Welcome to Simon Philp's Blog

My previous rant do you donate?, Seemed to get some people thinking.  I received several emails speculating that it's not  always obvious just how much we do actually take for granted. This is until someone, or something opens our eyes.

Rant 1 : After a productive day at work and listening to a variety of different tunes for my upcoming Summer Mini Mix series and my next  funky house podcast I come home to find that my boiler has decided to pack in.  Lucky enough for me I have home care 400 which is a maintenance contract from Scottish Gas.  Upon phoning them to say "look it's cold, I have no hot water or heating when can you come out", "well we can give you an all day appointment tomorrow or we can give you an afternoon or morning on Monday?".  For me the weekend is my time.  I'm not going to sit in all day waiting on an engineer while I could be out doing what I need to do, seeing people I need to see, so I decided to bit the bullet and say Monday. Just hoping it's a repair job and not a new boiler.....  This morning, I am so glad I made that choice as it's such a beautiful day. Today see's me visiting my unwell gran, going to the gym ( they have awesome showers) and visiting my mum. 

Rant 2 : Yesterday afternoon I have discovered that moving banks isn't as straight forward as I hoped. Would seem that my current bank who will not be named is just useless.  Some standing orders and direct debit details haven't been sent over to my new bank even though my new bank requested this information 6 weeks ago. I started to panic as I wasn't sure where my mortgage payment was coming out from? Luckily a nice woman on the "switching team" for my new bank talked me through what has come across and what hasn't.  Today will see my current bank getting an ear full even though it will probably be a non uk call centre, which can bring more frustration depending on who I am speaking to.  As of next week, all direct debits etc will be over to my new accounts and I can actually walk into or call my local branch, winner. :)

Rant 3 : What next you may ask?  Well I am not sure how long this has been going on but a couple of blogs I comment on have removed "my url" on there comment form, so when you go to comment all you see is your email address, your name and the comment textbox, what is the point in that? For me it's a turn off.  Why would I want to join in a discussion and not being able to link back to my own personal website? Is same with trackbacks, why not accept a trackback? Is it because they see other bloggers as "the enemy" and that uniting and sharing links/resources/common interests is bad? Who knows? 

There would have been a 4th rant in relation to losing a lot of personal documents and photographs but as luck stands I have learned from my mistakes and keep backups of everything.

Well, that's it.  Am off out now to enjoy my weekend rather than "the system" keeping me in.Peace out and stay safe...

Just posted a new funky house podcast.  As I have stated over on my podcast sub site the format will be changing over the next couple of weeks.  This includes new voice overs, new wordpress theme and new iTunes album art.

This month has been a busy month as on the podcast side of things we've had a guest mix from Drum and Bass band Twin Shinobi and a Summer 2008 Mini Mix.

Also over at the DJ Cruze camp, Marc has just release a long awaited podcast episode Number 39 - Higher.  I personally think Marcs mixes are awesome :). Check it out.

Yesterday I submitted my first patch to the subtext project.  While I have created a couple of skins for the blogging engine I wanted to contribute more.  Within subtext you have the option to add links to categories.  These are usually used for blog lists which usually link to a friends site, coworker or a contact. 

An example of a list from Simone Chiaretta's blog:

What is XFN?

Xhtml Friends Network uses an attribute of the a href tag called "rel", examples:

<a href="http://www.siphilp.co.uk" rel="me">Si</a> or <a href="http://www.kemponline.co.uk" rel="friend coworker">Andy</a>

This patch allows you to assign a relationship to each link.

For more information about xfn check out  - http://gmpg.org/xfn/.

Admin Screen

End Result

Creating and submitting the patch was easy thanks to Scott Hanselman's post - How to contribute a patch to an Open Source Project like DasBlog.

I hope to contribute more to the subtext project :).

I have written a variety of posts about subtext which can be found here.

A while back I was planning to move all my galleries to flickr instead of using subtexts built in functionality.  Unfortunately I haven't had time to implement a couple of new flickr controls for subtext.  I was thinking about creating a gallery provider but time isn't on my side so it's been canned for now.

I have been playing about with the GalleryThumbNailViewer.asc control that can be found in your skin directory that has resulted in the following.  When the images are loading the user is shown a loading message.

