SAJAX

I love the ideas and such of AJAX. I think it’s a really good idea. I’m looking at a lot of the ways to try to provide seemless updates to the user and think AJAX is the best thus far because it is the most compatible, followed by Flash, then ActiveX (there are actually good uses for it. did you know that?)

My problem comes from integrating AJAX back to my PHP. I have done it, but it frequently becomes messy. This is caused by the problem where I don’t directly interact with my functions and scripts. Instead, i have to pass a variable to specify which part of the script to execute, then any parameters i need. this makes the script get worse and worse as it gets more complicated. I have found a solution though.

SAJAX is the simple AJAX toolkit. It is very impressive. It doesn’t do too much other than make integrating your php funcitons directly into your javascript very easy. That is usually the code that drives me nuts so i guess this is basically a godsend for those like me. You still do all the php work and how javascript will call this, but after that, it takes care of the transaction. it has full debugging functions too (which could be more useful if you overrode them for by default they just will alert when turned on. i would suggest using redirects when someone can’t use AJAX and logging errors silently if a funciton screws up and the like.

In short, i’ve only played with it, but it is my current idea to use this in my template engine. It’s a very useful bridge. If i finish my template with it, i know i’ll be donating. Try it out.

Link: http://www.modernmethod.com/sajax/

Modding an iAudio M3

DISCLAIMER: ok, if you’re not familiar with these, this is where i basically say don’t do this.
The information expressed here is for eductational purposes only. I do not endorse or condone any activity and am in no way responsible for any reprocussion of any action taken in any way related to the information presented here. In short: do what you want with your stuff at your own risk. It’s not my fault if you screw up. If you question it, DON’T DO IT.

OK, got that out of the way. Now I bought an iAudio M3 and I love this device. It’s made by Cowon. The cool features i got it for was ogg play back (besides mp3, flak, wav, wma, and i think one or two more), excellent sound, voice recorder (used it at a conference to record it), small design, long battery life. you can see it’s full stats on the stats page. I love my player.

My problem was that i chose to go cheap and bought the 20 gb version. It didn’t take me that long to fill the hard drive and now i’ve started to become annoyed that everytime i buy a cd, i have to delete an old one. so i decided to see about upgrading the hard drive (if you don’t want to waste your time, i didn’t test a new hard drive because of price). step one should have been looking up the price of a new 1.8 in hard drive, but of course i didn’t do that first. my step one was getting the player open.

NOTE: your warrenty will be void if you open the case. i really don’t suggest this unless you have VERY good reason

the case is held shut by four VERY small screws on the back. after searching for a small enough screw driver (got mine open with a phillips number 0), the screws were easy enough to remove. note the ones on the botton are shorter than the ones on the top. after removing the screws, the back plate is very easy to remove (just don’t lose the screws). And when you look inside, you can see something like the poor picture below (it was a very low resolution camera that didn’t focus right) [you can find good pictures of the boards on the iAudio port of RockBox page (link below)].

as you can see, the hard drive is sitting right there. the problem is getting it out. that is more challenging that it might appear. on the left side of the image, you can see another circuit board (from now on called the daughter board). this is what is in your way and getting it out is not an easy task. there is one screw holding it down (the hold is outlined in red in the picture), but that’s not the challenge. to take the board out, remove the screw, then very carefully lift the left side of the board (if the player is sitting with the bottom towards you, the bottom of the daughter board if you are looking at it in the picture) first and slide it slightly towards that side of the case after the connector on the bottom is loosened. you have to get that wheel out (you will probably have to bend the plastic of the case to get it through.

from here, the procedure becomes reletively obvious: remove ribbon cable from hdd, slide hdd out. NOTE: 1.8 in hdd’s cost a hell of a lot. i did NOT install a new one, though in theory, you should be able to have the jetConsole reformat the drive properly for use. I have not confirmed this.

when you are done, put everything back in reverse order and make sure the daughter board connector (it’s right under the foam padding on that side) is pressed together. I actually fixed my busted back light by doing this and have no problems afterwards, but you must be careful.

Well, what about hacking firmware? I have yet to do this for there is only one project that i know of that has an interest in this. that is RockBox.org. They currently have their firmware running on a bunch or archos players and a couple iRiver players. an associate confirms that the iRiver port works nicely. currently, there is no iAudio port that is ready, but you can keep checking up on it at the iAudio port page. As soon as it’s ready, i’ll play with it.

