My rant about how Stikipad founders has screwed their customers attracted this comment from reader Verity, which I figure warrants a proper reply, not just a comment: It proves that it will be a long time before we dispense with…
Quick and dirty way of testing Javascript live on a website in browsers without Firebug: <form onsubmit="try { $(‘output’).innerHTML = $F(‘input’) + ’ => ’ + eval($F(‘input’)); } catch (e) { alert(e) } return false"> <div id="output"></div> <input id="input" name="input"…
Apple, please make it easier for us to consume Steve… Why is there not a single podcast I can subscribe to, so the HD versions of the most recent Apple keynote, iPhone SDK announcement, or any other reality-distortion-field-spreading event automagically…
I am going to BarCamp Copenhagen on Friday. This being my first encounter with the BarCamp concept I have pretty much no clue what I am going into, and I am both excited and a tad nervous - I mean,…
According to the HTML 4 specification a definition list can be used to mark up dialogues. Mark Norman Francis objects to this, and in “his article on 24 ways” he goes on to claiming that using definition lists for anything…
2 hours down the drain, and all I had to do: sudo port install ImageMagick sudo port install rb-rmagick…
This is a followup to my post about using YSlow to optimize websites with a warning. In that post I mention using mod_deflate to GZip encode all our text based content before delivering it to user agents supporting this. However,…
Going through my aggregated feeds today was a pain. Everyone were writing about the WWDC07 keynote stuff and I hadn’t seen it yet. So I had to stop reading and start looking . And since I blog too little these…
You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it? After launching the rewritten and redesigned BiQ I…
BiQ on Rails, Browsers, Programming, Projects, Software, Technology , 5 comments
After 6 months of evangelizing and advocating, followed by 6 more months of rewriting, and then 3 more months of building new features and enhancing existing ones, we have finally launched the new version of BiQ. Going from ASP/VBScript on…
BiQ on Rails, Programming, Projects, Software, Technology, Webdesign , 3 comments
Rails 1.2.3 was released today, primarily to fix a few bugs and compatibility issues with the recently released Ruby 1.8.6. Since the Rails team doesn’t provide an aggregate changelog and I was going through the individual changelogs to see what…
The Rails core team is cleaning up. That’s obviously a good thing, however it does leave us facing a kabillion deprecation warnings when running tests and whatnot. Unfortunately the official deprecations page appears to have been thrown together quickly after…
This is a followup to my previous rant about the state of accepting online subscriptions. A few things happened after my post. Most importantly the client met with a focus group of potential users, and - among other things -…
Around 6 months ago I started the actual progress of rewriting our existing, customer facing application at BiQ. A week or two before christmas the rewrite went feature complete. That is; all the features we want and need in the…
BiQ on Rails, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
Payment gateways, merchant accounts, transaction fees, statements, grraaaah, it’s driving me bonkers. Here’s the deal: I have a client wanting to sell subscriptions for his web application. Nothing fancy, everyone’s doing it. It should be easy finding a payment gateway…
Google Code Search is a new search on Google Labs specifically for searching through, well, source code. And what do the geeks do with it? Figure out how many fucks are in the code of various languages Find serial number…
Small plea to podcasters; Crank up the volume, we old geezers can’t hear your (probably) quality content. I’m getting close to 30 years old and apparently my hearing is already failing. Even if I crank the volume on my iPod…
Thursday marked a major step on the path to exploring Rails as an alternative for BiQ. As I’ve mentioned earlier I’ve been looking for someone to come and present Rails for us. We found Scott Raymond of Blinksale and IconBuffet…
Read the full entry, BiQ on Rails, Business, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
It seems I have stirred quite a pot around the office with my recent ravings about Rails. Today the tech-head on the board sent me this article about why Rails won’t make it into the mainstream and asked for my…
Heh, even when filling out the provided PDF on a computer and printing it, the OCR at SKAT (Danish IRS) manages to misread stuff. Substance Lab turns into Sunstance Lab….
At the day job I’m the sole developer and maintainer of a legacy ASP/VBScript system. Yes, ASP/VBScript. No, not .NET. And yes, it’s driving me insane. The code contains around 42000 lines of VBSCript drivel and 30000 lines of supporting…
BiQ on Rails, Business, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
I switch between a few different computers on a daily basis; a Windows machine at work, a Windows machine at home, and an iBook on the couch. This does cause some difficulties, one of those being about having access to…
Looks like my Windows XP has suddently started integrating my Mozilla Thunderbird into the Explorer……
As posted previously we’ve been looking to buy a printer for the home office. We ended up buying a Brother DCP-340CW from enavia.com. It arrived yesterday and these are my initial impressions….
I’ve been getting into podcasts recently, for various reasons. The concept of podcasts is great. Listening to smart and funny people is always interesting, and someones voice has a way of getting to you that letters on a screen rarely…
Looks like my birthday wishlist has been filled already. And hey, I turn 30, just like Apple, so I really deserve it!…
In a previous post I took a few easy and cheap shots at some danish web development agencies. I did this since their websites irked a pet peeve of mine. Unfortunatly, in my eagerness to rant I ended up writing…
Read the full entry, Blogging, Technology, Usability, Webdesign , 0 comments
This post is inspired by the announcement of the Danish Internet Award 2006, sporting a 1999-style website complete with Flash intro and invalid markup (They do have a weblog, though). I looked at the list of people from the grand…
Read the full entry, Blogging, Technology, Usability, Webdesign , 5 comments
An important design element that’s part of the whole AJAX business is somehow letting your user know that stuff is actually happening while the server crunches away. A common way to do so, is to add a little animated GIF…
Before you do anything else, go to fluxiom.com and check out their video. Then realize this; It’s a web application. Holy crap! I can’t wait to see it in action. If indeed the interface and interaction is as the movie…
The girlfriend and I are looking at buying a new printer. Our main criteria is that the printer must be usable from both Windows and OS X (and deliver nice quality prints, obviously). Things that would be nice in addition…
I’ve been wanting to write about the recent SONY BMG Music copy protection fiasco for a while. The whole thing is simply so messed up and I find it hard to keep my mouth shut. Short summary: SONY BMG Music…
Whoa, deja vu. They’re messing with the matrix again. And guess what? Seems noone has learned a lesson from the last glitch….
