MooTools 1
“MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API.”
Downloads (book + cheatsheet)
Unfortunately the one bad thing about MooTools is the lack of any kind of reading material other than the documentation on the site.
However with the miracles of Screen Grabbing and some crafty PhotoShop batch processing I’ve managed to build a little PDF version of the brilliant MooTorial on ClientSide’s site.
…all praise goes to Aaron Newton at ClientSide, you are a genius!
…praise here goes to mediaVROG for updating Snook’s original work, you guys rock!
Web Resources
Links
How-To
Examples
Fighting Flu
Today I woke up and felt the oncomings of a cold, damn!
So in the interest of being Agile I thought I’d post something to help out others and tackle the beastie head-on.
Symptoms
My doctor told me that if you can see little white patches or blotches on the inside roof of your mouth it denotes a possible viral infection.
Add to that a dull stinging feeling in that area and it’s probably the first signs of a cold.
Why do I have a fever ?
If your sweating a lot don’t worry, it’s your body’s way of tackling a viral infection. What happens is your body heats up to induce your anti-bodies to work harder, hence you sweat more.
Drink plenty of fluids, orange squash (better than plain water) to combat this and keep your brain lubricated.
Dehydration leads to headaches as your essentially drying out your poor little brain cells.
Paracetamol + Caffeine
Most drugs these days like Anadin Extra or equivalent contain a small amount of caffeine, this is used to speed up the body’s absorbtion of the drug and work your anti-bodies harder.
Not a bad thing, just don’t overdo it with the coffee otherwise your heart will be unhappy.
Chocolate… Very Good!
My best cure is simply Lemsip and Hot Chocolate, and if you feel like it Marshmallows!
It takes on average 5 minutes for the body to absorb chocolate plus it’s pure energy for the little Sonny Chiba’s to fight the bad boggie boys.
Plus it makes you feel good, just remember to brush your teeth ;-)
Pointers + Tips
The easiest way to fight a bout of the Flu or a nasty Cold is to hit it head-on before it really takes hold.
- Take paracetamol when it starts
- Hydrate! (always wanted to say that)
- Take Vitamin C to feed your anti-bodies
- Try to get to bed early if you can
- Chicken soup always good
Also if you’ve got a runny nose use tissues to blow your nose and prevent sneezing. Last thing you want to do is spread it around the office, on your keyboard, ipod, etc. (it’ll happen though).
Plus dispose of the infected tissue paper daily (via toilet, trash can) to make sure the virus doesn’t linger around the premises and spread to others.
It’s a virus so treat it like one, head on and with no mercy!
Take nice hot baths to burn it out (note the point about heat speeding up your anti-bodies) and relax.
Showers are ok but Radox + Hot Baths really work.
Also curry’s and hot food also tend to work in burning out the virus.
Final Note
Above all take care, don’t overdo it and just put your feet up with a good movie; it is halloween after all.
MySQL dumps with DateStamp's
Quickie here, below is a simple command to backup your MySQL database to a fully datestamped file…
mysqldump -u user mydbname > "backup_`date +%Y%m%d_%H%M`.sql"
Replace ‘user’ with your MySQL username and mydbname with the name of the database your making a dump of.
The > pipes the output to the file.
The ‘date’ part uses Linux’s date function to append date digits inside the filename. The ’ embeds it inside the filename.
So in the end you should end up with a file something like…
backup_20071030_1700.sql
Neat!
Twittering with Skype
Just found out how to do this, major bonus, now I can twitter from my Skype account; how easy is that!
- First open Skype and click ‘Search’
- Do a search for ‘twitter4skype’
- Add them to your contacts
Now to authenticate this little Skype Robot with your Twitter account your going to have to send it a chat message, but in one line so be careful here.
- Start a chat with twitter4skype
- Type: /account
- Press shift+return together
- Type in your twitter account name
- Press shift+return together
- Type in your twitter password
- Press return
You should get a message shortly after saying ‘Registration complete!’.
Now every entry you send to twitter4skype will appear in your Twitter stream, including fully formatted html links.
Plus any posts your friends make will appear in the Twitter4Skype chat stream so you can track what your friends are doing as well as yourself.
Warning!
Be aware though that if you post anything in any group skype chats / swarms the Twitter4Skype bot will post them to your Twitter account.
Major pain!
Only way to kill it is to change your Twitter password, or change the Group chat to a Public chat.
Practically a virus!
The Skypephone
I am so getting one of these, launching in the UK on November 2nd 2007; Skype and the 3 network are releasing a mobile phone that is connected 24/7 to the Skype network so all your phone calls are now free.
Damn cool, ok you have to top-up a minimum of 10 quid a month on pay-as-you-go and it costs 49.99 but with a 2mp camera, mp3, video streaming and instant messaging via Skype how could it be bad!
Will have to wait and see.
Alternative
Alternatively if you don’t want to buy the new Skypephone and you’re on an all-inclusive data plan, like Blackberry, you could use fring.
This is a free piece of software you download on to your SmartPhone which allows you to hook up to one of the IM Services like Skype, etc. at no cost other than data.
Geocoding... Virtual Earth + Google Maps
As most will know but some still contend against, the world is indeed round; and to track a point within said world we use a system of Latitude and Longitude; and maybe the odd Harrison watch.
Now for computer’s it’s a little more complex. System’s like Google Earth and Virtual Earth use something called Geocodes.
Unlike Latitude and Longitude which operate with hours, minutes, seconds; Geocodes are point-mapped numerically to the location.
Now converting zipcodes to geocodes is simple but I’ve been looking around and apparently UK postcode -> geocodes aren’t freely available due to Royal Mail wanting cash, but I may be wrong.
Here’s some resources to get you started…
Links
Geocoding with Virtual Earth & Google Maps
Precise Map Pointing with Virtual Earth
Finding things with Virtual Earth
Reading points and plotting with Virtual Earth
Source…