Hopefully that will give you enough to think about and if anyone has done more or wants to contribute, please leave comments.

PHP for me!

I finished my study guide for PHP today. Now all i need to do is remember all that i’ve ever come across about php and… why is it that now is when i start learning so much more? it would have been nice to learn this much all along… but it’s all so wonderful to know.

So i had to get my subscription to PHP|Archetect today. now i really feel like a php geek. i’ll take my exam early august if i have the choice… in the mean time, i need to find someone’s site to develop… well, the back end for it.

oh and great news, whoever actually read this, my site is officially starting to be spammed. yup. the only comments come from a debt consolidation site. they’re using a hotmail account for email of which i’m not going to bother to try to contact yet. until it gets annoying they can post ads because they made me laugh. on their homepage, i got greeted by a php error. how awesome is that?!? laughed for like 3 minutes, then got to see their really crappy table based layout that renders horribly in any decent browser. don’t wory, it was made in imageready (adobe product). i’m curious if they even have a liscense to use it, but not my concern. made me laugh so i’m ok with them making fake posts just to put up the link.

cheers!

Projects Page

I made my downloads page a lot more complete. You can use the link at the top left or Click Here to view it. Nothing new there, just added the listing for some of my projects.

PS. Finally recieved my letter for my ap results.

I’m up for the moment!

If you were interested in blogger template, it’s been fixed so it’s correct now (especially for IE).

Blue man was very fun, as can be expected. uh… my foot still hurts from where i sliced it pretty good. Now i’m off to test out Simple Machines Forum. Seems like it has many many features and good support yet is still free. I’ll see how it is.

That’s all for now.

Tired update

Things actually happened! now i have to update…

thursday was interesting. i got attacked by a bird at argonne. people know that geese attack people there from time to time, but it wasn’t one of them. i got attacked by a sparrow. yes a sparrow. it was quite humorus. it was more humorus when i came back and it did it again.

today was fun. argonne picnic. went there followed by playing in forest. sliced the botton of my foot up pretty good and ended up very physically tired. ended up with a tick on my leg too. a little fire, bactine, and a needle got it back out. tonight, after resting, was interesting. needed to port a WordPress template over to blogger. Wouldn’t seem too hard except you must realize that that blogger bar at the top makes most reletive positioning not work. after fighting with it, i got it to look right (i think..). links are at bottom.

i just noticed that grundycountyracing.com that i spent so much time working with and debugging hasn’t even been touched. i made sure the email did send and i didn’t imagine writing it of which both are true. I have no idea what’s going on with that…

tomarrow i go to see blue men. it will be good.

links:
wp theme demo (browse the list here)
old blogger accout that now uses that theme. all css is in the page

Exhausted Success

Well, I’m exhausted, but I finished all the backends and debuging of grundycountyracing last night. It is now out of my hands to people who are far more capable of keeping this up.

So what am I going to do? Freaking sleep for one… I need it badly. The fourth is tiring anyway with all the explosives. I did have a very nice early afternoon at least, but those who need to know that already do…

So what about projects? I always have projects. Well, the first thing I need to master to satisfy myself is AJAX. It’s a really cool system that I’ll post a couple decent links at the bottom if you want to read. It’s a way to make much more dynamic web pages. Also, I have to learn everything and its sister about PHP rapidly, then schedule my exam for Certification. That seems fun to me… or going to… hurt. Anyway, I just have to work on that. I need to do something with neo shock… but… sigh. i can’t do as much as i want to. I don’t have the energy.

I’ll do what I can when I can. Next weekend is already completely planned. It looks great…

I must sleep.
AJAX links:
xml.com/…/xml-http-request.html
jibbering.com/…/httprequest.html

Preliminary Information

If you want to look at what I’m improving upon, you can look at grundycountyspeedway.com. It’s quite sad. This is my first major use to Zend Studio. It is preforming fantastically. I am very happy with the results. It will be a great place for fans, drivers, and advertisers. It will be easy for fans to see what is going on, while still easy for drivers to display what they want to display. Even advertisers will have a decent amount of control with minimal effort.

Now I have the task of making this a reality. It is a challenge. It is fun though. Tomarrow will generally be dedicated to that cause. Hopefully I will have more set up by tomarrow night. You can look at the current project at grundycountyracing.com/version2/. Please comment. I am happy to change and share what I’ve made.