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loadaverageZero

added: Thu, 24th November 2005 | 237 views | 1x in favourites
feed url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/loadaverageZero

Latest feed entries:

Happy Birthday loadaverageZero!

Wow, I whole year has passed by since I first fired up this Website. And in that timeframe I also added blogZero, which more or less obsoletes this news and announcements area. So, for more information on this anniversary I recommend you visit the Happy Birthday loadaverageZero! post there.

Blue Moon

Oops! I completely forgot tonight is the Blue Moon. I'm an idiot. Some links: Blue Moon on blogZero. My Web-based calendar for August, 2005 and some details on how the moon phase data is implemented via dbrowse: Moon Phase Data.

blogZero

Well, I broke down and installed some PHP-based blogging software. I've been planning on writing the thing myself, but haven't had the time lately. I probably will someday soon, when I get fed up with the quirks and incompatibilities of the existing systems. For the time being, I'm evaluating and using Serendipity, aka s9y. It's pretty slick actually, the installation is straightforward and the backend is easy to use. It has whole a slew of plugins, and uses CSS and Smarty templates so you can hack it to bits if you want to. Being a tweaker myself, this is already well on course.

OSCON Jones

If you are sorely missing being at OSCON like I am, in addition to all the regular bloggers I keep track of, Event Blogging Services has an aggregation of many others you can check out online, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

What is RSS?

Perhaps the terms "aggregator," "autodiscovery," and "feed" are part of your daily lexicon, but I am to understand that as few as 10% of Web users even know what RSS is or what to do with those orange XML chicklets. And worse, clicking on one usually results in a page full of confusing source code or the browser prompting you to download the file. These are not good results for visitors that are new to RSS. So, even though the target audience of loadaverageZero are Web developers, who presumably understand RSS well enough, I felt it was important to author a document that describes RSS in layman's terms, and explains how visitors can subscribe to my feeds.

Original Vanilla

I kind of like chocolate myself, but this is good too. If you've ever installed phpBB, or looked at it from the perspective of modern Web development, then you know that despite its many features, it falls short when it comes to standards and CSS support. It's also a PITA to install and configure to get it running the way you want it. This morning I installed Vanilla, from Mark O'Sullivan of Lussumo. I had it working and tweaked in less than an hour.

Sky Rockets in Flight

In one delightful afternoon, the pagerank for Web Developer Resource Index (drx) shot from nil to six. The gods at Google sure work in mysterious (and goofy) ways. Now, I'm not sure who should be more pleased with this turn of events, me (as a reward for all the hard work I put into it), or the 700-odd pages I'm reviewing, rating and linking to. I guess some basic arithmetic answers that question.

Basecamp Bats 500!

Over the past few days I've been pondering my next addition to the drx database, because, as a sort of mini-milestone, the author I have selected will mark the 500th contributor to the list. My guidelines are already pretty strict, but this one had to be something special. Well folks, Basecamp is it. After using it for about a week now, my conclusion is this: Basecamp is slick, there is no doubt about it.

The Pacific Northwest is Buzzing

And hopefully it isn't the sound of chainsaws. Two big events are right around the corner. If design is your gig, then plan on attending WebVisions 2005, taking place at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. If you're an Open Source/Web developer, then maybe you should hold out until August, when OSCON 2005 will be rolling in the same location. Sadly, I can't make either one. If I had my druthers, I'd make a beeline for OSCON with the singled-minded goal of meeting Larry Wall and shaking his hand. Maybe someday he'll take me for a ride in that old Datsun.

Digital Web: On Staff

I am pleased to announce that I have accepted an invitation to join the staff of Digital Web. It seems that Cal Henderson is rather busy these days, with a little thing called Flickr. Nick has assured me Cal remains the lead programmer (it is his system after all), and hopefully he will be able to continue his role at DWM when things cool off for him a bit. In the meantime, I will be working on the database backend, and the software that drives the front end.

