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Paul's Journal

paul
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10/02/2010 13:55 #52879

Second Life Cash
Category: web
I can't believe how much money I was made off of this thing. My $125 original investment made in 2002 has yielded thousands.

I wish I had time to play more because I am sure I could make much more. Maybe I should stop working so hard on my real job and start concentrating on more interesting things.
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10/02/2010 13:37 #52878

border-radius rounding corner drama
Category: web
Rounded corners have been really annoying the last 10 years. Everyone loves them but there was really no easy, efficient way to produce them.

In order to make them work you needed all kinds of extra markup or images cut out and stuck on all the corners. The problem with the markup up is that even when you create a function to auto generate it serverside or with clientside javascript you end up with a ton of unnecessary markup that make managing the DOM that much harder. With the images it is even worse in that they don't scale well because they are bitmap graphics and everyone zooms now on they many devices from mobile phones to televisions.

CSS3 brought support for a new style called border-radius and the browsers began to accept it but only with their own proprietary prefixes. I don't understand why browsers do this. Before they accept the new styles they always add their own prefixes.

e.g. -webkit is safari/chrome, -moz is firefox, i.e. has nothing to do with this yet.

So in order to get the comment bubbles to appear rounded on the front page I need this.

border-radius:15px 15px 15px 15px;

Seems simple enough, but no stable browser supports that yet. Instead I need that, for when they do, and then these custom prefixed values of the same thing. Here is the mozilla one.

-moz-border-radius:15px 15px 15px 15px;

Then to make it even more stupid, chrome can't handle the shortcut of adding all the corners on one line which makes it require these four lines.
-webkit-border-top-right-radius:15px;
-webkit-border-top-left-radius:15px;
-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:15px;
-webkit-border-bottom-left-radius:15px;

This article covers it all

10/01/2010 23:30 #52874

Standardizing web buttons
Category: web
I was so curious how the buttons in google analytics are rendered so I took a look at the source. To my surprise, they were so mangled in tables and excess markup that I almost can't believe it.

They look pretty much the same in all browsers.
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But is it worth this kind of ridiculous markup. Even that table is in a nested table. Its like the web I worked with back in 2001. And those extra empty tags on either side of the text.
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My new thing is to just use buttons and let the browser render them natively. I don't care if they look different in different browsers so long as they look good and work in each. I think the days of pixel perfect matches between browsers with such diverse rendering engines is over.
tinypliny - 10/01/10 23:59
It's true for experimental approaches in Science too, btw. Someday, I want to be here, even if just to see how they do things. :::link:::

OOPS their home page is broken. Bad sign.
tinypliny - 10/01/10 23:48
Oops I meant the earlier comment to be on the Chrome-frame journal.

If little efficient things like trying out Chrome-frame is causing stuffy non-lateral thinking people heartburn, their entire stomachs will probably implode when remote monitor-only-efficient-maintenance-workstations are suggested. I am sometimes depressed by this lack of open thought and flexibility in thinking.
tinypliny - 10/01/10 23:40
At this rate, we will never get to a monitor-only-centralized-super-computing-remote-workstation-for-everyone-on-campus dream. :(

10/01/2010 23:16 #52873

Fedora 14 Release Date Approaching
Category: linux
It seems almost hard to believe but Fedora 14's release date is just around the corner on 11-02-2010. It got pushed back a little bit but not by much. The final release candidate should be out by the 19th. It seems like just yesterday that Fedora 13 came out. I love the pace at which Fedora moves. Everytime they refresh it is like getting a new computer.

The feature set is enumerated here . I already upgraded to Netbeans 6.9 on Fedora 13 so thats no as exciting as it could be. I am so curious how the default desktop background turned out - I hope it progressed from (e:paul,52182)

tinypliny - 10/01/10 23:43
That's hardly a month away! They have some smart brains working... I am slowly getting used to the new OS. What I miss the most are keyboard shortcuts that let me switch focus to the desktop, taskbar, windows, programs etc. They must exist on linux but I need to find them.

10/01/2010 22:35 #52872

Ate at blue fin again
Category: food
(e:samathon1986) and I ate at the Blue Fin Asian bistro again on Thursday. I can get over how similar it is to Wasabi. They even have the same napkins. Could it be the same people?

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tinypliny - 10/01/10 22:51
They probably heisted the cutlery and tissue when Wasabi staff weren't looking. You have blown their cover now. Tsk. Tsk.