Now, there’s a guy trying it for real to go from central Oregon to Idaho (let’s hope there’s no restricted airspace near him): Yahoo story

Warning: NSFW language

Eddie Izzard Lego Skits on YouTube

The quotable lines, I believe, will be:
• “Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, You”
• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ox? That’s the whole basis of trade!
• The bible journalists were here!
• Rawr (dinosaur impression)

The DC crowd was a bit antsy since the show started almost 30 minutes late and, as mentioned, the acoustics sucked. There was a lot of yelling from the audience for Eddie to this this and that, which he took graciously for most of the show. Some of his stuff did fall flat (there was a lot more of the “scribbling notes to self about not using this joke or that joke” than in the previous acts I’ve seen).

Dressed to Kill still sets the bar, but, in my opinion, this takes the second spot easily.

A couple of days ago, buzz started to build around Alltop which was built by Guy Kawasaki’s Nononina, also behind the site Truemors. Alltop is a very pretty site with a wide variety of content, but it too is based on the same content (and looking at the page sources, potentially the same code base).

If you want to build your own, I offer you my findings, code and lessons learned

Technorati Tags: php, popurls, alltop

The source code:

As this is a quick and dirty implementation, I apologize if the code base contains some minor bad practices. In most cases, I’ve adhered to standards that should allow you to unzip and deploy, but if something doesn’t quite work, take a look at the code. It was intended to be deployed on the URL news.delic.com so take a look for any part of that string if paths don’t work.

Please leave all of the GPL, BSD, CC and other licenses in the code intact, if you publish this. Any changes I have made to the code are extensions of these licenses. You are free to reuse any code I have written, but if there’s a license embedded in there, you should leave it there.

News aggregation source code (zip format, 490Kb)

System components (aka. “the credits”) and requirements

If you are interested in rolling your own version of the aggregator, I have listed the components below, along with links to some of the relevant installation instructions and documentation

PHP:

PHP core components - minimum
• PHP 4.3 or higher (including PHP 5)
• PHP’s XML extension (enabled by default)
• PHP’s PCRE extension (enabled by default)
• Either PHPmultibyte string extension OR iconv extension. There is a bug in the current version of SimplePie one or the other.

PHP core components - recommended
• Ability to change file/folder permissions (dependent on how much access your host provides)
• Both PHP’s multibyte string extension AND iconv extension.
• PHP’s cURL extension (disabled by default)
• PHP’s Zlib extension (disabled by default)

If you are hosted on Dreamhost and running PHP 5+, you will have all of the minimum and recommended components listed above available to you via the php5 default install.

SimplePie
• The PHP installfor SimplePie. Installation instructions (if you are rolling your own from scratch) begin here
• The SimplePie Newsblocks Demo Source. The documentation for the demo is also available

Javascript

• The SimplePie Newsblocks Demo contains Prototype, Script.aculo.us, and Behaviour.js, along with SweetTitles. I have replaced SweetTitles with the jQuery based ClueTip (see below) due to some text flicker issues on Firefox.
• Cluetip, which is ajQuery based tooltip replacement. The Cluetip download has all of the jQuery libraries needed (jquery 1.2.2 minimized, dimensions, hoverIntent and cluetip). Since both prototype and jQuery are being used, you will need to run jQuery in noConflict mode.

CSS/Theme

• The theme used for the aggregator is based on the black style of the Simplr theme for Wordpress, although the aggregator is not actually running Wordpress. The CSS for the theme has been modified to work with the SimplePie scripts, and can be found here.

Tips and tricks

Some lessons learned in using the SimplePie library:
1. Setting up feeds in index.php is extremely easy. For most feeds, the following code will work flawlessly:
   

   <?php echo newsblocks::render (’http://digg.com/rss/index.xml’); ?>

   The SimplePie Documentation has all of the options one might need to increase the number of articles pulled from the feed, the cache periods, etc.

2. If you need to modify the output of the SimplePie parser (for example, to just pull the image out a feed), you need to work in the /php/includes/newsblocks.inc file. Included in the newsblocks demo file is a function called render_wide which will return any images in the thumbnail enclosure. If that does not work, you may need to familiarize yourself with the PHP function preg_match_all and PCRE.

To get Cluetip to work, there are two necessary steps:

3. run jQuery in noConflict mode. In the code below, the class “ctip” has been assigned to all links that have associated tips we want to show in Cluetip:

   <script type=”text/javascript”>
   jQuery.noConflict();
   
   // Put all your code in your document ready area
   jQuery(document).ready(function($){
   // Do jQuery stuff using $
   
   $(”a.ctip”).cluetip({
   
   splitTitle: ‘|’, // use the invoking element’s title attribute to populate the clueTip…
   // …and split the contents into separate divs where there is a “|”
   showTitle: false // hide the clueTip’s heading
   });
   });
   </script>

4. Modify newsblocks.inc so that the html output for each link for each item in the rss feed contains the “ctip” class as well as the “|” delimiters for the title and body of the tooltip. Look for the code:

   $html .= ‘<li class=”‘ . $class . ‘”><a href=”‘ . $item->get_permalink() . ‘” title=”‘ . newsblocks::cleanup ($item->get_description(), $length) . ‘”>’ . $item->get_title() . ‘</a> </li>’ . “\n”;

   and change it to:

   $html .= ‘<li class=”‘ . $class . ‘”><a class=”ctip” href=”‘ . $item->get_permalink() . ‘” title=”|’ . newsblocks::cleanup ($item->get_description(), $length) . ‘”>’ . $item->get_title() . ‘</a> </li>’ . “\n”;

* = Alltop and PopURLs are registered trademarks and/or servicemarks of Nononina and Thomas Marban respectively. This site is not affiliated with them in any way.

