I got to work this morning and got my laptop out of my bag and found that at some point on the way in I´d managed to break the charger. I´d snapped the end bit that goes into the back of the laptop and having a quick look on t´interweb showed it was going to cost about ?65 to get another.

 
I can´t be bothered spending that kind of cash since I need a new laptop anyway so I got my trusty penknife out and stripped all the insulating plastic off the end of the charger. It turned out that the soldered connection had just been broken on the outer contact. Fixed that without a problem and then a bit of insulating tape got the whole thing up and running again.
 
Oh yeah, don´t try this at home kids! I´ve got a degree in electronics so I know what I´m doing. Don´t email me if you electricute yourself doing something stupid…

Macromedia Studio 8 is going to be out soon and I can´t wait! I´ve got a very strange way of using Dreamweaver since the custom template systems I use and the fact that I do most linking using 404 redirects in htaccess means that the page view never gets it right and most of the other helpful features just screw up the site (like the checking for updated links thing). My main use of it is for the code highlighting and function completion features as well as the automatic ftp upload.
 
But that´s why I can´t wait for version 8. The ftp bit is annoying me more and more recently. Although our ftp servers aren´t particularly slow the upload process takes ages and I probably end up wasting an hour or so a day waiting for the files to get uploaded. The fact that it really slows down the PC while it´s doing it means I can´t do anything else at the time either!
 
Enter my saviour. Dreamweaver 8 and it´s background ftp feature. Aces!

This blog, another one of mine and a few other people that I know run their blogs off this code that I´ve written. It´s not exactly feature rich but it does the job.
 
One of the things it does do is send out an email to people who´ve "subscribed" to it when I make a post. Only problem is that some of these people don´t check their email as quickly as I post, especially if I post a couple of times in one day. A few of them have asked if I can get it to only send them one email in a day. Sounds reasonable and will be fairly easy so think that´ll be next on my list of things to do.

 
Ask and you shall receive!

Sorry, crap joke. But it´s a great technology! If you´ve never heard of it here´s a bit of background. It stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML (I think) and what it basically does is allow you to code pages so that they can communicate with a webserver to retrieve information without reloading the page.

 
You build in javascript functions into a page that use one of the "onEvent" functions in a link, form field or image (or whatever) to send a request to a webserver based on what the user is doing. The server then sends back data that you can then use to build html elements on the page without having to reload the page. This means that you can dynamically add information to a page based on the contents of a database without having to refresh or send out large amounts of information in the first place.
 
An example or two might help explain what I´m on about. A good one is http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en which uses an autocomplete feature quite nicely. There´s also Gmail (no, you can´t have my login details) which autocompletes email addresses and has a spell checker.
 
This technology isn´t new and has support from IE, Firefox and other major browsers so it´s definately worth looking into. I´ve got big plans for it for Eppointments. We could implement things like:

• Contact list editing without page refreshes


• Mobile phone number and email address autocomplete based on the users contact list


• Some kind of T9 dictionary for SMS messages


• Address completion based soley on postcode (obviously using a postcode database on the server

Time to do some research as I haven´t actually checked how easy this is to implement yet! More to follow

After all these years of having nice wizards and configuration menus to help you set up your servers, Microsoft is releasing a server version of Windows that comes with no GUI, just a command line. Time to join us Linux sysadmins in doing it the good old fashioned way.
 
Trust me, its more fun this way anyway and you learn more about how things work. Plus the non-technical people around you think you´re doing something really complicated!

I try to keep up to date with whats going on in the IT world, either through the various news letters, news sites, other blogs and magazines. I´m interested in anything to do with IT (partly because I need to for my job, partly because I´m a big geek), but obviously because of my main job role I´m more interested in the web side of things.

 
Because of this I was quite suprised to find out that the new version of Macromedia´s product group, Studio 8 is about to be released (ish). The fact that I found out about it from a magazine as well, which is normally a few weeks behind the online sources but a bit more concrete in it´s information, was also suprising. I don´t know if Macromedia were trying to keep this one a bit more low-profile, if my holidays means I just missed it all completely, or if the whole Macromedia/Adobe thing just took up everyone´s column space.
 
I´ve only had a chance to go and have a quick look at the site and sign up for the trial version notification but it looks as though they might have put a fair few improvements in it (especially Dreamweaver) that could make it worth the upgrade. Time to investigate!

As a web developer I´ve used countless forums, a lot of which run on vBulletin. I practically learnt PHP from Devshed Forums and think they´re quite brilliant.
 
I´ve never been an administrator of my own though (or even a mod) but we´ve now got our new site up and running on it at NHS Forum. It´s just about ready for launch so I´ll probably do a lot of posting about how it goes on for anyone out there who´s thinking about getting their own.

Marketing is a bit of a cut-throat business and so is Search Engine Optimisation, so when the idea of trying some Cloaking Software was being bounced around the office I thought I´d find out a bit more about it before saying no. I won´t go into how it works here since it´s mentioned enough elsewhere, but after looking around I think it´s a bad idea.

 
The main one I looked at was searchenginecloaker.com since it was at the top of the paid ads on google. The first thing I noticed was that the site was blacklisted by google (and before you come on and say "We´re on MSN though!", yeah - them lot are really ethical! Oh, and MSN fans, don´t bother trying to stick up for them - I don´t care).
 
Next thing that I noticed was this guys marketing strategy. He´s good enough to know that forums are a good way of getting found but he always gets his comments edited for self promotion. There´s also the fact that if you try and search for Cloaking Software, most of the top results are from respectible web master forums and SEO sites recommending against them! Not exactly good advertising for them if they can´t get to the top for what they are selling.
 
There´s a few more things I found but we´ve basically decided not to bother. Not even on an unused domain to see if it would work. For a change I´ve left out all the technical stuff I usually throw in - it´s Monday after all.

 
Leave a comment, let the arguments begin! All cloaking software companies will have their links changed to whatever site I find most amusing that day.

We´re setting up a new site for students to go on and find fun stuff, put drunken pics and all that kind of stuff that I can´t do anymore since I have to wirk now. Dammit.
 
Should be up and running in a few weeks: Total Bollox. Have a look, I´ll probably be on it most days