DJ Spook MusicESTABLISHED readers of my blog through the years will no doubt be thrilled to note that I have reverted to a modern implementation of a previous design as part of teaching myself how to create WordPress themes.
Should you wish to use this WordPress theme please let me know by adding a comment to this post and if there is enough interest I’ll bung it up on Google Code.
I worked on a couple of extra-curricular projects over Christmas, one being a a project for Cadburys, who are touring the country over the next six months before the Olympic Games with three podium-style stands on which punters can attempt to win one of ten pairs of tickets to the opening ceremony by estimating how long exactly 20.12 seconds is. These will appear in various shopping centres and exhibitions over the months.
Punters press the big red comedy button to start and press it again to stop, and no, they don’t have view of the screen while they’re playing. If they win there’s a winning sequence of sounds and words on the display and the operator also activates four flashing purple police lights. It’s pretty much impossible to estimate correctly, however, even if you do have sight of the screen.
My job was to create the software for this including all the graphics, which I did using my normal skill-set of HTML, CSS and Javascript/jQuery (no server-side stuff required, runs on a laptop without an Internet connection). I’m also able to push out software updates to each of the three stands over the next six months should they for some reason become necessary.
The screens in the photo below will be installed within the podium-style stands themselves and only the clock digits themselves will be visible through the aperture in the front (simulated by the crude paper surround on the screen on the right). The purple bar at the top of the screens is only visible on the operator’s laptop and contains some basic options and settings which aren’t publicly visible. The red button is custom built and contains a USB numeric keypad with a mechanism that presses the “5″ key. This then simply plugs into the laptop as a USB keyboard.
It was a nice bit of fun. It’s not a million miles away from the sort of things I used to do when I worked for 2Heads back in 2000/2001, so almost a little nostalgic. No plugins or flash either, all HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery, as it should be.
Testing the displays and the comedy red button
I’ve been working with LaTeX quite a bit recently and I came across a very silly shortcoming that some of the programs that convert LaTeX to other formats suffer from. It’s moronic, but certain of them (pandoc, I’m looking at you), don’t follow includes (i.e. \input commands).
I have a PHP script which compiles all my LaTeX source files into various destination formats, including PDF, HTML, MediaWiki markup and text, and so in order to compensate for this ridiculous incapability I added this function which creates a “flattened” version of any LaTeX file by inserting the contents of any included files at the point they are included. It’s recursive, so if those included files also include files, they too are processed.
It’s simple but effective. Pass the path to the file to flatten. A string is returned with the entire flattened file. You may need to pay attention to relative paths in your \input commands if you includes are in sub-directories.
We’re hiring for a Software Engineer at work to join our technical team based in Birmingham city centre (Jewellery Quarter). If you’re looking for a challenging PHP role and you think you might fit the bill, please do drop me a line with your current CV. Full job specification below. Please don’t be put off by the crappy website, we’re literally just about to launch its replacement :)
Glide is a rapidly growing energy and telecommunications company specialising in looking after tenants, landlords, letting agents and property investors across the UK. They supply gas, electricity, telephony and broadband services to residential and commercial customers.
They believe in hard work in an informal atmosphere that encourages people to express their ideas. They look for talented people who want to work with technology and can tackle problems in a smart and creative way. Their employees enjoy working in a challenging environment that brings out the best in them. Customers and customer service are at the heart of everything they do – their business revolves around their customers.
They have their own in-house development, customer support and sales teams and remain focused on keeping their costs low through automation and keeping customers informed through good communication. As technology evolves, they aim to bring new and improved services to their customers as early as possible.
They currently have an opportunity for a full-time senior software engineer, starting immediately, as part of their in-house software team.
The role will focus on developing their bespoke systems. Their systems are written in object-orientated PHP with a SQL database. You will need to be a highly competent programmer in PHP, SQL, Javascript, AJAX, Smarty templates, Model-View-Controller and in documenting your work. Good familiarity with Ubuntu/Debian based systems is required. Experience with invoicing routines, SVN or accountancy systems would be useful.
The role will involve working on projects to develop existing products, launch new products and services, improve internal customer service systems, update and maintain accountancy systems and invoicing scripts, debugging and diagnosing problems with their existing code base and working closely with their customer service teams. The role also includes integrating their system with multiple third party suppliers, redeveloping customer portals and revamping their website.
You will be enthusiastic about new technology, eager to learn, and will hold a degree in Computer Science or equivalent. You will be capable of managing your own time.
The company is a place where everyone can be heard. If you like the sound of this opportunity, they’d love to hear from you. Please direct your communication and correspondence through my team or direct to me. Please view the website at www.glide.uk.com for more background information to assist you with your response.
If I have any regular readers, they will have noticed that I’ve started to use my WordPress as a notebook as well as a blog. This site is more or less a general dumping ground for my online stuff that I’m willing to show the world. If you don’t understand it, then don’t worry about it.
