Aussie Ladette to Lady

I've been watching this show recently - very interesting. The basic premise is that a group of wild, unmannered young girls from Australia (the 'Ladettes') is sent to a prim and proper English finishing school called 'Eggleston Hall'. Here they are taught how to behave like proper ladies (high tea, going on hunts, baking, social skills etc.) Their progress is tracked on a week by week basis and every week the one that performs the worst gets sent home. I can recommend it! I see on Wikipedia that there is also a British version out (the original series) which was quite successful.

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Second application approved by Apple

This morning I received the good news that my second application has been approved for the IStore :) This is the first time I've published to more markets than just South Africa. The app is available for the Ipad only (which is what the client wanted) but actually contains adaptive layout so it could work on a phone as well.

IOS version Available here.

Android version available on Google Play market here.

IOS version is available in the U.S., U.K. and South African markets. If you are interested in creating your own IOS/Android applications and do not want to learn XCode - you can use ordinary HTML5/JS to do it and then compile it cross-platform using Phonegap. I use Application Craft as my preferred platform for doing this. Support is excellent and the system is fast approaching maturity.

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Mobile JS/HTML5 plugins

When I first started developing for Phonegap (soon to be Cordova if not already), I found it difficult to find a single resource where specifically touch-enabled JS/HTML plugins were listed and reviewed. So,this is my attempt at compiling a list of JS/jQuery/HTML5 plugins that work well on mobile platforms (i.e. touch-enabled, lightweight, or just interesting plugins that will spice up your UI). This page will be continuously updated as I find worthwhile items. Please feel free to make plugin suggestions.

Mobile Photo Gallery Plugins

Plugin name	Description	Platforms	Price	Link
PhotoSwipe	Awesome photo gallery/image swiper. Easy to implement as well. I've tested this on various devices with excellent results. I've also suggested that the Application Craft team convert this into a widget, which they did, so you can literally just drag and drop this component into your page if you are developing your mobile or desktop application on that platform. If you're developing for IOS, Photoswipe also supports multi-touch rotation of images in full-screen mode.	iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry 6 and Desktop all supported.	Free	Click
Royal-Slider	From their site: RoyalSlider is a cross-device jQuery image gallery and content slider plugin with touch-based navigation, fluid layout and animated caption-blocks with custom effects. Use it as content slider, image gallery, banner rotator, or even presentation. I haven't tested this on mobile devices yet but feedback on the site looks promising.	Tested on iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 4, HTC Desire and Blackberry PlayBook.	Commercial, $18	Click

User Interface Elements

Plugin name	Description	Platforms	Price	Link
Mobiscroll	A wheel scroller user control optimized for touchscreens to easily enter date and/or time. The control can easily be customized to support any custom values and can even be used as an intuitive alternative to the native select control (dropdown list). It is designed to be used on touch devices as an alternative to the jQuery UI date picker. The control is themable. You can easily change the appearance of if in CSS. It also comes with pre-defined, nice looking skins (Default, Android, Sense UI, Ice Cream Sandwich and iOS).	Tested on iOS4, Android 2.2, Android 2.3, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE9.	Free	Click

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pdf.js

Rendering PDF files in JS to a HTML5 canvas - definitely one I'll keep watching:

pdf.js

And here is the github link https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js.

First question is - I wonder if this will play well with Phonegap?

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Invest in industry specific apps

I like it - cause I make them!

Read point 4 in this article from Pete Cashmore.

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CSS transitions with Jquery?

If you are looking to hardware-accelerate transitions using CSS3 and you are using jQuery - this is one great plugin:

http://playground.benbarnett.net/jquery-animate-enhanced/

Thanks for the great work Ben!

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Merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone!

Tip - Stay away from Camp's Bay during the festive season.

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XLHost down

It seems that one of the largest hosting companies in the U.S. is down at the moment. Today when I arrived at work, all our servers in the U.S. were unreachable, as is the XLHOST home page: http://www.xlhost.com.

Great way to start the day.

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Man arrested after trying to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen

A man from Sweden was arrested after he tried to build his own nuclear reactor at home.



Richard Handl was only caught after he actually called the Swedish radiation safety authority to see if what he is doing is in fact legal (I still wonder if he would've been caught if he never made that phone call!). Mr. Handl documented the whole process in his blog (you can read it here). As it turns out, he might end up in jail for two years.

And all of this was done with an apparently defective Geiger counter - on his blog he states: "But I think there is something wrong with it, because some times it wouldn't react on high radiation."

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Handy Ubuntu commands

Find all files containing a search term and delete them:
find . -type f -exec grep -q "a particular string" {} \; -exec rm -f {} +

Forward a port through a SSH tunnel (in this case POP3):
ssh -f -N -L *:1234:*:110 user@POP3_server

Export mysql databases command-line:
mysqldump -u root -p --databases dbname1 dbname2 | gzip > databasebackup.sql.gz

Import exported databases:
cat databasebackup.sql | mysql -u root -p

Release amavisd blocked mail:
amavisd-release ID (from syslog or wherever)

Reconfigure timezone on ubuntu (NTP needs to be installed first, of course):
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Sync whole directories across ssh tunnel with rsync:
rsync -urLptgoDv -e 'ssh -p yoursshport' /sourcedir/ user@server:/targetdir

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Windows 8

Just read this article on the upcoming Windows 8:

Windows 8 - what to expect.

