Tuesday, 15. September 2009, 05:38:49
linux, mobile, video
My new
Nokia N96 (yes, and then they immediately released the N97!) may not be as intuitive as the iPhone but is packed with far more features and is so much more open to exploration that it's a keeper. Not only that but clever
@LonelyBob gave me some help last night to fix a problem I'd been battling with - video conversion.
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Wednesday, 9. September 2009, 12:40:41
Currently enjoying a wonderful evening with fellow Tokyo tech-heads.
Two things of note:
1. There isn't a Japanese equivalent to CES or other big conference. Is this because there's no interest, no-one has tried it or simply because it would be so popular there's nowhere big enough to hold it?
2. Personal servers are the future. Opera Unite is not the only player in town - say hello to ServersMan for the iPhone...
Ah, good times.
Thursday, 2. July 2009, 06:11:39
web development, php
Hardly worth a whole blog post but it may help somebody...
is_numeric() is the function to use for validating numeric-only user input with PHP but unfortunately there is no is_alphanumeric(). Or so I thought.
Meet ctype_alnum().
I've seen lots of people using regular expressions to get round this, myself included, and it's not complicated but it's still nice to simplify where possible.
Tuesday, 9. June 2009, 14:20:16
japan, linux
One of the things I love about living in Japan is the surprises it throws your way.
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Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 01:13:01
web development, reference
Inspired by a
forum post I came across the other day I've compiled a list of free online checkers/validators for web developers. Please let me know if you're aware of others. (Updated 27th October 2009)
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Monday, 18. May 2009, 13:12:16
linux, opera, japanese
Like many Linux users I've never really had much luck with SCIM and Opera but I'm pleased to say I've finally found a solution: use UIM.
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Tuesday, 17. March 2009, 12:25:00
video, wii
Continuing with the Wii theme, I found out how to convert videos so they can be viewed on the Nintendo Wii.
The Wii can show videos in two ways:
- Flash videos viewed online in the Opera browser.
- AVI files viewed from a memory card in the photo channel.
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Sunday, 11. January 2009, 00:12:47
opera, wii, widgets
Just a quick note that may help widget developers.
The problem:Your widget may work well on mobile and desktop and in the widget emulator, but the version of Opera used on the Wii is a very different beast and the emulator does not reflect its quirks. Not only that, you can't download or transferyour widget directly to the Wii to see what needs fixing (or at least I couldn't find a way).
The solution:The version of Opera used on the Wii is 9.3 so to test compatibility, install Opera 9.27 on your PC and you should be OK to then fix and re-submit successfully.
The Wii user agent as reported by
BBClone.
Monday, 15. December 2008, 05:31:17
ecofriendly, business, ideas
Not technology-related but I actually had a pleasant experience while being dragged into a cosmetics shop yesterday. I tend to get turned off by the overpowering smelly stuff and fake tans of the staff, but this particular shop (a branch of Lush) had something special - popcorn!
Alas, it wasn't for eating but rather for packaging. Yes, Lush have given up using shredded paper, already an improvement on styrofoam, and since summer 2007 (got my finger on the pulse as always!) have been using popcorn to
protect their bath bombs, blocks of shampoo, etc.
The slightly in-your-face salesperson reeled off the benefits for me:
- Easily compostable (but then so is paper).
- 60% lighter than previous packaging so more efficient to transport.
- They pop the corn at their distribution centres so just the smaller kernels are shipped in. Again, more efficient to transport.
- Previously, products were wrapped in plastic to protect against ink marks from the paper but now no plastic is needed.
The downside is that they have to make it clear both the product AND the packaging are not edible. Another is that more food is being produced for packaging. Add that to the trend of food production for fuel and it puts more pressure on limited resources. On balance, I imagine the overall effect is positive but it would be interesting to see some expert analysis.
Still, it's great to see innovation and originality, although apparently not as original as I first thought. A Dutch company
tried this back in 1990 and there are even anecdotes that
popcorn was used in World War II to protect packages parachuted to recipients on the ground.
Another reminder that history has a lot to teach us about thinking outside the box.
Monday, 20. October 2008, 09:45:33
web development, firefox, opera
By accident, I came across a feature today which has pretty much made Firefox redundant for me.
I'm sure I'm not alone in reverting to Firefox occasionally for one or two key features that don't exist in Opera (or at least I haven't found them yet). The
Web Developer toolbar was my addictive feature but without wishing to sound like a cheesy commercial, all that changed when I found the
Dragonfly team's debug menu.
Although it doesn't do everything the Web Developer toolbar can do, it's got plenty to keep me productive and happy in a single browser. The only time I need fire up an orange fox, blue "e", etc. is for cross-browser testing but in an ideal world, that would be redundant too.
I highly recommend you try it out and here's an
updated version of the menu which has the addition of a feed validator, W3C HTML5 validator, headers checker and window resize options (
thanks aleto).
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