Train wreck much?

Also, what is it with XML and data storage? It's not a language that was designed for data storage, it's primarily a markup language.

It's not perfect yet, it has some problems (as a quick scan of the reviews reveals), but for £2 it's a bargain. :-)

Also, I should get some sleep...

At 8/8/08 01:36 AM, Wreckages wrote: nvm about above, i went about it wrong, i think.

Best way would be to log by amount spent in a single transaction over the course of a month (unless all the costs you have are your hosting costs). So it could potentially be more accurate to write what you spend down when you spend it, rather than total it up at the end of the month.

I bought Pennies from the App Store, which does just that. You give it a budget and then add in expenses in different categories. Then it totals it all up for you. :-) Works a treat so far, just as long as I keep adding what I bought into it.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSto re.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=287129922&mt=8

I don't own it, but http://www.typescript.org is the url of my content management system collaboration.

At 8/6/08 12:43 PM, thoughtpolice wrote: The greatest song ever.

No no. This is the greatest song in the world.

(although your song is cool too.)

On further reading it seems that it's recommended that absinthe be diluted with water, because of the high alcohol content.

http://www.feeverte.net/forum/lofiversio n/index.php?t2937.html

Most pubs will not serve you more than 3 single shots of absinthe. The stuff is 55% vol! I'd definitely not recommend mixing absinthe with beer either.

Have a shot or two and see how you are after that. You should only need one 50cl bottle, it'll go for around £15-17 at supermarkets, or specialist liquor stores for a little more than that. One bottle contains 28 units, so it will definitely knock you out.

Have fun! :-)

Careful with that stuff... ;-)

At 8/4/08 09:41 PM, DanielZ wrote: Maybe for you it's fine, but the keys are too tiny for my huge fingers...

Once you get used to typing (two thumbs) it actually is a breeze. The dictionary is almost flawless and picks up almost exactly what you were going to put. Sometimes it does make errors, but it learns what you type. Having no tactile feedback is fine, because you have visual feedback (the letter pops up after you've pressed it). And to be honest, I think a 'real' keyboard, even if it were the size of the whole iPhone itself, would still be a real pain to use. I'd rather have a fullsize keyboard. ;-)

At 8/3/08 07:02 PM, elbekko wrote: I personally wouldn't want to use one regularly, for the whole dying alot and all.

You only die once. :-)

At 8/2/08 06:24 AM, BoneIdol wrote: The iphone does let you do stuff with webapps and javascript though, so you could look into that.

I love how developers aren't technically allowed to talk about the iphone SDK since you agree to an NDA when you get it. No development books, no tutorials... I can really see this working out well.

One can guess that the NDA is still in place because Apple haven't got a finished SDK (i.e, it's still in beta). Sure, you can write programs with it, but it is still under review and a lot of code changes/updates are being pushed to developers. What's the point in writing a book if it's outdated in the next update?

Once Apple have got a finished product, no doubt they will lift the NDA.

At 7/31/08 05:26 PM, Afro-Ninja wrote: flash and web design are specialized labor, anything of that nature as far as I'm concerned should start at 20$/ hour (skill level providing)

I think you're missing Jon's point here; which is, around here we get many many 'job opportunities' which usually consist of working for nothing, or a nominal fee at the end. If you're looking for work around here, this is one of the better deals going, ;-)

(of course, you'd never want to take this job seriously for 10 bucks an hour)

At 7/31/08 04:12 PM, Jon-86 wrote:

At 7/31/08 03:38 PM, DearonElensar wrote: $10 is very low :/

$10 / £5 an hour isnt low. Thats actually quite decent if not one of the best work offers that have been posted here in a long time!

It is, actually, a top paying job around these parts. ;-)

At 7/28/08 02:12 PM, citricsquid wrote: Of course he got lucky. He is in no way exceptionally smart, there are thousands of people smarter than him. He got lucky because he happened to stumble into a market at a certain time, he had the product people wanted. Microsoft is only so successful because it joined the market at exactly the right time, and had exactly what consumers needed. That, was lucky.

Not so much luck; Microsoft's success lies in the business decisions that Bill Gates took. I.e. provide 'good enough' software for hardware vendors to stick on any machine they desired, cutting their costs in software engineering; whilst simultaneously killing off the competition (effectively forcing users of MS-DOS to upgrade to Windows, and killing off third party office suites). Contracts with computer vendors allowed Microsoft to charge a pittance for a Windows install on a new machine, and so they could keep their prices competitive, and crucially, a lot lower than Apple's.

It's not necessarily that Windows is a good product; it's merely so entrenched that people never bother to install a different OS - and most frankly don't care. ICT courses teach Microsoft Office on new PCs. Most people (read: not computer enthusiasts) don't know Linux exists.

Too many hits, I suppose.

15% off isn't free...

Also, level 34. :-)

At 7/17/08 11:38 AM, elbekko wrote:

Now I don't see how the dock is any different than the Windows taskbar.

When you 'close' a window, it just gets minimized to the dock. Try opening another instance of the same application - oh wait, it's the same window as you closed earlier.

Because Apple use a document centric model, not an application centric model (like in Windows). Thus, if you close an application's window, it doesn't quit. Having only one instance of that program means there's only need for the one taskbar at the top of the screen, rather than having the taskbar in every single window on Windows.

So, for Apple - one app, many documents. Microsoft, many apps with one document in each. Both have their tradeoffs.

At 7/17/08 04:22 PM, TheRyoku wrote: If people would read the whole post, you'd realize that he said they have an Alpha out, and soon to be Beta.

Neither of which are out, the blog has one entry, and the forums are practically bare.

Surely he should have a closing tag too.. or be self closed?

