Welcome to Simon Philp's Blog

Podcast Kicks
January 2008 Entries

Forth Road Bridge (www.siphilp.co.uk) Why is it our government likes to spend a shed load of money on something and then less that 2 years later they pull the plug? Today it was confirmed that the Forth road bridge will be scrapping it's tolls in less that two weeks. However, only two years ago 4 million pounds was spent in putting in a new toll system to help with traffic flow.

A whole £1 is the cost of the toll, which, when the toll has be banished where will they get the money for ongoing repairs etc?  Yeap you've guessed it, us. SNP you must be so proud of achieving so much.  Why not put the money into something worth while?  Maybe you should be using the phrase "unacceptable and unfair" on the ongoing yearly increases in train fares, the waiting lists in the NHS, and hikes in council taxes.

"A boost to tourism and inward investment", I am sure £1 will stop people traveling north. So frustrating.

In this move how can they motivate people to use public transport to commute back and forth to work?  Well, with the ever high train prices, and once the tolls are gone it would work out cheaper for me to drive to work every day.

In my eyes this isn't an achievement this is kaos.  

referrer spam For the last 4 months I have noticed the amount of referrer spam increase on my friends website that I help with now and again. Referrer spam isn't new and has been about for years. With sophisticated technologies arising to protect our email inboxes/blog comments/ping backs, spammers need to use every other way possible to lure "a victim".

For anyone not familiar with this type of spam:

Referrer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referrer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. Sites that publicize their access logs, including referrer statistics, will then end up linking to the spammer's site, which will in turn be indexed by the search engines as they crawl the access logs.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer_spam

Chances are you'll never notice the small gremlins coming in trying to make you click the link as your intrigued as to why such a website will be linking to you, but should you need a solution to prevent this type of things happening then there are solutions out there.

If you're using a php based platform.

For anyone using an asp.net based.

  • ReverseDOS - used by subtext and many other blogging engines.
  • Checkout a post by Mads Kristensen about blocking ip addresses that could be enhanced to talk to a "blacklist" of known spammers.

If you have a list of top referrers on your site then chances are you'll be targeted to try and get that nasty url in your list if you have nothing moderating the requests.

flickr logo gamma v1.5 Subtext comes with a handy little gallery feature which I can't fault as it does everything you would expect a gallery component to do however, I was finding it a little frustrating putting albums up all over the place so I decided to take the plunge and write a quick control that looks at my Flickr account. 

The title isn't really that accurate as I plan on keeping the subtext gallery control on my pages until I am happy I have transferred, backed up and organised everything.Flickr Subtext Control

The benefits are obvious, all changes are done centrally, files are stored on Flickr which means I am saving disk space and bandwidth.

The control itself isn't complex at all and uses a nice little library called Flickr.NET written by Sam Judson which can be seen on the right panel under the search box (at time of writing and can be seen as a screen shot ->).

Not sure what the Subtext Development Team have planned for SubText integrating with Flickr but my control just looks for 2 values from the web.config(API key and your flickr username) and Flickr.NET takes care of the rest.  Time pending I plan on looking at a nice Flickr gallery handler so I can integrate my galleries on my website rather than being linked out to Flickr.

I will put together a quite post later this week outlining the control and ability to download the source/dll :)

Resources:

A while back I wrote a quick article about adding a javascript onclick event to each individual radio button list "Adding a Javascript onclick event to a Radio Button List Item on DataBound".

I was speaking to an early learner via email regarding what we would use this type of scenario for so thought I would put together something very quickly just to maybe flair some creativity.

Demo

The following demo uses the JQuery library.  What I have done is simply change the onclick event from showing an alert box to populate a div, a textbox and a hyperlink with the value of the radio button. 

All I have done is add the JQuery library to the page and changed

 <script language=javascript type="text/javascript">
    function ShowExt(object)
    {
    alert("Value Clicked :" + object);
    }
    </script>

to the following

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
    function ShowExt(object)
    {   
    $('#JqueryMessageBox').html('This is a div showing value :' + object);  
    $('#JqueryMessageBox').show('slow').animate({opacity:1.0},3000).fadeOut('slow');   
    $('#textdemo').show('slow').animate({opacity:1.0},3000).fadeOut('slow');
    $('#textdemo').val('Textbox value : ' +object); 
    $('#vistscotland').show('slow');
    $('#vistscotland').text('Link showing : ' + object);    
    }
    </script>

For the above script to work we also need to add in the following html under the radiobutton list

    <div id="JqueryMessageBox" style="margin-top:20px;margin-left:10px;
background-color:white;border:2px solid #83A7BF;padding:5px;width:50%;
display:none;"
> </div> <input type="text" maxlength="55" name="textdemo" id="textdemo"
style="display:none;margin-top:10px;margin-left:10px;" /> <a href="http://www.visitscotland.com" id="vistscotland"
style="display:none;margin-top:10px;margin-left:10px;"></a>

The style options contain alot of formatting options but really all that is needed is the display:none. In this case I'll keep it kind of pretty.  All the Javascript is doing is looking for the Id's of the elements under the Radiobutton list, running through an effect and then populating the element with the value of the object that called the onclick event.  Nothing complicated, short and sweet.  I would like to iterate even though it's obvious the event/effects won't work if javascript is disabled.

