Smashing Magazine do it again – Practika icon set

Smashing magazine release yet another top quality icon set for free.

Upgrade your Google Analytics Javascript code and avoid IE 6 errors

If you run Google Analytics on your site then make sure you have the latest version of their Javascript code running.

The old code produces errors when running in IE6. I’m not sure if it’s all the time or only in certain situations but I have now seen several sites throwing errors dialogs in IE6 when using the old GA JS.

Somewhat ironically, this page about Google Analytics tips and tricks suffers from the problem.

Kylix project files

Kylix Project Files

A Kylix project is made out of a number of files, some of which are very important (and so should not be deleted) and some of which are recreated during the save or compile process. The files are given names based either on the actual project name, or on the source module (or unit, to use the correct term) to which they relate.

When you start Kylix, it uses a default project name of Project1 and a default unit name of Unit1. The project file represents the whole application, whereas the unit typically contains the source code for an individual form. However, a unit can also be made that is unrelated to a form, containing (for example) reusable library code.

Here is a list of the more common files you will see, based on the default Kylix naming scheme:

• Project1.dpr – The project source file
• Project1.res – The project resource file, which is unused in Kylix (Delphi uses it for storing the application icon and version information)
• Project1.kof – The Kylix Options File, which is a textual configuration file maintained and used by the IDE to store settings from the project options dialog
• Project1.conf – The equivalent of the .kof file for the command-line compiler (dcc). You can readily generate Kylix applications from script files using the command-line tools, e.g.: dcc Project1.dpr
• Unit1.pas – A Delphi PAScal unit
• Unit1.xfm – The form file whose associated source code
• Unit1.dcu – A compiled version of Unit1.pas (Delphi compiled unit)
• Project1.~dpr – A backup of the project file. Unit1.~pas – A backup of the form unit
• Unit1.~xfm – A backup of the form file
• Project1 – The resultant executable compiled from your project and associated files

Could I be a freelance writer?

I’ve read quite a few blogs about writing recently. There’s a lot of people blogging about freelancing gigs.

I’d consider myself an OK writer. I can string a sentence together and get the odd punctuation mark in the right place. My blogs are readable if nothing else.

Freelancing is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and I’ve always assumed it would be a coding gig as that’s what I have always been employed to do. Maybe writing could work though.

A possible plan goes something like this:

• Setup a website offering writing services
• Put up a portfolio, which should include: SEO articles, press releases, short stories, etc
• Pitch it

Competition is no doubt fierce in this market already so I guess I’d have to keep it niche – possible targeting the town I live in and the surrounding area.

It’s me, the weirdo

I was visiting my parents with my daughter last weekend – I was on holiday from work at the time. As we were leaving I had to open the boot of my car to get something out and my Mum spotted an old 68000 assembler book that had been lying in there for manyyears.

“You’re not reading work stuff while you are on holiday are you?” she said.

“No”, I replied, “That’s not a work book, I read those for fun”.

“Oh…….”, there was a slight pause and a worried look from Mum, “I didn’t realise you were that weird”.

Thanks Mum.

Is the 16 year-old affiliate for real?

I wrote about Harrison Gervitz, the 16 year-old who is making it big with affiliate marketing, before here.

After reading his Shoemoney post I checked out his blog. He has had quite a lot of negative comments on there from people who are doubting whether he’s real. They even go as far as saying it’s his parents that are making the money and he’s just a front.

And so what if he is? If it was his parents making the money, and I don’t for a minute believe it is, and they are using him as a front then I think that’s great marketing. They’ve put a spin on the making-money-with-affiliate thing and gotten themselves some big-time exposure around the web. He has clever parents.

If it is Harrison making the money then he’d do well to ignore all the negative comments. It’s the same people who claim Shoe’s adsense check is fake and so on – and really, who give a shit? There will always be people who want to bitch and flame those who are more successful than themselves.

Harrison, just carry on making the money and doing what you do. Harrison’s blog and the Shoemoney post.

Somewhat resolute

I listed my New Year’s resolutions on here last December.

We’ve now passed the mid point of the year so I thought I’d check them and see how I’m doing.