At 7/14/08 05:47 PM, Anim8or666 wrote: And that's the only thing that prevents me from shelling out several hundred for an iPhone- Flash. Why doesn't Apple add Flash player to the iPhone? It's has plenty of CPU power to handle it. And even if Adobe doesn't release Flash player officially for the iPhone/Touch, why doesn't somebody else do it, now that the development kit is available?

You yourself pointed out that Flash sucks for web development. And you're right, it does. No-one wants their online experience ruined by banner ads and annoying rollovers.

However, the two 'somewhat' useful applications of Flash aren't so on the iPod Touch.

1) Streaming video. Video is handled by the more than capable H.264 player on the device. Flash video is noticeably erratic when skipping forwards/backwards, and it's essentially a wrapper around a perfectly capable video by itself.

2) Games. iPhone games take advantage of gestures and the accelerometer (also, it has a rumble function, but the Touch doesn't) - which Flash doesn't support. Flash games would mostly be about clicking buttons on the screen. It just doesn't translate.

The problems with Flash on the iPod touch (in my views) are as follows:

1) Lag in Flash is a problem, even on desktop PCs. A native version of Flash for the iPhone would be there in all it's CPU intensive, battery draining glory. Flash Lite doesn't make sense, as the vast majority of existing Flash content is written in standard Flash.

2) A lot of Flash content is in a wide variety of sizes and aspect ratios - but the majority is designed to work at 800x600-1024x768 resolution. Flash content on the iPhone would either need to be scaled down, OR shown at full size and you'd have to pan around it manually. Would most likely make for a poor user experience.

3) Would render banner ads, rollovers, masks and all manner of grievances. Not nice on a desktop. Even worse on a small device when you have limited screen space.

Using flash for navigation eliminates iPhone and iPod Touch users from browsing your website. Plus, it's only worth using it IF you have a good reason - and that system can be done painlessly using CSS. :-)

Here's a preview using Mobile Safari.

It might be an idea just to check if your EasyPHP installation isn't corrupted. Here's a setup guide.

http://www.trap17.com/forums/setting-up-
easyphp-local-computer-t65.html

The problem might also be that you're double clicking the file locally, rather than running it from an address. Go to http://localhost/modon.php (at a guess, I'm not sure of the exact URL) and see if it works then.

Your code works fine on my machine. Check to see if your PHP version is up to date with this code:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

You're looking for a version number greater than 4.0.2.

It'd probably be best to post the code you're working on so we can see what triggers the error.

Simple. Each card should have a 'value', and this would increase if you got a full house or a straight flush (or any other poker combo). Therefore in a 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 card hand, the 8 has the least value because it's far away from the flush you want. In situations where any card is neither good or bad it could either be a random decision, or the AI could have a certain 'strategy' - which might be to retain all picture cards, or only collect spades, etc.

Firstly you work out the thinking and then the code. :-)

I believe it's called Shoddy Battle.

At 6/26/08 07:59 PM, elbekko wrote: Seriously, if that's how you think, stop programming NOW. "If it works, it's good" is far from a good point.

Of course, code is a process of continual refinement, and well crafted code is easier to maintain. It also depends on the project. But why is good enough not good enough?

I don't need a perfectly written piece of coding for a website that will only be updated twice a year. Right?

At 6/26/08 05:02 AM, BoneIdol wrote: Most of the people who write it will, when pressed about it, chuckle and go "oh that's PHP for you; it's not designed to be clean". Yeah? Well why the fuck not? Perhaps you just can't be fucked to learn how to write clean code? Which brings me onto elbekko's post.

You're misinterpretating my point; which is that PHP, can encourage sloppy code because it is not an objective orientated language, and can be weaved in and around HTML. Of course, the OO features introduced in PHP4 and 5 show that PHP can actually be a very clean language.

The problem (most of the time) isn't that people can't be fucked to write clean, structured code, the problem is that everyone has different ideas of what constitutes it. I know people who will make websites that include 15 files just to make a simple bloody homepage, who insist that is "properly structured". While breaking your code into different modules is nice, there is doing it properly and there is taking the piss.

And er.. this is not PHP's fault. If it makes sense to me to have 15 files for my homepage, that's what I'll do. Which would you prefer - something that worked (did the job) and took a couple of hours to build, or something that took six months? It's like people who seperate CSS into say 5 files - why? Because one huge CSS file can be intimidating to other people who need to change something and haven't gotten any prior experience fixing the code.

I know people who will keep all their POST handling in one file (with one huge switch statement, often with really stupid fall throughs), even when it's 500 lines long. And you know what? They insist that's "properly structured". too.

Again, if it works, then what's the problem? If it's properly structured for them, then it's fine. It doesn't matter whether it's written in 2 lines or 200. If it works, it works.

The thing is I'm no exception to this either; I've written some god-awful code in my time. Often in an effort to try and achieve cleaner code, ironically. Any programmer who says that: a) they've never written shit code and b) they're current coding style is perfect is talking out of their arse.

Who cares? We're all human and we're all imperfect. Godawful* code is GOOD if it WORKS. Even if you think it's bad, sales/marketing may well love it, it may be another Facebook and everyone will love it, regardless of all that bloat.

* in the sense of it being bloated/slow/convoluted, not in the sense of being insecure, buggy etc.

Anchors.

<p><a href="#bottom">Bottom of page</a></p>
<h1>Site title</h1>
<p>Lorem ipsum</p>
<!-- Bottom of page! -->
<a name="bottom"></a>

My only trouble with it is that the images (and especially the wooden background) don't seem optimised for the web. The page loads pretty slowly (even over broadband), and while a few seconds may not be a lot, unoptimised images can put unnecessary strain on your resources when you have a large userbase.

Other than that, it's a very thoughtful design. Good job.