Metro UI. Sigh. A PC is not a tablet - and never will be.

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Cleaning up server room

Recently I decided to re-do the whole 'server room' - not a real server room mind you - our stuff is hosted in a data center at XLHost - but a whole bunch of boxes (about 10 or so) crammed into a back office that is being used on the LAN internally.

Before any changes made:




Here I started rebuilding the first of the old servers into a brand new rackmount casing. As you can see, the cabling in the place was quite a mess.




There were even boxes running on the floor.




First 3 servers rebuilt!




Rebuilt the whole lot - these are the old casings I threw out.




I ordered a brand new server cabinet:




Sorting out cabling was another story altogether...






Server cabinet installed and powered up:



Back of new server cabinet:




Finally, we have a place that looks decent:

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SA passport?

Ever wondered which countries you can visit without a visa if you are a South African citizen? There aren't all that many but some of them surprised me. I really didn't think Ireland would be included on the list, in fact I didn't think we were able to go anywhere in Europe.

South America seems to be the way to go.

Have a look at an article from Getaway magazine here.

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Wizzit Internet Banking (IWIZZ)

For years now, I have been using Wizzit as my bank. Cellphone banking using their *120*949# (on Vodacom) system is an absolute breeze. As good as the mobile banking is, they are also running the worst ever online banking site I have ever come across. EVER.


Most of the time you get greeted with a message like this when logging in:





And then the site just dies. The SMS notifications boxes for payments are always greyed out as well and the site looks like it was made by a blind person with absolutely no regard for style or usability.


If they don't shape up soon I am having my salary deposited into my Capitec account. Mobile payments work well for a quick transfer, but when you have to do end-of-month bill payments it is just too tedious.

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My first 3D Android application

OK, so I finally got around to creating my first 3D program for Android. It is very basic but it is a first step.

Move around by moving your finger on the bottom left of the screen, and look around by using the bottom right. The app starts up automatically in landscape mode.

I've only tested this on the HTC Desire and compiled it for ArmV7 - so I am not sure for which Android phones it will work.

Download link: http://www.ebudget.co.za/ruan3d.apk

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Mozilla, you are letting us down!

The latest update of Firefox crashes, on average, twice a day on my (normally stable) PC running Windows 7 Pro. Add onto that the HUGE amounts of memory it consumes and it is slowly starting to become my second choice when compared to Chrome. If Firebug was fully ported to Chrome, I'd uninstall Firefox in a second and never look back.

I am not the only one either. Come on Mozilla - we expect more!

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Need ringtones?

How about just using a youtube video. This tool is fucking awesome:

Video2ringtone

Any youtube video (or part thereof - which is the good bit) instantly converted to MP3 for your cell.

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Wish upon a hero

Found this really interesting site called 'Wish upon a Hero' today. It basically connects people in need with people who are able to assist them. As can be expected, most of these 'wishes' are of a financial nature (mostly single mothers struggling) but there's also some really weird ones, like this.

Not a lot of wishes from South Africa though.

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I've found it!

The end of the internet is here.

I've also been looking for a live map of the whole internet - it seems something like that doesn't exist (yet). Found some cool static maps online though:

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Handy script - remove e-mails from the postfix queue with a certain FROM or TO address

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
# pfdel - deletes message containing specified address from
# Postfix queue. Matches either sender or recipient address.
#
# Usage: pfdel
#

use strict;

# Change these paths if necessary.
my $LISTQ = "/usr/sbin/postqueue -p";
my $POSTSUPER = "/usr/sbin/postsuper";

my $email_addr = "";
my $qid = "";
my $euid = $>;

if ( @ARGV != 1 ) {
die "Usage: pfdel \n";
} else {
$email_addr = $ARGV[0];
}

if ( $euid != 0 ) {
die "You must be root to delete queue files.\n";
}


open(QUEUE, "$LISTQ |") ||
die "Can't get pipe to $LISTQ: $!\n";

my $entry = ; # skip single header line
$/ = ""; # Rest of queue entries print on
# multiple lines.
while ( $entry = ) {
if ( $entry =~ / $email_addr$/m ) {
($qid) = split(/\s+/, $entry, 2);
$qid =~ s/[\*\!]//;
next unless ($qid);

#
# Execute postsuper -d with the queue id.
# postsuper provides feedback when it deletes
# messages. Let its output go through.
#
if ( system($POSTSUPER, "-d", $qid) != 0 ) {
# If postsuper has a problem, bail.
die "Error executing $POSTSUPER: error " .
"code " . ($?/256) . "\n";
}
}
}
close(QUEUE);

if (! $qid ) {
die "No messages with the address <$email_addr> " .
"found in queue.\n";
}

exit 0;

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