This seems to be an issue that pops up every so often on the Ruby on Rails mailing list and IRC channel and probably elsewhere. When using Lighttpd proxypassed behind Apache (this might also be true if you’re not behind…
My first Ruby on Rails project is currently being tested by some friends. Today one of them told me that it was running REAL slow for him; around 15 seconds per request! Needless to say, that’s bad (and weird, since…
Jumping on the meme bandwagon, here’s a list of my favorite Mac OS X applications (so far): Quicksilver - it took me a while to “get” this. Now, I definatly wouldn’t want to go on without it - and I…
Jabber-based, Google-sponsored Instant Messaging. Bloody hell, don’t I feel silly now for never getting my kickass Jabber client application running. Oh, and “hah” to all of you thought I was crazy when talking about the benefits of Jabber ;) Could…
For a long time David tried to persuade me that the extra cost of an Apple computer was worth it, by excitedly telling me “It’s all about the experience, man!”. I didn’t believe him until I finally caved in and…
I thought Google Maps were cool. Now Google has bridged the gap between desktop and server app and brings you the world in it’s full, texture mapped 3D glory with buildings and terrain raising out of the 2D surface making…
Update: Ah well, it was a fun experiment, but I’ve decided to scrap it again, possible in favor of something pure Javascript’ish. The AJAX preview is either too unresponsive to be worthwhile or I send way too many requests against…
A few stray impressions, thoughts, and notes for myself regarding my first days as a Mac user. Some of these could probably be solved be reading the manual, but if OS X is intuitive I shouldn’t have to, dammit! ;)…
This entry is posted from Safari on my sparkling new iBook. Yup, that’s right, I am now more or less a switcher - even though I have no plans to discard the Windows PCs just yet. So far the experience…
The Google Web Accelerator has been a wake-up call for a lot of people (myself included), and it has resulted in a lot of fingerpointing and a lot of “I told you so ages ago, I rock, you suck”. Whatever,…
Ever since it was made public, Dave Hyatt has been busy working on making Safari pass the Acid2 test. Yesterday he reached the goal. Congratulations to Safari for being the first browser to reach this milestone, and huge thumbs up…
Having followed the Ruby on Rails weblog I’ve known about Bla-bla List for some time now. However it’s appearance on Forever Geek made me figure I’d give the application a shot and try it out for size. Now, I won’t…
Open source is for people who don’t want to make money Note this wasn’t in reference to creating open source solutions, but about using open source to power your business (specifically at the database level). Who wants to prove the…
A month ago Opera CTO, Håkon Wium Lie, and WaSP publically challenged Microsoft and all other browser vendors to get their asses in gear and their browsers CSS support up to snuff. Now the goal line has been unveiled….
I have a Sony Ericsson T610 cell phone, one Microsoft Outlook 2002 (yeah, I know…), a Bluetooth dongle I’ve forgotten model and make of, and XTNDCOnnect PC. Once upon a time, they were all able to communicate with each other…
So Google apparently pulled down the GoogleX page, that I posted about linked to yesterday, from the labs. http://labs.google.com/googlex gives a 404. Luckily it can be found in their own cache. Scoble has a post with more mirrors….
What would make a MS SQL Server 2000 randomly decide that performing write operations is too daunting a task? And instead of telling people that it doesn’t want to write things anymore, it just fails to respond while the query…
I don’t get the big outcry surrounding the Google Toolbars upcoming AutoLink feature. People are crying foul, apparently because Google changes their content, that they can no longer be sure what readers see on their website, and that this is…
I put the newly launched MSN Search to the ultimate test: Searching for my name. Result #34, the last result of the bunch, was my about page. It was one of 3 results containing all 3 words from my name,…
Guide to OS X for PC to Mac converts Mac Mini benchmarks for different harddrive sizes and speeds How to turn your Mac Mini into a media center Mac Mini benchmarks compared to other Macs Mac Mini dissected Anandtech…
This showed up in my Google ads today: Apparently someone really has it in for Jens Jacob, Berlin and is willing to spend money on getting his point through. This made me wonder what other, creative, non-advertising uses people have…
The big geeky story around the blogosphere these days is the new Google Suggest feature. Drew McLellan takes you behind the scenes, Adam Stiles looks at and “hacks” the technical side of Google Suggest, and Kevin Gibbs who made the…
Jakob installs Ruby on Rails on a Debian machine - it’s not as easy as one could hope.
Thank you, Poland, for taking the stand against software patents that Denmark was strongarmed into not taking. One small step away from the US software patent conditions….
Linux sucks. Or rather; Getting to know Linux sucks if you don’t already know Linux. I don’t consider myself a total dimwit in regards to computers or command line processors and the like. As a fact, I tend to believe…
Jakob explains how he set up CVS over SSH2 on a Windows 2