Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
I’ve been down the free software highway for about 2 years (atleast according to the date of the last backup of windows-stuff), and I figured I might share my experiences and what-not with the few people who still pop in here every now and then for a visit 
First of all, I have not been faithful to any single distribution (with the exception of the one I’m using now, which I’ve stuck by for it’s last two releases), but I’ve grown attached to and kept faithful to a couple of applications. I swear by LibreOffice, i refuse to use anything not webkit-based for web browsing (google chrome for regular browsing, luakit for some sites i need to keep open as single applications), and I tend to start looking for alternatives when sites i visit depend on flash.
I’ve found great replacements for most of my old windows software (who weren’t really rocking it in Windows 7 64bit anyways), and in many cases I can still run the windows software in Wine (a project that goes from clarity to clarity with the 1.3.X upgrades), for older software I can most of the time run it better in wine under linux than in windows xp-compatibility-mode in Windows 7.
Developing is a friggin dream when you’re not hogtied to how the manufacturer of your OS wants you to view the world. I have several version of PHP set up for web-development (one that always upgrades when my webhost does, one that keeps up with latest in the 5.X-branch, and a bleeding edge test version to play around with the latest goodies … even though it sometimes goes bang), not to mention several version of Python and fitting GUI-tools for desktop development.
Computing has become so fun again, I’ve even gotten around to playing a bunch of games. I constantly pitch in and get the newest Humble Bundle, but I’ve also been playing some of my favorite old windows games (and some of my favorite old DOS games …. yes … DOS games). Playing the GTA-series as well as Neverwinter Nights, Arcanum and a bunch of others (Like Quarantine and AMOK for DOS) better than they did in native mode is just … Well, computing the way it should be
I had to use a USB-dongle with a 3G-modem in it a while when my internet broke down, and while Windows-users might think they have a sweet deal with the drivers auto loading from the dongle and all, when I popped that dongle in the driver was already loaded. pin-code and BAM we were surfing again.
Computing is fun again! And I’m getting back to developing my own stuff again. Some good things will happen this year.
If any of this has gotten you curious, go check out Linux Mint, Ubuntu, PinguyOS, Fedora and OpenSUSE where you can download a bootable dvd and play around with while you contemplate if you too want to put the fun back into computing
Oh. And Happy Valentine! Celebrate it by doing something awesome with someone you love! I’m thinking of playing videogames with my daughter and sending money to a charity <3
Posted in IM, Personal, Programming, Technical | No Comments »
Friday, December 3rd, 2010
I’ve setup a database at the old scripttricks.com-domain and wrote a small plugin that, when activated, grabs and displays a famous quote on all of your posts.
Demo: check the bottom of the posts on this blog
Here’s the code:
<?php
/*
Plugin Name: myQuotesWP
Version: 0.5
Plugin URI: http://www.scripttricks.com
Description: Adds a famous quote to the end of all blog posts
Author: Bjorn
Author URI:
*/
function file_get_contents_curl($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
function fetch_quote($content) {
if(! is_feed() && ! is_page()) { // dont want it showing on anything but posts
$content .= file_get_contents_curl(“http://www.scripttricks.com/qu1/getquote.php”);
}
return $content;
}
add_filter(‘the_content’, ‘fetch_quote’);
?>
Save the code as “myQuotesWP.php”, copy it into your plugins-folder, activate and you’re ready to go. If you make any improvements on it or tweak, don’t hesitate to let me know, I enjoy seeing what others do with my code
You can also download it right here:
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download: myQuotesWP (532B)
added: 03/12/2010
description: Grabs a famous quote from scripttricks.com and adds it to the end of your posts. Unzip into your wp-content/plugins-folder, activate and you're set.
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Posted in New Products, Personal, PHP, Programming, web | 2 Comments »
Friday, December 3rd, 2010
If you’re doing any development, you need a set of tools that helps you finish the task at hand. For a webcoder, a syntax-highlighting editor is a must. If indentation is built in and configurable as well, that helps too.
I’ve myself used jEdit (http://www.jedit.org) for years and years and years, because not only does it do everything i want it to, there’s also an almost perverse number of plugins that does everything, from chatting on irc, playing tic-tac-toe and everything else you can think of. Plus it’s free and multi-platform.
Last few months it’s felt like jEdit has gotten a bit slow on my machine, so i figured I would try out some other applications. I’ve tried about 9 or 10 or perhaps even eleven, but I only have two editors left on the system (besides jEdit).
First up is intype. Intype is ridiculously fast on my machine not to mention the fact that it looks real good. It also has an awesome feature called “Bundles” which basically means you start typing the first part of your block, hit the tab and intype finishes the block and you fill in the details. I haven’t gotten used to it yet, but in the long run I think it’s going to save a lot of time … intype is free for the time being, but the developers have been open about it having a price when it leaves the beta stage.
After intype, i found an awesome little program called “Bend”. There has been ridiculous rumors floating around that this is a product from Microsoft, but that’s not true. Below is an image of the settings screen, which animates into view when invoked.
The editor itself is quite minimalistic, loads decently fast and is a total pleasure to work with. The system for keeping track of open tabs could be better, but in the grand general scheme of everything, it rocks.
Bend has sadly disappeared of the face of the planet, website deleted and noone saved down the source, so we’re all anxiously waiting to hear from the original author. I’ve managed to find a zipped install though, that i’ll share with you.
Visit intype HERE and download intype HERE
Download Bend HERE
Posted in Personal, Product Creation, Programming | No Comments »