Firefox Extensions for Web Developers

You will find many Firefox Extensions listed in drx, and they are located in almost as many categories. The goal of this page is to consolidate the best of them into one view in order to demonstrate this diversity. There are hundreds of other fine examples that are not listed here. The ones that are have been selected because they are focused on Web development, like the rest of drx.

Howto MagpieRSS: Implementing Web Developer News

By popular demand, I have authored this document to help loadaverageZero visitors understand how the dnews application was built with MagpieRSS, PHP and MySQL. If you are comfortable with these open-source tools, then you should have no problem grasping the logic from reading the source code. I will provide links to the code and data as I describe how they work together to build the interface. There are only two simple MySQL tables that make up the backend of the dnews application: news, from which the "channel selector" menu is built, and feed, which holds some details about each RSS channel. The two are bound together by a foreign key.

Best of the Best

Since drx is comprised of only high quality Web Developer resources, this list really is the Best of the Best. In no particular order, other than alphabetically. A tooltip for each review link will reveal the category for that resource. Also included are a complete list of the matching categories, and a "cloud" which displays tags ranked by the number of resources matched. Enjoy!

Using PHP and MagpieRSS to present Dynamic News Feeds

In my ongoing quest to demonstrate how the resources I review using the drx application are both pragmatic and worthwhile, I present RSS News feeds for Web Developers from several sources and in several categories.

drx/tag - Get off of my Tag Cloud

If you thought I wouldn't do it, you were living in denial. That's right folks, just when you thought I'd indexed drx to death, comes drx/tag. Complete with a silly tag cloud and all. But this has very little to do with so-called "social bookmarking", since I'm the only tagger (so far). What it has much more to do with is controlled vocabularies, or cross-referencing the resources. Examples are good: instantly find all Firefox extensions no matter what category they're in. I personally think this feature almost makes drx/search unnecessary. Enjoy.

Which one of these things is not like the other?

I would like to take a few moments this morning to apologize to my visitors for the downtime I've been experiencing in the past couple of days. In the wee hours of the morning two days ago, my hosting company initiated a planned infrastructure upgrade, which is just a fancy way of saying they were moving some fiber around.

hReview and drx

After spending an hour or so yesterday studying the hReview specification on the Technorati developer Wiki, I quickly came to the conclusion that drx is well suited for testing the new microformat. Since in essence drx is a categorized list of reviews (although I prefer to describe them as resources), and because of the modular nature of the application and its inherent metadata design, I had no trouble adapting it to the first draft of the hReview spec.

drx: Web Developer Resource Index

New features for drx! Easily find Web developer resources in over 60 different categories. Now with author, category, title and domain indexing. Also added other exciting features: recent additions and search (in beta).

Generating Dynamic CSS with PHP

Hey! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter! (You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!) Remember that old Reese's commercial? Contributing author Doug Clifton offers a new take on two great things that go great together: CSS and PHP. His article, "Generating Dynamic CSS with PHP," shows you how to sweeten your peanut butter presentation layer with a little wholesome PHP.

drx: Web Developer Resource Index

drx is a Resource Directory and Index for Web developers, designers and programmers of all skill levels. The directory focuses on standards, accessibility and open-source software, solutions and tools. Many features are already in place, and more, including search, an A-Z index, author and other metadata indexing, and RSS 1.0 feeds are coming soon.

dbrowse: MySQL Database Browser

dbrowse allows the user to examine a wide variety of information about a MySQL database including a list of tables, each table structure, properties and metadata, keys and indexing, records in each table, and the server status, variables and threads.

Web Standards, Development and Programming

Groundwork. An introduction to the Web site with News and Announcements.

Structured Help Pages with PHP

For visitors who would like a better understanding of loadaverageZero, there is a wealth of information located on this page. For programmers and developers interested in automating lengthy technical documents, read the Abstract, the Table of Contents and view the PHP source code and the resulting XHTML.

Building Modular XHTML Web Pages with PHP

A series of labs describing the process of building modular, structured and valid XHTML Web pages using the PHP server-side scripting language.

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