Monthly Archive for September, 2006

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Barcamp Brussels: this Sunday!

Published on September 19, 2006 in barcamp and Brussel. Closed

Five more days to go! Some more tips for those of you who are attending Barcamp Brussels on Sunday:

How to get there

SAP Lounge: map
The SAP Lounge is located in the Arsenal complex, an old military building that is now turned into fancy offices. The address is Chaussée de Wavre 950, 1040 Etterbeek. That is on the corner of the Chaussée de Wavre and the Boulevard Général Jacques, right next to the VUB University. There is a parking for SAP Lounge visitors just before the Colruyt at the right.
Here is a map of SAP Lounge.

Sponsoring

SAP LoungeLike last time, most things have been paid for (thank you Skynet), but we are still going to need some sponsors for drinks. If you or your company would like to contribute (I will of course mention this kind gesture), please contact me on the day itself.

Fancy WordPress themes on Dreamhost

Published on September 15, 2006 in Wordpress. Closed

new WordPress themes on Dreamhost

It used to be that when you installed WordPress on Dreamhost, you only got 3 standard themes installed. Now you get a whopping 50: 2exquisite, 534, Abstrakt3c, Almost-spring, Artsemerging, Barthelme, Blue Kino, Classic, Connections-reloaded, Craving4green, Dapit_hapon, Darknight2.0, Daydream, Default, Disconnected, Durable, Fasttrack, Fluidityrs, Fspring_widgets, Greening, Hemmednoajax, Leone, Lush, Milc3, Modern, Newzen_2.0_build_105, Nineshadesgreen, Nolimits, Ocadia, Orchids, Phoenixblue, Plaintxtblog, Pressrow, Qwilm!, Rounded-v2, Roundflow, Rusty, Shadedgrey, Simply-vic, Sirius, Stripedplus, Tbs-blue, Thirteen, Tiga, Typoxp, Unsleepable, Veryplaintxt, Vslider2, Wpandreas03, Wpglass, Wpjeriko01.
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Context-aware mobile devices

Published on September 14, 2006 in mobile. Closed

RIM, the maker of the fancy Blackberry devices, has filed a patent application for a technique that allows devices to ‘guess’ in what kind of environment they are:
Blackberry

The new Blackberrys would occasionally and very briefly vibrate. This should be too short to be mistaken for a message alert but just long enough for an accelerometer inside the device to measure how much it moves. This tells the Blackberry whether it is on top of a flat table, in a person’s hand or stuffed inside a pocket.

On a table, the Blackberry rings loudly to announce a call. Inside a pocket, it shuts off the screen to save power. And while in the palm of a hand, it leaves the screen lit but switches to vibrate when it has a message to deliver.
(newscientist.com)

But that is only one way to guess the situation it’s in. If we call the above vibrate-and-sense method a kind of ‘feeling’, what if we took a look at all five senses?

  • feeling: the Blackberry already senses that last time it was used (for the screensaver function). It could also sense the last time it moved. If no movement, it is not carried by an active user, and e.g. should not use the vibration alert. The device could also monitor temperature and humidity to detect presence of a person.
  • seeing: a basic light sensor could detect day and night, or out/in a pocket or bag. In the dark, the screen lighting up when a call/message arrives has a totally different impact.
  • hearing: just monitoring background noise could tell a lot about the environment: is the user e.g. sleeping, and if so, does he snore. If background noise is > 100dB don’t use sound, only vibrate. If > 120dB, don’t even bother vibrating.
    Another way to measure might be like a radar-sensor: emit a sound of inaudible frequency and see how strong/fast it comes back.
  • smelling: biometric authentication! If the user holding the device does not smell like the owner, lock the screensaver.
  • tasting: let’s not go there. Oh wait, a tongue sensor that detects alcohol level: if too high, don’t let user send messages to his exes.

Watch out, at some point we all will give names to our mobile devices, and have actual conversations with them.

Styles should not be referenced by a <link>

Published on September 14, 2006 in webdev. 3 Comments

(If you don’t work with HTML, this next post will be of no interest to you.)

Rant: the way external CSS stylesheets are included in HTML now is not logical nor convenient.
So: <link type="test/css" href="(...).css" rel="stylesheet" /> is wrong,
it should be <style type="text/css" src="(...).css" />.

Why?

css Zen Garden
Because src is for now, href is for later

In a HTML page, there are a number of files (URLs) that have to be fetched to display:

  • any text in the document, within <h1>, <p> or <div> tags or not
  • any images, specified as <img src=”" /> (always external)
  • any iframes, specified as <iframe src=”" /> (always external)
  • any javascript, specified as <script src=”" /> (external or in-line)

There are also links to other URLs that are not for now: maybe one click away, maybe just there to be interpreted by the web browser:

  • anchor links, specified as <a href=”"></a>
  • links: prev/next, archive links, feed link, specified as <link rel=”" href=”" />

So: you need the src="" referenced files immediately, and the href="" ones not. The way stylesheets are referenced now breaks this logic.

Because <style> is for stylesheets

Why can you embed in-line CSS style information within <style> tags, but not external stylesheets? Compare that to Javascript:

Inline JS: <script>...</script> and
External JS: <script src="" />

That makes sense. The same should be possible for <style>. The way it works now is counter-intuitive and antiquated. So please add it to XHTML 1.1.