What is happening in the background is that when the document structure is loaded the div is displayed.  When all the images have loaded a document ready event is fired that then hides the div. 

You may be surprised that this is accomplished by a couple of lines of javascript that uses the jQuery library.

Control Code

 At the top of the control under the <%@ %> line I added the following

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function()
{
$('#Loader').show(); 

}); 

window.onload = function(){
$('#Loader').hide();
jQuery.noConflict();//Only add this if you use lightbox
initLightbox();//Only add this if you use lightbox

}; 

</script>

Then just under the <div id="Gallery"> line I added the following:

<div id="Loader" style="display:none;height:50%;background-color:pink;
border:1px solid red; width: 70%;top:200px; text-align: center;
font-size: 30px;opacity: 0.8;position: absolute;top: 20px;
-moz-border-radius:10px;">
<p style="color:red;margin-top:150px">
Loading Photographs please wait...</p></div>

That's it.  Have a look yourself.  I have added it to my galleries :)  Please note the lightbox comments.  If you don't use lightbox in your galleries then you don't need those two lines.

There are alot of developers out there that use jQuery for the javascript library needs and I am one of them. Previously I have written 2 articles using jQuery in conjunction with an onclick event on a radio button list:

1. Adding a Javascript onclick event to a Radio Button List Item on DataBound
2. Adding a Javascript onclick event to a Radio Button List Item on DataBound Pt 2

 Before attempting changing anything please make sure you have a backup...

Yesterday I decided to wipe the cobwebs off several records and put together a quick mix.  I plan on doing a couple more mini mixes throughout the summer which will hopefully add a little funk to your life :)

Would seem this week is all about the music. First a guest mix by Twin Shinobi and now this Summer 2008 Mini Mix.

If you would like to hear a track in the mix please get in touch. My usual podcast will be released next week. Some thumping promo's coming your way. If you've not already subscribed to my funky house podcast then what you waiting for. Itunes Subscription link, Rss Feed Link.

Over the coming weeks I plan on re-vamping my podcast site and the album art so check back for some new features and competitions.

The photo used in the album art is courtesy of a friend : Neil Smith Photography

First guest mix. This mix is different from the normal house genre and dives into Drum and Bass.

The mix is from a friends band called Twin Shinobi.

You can find more on Twin Shinobi on myspace.

My usual funky house mix will be posted up at the end of the week :)

If you want to give feedback on this guest mix please comment on the podcast post or on Twin Shinobi's myspace page.

Ever downloaded a podcast, thought hey that's good, think I'll subscribe? Every couple of weeks or so a new podcast is released and you enjoy the listening. It might not even be a podcast, could be a good cause, a blog article or even an opensource application your using.

The above could be classed as products. Products take time, effort and dedication.  Think of all the blogs out there running on wordpress.  Out of all these blogs at what percent do you think they have donated back to wordpress?  A guess would be that it's a very low percentage.

This post came after a friend who has a very successful podcast told me how, in the duration I was the 2nd person to donate. I was shocked, literally gob smacked hearing this. Again though thinking back I thought it was appalling. Sometime ago people were complaining about the number of voice overs being to high, think at the time it was about 7 in a 65 min mix, now these are short voice overs and in reality it helps stop those nasty rippers getting tunes and promotes him as a dj.

Next time you use an opensource application, download a series of podcasts, find an article that saved your a$$.  Think, "how can I show my appreciation?". It might be to get involved in the project, help promote it or even send some hard earned cash. Imagine if such people didn't provide such products?  How long would it take you to create such a product, or how much would it cost to get a professional to do it?

When was the last time you recycled?  Today, yesterday, last week?  I have 2 recycling centres very close to me so I recycle as much as I can.

We've all got 3 or 4 different coloured bins/boxes for paper, glass, plants and general waste, so we all do as much as we can.  However want to do a little bit more? Are you a snowboarder, skier or a hill walker?  Want to give a little bit more back?   Add this to your calendar: the big spring clean.  This event takes place on the 1st of June at Cairngorm Mountain and the Nevis range.   More details can be found over at the ski club UK.

* photo by http://www.john-nyberg.dk/