Use Modernizr to replace the a “number” INPUT element with an normal text box and two control buttons in older browsers:
if (!Modernizr.inputtypes.number) {
document.write("<button type='button' onclick='number_field.value = parseInt(number_field.value) - 1'>-</button>");
document.write(" <input type='text' size='10' id='number_field' value='0' /> ");
document.write("<button type='button' onclick='number_field.value = parseInt(number_field.value) + 1'>+</button>");
} else {
document.write("<input type='number' size='10' id='number_field' value='0' />");
}
Saves using a cumbersome multi-line control structure for simple conditions like this:
// normal control structure
if (statement) {
$variable = true;
} else {
$variable = false;
}
// short-hand equivalent
$var = (statement) ? true : false;
// useful return statements in functions
return (statement) ? true : false;
Following on from my recent release of AGCDR (Asterisk CDR Statistics), I thought I would make an important sub-set of that project available separately. As part of writing AGCDR I wrote a reasonably extensive set of PHP classes to interact with the Google Chart API. The following chart types are supported, although some do not support all the features that the API offers:
The download contains all the classes, both in separate files and in a combined file (which one you will use will likely depend on whether or not you use class auto-loaders) plus a page of example usages to get you going.
As with AGCDR, this is currently being released as a beta so it’s not perfect and I would welcome comments, suggestions and bug reports. Please submit any comments, suggestions or indeed any code you would like to contribute via the Google Code page in order that all information pertaining to it is kept in the same place.
Here’s a gallery of examples:
I’ve been a beneficiary of the open source software community for quite some time now. Ever since downloading Slackware Linux onto upteen floppy disks in 1995, I have used and profited from the use of open source software, whether it it be an operating system, programming language, server technology or desktop application. However, up until this point I’ve never given anything back to the open source community (I really don’t count my Twitter CLI script), chiefly because every software system I have created or worked on has been proprietary and subject to non-disclosure agreements. I’m not grumbling about that, not all software is meant to be or should be open source and working on such systems has paid the bills (just about).
So, what have I written? Unhappy about the lack of a decent (and free of charge) system for analysing caller detail records (CDRs) generated by Asterisk PBX telephone systems, I decided that I would combine a number of techniques that I have learnt and developed over the past year or so to put my own package together, and it’s now at the stage where I think it could be considered a beta. This means that it’s not perfect but it’s more or less there. I’ve started hosting it over at Google Code, including a tarball download and a Subversion repository.
Where does it go from here? I’m open to suggestion, which is why I’ve published it and I would welcome comments from anyone who’s interested and/or finds it useful, whether you are a developer or just an end user. Is it useful? Does it work out of the box on your system? Is it easy to install for someone who isn’t a developer? What other features would be useful, bearing in mind that the data produced by the Asterisk CDR MySQL add-on is relatively limited?
I know that the documentation is a little rough around the edges and so I shall be paying attention to that, certainly. I also want to do some really thorough and structured testing in order to ensure it’s as robust as possible. I’ve tested it, obviously, but I’ve not seriously tried to break it yet.
So please feel free to download it, either as a tarball for installation or from the Subversion repository if you would like a good look under the hood. Please submit any comments, suggestions or indeed any code you would like to contribute via the Google Code page in order that all information pertaining to it is kept in the same place. I won’t publish any comments made directly on this blog post for this reason.
* Incidentally, the MVC framework which AGCDR uses is also of my own creation and is something that I’m working on with a colleague from work. It’s called Syml and it’s also available on Google Code if you would like a gander at that separately.
I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I have a relatively basic but functional command line Twitter script, for use when you can’t or just don’t want to load the full-fat Twitter site in your web browser or you don’t want to use a third party GUI client. I received much more interest in this than I thought I would (i.e. more than zero) and so after some thought* I’ve decided to make it available to anyone who wants it.
The script, which supports a single Twitter account, supports the following actions:
In order to work, you must authorise your Twitter account with SuperTweet, and provide the script with the username and secret that you specify in your SuperTweet account. This is because the script does not support oAuth (at least, not yet). Also, if you use Twitter to post URLs (and you probably do) you will also require a Bit.ly API key. Edit the script and provide both sets of credentials at the top.
The script is self contained, containing all the various classes that it depends on in the same file. I’ve verified that it works “out of the box” on Ubuntu Linux 10.04 and Mac OS 10.6. It will probably work on many other systems too, assuming they have PHP installed. With a small modification to the first line you can probably get it to work on Windows too, but that’s as far as I can advise, you’re on your own from there. The version I use doesn’t contain the included classes as I link it to my local class library.
To get started, download the script, unpack it with gzip -d, add execute permissions with chmod +x and then type ./twitter.php commands for a usage summary. Some commands when called without arguments will present further usage summaries which will tell you how to use them. You’ll probably want to start with something like:
./twitter.php update "Testing @stuartford's pitiful command line Twitter script."
Don’t forget to add your Twitter and Bit.ly credentials to the top of the script otherwise it definitely won’t work first time for you and I’d rather that didn’t happen.
If you don’t understand most of this post then this script probably isn’t for you, sorry, it is what it is, no warranty, etc.
* I say it required some thought because it’s rare that I make my code available for public use. I don’t know why, because I believe I am a talented software developer, I guess it might be the slight family creative gene within me that might be forcing a behaviour equivalent to an artist who’s perpetually reluctant to show people his work, who knows, that’s one for the shrink’s chair. Certainly the script isn’t my best work, it grew out of something quick and dirty, and as any developer will tell you, anything that grows out of something quick and dirty will always be quick and dirty at its heart.
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