Bluetrait

Yes it's not even the first day yet (I need to head back in tonight), but I have some time off to write about it.
My first lecture (2 hours) was Database Fundamentals. No work done yet, just a basic introduction into the course. This looks to be quite a useful subject. We'll be learning database structure, development and queries.

The database software that we will be developing on is PostgreSQL, which is interesting. MySQL and PostgreSQL are the two most popular open source database systems. PostgreSQL is known for its stability while MySQL is known for speed.

It will be very interesting learning PostgreSQL as I've mainly used MySQL for all my development stuff. There has always been a large debate over which is better. Hopefully I'll be able to write something comparing them. I would also be interested to see how easy it is to add support for PostgreSQL into my blog script. I currently run a basic MySQL class that sits between the queries and the database, we'll have to see if the queries are compatible with each other.

Anyway, the lecture was a good introduction into what I should expect from the course. The reason I have time to write this entry is that there are no tutorials on this week. So that lecture finished at 11am and my next one is at 8pm! This won't be the case from next week onwards, I'll be in at UNI all day.

So yeah the course looks good, we're even allowed to do some web based development for one of the assignments. Cool, should be good.

In recent years there has been a shift from table based layout to using CSS. Finally people are realising that tables are not meant for layout.

The concept of using CSS is to separate content from formatting. This allows for a greater audience. Such as people who use screen readers or those browsing via a mobile phone. CSS has a nice way of "falling back" if the device doesn't support it.

With html you are also given the meta tag "media" for use within the style tag. This allows you to define what CSS style will be use for a certain device, i.e screen, print or handheld.

The World Wide Web Consortium states that

Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media.

Now although we are moving away from tables they still have a use. Tabular data. Tables should really only be used for this. An example is in this post.

So by all means use tables, but please use them for their intended purpose.

Let us see if this comes out correctly, I think I'll need to hack at my filter thing...

Apple have upgraded their ipod range.

We now have the 30gb and 60gb ipod photo (which are now cheaper). But the bigger upgrade is the ipod mini. Now with 6gb storage and 18 hour battery life. Pretty cool. I would be quite happy to have one of these. They're so small and funky!

Also new firmware has been released for the older 3G ipods. This firmware adds some new features that the 4G has and makes the screen look better (also has newer menu images). Highly recommended for all 3G users.

The updated can be found here.

Link 1
Link 2

more incriminating photos

standardtm make cool bags.

I got something similar to this on my UTS camp, while I was recommended to buy this for my laptop.

Both are well made and very useful. Although I don't think they're cheap.

Highly recommended.

A few days ago ucosty moved over to his new custom written blogging tool, netBlog. One of the driving forces for this move was the excessive amount of spam his was receiving. Although wordpress has some spam filtering it isn't enough. The fact that people are now getting hundreds of spam messages each day, people don't want to spend the time deleting them.

Spam also degrades the web site. Some of the language used in these spams messages is enough to turn anyone off a website. The author also losses credibility because of these comments. It isn't their fault that the spam is there, but it is their website. Filtering systems in businesses that track key words will often block these sites too. No one wants to go to a website advertising illegal underaged sex.

So anyway, matthew (aka ucosty) is now running his custom script which should be free from this junk. He is also planing to release his script too. Great work.

Wordpress 1.5 has been released and can be downloaded here

Hey everyone,

Back from the geek camp! Which might I add wasn’t too geeky and was extremely fun.

The first thing about this camp that should be noted was it wasn’t your average crappy school camp. You could do pretty much what ever you liked, everything was optional. For example staying up until 2.30 playing poker, with our camp cash!

Camp cash was pretty cool, the lectures and 2nd year students handed out “Camp Cash” which was used for an auction on the last day (today). I ended up with a really nice Compaq carry bag for my laptop and a cool large blow up Compaq ball. Also they were auctioning off things like x-box games, office XP plus many other things.

Yesterday we spent most of the day canoeing and capsizing people.

Some societies they have at UTS are very funky, for example ProgSoc. For $10 a year we get free web hosting (Dual Opteron 2GHz), and if the storage space isn’t enough for you go and install another hard drive. So cool.

One of the more interesting activities at ProgSoc is the long range wireless project. You see UTS have this tall ugly building with a communications tower on top of it. Perfect for long range wireless. We’re in the planning (I’ve just setup a UTS ProgSoc wireless mailing list) of getting this up and running. So far the equipment for UTS has been purchased and will be installed shortly (after we work out authentication for users). So we’re going to have a massive wireless network for UTS students.

And I have line of sight to the building! Excellent.

I have some photos online, not great as I didn’t really carry my camera around all that much. I’m going to try and get pictures of the fashion parade later, which was very funny.

So yeah it was a great time.