Techy: Updated Software

May 20th, 2007 by Richy C. No comments »

I always find it useful to have certain software on my computer and my recent change of job (more of this at some point in the near future) has prompted me to check for updates for certain items. So here they are:

  • EditPlus (version 2.3.1 released 14th of March 2007). This has got to be the one of the best text editors out there – simple to use, has FTP built in, has syntax colouring, has set modes (for PHP, Javascript, HTML and much more) and doesn’t try to take things over. It’s shareware, so if you like it – buy it! I did (several years back) and keep on being tempted to buy another copy just for the sake of it.
  • Irfanview (version 4 released 23rd of April 2007). A simple to use very handy image viewer (handles practically every format I’ve thrown at it) and simple editor. Completely free of charge.
  • Google Earth (latest version 4.1 released 6th of May 2007). Ok, not essential – but a very useful tool (and, for some reason, not included in the Google Pack updater so it’s not that easy to keep track of latest versions). It’s nice to fly around the world.
  • Mozy Remote Backup (version 1.8.2.7, released 9th of May 2007). I think this is an excellent automatic remote backup system for Windows PCs and Macs – it’s just so easy to use and allows you to “roll back” to any backup date. And if you follow this Mozy Backup signup link – you’ll get 2.3Gb (2,304Mb) of storage space FREE of charge to automatically backup your files.
  • Thunderbird 2 (released 18th of April 2007). A nice little FREE email client to replace the expensive Microsoft Outlook email system (which has a 2Gb email limit) and Outlook Express. It now supports “tags” (like Google Email) and has a good antispam and antiphishing detection system.

What’s your “must have” programs?

Disney Help Explain Copyright Law

May 20th, 2007 by Richy C. No comments »

From Boing Boing via Stupid Evil Bastard is this Stanford University Cyberlaw documentary film program about copyright utilising Disney® copyrighted movie clips under the Fair usage act.

(Direct download link: Stanford.edu, Coral Cache)

Why Disney? Well, to me they seem to be a major copyright abuser (the Lion King character and the intro to the film is very similar to a Japanese animated series Kimba the White Lion: they even appear to have used the “Lion Sleeps Tonight” music without permission, Atlantis is meant to be similar to “Nadia: Secret of Blue Water” and “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”, characters in Aladdin are meant to be similar to ones in The Thief And The Cobbler and I’m reasonable sure there’s others), but they are also one of the main companies who keep pushing for copyright extensions (see The Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

I also don’t quite like their policies of “niceify” some stories (such as The Brother Grimm stories, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmations etc) – at least if Disney are going to make them into films (even though the stories are public domain and therefore available to be used “without fees”: something no Disney item is likely to become), they could at least keep the story intact.

(rant over)

Joke: Interesting Year….

May 18th, 2007 by Richy C. No comments »

Interesting Year: 1981

1. Prince Charles got married
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe
3. Australia lost the Ashes tournament.
4. Pope Died

Interesting Year: 2005

1. Prince Charles got married
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe
3. Australia lost the Ashes tournament
4. Pope Died

Lesson Learned? -
» Read more: Joke: Interesting Year….

Net: Code Snippets for web designers

May 17th, 2007 by Richy C. No comments »

Another quick snippet for today as I’m quite busy – in fact take 25 code snippets for web designers (including Bubble Tool Tips, Box Overs, Ajax Star rating bar, CSS Star Rating Redux, Ajax Contact Form, an online form creation utility called Wufoo, Pretty Accessible Forms, Radio and Checkbox customisations, a text renderer thingy, revised image replacement, the obligatory CSS rounded corners, cool looking CSS Speech Bubbles, even more rounded corners, vertical bar graphs just using CSS and PHP (and another method), a hover light box, Lightbox JS, CSS Image Maps, CSS Image Pop-up, Sliding Doors CSS Navigation tabs, taming lists, a design experiement in the art of navigation, navigation matrix reloaded, light weight css tabs and accessible image tab roll overs.

Phew – so much for this being a snippet on its own!

Techy Snippet: MySQL Database Schema Dump

May 17th, 2007 by Richy C. No comments »

To extract/export just the schema/design/create tables section of a MySQL table via the command line, you need to use a command such as:

mysqldump –no-data [databasename] [optional table name] -u[user name] -p > extract.sql
(enter the [username] mysql user password)

To import it again, use:

mysql -u [username] -p [databasename] < extract.sql

See also: MySQL Docs: MySQLDump.

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