1. Stop procrastinating.

How am I doing? Dismally. If there was a procrastination world championship then I’d be in with a good shout. Seriously, I can dick about and put stuff off with the best of them. I have ideas for at least three new additions to my hearing aid site that I’ve only barely started. There’s some good apps that I could add to it that’d be truly useful. Why haven’t I done these? No idea. I have got into the J2EE stack and picked up Python so I haven’t spent all of my time sitting around scratching my arse. Just most of it.

2. Stop smoking.

How am I doing? Up until two weeks ago, very badly. The last two weeks: excellent. I gave up two weeks ago. Six months later than I intended but better late than never.

3. Drink less coffee.

Doing well with this. I usually have one cup in the morning to wake me up and then drink Tea in it’s stead for the rest of the day.

4. Drink more water.

The coffee cut down means I have been a lot less dehydrated and adding water has been less of a concern. Even so, I have been drinking either Tea or squash during the day.

5. Get more sleep.

How am I doing? Yawn….. Really badly. I have bags under the bags under my eyes. One I go to bed I normally sleep like a log but I just can’t bring myself to go to bed early. Seems like a waste of time even though I know full well that the extra sleep is needed and would be refreshing.

So, that’s 3 out of 5. Not bad but I really need to stop scratching my arse so much.

Color Scheme Generator 2

Color Scheme Generator 2 is a pure-javascript colour picker.

I’m no designer and I know next to nothing about colour schemes or how to pick a good complement of colours but this tool makes it really easy.

You select your first colour on the wheel and then it automatically selects the colours for monochrome, contract, triad or tetrad schemes. It also has a analogic option which picks a tetratic scheme basic on a slider that defines the angle around the colour circle from your original selection.

Java FX: Where the dickens have you been?

So, looks like JavaFX is finally arriving.

It was first announced at JavaOne in 2007 (yes, seven) and it now looks they are ready to let it fly.

The JavaFX part of the Sun site has been somewhat barren for ages but it has been updated with some previews and stuff.

I was thinking that it might be a case of too little too late for JavaFX but now I’ve looked at their updated site and checked out the previews I’m not so sure.

The previews look nice. Not any better than Flex or Silverlight or Dojo or whatever but still very nice. It can certainly compete in terms of looks.

Integration with NetBeans will be a winner. NB is a powerful IDE and it’s gaining features all the time – there’s a preview release of NB with integrated JavaFX SDK. Not related, but NB is getting Python support soon too.

My “meh” reaction to JavaFX has suddenly turned into foaming-at-the-mouth-moist-in-the-pants anticipation.

The JavaFX scripting examples look simple enough – shouldn’t be any great shakes for existing Java devs.

Not sure what’s available for networking – presumably it’ll do web services, xml, json, etc, etc out of the box. How long do you give it before someone has created and RSS reader? Two days? Three?

ScribeFire: Firefox add-on blogging client

The quest for a blogging client continues and the next option on the block is Scribefire.

It’s a bit different to the two I’ve tried already, BloGTK and BlogDesk, in that it’s a Firefox plugin. I like to use my browser as a browser and I don’t particularly like plug-ins that try to extend a browser to do something it wasn’t designed to do. But we’ll see.

Installation was a breeze.

• Went to Scribefire site. Installed plugin and restarted FF.
• Scribefire setup wizard was excellent. I put in my blog’s URL and it came back and told me that it’s a Wordpress blog and offered some default options. Next I just put in my user/pass and that’s that. That’s how a setup should be – nice and easy.
• Get taken to a welcome page and then I hit F8 to bring up Scribefire’s window. And I’m writing this after about 2 mins setup tine.

Editor is nice. Has all the expected options plus a few nice extras.

There’s a quote button.

There’s buttons to increase and decrease font size. That’s useful – save’s having to remeber which header tag you are supposed to be using.

The insert image is OK. It lets you specify a local file or a URL. There’s an option to upload the local file using FTP or the WP XML-RPC API.

No option scale or modify the image though – that’d be nice. At the very least a “small, medium, normal or large” selector would do.

There’s a source view too, which is handy to tidy up any loose HTML created by the WYSIWYG.

Wow, just noticed the Preview pane. This rocks. It picks up my blogs theme and shows the preview using that – extremely cool.

The really nice menu options I mentioned earlier are buttons to let you drop in video or image from YouTube and Flickr respectively.

Where’s Scribefire saving my post to before I publish it?