Chris’ Blog

I am always looking for new ways to do things. A few weeks back I wanted to subscribe to some newsletters at work. I noticed however that my inbox (which I try to keep empty) was being cluttered with newsletters I had not yet had a chance to read. Newsletters just don’t work in my inbox for me, I’d rather have an rss feed - but these companies don’t offer them - so I started looking for an email to rss feed application. I’m not going to be specific with what I found (you can google if you are interested) but there are some that use IMAP, some that are disposable emails, but nothing that really did it for me. Then I stumbled upon something someone had written and it was just what I needed. It still works great so I thought I’d share. What I did is I created a new blog for that topic or newsletter (some go to the same blog) on blogger. I then use a filter to forward my newsletters to the blogger auto post email which is setup to publish automatically. The emails become blog posts which has an rss feed which I can then subscribe to. I even set the filter to archive the messages and mark them read (and in some cases apply a label) - I still have the email if I want to go back and read it, but now I have it as am rss feed too!

Ok, so Google created a browser. I haven’t spent a ton of time playing with it, but its worth a look if you haven’t downloaded it yet. It can be downloaded for windows only right now at http://google.com/chrome. Below are my thoughts:

1. It seems to load pages (particularly AJAX based apps) quite quickly.

2. It seems to respond quickly in general as far as switching between tabs and pages and such.

3. I like the tabs in the top bar and not having them take up the normal bar - it made the whole thing seem like it had a lot more space (although I do also have the web developer toolbar taking up a row too…)

4. I need some of my add-ons from Firefox, namely Adblock Plus. I just could not stand to use it for very long for real web searching with all the ads interrupting me…

Overall opinion - I like it but I will wait and let it develop before I think hard about adopting it as my default browser.

I have had so many problems creating buttons in IE using the dom that I had gone to just using images as buttons and adding them. Turns out there is one simple thing you can do to get it to work. Create the button, then add it to the page…

Here is what I was doing:

var button = item.appendChild(document.createElement('input'));
button.type='button';
button.value='THIS IS A BUTTON';

This code always threw an error, however if you do it this way (creating the button, and then adding it) it works fine:

var button = document.createElement('input');
button.type='button';
button.value='THIS IS A BUTTON';
button = item.appendChild(button);

Have fun dynamically creating forms that will work in most browsers!

The other day there was an article in a newsletter I skim from sitepoint, and it talked about animated css. It was really quite interesting and the link can be found here. I didn’t really see a use for his example (here) but it seemed like an interesting idea. As I thought of it I came up with a way to make it resize the image using javascript and came up with my own example. I stuck it up here. I still don’t know that its usable anywhere, but I thought it was interesting. It gives you an ability to randomize the time the lightning struck. Let me know what you think.

Well, a few weeks back I found a program called RescueTime. Cleaning out my RSS feeds today I found that JD at Get Rich Slowly had a similar post earlier this month discussing this program. I decided that I wanted to chime in myself. What this program does, is run on your computer in the background recording the programs that you are using (only the active one, not all the ones you have open.) It then updates this information to your account on the website - where you can view your statistics. I installed it on my work computer because I wanted to see how much time I spent doing what at work. I felt like I was wasting a lot of time and not working on what I was supposed to be working on. Turned out, I was spending a lot of time on my computer not doing work!

Now its not gonna be perfect because if you walk away from your computer it still records whatever is open. One way I found to increase the accuracy of the reporting was to assign a particular website as “Meeting”, “Out of Office Business”, or even “Not At Computer” (for bathroom breaks, or other things) and I just click a bookmark that points to the particular page when I am leaving the computer - then when I get my report it is more accurate.

I really like this product. It seems to do a great job at reporting the information and from the first day that I installed it I have been more careful with my time because I know that it is being recorded! (And I’ve realized how much I spend!) I think I’ll set it up on my laptop here too.

Are your Google Analytics stats messed up because you go to your site all the time? Would you like to fix that? Well Google provides a way you could block the traffic from a certain IP address. But if you are checking it from a range of computers then that doesn’t really do you any good. You can block a range but what if you use your laptop all over town and connect into different wireless access points. Or in my case when I go to school I get an new IP every day if not more. So what I decided to do was to defeat it with cookies.
The first step is to create a page that will store a cookie to the computer. For this site I added it into the submission page for these posts. No one else comes here so I shouldn’t have to worry about people accidentally getting the cookie set on their own computer. (A side benefit of having it on a page that I use a bunch is that if I clear my cookies it comes back without me having to think about it.) To create a cookie on a page using php you put this at the top:

<?PHP
setcookie (”analytics”, “no_analytics”);
?>

This sets a cookie with the name analytics and the value no_analytics set to that cookie.
Next, we put an if statement around where we record the analytics (for me this is in the header so it is called on every page.):

<?

if($_COOKIE["analytics"] != ‘no_analytics’) // if there is a cookie for this site that contains this information then the analytics will not be counted
{

?>

This If statement will check the cookie and if it exists it will not print out the javascript that sends the information to the Google servers. As long as you have the cookie set in the browsers you use, you will be able to visit the site without being counted. And if you visit from somewhere else - if you want you can hit the page, store the cookie and delete it when you are finished!

