Anzac Day 07

Crazy Weather on Anzac Day public holiday this year (Wed, 25 April 07). Pouring rain whole day. Didn’t get to do much. the rain lasted for over a week.

TechReflection:php

(Image: Technology Reflection) Thought I might do a reflection on php before the Anzac Day break. php is more version dependent and system dependant compared to the universal html or the new xhml or java scripts we would soon dig into. If php is written for a version different from the one in the server, it won’t work. We had trouble making a few php files work although it was tested to be alright on other machines before.

This dependency isn’t necessarily a huge problem for end users as what they see is the webpages php project, rather than how the php works. The problem is more on the server side.

Database websites are extremely powerful in building online communities, forming a major driving force in online communications. php allows users to interact with database made available by website owners.

StudyReflection:GroupThing

Some of us shared the same concern on the group thing as it’s often associated with issues like fairness, which can cause a lot of headache if not handled properly.

Say you get someone who is quite used to thinking negative and happens to be technically advanced, you are likely to get more bad comments than good ones in your group assessment. For those who are not from an IT background, you certainly don’t want to enter a technical competition that is likely to mark you down. So how do we focus on learning instead?

This concern was addressed this week. The group thing we are doing is actually a lot more creative than that.

First, it’s not quite a work group kind of group as each of us does our own project independently. You don’t get the chance to blame each other for working too little or too hard

Secondarily, don’t be fooled by the word “assessment”. It’s not quite the sometimes hazardous “peer assessment” you may be thinking. Although you are “assessed” by people in your group, it’s not an academic “assessment” in traditional sense. The group feedback has nothing to do with your grade.

So the answer, if you do not already know, is that it’s going to be a support group that gives you feedback to encourage interactive learning.

Tech -xhtml validation

It took me quick a bit of trouble to get this validation thing done. But it does feel good when my work was finally validated. I also notice that I can get more details by validating the file online than off line when the file is in my hard drive.

Have a look at the following images. These are the slightly different validation results from the same file. The first validation was done when the file was in my hard drive. The second one was the result I got after the file was uploaded to the MIM server.

I also experimented the “xhtml” file extension. After I changed the file’s extension from “htm” to “xhtml”, it displayed the same as before in both explorer and firefox.

But things changed after I uploaded it to the MIM server. I first uploaded it with the “xhtml” extension, it didn’t show up in the browser at all. I double checked. The uri I used was correct. I had to change the file’s extension back to “htm”. It works perfectly since.

Joost Invite

I finally got the Joost invite after the long wait. Happy to share it. Just comment here or email me

Study Reflection

Oh well, we had a week’s break, but way to short for me. Anyway, time to do some serious writing on my chosen technology. I started to feel that all the resources I collected along the way wasn’t a waste of time. I also found some more new ones on my chosen technology. I am up to 808 words now, only a couple of hundred more to go. Maybe it’s not all that bad to have something new to study after all.

Back up your blog

My first life threatening experience in blogging.

I took some time to get my blog organised today. Just before I wrapped everything up, I found some of the posts including comments and everything attached to them were missing. There’s no way I could find them again.

I have some information and images in my hard drive, so I could possibly re-post something similar. But it would still be quite a mess as missing links would be all over the place. Out of desperation, I remembered I played with the export button a while ago to see what it could do.

I still didn’t know what exactly happened but I knew it exported a file to my hard drive. I decided to take the risk to do something with the file as it seemed to be the only hope.

This is what happened after I made the decision.

I did the export thing again to get the most up-to-date export file as a backup. Then I imported the file that I exported when I first played with the export button. I waited quite a while after pressing the import button. It’s a long wait and chances were the whole blog could be messed up completed.

The wait was well worthy. A result page finally showed up. It repaired all the missing postings including everything associated with them without messing up anything else.

Ok, it sounds simple enough to back up your blog. But I think you should actually do it. If you don’t known how, find out as soon as you can and actually do it. It could save your blog’s life

Health Book Sharing

Just got 2 copies of this book: Olive Leaf Extract. On the cover, it says over a million copies of the books were sold and it “provides valuable information on using olive leaf extract to fight invading bacteria, viruses, fungi and other harmful microbes – read inside!”

If you want to have a free copy, email me at sydneyspeaking@gmail.com or simply comment here, I will bring it to the city for you.

CSS

With the feedback we got this week, I am now able to fine tune my project and focus on CSS under the xhtml standard.

Digital Photography

Got this CD, lots of tools for making digital photography more fun.

For Flash fans: This flash intro of the CD was quite simple but elegant and works well.