Saturday, February 05, 2005
Interfaces, Tech Support & Hair Dressers
It's been ages since I added a new entry here. I've been in Calgary for almost 3 weeks now. It has blown past fairly quickly. I haven't had any creative burst of new and nifty things work wise. That's not to say that I have not done any work, it's just been a consistent level of average work.
I completely re-worked the entire interface for the L&Y toolkit. Chris Lang has been a huge influence on my artisitc web skills since I have been working with him. It's not that I was unaware of user interface techniques, or that I couldn't accomplish what I wanted. Coder's (especially in the OSS world) tend to work on what interests them. Playing with CSS, and picky little user interface issues like changing the font one size smaller, or the font family to something different, and the background shading, and borders, and positioning etc. etc. etc. is not interesting to me. To me it is menial task. My time is better spent doing what I am good at, which is writing code.
I know that all of those things I mentioned are very, very important. Greatly important on a public website. I am a low level coder however, and what interests me is making the web site functional. It's the microsoft vs linux console scenario. I don't care if it looks pretty, the crappy software doesn't do what I need it to. Hey ... over here is something that _works_, its not the greatest looking thing, but maybe that will improve on a future revision? Since Chris is so look and feel oriented, as well as a technically gifted person, I have become accustomed to being bombarded with interface changes. I have learned a few tricks along the way, and since I was doing some work in the toolkit anyways, I decided to make a wholesale change. I must say it is for the better. I have had nothing but compliments, and I found that I have become so used to thinking about fonts, borders, and shading that I tend to notice all of that stuff more and more. Functionality still comes first, lets not forget our priorities.
I also added the WYSIWYG editor HTMArea into my code base. It's not hooked into the CMS as of yet, but I did make use of it in the toolkit. I did have to chase down a few bugs (relating to IE of course). The editor works great in Mozilla (Firefox), yet on certain versions of IE (windows 2000 version 6.0.28 or something), the actual textarea, to type in, was non existent. This was apparently not a problem on Windows XP with SP1. Apparently the problems on certain versions of IE are when the editor is within nested tables. IE does not handle the size coordinates properly within nested table cells (resets to 0), so the end result is a textarea created within an iframe of 0 pixels. :-( A simple code hack in the htmlarea.js to set the width and height to 100%, and a border around the textarea, and everything seems to be no problems.
There was a slight issue with mozilla based browsers. You could not copy and paste into the broswer. It violates the security settings, as mozilla does not allow scripts on web pages access to your computers clipboard. GAY! But I understand the reasoning, and potential security problems behind that. In order to fix it, you can install a firefox extension to edit your user files, and place some settings in the user.js tab to allow specific web sites clipboard access. Nifty! And everyone is happy again.
Yesterday was an interesting day for me. Since I re-worked the entire L&Y network to run the VPN using Linksys routers, there have been absolutely no problems that I have heard of. That makes me very happy, considering the problematic VPN setup they used to be running under. That's 5 months and not a peep from anyone. Speed seems to be up, and connections are not flaky, no more faulty hardware to deal with etc.
Telus' entire network in the province went down yesterday apparently. The two outlet offices not in the city both happen to be running on Telus. Oh the joys. I was on my way to the office, and I got the phone call from Andy Henderson about problems with the Lethbridge office, and he informed me about Telus. After quite a few minutes on the phone with John at the remote office I realized what had happened. The wonderful tech support that John had been talking to on the phone about their problems, when they first realized the lack of internet, had him reset the modem, and the router. Standard stupid techy help desk fix all for any problems you can't fix. Reset everything and start all over. John did just what he was told, he held that little reset buton in with a pen for 30 secs and reset the VPN router.
It's not really anyone's fault per se. How was the Telus guy supposed to know it's a specially configured VPN router (how many telus clients make use of that?), and John didn't realize what it really does. Now the router is set to factory defaults, and I have no information I need to reconfigure one to courier down. I can't remotely login because it's not even online anymore without the proper settings. Telus does not have true static IPs, they are all assigned by DHCP and held for your MAC address. This particualr router had a cloned MAC address to make installation easier, and like I know the MAC address of the OpenBSD firewall from 6 months ago? With the patience of John and his ability to play around and relay to me what was happening over the phone, we eventually managed to set up the correct MAC address, and configuration so I could get to it remotely and configure the VPN networks. woot! They were all back and running. No trips to Lethbridge for either Andy, and everyone is happy. John won't ever reset the router in the future. The second office didn't touch a thing, and I just logged into the main VPN router, hit the connect button on that tunnel, and bango, they were all connected again. This network is going to be the death of me I'm sure ;-)
I'm flying out to Victoria for one last trip. Well probably not the last trip, but the last major one for a while (I hope). I had some shirts made for Marshall and the girls.
Since I'm flying out on Sunday I've been organizing things before I go. I finished my company year and, and dropped everything off at the accountants. Thanks to Aaron Seigo for killing a few trees printing out my number crunching for me. Thanks Dude! I've cleaned up the clutter and band uniform parts lying around from Robbie Burns night, and now all I have to do is the dishes, laundry, and maybe run the vacuum over the place.
I got some new threads while I was here this time (like $250 I can't really afford ... but oh well). So I decided to go all out before I left and went back to see Renee at Diva Hair. I got highlights, and a smokin' haircut. Renee is totally awesome and always does a superb job on the hair. I get the "friend discount", and I always make it worth her while. Thanks babe! So I'm stylin', and ready to go again. The wheather is turning cold, so It's a good time to hit the west coast again.
