Unpossibilities…

Installing a clean version of WordPress 2.2 also gave me a nice chance to update the theme. I've chosen to install the GlossyBlue theme created by N.Design Studio. He did an excellent job on creating this theme!

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What do you do every day, besides going to work, having dinner and walking the dog? Just like me you're probably checking out some of your favourite websites, right? You type in the URL, hit enter and wait for the website to show up. When done reading the website you move onto the next one.

Most people I know run their own website or weblog and to keep up with their stories a nifty three-letter abbreviation RSS exists. It's hard to imagine current life without RSS feeds. Everyday millions of people write articles about interesting stuff, which varies from the latest cellphone that got released to a new chemical substance that has been discovered.

Those of you who aren't familiar with RSS should watch the video RSS in Plain English. This video will describe what the three-letter abbreviation is, how it works and of course what it can do for you. Once you go RSS, there's no turning back!

I've bought an Apple MacBook 13" approximately one year ago. I've always installed Apple's updates and also kept the custom installed software up-to-date. Cleaning the laptop every two weeks even became a ritual. Though the MagSafe connector on the MacBook is starting to show all kinds of red dots: See the picture Is this the result of oxidation? Are there more MacBook users having the same thing shown in the picture? Is there any chance of damaging the MacBook. I've tried removing the red dots with a dry piece of cloth with no result. Update: I've placed the above picture on a discussionboard. Turns out more people are having similar spots, though not as big and messy as mine. Most people say it's harmless and no need to worry about it.

Have you ever wondered why most text is printed on a light background? How many times have you tried reading a full article on your computerscreen and dozed in or completely stopped reading the article? I've thought about it occasionally. Sure, articles can be boring. But you also might consider the color scheme that's being used on the article. I believe the same applies to text-editors. I'm using Textmate (by Macromates) on my Mac for programming in all sorts of languages. It has always been using its default color scheme, dark colored text on a white background. However, today I decided to invert the color scheme and was amazed how good it felt (here's a screenshot). The reason for doing this can be hard to explain. I've stumbled upon an article written by Roger Johansson about this issue. Roger published an interesting discussion on “Light text on dark background vs. readability” a while ago. When reading the comments made to Roger's article, you'll notice the different opinions people have and their reasons. Continue reading...

Today I've arranged a webhost that will be used for developing and testing our application written in Ruby (and Flex). Now you will be able to check our project progress at www.flexiblecoder.nl. This weekend (24-25 Februar) I'll be configuring our new server and will invite people to test our application. Webhosting is provided by www.jronline.nl. JR Online is one of the few companies in the Netherlands supporting Ruby on Rails. The package contains very cool features like unlimited subdomains and MySQL databases. JR Online also supports multiple Ruby on Rails projects. People in my class might have their own account and deploy their Ruby on Rails project. Project developers:

• Rudie van der Weij
• Timo Vos
• Robert Venema

Project location:

• www.flexiblecoder.nl/eval/

A picture is worth a thousand words. That's why our application will be capable of exporting data to beautiful pie graphs instead of outputting long lists of raw data. As a Mac user there are several options to develop your own Ruby on Rails (RoR) web application. I've always used Locomotive to develop my RoR web applications. Locomotive also offers you a RMagick Rails Bundle. This Bundle includes the ImageMagick package and Ruby RMagick bindings. The ImageMagick package and the Ruby RMagick bindings are the preferred tools of Rails experts for image manipulation - BUT are also notoriously difficult to properly install and configure. Locomotive spares you the pain. Just download the +RMagick bundle from the Bundles page and you're ready to go! Go check out some beautiful graph examples generated with Ruby and Gruff.

• Locomotive Official Website
• Locomotive Bundles
• Gruff Graphs for Ruby
• Gruff Documentation

We're done building the very first prototype. A survey management system built on Ruby on Rails (RoR) and Flex. While working on our first prototype, we've stumbled upon alot of development problems. One of our key-component was creating forms that consists out of questions and answers with each their own specifications. For example, a question can be either a simple yes / no question or a multiple response question. Creating this component was time-consuming and the end result not satisfying. Today we've discussed about stop using Flex and build the entire application in RoR - which we already used as a data provider with Flex - combined with some nifty AJAX. Furthermore I'm going to set up a webserver (Slackware distro) with RoR support, that will host our project. A very useful installation guide on how to accomplish this was written by Chip Cuccio. A new start, a new deadline results in a theme-update. It's called "Barthelme", which can be found at plaintxt.org.

Inspired by today's broadcast of CNN Connect "The Networked World", i'd like share my own experiences with Web 2.0 and its users, especially the elder. Nowadays more and more users are able to use the internet wherever and whenever they want. The rapid rise of online social networks is stimulating its usage even more. People spend more time online e-mailing their friends, maintaining social contacts on social networks (e.g. facebook or myspace), buy and share music...and so on. So do I. When internet became more available to the mass, people were afraid of becoming socially alienized. Nowadays I believe it has completely changed. When looking at my grandparents, they've become socially isolated. They never had the urge to use the internet. Even a simple handling like "scrolling a page" is completely unknown to them. Same goes for my parents, though my mother starts using the internet more and more. Because they don't know anything about the latest Web 2.0 hype (user generated content) which brought us websites like flickr.com and youtube.com it's not easy for me to share them my pictures and videos. While I'm taking pictures during my vacation, put them on flickr, e-mail or message a friend about the update, my parents and grandparents wait eager for me to get the digital pictures printed, videos being put on dvd (or vhs even). They no longer have an active role in the lifes of their familymembers due to lack of knowledge about internet and how to use it (also the digital devices themselves). So i state: Today older people should really be worried about being left behind in the digital revolution. There's is no longer an excuse not using a computer or cellphone, because if you don't you will socially get left behind. Start learning by doing.

• World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2007
• Surfende Senioren (Dutch)

Eval Logo Doesn't it look soooooo web2.0?! Spiffy!

Here are some good excuses that should help when you do a user test on your product...or when things don't work as planned on your assessment.

• "That's weird..."
• "It's never done that before."
• "How is that possible?"
• "It works, but it hasn't been tested."
• "It works on my machine."

Source: Full list at Under the Sun.