I made a lot of changes to the site’s code this weekend. First of all I converted the layout from an old style table style layout to the newer more favoured div/css layout, looks the same right? That’s what it’s supposed to look like, the apparent advantage of using divs and css tags is the cross-browser compatibility, and also it apparently makes it a lot easier for search engines to read your page, therefore making your page ranking go up. It will be interesting to see if it makes any difference in that respect. The only visual change is the navigation bar, I’m using CSS rollovers which load much easier and with less issues than a javascript rollover and because it uses text links as well as images, it’s once again, better for search engines.

The other major change is all the pages, (except for the photo gallery) are XHTML 1.1 Transitional validated and CSS validated, what does this mean to the average person visiting this site? Bugger all, but it helps out my coding skills and makes the site more compatible to browsers other than Mozilla or IE. It would be XHTML Strict, but I still wish to use a few HTML atributes that aren’t used in XHTML, so transitional is the go.

Well, for most people that is possibly the most boring meaningless read ever, oh well.

I’m working on my next PHP project at the moment. This one actually has a practical use. It’s a student or child carer tracking script. It allows any coordinator to add positive and negative comments about a particular child. It uses a MySQL database to store all the information and onlu uses 2 tables, 1 for user management and 1 more the actual inputted data. I’m trying to make this script as user friendly as possible and completely fool proof. I’m using strong form validation to acheive this. It allows the user to output the data in many different ways, they can select a single or all children’s comments to be displayed, they can display only positive or only negative posts, or both, and can sort the data by any column. You can also add photos to go along with the comments. I’ve finished the bulk portion of the script and I should have a demo of it up on this site soon. The real question is what to call it. I’m Thinking Kidtrack or Kidlog, I’m leaning towards the latter. Some extra features I’m planning on adding to it are accident reporting, multiple child management with groups for schools and certificate and notice printing. But I’m just getting ahead of myself now. This app would be great for primary schools, kindergardens and child care facilities.

I promise you this whole Guns n Roses thing is a small phase, I will be over it ASAP. Choonstats

Back to work again, probably a good thing I was starting to get rather bored.

NASA World Wind

This is one of the coolest programs I’ved used in a while, and I can’t believe it’s not more widely known. World Wide Wind is a 3D Atlas, made up of satellite photos, you can zoom right out to see the whole globe, spin it around with the mouse and zoom right in on any city, and when I say right in I mean right in. In cities in the USA you can zoom in so that 1 pixle represents one metre, you can literally see people and cars. Other cities across the world you can get to 25 metres per pixel. This is a 180meg download and would probably only be decent on a broadband connection because it downloads the satellite images on the fly (although they aren’t current, the world trade centres are still in New York).

Here’s a couple of screenshots I took

Geelong, My Home Town
The Red Circle is about where my house is.

Navy Pier, Chicago
Here’s how close it can get in major US cities, those dots are people.

Went to see Ross Noble last night at the Athaneam theatre. Was a bloody funny 2 hours. You know you’ve got your moneys worth when your getting sore from laughing so much.

It’s the first time I’ve seen a single comedy act and it baffles me how one person can babble on for 2 hours and make people laugh their heads off constantly. He seemed to not really have much set material at all, just went off on tangents for half an hour and before you knew it it was over. The crazy thing is though he would never forget about the original story that he branched from. Oh and the theatre was unbelievably hot, and of course Ross Noble used that as a starting point for the night. Someone in the crowd suggested they were heating upp the theatre for Puppetry of the Penis which was on afterwards.

All round though a very funny show, and for the third time in 3 years I’m wishing I went to more comedy festival gigs. Oh well, there’s always next year.