

I wanted to create a tag cloud, and looked at Cal Evans's Cloud Generator, which to me seemed overly complex, though very stable I'm sure. I just thought that it would be easier to work it out myself and tailor the solution to my needs.

It was actually easier to do than I thought.

1. I run a query against the top 20 tags, returning the tag name, and usage tally, ordered alphabetically.
2. I loop the results, adding them to two separate arrays, and calculate the maximum usage and minimum usage.
3. Now I have the maximum usage value, I calcululate each usage as a percentage of the maximum, which I use to give the tag a rank 1-5. 0% - 19% is rank 1, 20% - 39% is rank 2 and so on.
4. The tag is output as <span class="tag_rank_1"><a href="tagurl">Tag Name</a></span>
5. In the stylesheet I set the styles I want for each rank such as darkening and enlargement of the font.

Click here for the source code.

Tags: PHP Tutorial Tags Blog Cloud Stylesheet

Due to a failure in the heating system in work today, we were all sent home early. In fairness it was bloody freezing.

After a 3 hour power nap, I got up and finally completed the tagging system for the blog.

It works simply though an onBlur function on an input box, splitting the tags into an array and inserting them into the database. Each keyword is passed separately so that I can check if it already exists in the database, in increment the usage accordingly so that I can later create a tag list, sized around popularity.  

It's a start anyway, and it works well, which is all I want. Off on holiday tomorrow, and hoping to be off Wednesday to help Lisa.

Tags: Javascript PHP Cold Work Temperature Tags Blog Split

This blog software represents the first time I've tried to build and maintain static files.

Mod rewrite was an option but ultimately I think this will be better suited for this particular application.

Although quite simplistic at this stage there have still been a number of issues which may or may not be due to the configuration of my hosting provider 34sp but nonetheless was very frustrating.

The main issue was getting mkdir to work correctly. Although I'd set the permissions correctly, I was still having issues. This turned out to be because the example I was following (successfully on local development box) had the directory name ending in a forward slash.

Whatever config 34sp are using, it did not like this and eventually, when I removed this, I began to make progress. The next problem was that it wouldn't let me create folders in the httpdocs folder, so had to create a subfolder called content. 

This resolved the issue and the pages are now building correctly.

The folder build / check code now looks like this: 

//Check or create YEAR folder

$dirName = 'content/'.date('Y');

if(file_exists($dirName)){

//exists actions if any.

}else{

//doesn't exist actions if any

mkdir($dirName, 0777);

}

//Check / create MONTH folder

$dirName .= '/'.date('m');

if(file_exists($dirName)){

//exists actions if any.

}else{

//doesn't exist actions if any

 mkdir($dirName, 0777);

}

 

Tags: Blog Content Engine Stable Hosting