Twitter status updates

Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 26th March 2008 16:01:24 (GMT +0530)

I'm currently updating my Twitter status through the code when I make a blog post.

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England back to winning ways

Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 26th March 2008 13:01:11 (GMT +0530)

Ryan Sidebottom's heroics have given a big confident boost to English Cricket as England have beaten New Zealand 2-1 in the recent Test series which ended today. After losing the first Test, England dropped their pace duo Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard to inject some young blood into the team bringing in Stuart Broad and James Anderson. Broad and Anderson were right in business but it was Sidebottom who made a big impact on the team. His ten wicket haul in the first Test which included a hat-trick was followed by a five wicket haul in the second Test and a seven wicket haul in the third Test won the series for England.

There has been some remarkable improvement in the England batting lineup as well. Tim Ambrose, Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell made centuries during the tour and the rest of the batting line up chipped in as well. So all in all its the break that England needed as they are back in to winning ways in Test Cricket.

Summary of the series


England team with the trophy after beating New Zealand

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UNIX Cheat Sheet

Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 25th March 2008 14:58:58 (GMT +0530)

Here is a comprehensive document that has a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which can be very useful in our day to day work.

UNIX Toolbox

This document is a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which are useful for IT work or for advanced users. This is a practical guide with concise explanations, however the reader is supposed to know what s/he is doing.

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Get Back your Screen Space

Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 18th March 2008 16:17:00 (GMT +0530)

Here is a list of tweaks and extensions that would gain more space for viewing websites in Firefox

Get Back your Screen Space: Maximize Firefox Viewing Area

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Mighty Mini

Posted by Nazly on Wednesday, 12th March 2008 08:26:55 (GMT +0530)

For a long time I had this craze for cars and specially the Mini. I don't own a car though but my motorbike has fulfilled all my transport needs and really happy with that except the fact that I can take a bath when it heavily rains while riding

While I was walking by with a friend of mine I spotted this Mini parked and quickly caught it using my phone cam. The Mini is in excellent condition by the looks of it. My friend and I were really keen and found the owner of the car and asked him whether he has any plans of selling it. He had a one word answer. "No"

This gentlemen who was in front of a computer was really keen on giving us some information about the Mini. Also he shared some info related to their club. Their website URL is mightymini.lk. It was very interesting to talk with him. I have seen Minis go on road trips and I guess this is the only Mini club here in Sri Lanka. Correct me if I'm wrong. Hopefully sooner I can join this club. Of course I'm in the look out for a Mini, definitely not the New Mini

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Embedding YouTube Video as Valid XHTML 1.0

Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 11th March 2008 13:16:22 (GMT +0530)

I always wanted to embed YouTube videos to my blog posts. But when I add the YouTube code to embed videos in my blog posts, I get validation errors from the W3C Markup Validation Service. I have been very careful on maintaining my blog to be XHTML 1.0 compliant. So finally I have found the solution to sort out the issue. The main reason being YouTube's use of the <embed> tag, which has been deprecated in XHTML 1.0. So I had to modify that code a bit to suit my need to be XHTML 1.0 compliant.

This is the code that YouTube gives to embed a video to a page



I changed it to



I tested the code on all popular browsers and it works fine. If you come across any browser versions that has any problem with this code not displaying the video please do let me know with the browser and its version.

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Sidebottom hat-trick

Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 11th March 2008 12:03:48 (GMT +0530)

England's Ryan Sidebottom bagged a hat-trick during the New Zealand's second Innings, giving some hope for England to win the 1st Test between in the recently concluded Test between the two teams. England trailing by 122 runs after the first innings, bowled out New Zealand for 177 runs in their second innings thanks to Sidebottom who captured six New Zealand wickets including the hat-trick. But England needing 300 to win the match failed to capitalize were bowled out for 110 giving New Zealand 1-0 up in the series.

Here is a clip of Sidebottom's hat-trick

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100+ Resources for Web Developers

Posted by Nazly on Monday, 10th March 2008 12:31:17 (GMT +0530)

This is a fantastic list for Web Developers.
100+ Resources for Web Developers

From the Blogpost :
There is some amazing stuff out there on the Web-resources, tools, tricks, and tips. Problem is, as a Web developer, you spend so much of your time just keeping up with new technologies - learning, playing - and this doesn't leave much time to go hunting for the latest and greatest tool, or for a better way of doing things.

So we've put together a list of over 100 resources to help make your life as a developer easier; where to find snippets of code, sites that automate processes, cheat sheets, lessons, useful tools and a couple of silly videos to give your brain a break if you make it through to the end. Please enjoy!

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Rock with RSS

Posted by Nazly on Sunday, 9th March 2008 13:29:26 (GMT +0530)

Here is a list of tools that would help in managing RSS Feeds.