To see the demo in action : http://dev.siphilp.co.uk/OnClickRadioButtonListwithjquery.aspx

 

Yes, the site hasn't had alot of updates the past week and the reason for this is that we've been away boarding it up in Austria. We thought this year we would again venture out to a new resort and this time it was the Austrian soil we choose. Our flight landed into InnsBruck just after sunset but during the flight I managed to take a couple of pictures.

Hot FuzzLast year when Hot Fuzz was released I posted an item regarding how much I enjoyed the film.

For anyone who hasn't read the above post or hasn't heard of Hot Fuzz then you're surely needing to nip yourself.  Quick overview:

Top London cop, PC Nicholas Angel is good. Too good. And to stop the rest of his team looking bad, he is reassigned to the quiet town of Sandford. He is paired with Danny Butterman, who countlessly questions him on the action lifestyle. Everything seems quiet for Angel, until two actors are found decapitated. It is address to as an accident, but Angel isn't going to accept that, especially when more and more people turn up dead. Angel and Danny clash with everyone, whilst trying to uncover the truth behind the mystery of the apparent "accidents". Written by Film_Fan

Hot Fuzz is a fantastic comedy from the creators of Shaun of the dead starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost netting over $78,000,000 before being released on DVD. 

Back to the subject in question keeping in mind "Shaun of the dead".  In one of the scenes where PC Nicholas Angel is driving away from Sandforth after the residents think Danny Butterman have murdered him he stops in a garage where he buys spray paint and a pair of glasses. During this he throws down a dvd called "Zombies Party"

Hot Fuzz  Zombie Party

Look familiar?  Whose face do you think is under the £4.99 tag, answers on a postcard ;)

If you still haven't bought it and don't want to then why not just Rent it from Amazon

posted @ Sunday, January 13, 2008 9:12 PM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Life | Humour | ]

Bug on Enter key For the last 2 months my Norton Anti Virus has been shouting at me since my subscription has now expired.  Today I thought it's about time I done something about it as you can be as careful as you can but , some how chances are those nasties will work there way onto your machine. 

Once a nasty is on your machine then who knows what it'll do?

 

I would like to make it clear here that it's always a good idea to keep your operating system up to date and any software you use.  If you're unsure how to do any of this then check your vendors website for this information.

I opened up my Norton anti virus and clicked on the renew subscription button where I was taken to a page that told me what options were available to me.

upgrade Options

Thinking to myself I was sure I paid less than £30 when I bought it a couple of years back?  I went to Symantec's homepage to find that there was a "seasonal deal" on.

Norton Seasonal Greetings

Now, I started comparing the products and for the sake of a couple of pound it  would seem that I get more for my money with the Internet Security package.  It all seems obvious but how can Symantec justify an extra £15 for less "functionality"?

After purchasing and downloading the install was smooth, no problems what so ever.  I do like the new interface, seems less clunky.

I have yet to install it on my gaming desktop/media centre as I can install it onto 3 pc's which makes it a bargain. I just hope that it doesn't lock it down to much on default install that I have to manually "permit" outgoing, incoming connections.

 

News Items regarding online safety and threats

  1. Cyber thieves target social sites (BBC)
  2. Tips to help you stay safe online (BBC)
  3. http://www.getsafeonline.org/
  4. Before You Connect a New Computer to the Internet

Yes well, in the early hours of this morning I posted an entry in relation to how the weather was and how they said it was going to snow.  At that time when looking out the window, not a cloud in sight, just the stars.  Today while up in Dunfermline getting my beer money for holiday it totally changed.  The pictures were taken on my mobile phone(Nokia N95 8gb, 5 mega pixel).

Dunfermline High Street 3rd Jan 2007 Dunfermline Abbey 3rd Jan 2007

Dunfermline Abbey 3rd Jan 2007 Dunfermline 3rd Jan 2007

* If you would like the full resolution versions of these pictures please get in touch.

 

The next couple of days forecast heavy snow.  I don't mind snow infact snowboarding down to the local would be an accomplishment. Getting home with all the gear would certainly be a problem though especially after a couple of drinks.  1st couple of days in this new year have just been horrible.

Edinburgh

Not long now till we invade Austria for a well deserved snowboarding holiday. Just hope that they get some fresh powder for us to carve up.

Happy New Year.  First day of 2008 and well can't say much for the weather.

  1. 2 snowboarding holidays, one to Les Deux Alpes and the other to Bulgaria.
  2. Started my podcasts.
  3. Couple of trips up north.
  4. Friends Sean and Tracy became parents.
  5. Ryan and Katie tied the knot.
  6. Friend and colleague Andy started his own blog.
  7. Ported my blog to subtext
  8. A previous place of employment Equator Scotland(eqtr.com)based in Glasgow is fined for software piracy
    1. http://www.hi-techscotland.com/article/glasgow-firm-counts-cost-of-unlicensed-software
    2. http://www.computing.co.uk/crn/news/2203909/bsa-settles-glasgow-firm
    3. http://www.business7.co.uk/business-news/latest-business-news/2007/11/16/equator-in-software-piracy-fine-97298-20115167/
  9. Glencoe went into liquidation. Luckily the management saved the day :)
  10. Saddam Hussein was Executed.
  11. Parts of the UK experienced horrendous flooding.
  12. Tony Blair stepped down as prime minister.
  13. The death of Diana princess of Wales 10 year anniversary.

Bit of an eventful year with Technology moving up a couple of notches too. 

posted @ Tuesday, January 01, 2008 6:12 PM | Feedback (0) | Filed Under [ Life | ]