Knights Templar Mysteries by Michael Jecks:
• “The Last Templar (Knights Templar series)”
• “The Merchant’s Partner (Knights Templar series)”
• “A Moorland Hanging: A Knights Templar Mystery (Knights Templar Mysteries)”

SPQR series by John Maddox Roberts:
• “The King’s Gambit (SPQR I)”
• “The Catiline Conspiracy (SPQR II)”
• “The Sacrilege (SPQR III)”
• “The Temple of the Muses (SPQR IV)”

Misc Other Stuff:
• “Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets” (Sudhir Venkatesh)
• “The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy” (Sasha Issenberg)
• “Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)” (Garr Reynolds)
]]> http://www.delic.com/blog/2008/02/03/reading-list/feed/ http://www.delic.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnn-headline-lawyer-clemens-upset-about-steroid-report/ http://www.delic.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnn-headline-lawyer-clemens-upset-about-steroid-report/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:39:24 +0000 rshah21 http://www.delic.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnn-headline-lawyer-clemens-upset-about-steroid-report/ Would that be because he was named in it? Or is it the ‘roid rage coming through?
CNN Story
]]> http://www.delic.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnn-headline-lawyer-clemens-upset-about-steroid-report/feed/ http://www.delic.com/blog/2007/11/04/fall-update/ http://www.delic.com/blog/2007/11/04/fall-update/#comments Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:58:07 +0000 rshah21 http://www.delic.com/blog/2007/11/04/fall-update/ Time for a generic update of how things are going: Updates on work, wedding, my (limited) free time, and travels.


Work:

• Pretty much dominating my time. Handed over the code base of the 1.0 system to the government two weeks prior, and we’ve started UAT/IV&V, which is always a “fun” time for me as the functional lead and my requirements team. But aside from a few minor things (in the overall scope of things), this thing looks like it’s going to fly
• Picked up a new major agency as a client, when one of my old clients switched jobs. Suddenly my target for sales/work has doubled. A year ago I had 2 people working for me… Now I have 17
• Trying to get my PMP certification. It’s a scam, but it ups the billing rate, and if you want to lead gov’t projects, you pretty much have to get one. Should be taking the test in early December.

Wedding:

• Date picked: October 4, 2008
• Location: We’re close. I just need to see River Farm but J thinks this is the place

Sports:

• Red Sox - I could get used to this. By “this”, I mean the four game World Series sweeps. Not the “every game is an elimination game” ALCS. The Indians looked good, and they should be there again - all they need to do is pick up a good big bat over the offseason, and they’ll be a force. This season was “better” than ‘04 in that we won the division over the Yankees (although we almost collapsed in true Sox fashion), and showcased new young talent in the process. I can’t remember any names of young impact players in ‘04 - with the exception of Youkilis - and I had the feeling at the time that the team had been put together to win that year, rather than just win period. This could be good.
• Pats - just finished watching the Pats beat the Colts to go to 9-0. I’m not sure we should have won this game really. Even putting aside the horrible officiating, the Pats didn’t play good ball on either side of the ball. For some reason, the Colts just pulled up short in the 4th quarter. The Steelers game could be this team’s undoing
• Celtics - hey look! The Celtics are relevant again. It might be worth watching them again, if I can find them on TV or the Net….

Free Time

• Games: Ratchet and Clank Future Tools of Destruction - finally something fun and playable on the PS3. Assasin’s Creed will hopefully be fun as well.
• Books. Finished Hugh Laurie’s (yeah, that Hugh Laurie) “The Gun Seller”. Started out good, ended in confusion and chaos, like he hit a wall. “The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy” was a decent read, if you enjoy sushi. Currently reading “Einstein: His Life and Universe”, after which I’ll probably finish Harry Potter (finally. Not that I don’t know the ending already)

Gadgets:

• Picked up an Archos 605 Jukebox, for videos on trips. Pretty decent device. Only issues are the charge time and the fact that when I put a screen protector on it, it pretty much ruled out the use of the touch screen (but the buttons are fine)
• Using the OGIO Metroid as my current bag, and it’s actually working out pretty well.

Travels:

• Aside from a wedding in Winston Salem, nothing to really report on. Dallas over Thanksgiving to meet J’s family. India in January to meet mine.
• But I did put some photos up of our trip to Butler’s Orchard
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