ΒΆ 1:42:00 AM
I completely re-worked the entire interface for the L&Y toolkit. Chris Lang has been a huge influence on my artisitc web skills since I have been working with him. It's not that I was unaware of user interface techniques, or that I couldn't accomplish what I wanted. Coder's (especially in the OSS world) tend to work on what interests them. Playing with CSS, and picky little user interface issues like changing the font one size smaller, or the font family to something different, and the background shading, and borders, and positioning etc. etc. etc. is not interesting to me. To me it is menial task. My time is better spent doing what I am good at, which is writing code.
I know that all of those things I mentioned are very, very important. Greatly important on a public website. I am a low level coder however, and what interests me is making the web site functional. It's the microsoft vs linux console scenario. I don't care if it looks pretty, the crappy software doesn't do what I need it to. Hey ... over here is something that _works_, its not the greatest looking thing, but maybe that will improve on a future revision? Since Chris is so look and feel oriented, as well as a technically gifted person, I have become accustomed to being bombarded with interface changes. I have learned a few tricks along the way, and since I was doing some work in the toolkit anyways, I decided to make a wholesale change. I must say it is for the better. I have had nothing but compliments, and I found that I have become so used to thinking about fonts, borders, and shading that I tend to notice all of that stuff more and more. Functionality still comes first, lets not forget our priorities.
I also added the WYSIWYG editor HTMArea into my code base. It's not hooked into the CMS as of yet, but I did make use of it in the toolkit. I did have to chase down a few bugs (relating to IE of course). The editor works great in Mozilla (Firefox), yet on certain versions of IE (windows 2000 version 6.0.28 or something), the actual textarea, to type in, was non existent. This was apparently not a problem on Windows XP with SP1. Apparently the problems on certain versions of IE are when the editor is within nested tables. IE does not handle the size coordinates properly within nested table cells (resets to 0), so the end result is a textarea created within an iframe of 0 pixels. :-( A simple code hack in the htmlarea.js to set the width and height to 100%, and a border around the textarea, and everything seems to be no problems.
There was a slight issue with mozilla based browsers. You could not copy and paste into the broswer. It violates the security settings, as mozilla does not allow scripts on web pages access to your computers clipboard. GAY! But I understand the reasoning, and potential security problems behind that. In order to fix it, you can install a firefox extension to edit your user files, and place some settings in the user.js tab to allow specific web sites clipboard access. Nifty! And everyone is happy again.
Yesterday was an interesting day for me. Since I re-worked the entire L&Y network to run the VPN using Linksys routers, there have been absolutely no problems that I have heard of. That makes me very happy, considering the problematic VPN setup they used to be running under. That's 5 months and not a peep from anyone. Speed seems to be up, and connections are not flaky, no more faulty hardware to deal with etc.
Telus' entire network in the province went down yesterday apparently. The two outlet offices not in the city both happen to be running on Telus. Oh the joys. I was on my way to the office, and I got the phone call from Andy Henderson about problems with the Lethbridge office, and he informed me about Telus. After quite a few minutes on the phone with John at the remote office I realized what had happened. The wonderful tech support that John had been talking to on the phone about their problems, when they first realized the lack of internet, had him reset the modem, and the router. Standard stupid techy help desk fix all for any problems you can't fix. Reset everything and start all over. John did just what he was told, he held that little reset buton in with a pen for 30 secs and reset the VPN router.
It's not really anyone's fault per se. How was the Telus guy supposed to know it's a specially configured VPN router (how many telus clients make use of that?), and John didn't realize what it really does. Now the router is set to factory defaults, and I have no information I need to reconfigure one to courier down. I can't remotely login because it's not even online anymore without the proper settings. Telus does not have true static IPs, they are all assigned by DHCP and held for your MAC address. This particualr router had a cloned MAC address to make installation easier, and like I know the MAC address of the OpenBSD firewall from 6 months ago? With the patience of John and his ability to play around and relay to me what was happening over the phone, we eventually managed to set up the correct MAC address, and configuration so I could get to it remotely and configure the VPN networks. woot! They were all back and running. No trips to Lethbridge for either Andy, and everyone is happy. John won't ever reset the router in the future. The second office didn't touch a thing, and I just logged into the main VPN router, hit the connect button on that tunnel, and bango, they were all connected again. This network is going to be the death of me I'm sure ;-)
I'm flying out to Victoria for one last trip. Well probably not the last trip, but the last major one for a while (I hope). I had some shirts made for Marshall and the girls.
- Karen's shirt is bright YELLOW and it says "MARGARITA PRINCESS"
- Melissa's shirt is GREEN with a white collar and it says "Victoria's Next top Model".
- Marshall's is a white NAVY sleaved shirt saying "FEED ME WHEN I FORGET TO EAT"
Since I'm flying out on Sunday I've been organizing things before I go. I finished my company year and, and dropped everything off at the accountants. Thanks to Aaron Seigo for killing a few trees printing out my number crunching for me. Thanks Dude! I've cleaned up the clutter and band uniform parts lying around from Robbie Burns night, and now all I have to do is the dishes, laundry, and maybe run the vacuum over the place.
I got some new threads while I was here this time (like $250 I can't really afford ... but oh well). So I decided to go all out before I left and went back to see Renee at Diva Hair. I got highlights, and a smokin' haircut. Renee is totally awesome and always does a superb job on the hair. I get the "friend discount", and I always make it worth her while. Thanks babe! So I'm stylin', and ready to go again. The wheather is turning cold, so It's a good time to hit the west coast again.
ΒΆ 1:42:00 AM
