Shutter and Lightbox
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
The last 4 hours of my life were spent integrating Shutter into the NextGEN gallery, and comparing the different features between Shutter, Lightbox, and Thickbox
Pain in the ass I tell you, not the actual plugin or coding part. But the constant need to clear the cache, edit posts, and refresh like crazy..drove me crazy. And then to top it off each browser has its own quirks which have to get sorted out.
In the end I now have my images being served with Shutter, found it to be the fastest loader and it also had a nice feature to downsize large images on the fly to fit the users browser.
[singlepic=95,118,149,,]
Yay.
One downside is that because I’m not using the Thickbox plugin, NextGEN won’t take advantage of the JQuery navigation.
Sony VAIO VGP-XL1B3 Media Changer/Jukebox
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Hardware, Media, Review
This awsome device from Sony is a definite must have for the geek in you.
At $100 from B&H, its a steal!
So on to the specs:
- 200 CD/DVD capacity
- CD/DVD writer
- DVD-R: 16x
- DVD-RW: 6x
- DVD+R: 16x
- DVD+RW: 8x
- DVD+R DL: 4x
- CD-R: 40x
- CD-RW: 24x
- FireWire interface, with daisychain support (up to 5 devices - 1000 discs)
- LinuxMCE support
Oh and it weighs 44lbs..
I would have expected a device like this to cost well above $300, and I believe when it came out it was ~$400. I think its going to be discontinued shortly so I’m eager to see what Sony will replace it with. Maybe something along the lines of this. A 400 disc changer, with audio/video output support.
Can’t wait!
For anyone thinking about buying it, and have family in NYC area, I would recomend planning a trip to visit them. As UPS to Oakville, ON costs $90. And customs fees brings the total shipping cost to just over $110, making shipping cost more then product.
Tags: LinuxMCE, Review, Sony, Technology
My day
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Events
Well as the day officially starts at 12:01 AM, mine started with me going to bed at 2:30, and having to wake up at 7.
I had to be at Staples at 7:45 to open the Computer Dept, ya well that didn’t happen as I was stuck at our crappy Tim Hortens. At its worst I’ve seen that Tim Hortens with only two employees on the night shift (its a 27/7 place), now that’s not all that bad - till you realize they’re both wearing “in training” badges. At its best I’ve seen it full of staff all doing random things with their coffee filters and bagels…but no one taking orders.
So I manage to get my order, end up half walking/half running across the parking lot and managed to get the lid of the cup filled with coffee (it was sealed). I missed the morning meeting, which was primarily focused on the copy centre - so nothing important :P
After all that I get back on the floor and notice an abundance of people on the floor already. So I ask one of the guys in the laptop area if he needs any help, he turns out to be one of those “Nah I’m just looking around..ill let you know if I have any questions” kind of customers. So I think nothing of him till I see him walk away and go up the stairs to a meeting that was being held by the GM’s of various Mississauga stores.
Damn him, he could have let me know he was a GM and not a customer…
FedEx 1 | UPS 0
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Asides
Auto changing copyright year
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Asides, Web
While working with the PHP, I managed to play with a function to auto change the copyright period.
So the site will automatically adjust the copyright on Jan 1 to say
Pavan Chander © 2007 - 2008
<?php
$my_date = the_date('Y', '', '', FALSE);
if (2007 != $my_date)
{ print ("- $my_date");}
?>
Tags: PHP
All this damn PHP is going to kill me
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
Its ridiculous, I end up spending hours on such simple things involving PHP and it turns out to be a simple error my part. For example I’ve spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out how to place the Archives link on the right hand side instead of following the other pages on the navigation bar. It involved looking through all the PHP to write the HTML tags properly, and then over and above that, playing with the CSS to get it position properly.
The CSS is where I spent the bulk of my time actually, so It’s not entirely PHP’s fault.
Phew this site is starting to actually come together, added the following:
- Last.FM scrobble info
- Technology page directory structure
- “tag” support instead of categories
and of course:
- Placing the Archives link on the right hand side
There’s still lots left to do though.
Tags: CSS, HTML, PHP, Site News
Photo gallery goes live with NextGEN Gallery
Posted by Pavan Chander | Filed under Web
Well another element of my site has been added and implemented, now its just a matter of maintaining content.
Yes, I’m talking about the photo gallery. I found NextGEN Gallery a while ago and thought it was completely unstable but after playing around with it some more tonight I figured out the source of my problems, the plugin cannot handle high resolution images. Which to many might be a shame, but I disagree, any images that I would put up on my site are meant to be easily viewable and having images that are so big that they require a great deal of scrolling defeats the purpose of sharing them. Even if in the future NextGEN Gallery starts supporting higher resolution pictures I would still only show them at around 800×600, after all if someone really wants to be able to zoom in and fill a whole screen with my nose they can ask me for the originals which I would still have…
If anyone is considering hosting their pictures on wordpress, this is definitly the plugin to try out.
Edit: As it seems no one reads the word ‘Photos‘ at the top, im providing a link.