14 "OTHER" Ways to Use RSS Feeds

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PHP Projects u need to know

Posted by Nazly on Friday, 7th March 2008 17:36:13 (GMT +0530)

Here is list of PHP/Javascript Projects that I have been either using, keeping in track of or got to know recently. Doesn't matter if you are new to PHP or an expert in PHP, its a worthier try if you haven't got hold of them yet.

PHPMailer
Even though PHP's mail() function has been the No.1 choice for me to send an email, but PHPMailer is the ideal choice when I have to attach a file or send an email through a SMTP server with authentication.

php user class
This is a new addition to my list of classes. I haven't played around it yet, but php user class seems to be a cool class to manipulate users (login, logout, register, etc.) in web applications.

Magpie RSS
Magpie RSS can be used to parse RSS feeds.

htmlSQL class
This is one of the classes I came across recently. Its really cool. Using the htmlSQL class we can access HTML values by an SQL like syntax. Amazing ha?

Smarty
Smarty has always been my choice for a Template Engine.

StringParser_BBcode
BBcode is the best way to allow users to add bit of spice to their posts in forums, blogs etc. As a developer converting the BBcode to HTML can be bit of a tough job but StringParser_BBcode can do that for you.

easyFormProc
easyFormProc is a class that I developed that will create and handle all the process of the elements in a form. The processes include form posting, validation and retrieving the posted values. I have added few common validation functions. Custom functions can also be added.

jQuery
jQuery is a JavaScript Library that simplifies the way we write JavaScript. Handling events, performing animations, and adding Ajax interactions to web pages never been easier. This is a new addition to my list and I'm loving each an every moment of it.

tinyMCE
tinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor. It is a real life saver when it comes to developing CMS Applications that requires average users to update content.

These OpenSource projects really help a great deal in our developments. Specially when it comes to PHP, there will be always a solution already written by someone for our problem. So no need to re-invent the wheel. I would like to hear from you on PHP/Javascript projects that you have used/tried/heard during your development so it allows us to share what we know

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News updates via Twitter

Posted by Nazly on Friday, 7th March 2008 14:31:36 (GMT +0530)

If you are a Twitter fan, by now you would know that most of the news sites use the Twitter service very effectively to let the people who follow them on Twitter get the news very fast. I personally follow Slashdot, Reuters, DIGG's Tech News and Google News on Twitter and receive IM updates when a news is posted. Of course at times it can be bit irritative but I prefer being up-to-date. Twitter has options of setting the way you want to receive updates so it can be customized at any time. This is a list of news sites that use the Twitter service to update their news.

If you are a developer and want to get the advantage of notifying your viewers if you are running a news site, an articles site, job posting website or a blog, Twitter will be the ideal choice. Check the Twitter API which you can use to communicate between Twitter and your application.

Here is a simple tutorial on sending updates to Twitter from PHP Script using the Twitter API. I tested it and works like charm

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Google Search Tricks

Posted by Nazly on Thursday, 6th March 2008 17:29:43 (GMT +0530)

Here is a list of Google Search Tricks which can be really handy at times. This list mostly has the tricks that are not in the Google Cheat Sheet. I didn't know Google Search can be used to get LIVE Cricket scores. So people who cannot check LIVE scores because Cricinfo.com is blocked by the administrator at your workplace, now you have an option. Of course they won't block Google

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Enhance your Web Development Using the Firefox Web Developer Extension

Posted by Nazly on Thursday, 6th March 2008 16:13:09 (GMT +0530)

It has been bit over two years since I last posted about the Web Developer Extension for Mozilla Firefox. All these years I have been using it quite effectively on my developments and it still remains a very effective tool. If you haven't started using it yet, here is a nice article that would encourage you to start using it.

9 Practical Ways to Enhance your Web Development Using the Firefox Web Developer Extension

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Apache port 80 conflict with Skype

Posted by Nazly on Tuesday, 4th March 2008 11:57:06 (GMT +0530)

I'm not sure how many of you have come across this issue but yesterday was the first time I experienced it. I was installing Apache Web Server on a M$ windows developer machine and after completing the installation the Apache Service didn't start stating the following error.



I kept wondering for a moment what could be running on port 80 coz the machine was newly setup and it didn't have IIS or any other web server. It quickly struck my mind that once a friend of mine told me about Skype causing a conflict when he installed Apache. On this machine Skype was running already and I was logged in on Skype as well. So first thing I did was to exit Skype and started Apache. Now the Apache service started without any issues. With a little bit of research I found out that Skype was the culprit in this case because Skype uses port 80 as an alternative port for communication. Now since Apache Web Server is running, I started Skype and logged in and it was working smoothly as well. So starting Skype after Apache is started will solve the issue in one way as Skype will use a different port. But the better solution is to disable the Skype option of using port 80 as an alternative. On Skype you can do this by





Without changing this behavior in Skype, we can do the other way around as well. In httpd.conf file for Apache we can set the "listen" port to 8080 (as an alternative port) which will solve the issue but I preferred to use port 80 itself for Apache. But its just me. You have two solutions in hand and the choice is yours

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