So in the past I’ve tried to come up with code so that when you click a link that “unhides” a div, that it closes the rest of them. Well today I was working on something where I needed that functionality and I thought I’d post it for all to use. I’m sure I’m not the first to come up with this, but here it is:

function show(id)

{
var divArray = document.getElementsByTagName(’div’);
var div = document.getElementById(id);
for each (divItem in divArray)
{
if(divItem != div)
{
divItem.style.display=”none”;
}
else
{
divItem.style.display = “”;
}
}
}

So when you make a call to show() you pass the id of the div you would like to show. Show(’one’); for instance would show the div where the id=”one” and would go through and hide the rest of the divs.
This code could be changed to use any type instead of just a div if desired.

EDIT: I found that in the array returned, the last element is the number of objects returned. If there were 3 divs, then it would be 3, if there were 4, then 4. You get the idea… One way to remove the problem of having the last item is putting an if statement around the if… else that already exists.
This could read: if(typeOf(divItem) == ‘object’)

Have you ever had trouble finding a program in your start menu? Well I have lots… OpenOffice.org Writer has always been the worst - It’s just never where I think it will be. Previously I have seen a whole lot of people who claimed that Launchy was a program they just couldn’t live without, and that it helps you to find and open programs more quickly. The other night I finally decided that it was time to download it and give it a try.

I AM A FAN!

It is so much help! I liked it so much I looked at skins that I could apply (found here. I couldn’t find one I really liked. I’m running the Zune Desktop theme (found here. if you want some screen shots just google “XP zune theme” on google images) There is a Zune theme for Launchy, however I wasn’t impressed. I liked the default theme, so I changed it so that it matches the Zune Desktop theme.
Here are some screenshots:

Anyway, the file can be downloaded here.

Give Launchy a try and if you like my theme let me know!

Edit: They have come out with a new version of Launchy that doesn’t work with the skin…

About 6 months ago, I signed up with a free voicemail service called Private Phone. It was great. They gave me a free local phone number I could give out as my business line, and I got emails every time I got a message. This week however, I learned that they will be discontinuing service December 15, 2007… Sad day… So I’ve been looking at other options. I found one I decided I would try. It’s called K7 - I guess only time will tell how good the service is. Two things I’m nervous about right now are that

1. They didn’t give me a local number
2. If it doesn’t receive a message in 30 days they may cancel it.

Guess I’ll have to increase my business

Last week I setup an account at Mint.com. The site is to be used as a “dashboard” for all of your finances. How it works is you first create a free account. You then log in and add a bank account to their interface. This involves giving them the name/url of the bank or credit union, and your username and password. This aspect is what made me a bit hesitant to want to give it a try. Having all of my information in one place where I don’t have any control over it makes me a bit nervous. Because of this, before signing up, I read through their information on their security. Thankfully, it looks as though they have done their best to make each transaction as smooth and secure as possible. So I decided to set an account up.

I proceeded to add my credit card account with no problems. When the account is added it uses your username and password to access and download your history from your bank. It then loads the history on its transactions page, and categorizes them. The system allows you to rename things that are confusing (including allowing you to “always rename _____ to _____”) as well as change the categories that they are set to. You then get a nice simple overview of how you are spending your money. The benefit comes however as you add additional accounts. It lists them all together in one place, or separately, so you can look at the larger picture of where your money is going.

Another benefit is that the system looks at past transactions, and suggests a monthly budget for items such as entertainment, eating out, groceries, and many others.

One downside I found was when I attempted to add my Credit Union account it came up on their list of possible accounts, however it came back to tell me that it was unable to connect with my username and password because they were wrong. I know that they are right because I tried multiple times. I sent an email in to their support, but the response I got back was not helpful and left much to be desired. The good thing for me is that I don’t actually use my credit union account that often so I will be ok to not have it in the system.

The only other thing I feel is missing is the ability to upload previous histories. It only works with histories from the time you sign up forward. Even with these two minor problems, I would gladly suggest it and point you all to it! Happy Banking! Edit: I just tried adding my credit union again and it worked fine. There goes on of my downsides