I like source code control software, I’ve used

• Copy and Paste (We all start here)
• VSS (the most hideous thing ever)
• CVS (briefly)
• Subversion (never really liked it)
• Component Software RCS (My first pleasant SCC experience, Brilliant, but now a bit outdated)
• Perforce (an absolutely brilliant main SC system, still my favourite and main SC tool)
• fossil(interesting but a bit weird),
• Mercurial (very briefly as part of the brillian fogbugz) and most recently
• git (Brilliant in its own special way, and particuarily in conjunction with github)
• I even wrote a very basic source control system in a place I once worked.

However despite having experience with almost 10 differnt source code control systems, I still end up using the wonderful Editpadpro to simply connect via ftp to these sites and make a quick little change live on the server.  If I need to do anything major I do it with Source Control, but for 2 line changes or to fix a bug I often do it online/on-production , despite breaking the cardinal rule of software.  The obvious problem here is when I introduce a problem, if I don’t catch it immediately its sometimes a bit tricky to figure out what I broke.

Now I have a solution.

My host (Dreamhost.com) has git installed on some of its servers.  I have written a simple php script called gitmysite that allows basic sc interaction on the server.  This is read only externally, and is not designed to be pushed to.  It is basically a simple change repository.  Now when I make a change via ftp or editpadpro, I can simply go to http://www.mysite.com/gitmysite.php and after logging in write a quick commit message – click a button and I have a record of what I changed.  It will add all files I changed across the entire site.  This is still in development so it is a bit rough at the moment, but take a look at it on github and send me any feedback you might have.

https://github.com/tobya/gitmysite

With the script you can

• Create a git repo
• Create a .gitignore file
• Add all files in your site to repo
• Add changed files and provide commit messages after changes.
• View Status
• View Log

I found myTinyTodo . It perfect for what I want, you can create new tabs for type of todo, there is a text box where you type your todo – hit return and it appears in your list, then click the checkbox and it dissappears.

If you need a simple Todo Manager, this one’s great.

Clone of facebook link to page code

http://youhack.me/2011/06/25/create-a-facebook-wall-system-using-php-and-jquery-part-1/

Introducing ‘Anynework.net’

I have updated the DNS on anynetwork.net to have lots and lots of fully quaified domains pointing to IP addresses within the 192.168.1.x address space.

Simple

server1.anynetwork.net – 192.168.1.1
server2.anynetwork.net- 192.168.1.2
…

server254.anynetwork.net- 192.168.1.254

Fruity

apple.anynetwork.net - 192.168.1.1
banana.anynetwork.net- 192.168.1.2

I’m in the process of writing an API so that you can get your app to request a subdomain to use for a specific ip address.

See Anynetwork.net for more details.

The only gotcha is if you’re disconnected from the net the names may not work.

Here are two really good ways to generate QRCodes.

Zebra Crossing Barcode Generator (Using Googles Charts API)

PHP QRCode Generator (Pure PHP)

Both are really good, although for volume use the zxing / google one is probably better.  I chose to use the php library as I am using client data to generate contact cards in an internal app and wasnt completely happy about sending that info to Google over the web, even though they do say they only store it in Logs for a couple of weeks.  For non-sensitive data the google chart api is a brilliant way to generate qrcodes.  Just embed the details you need into the src attribute of an img tag on your page.

There are some very good QRCode Scanners for phones, the best I’ve found for the Iphone is Barcodes from the zxing people.

I asked a question on stackoverflow.com (which is for programming questions what google is for search), which lead me to the my answer on this site.

seems to replace (!) the contents of the window, and although it replaces the url in the address bar it doesnt really refresh the page as you will notice if you try the back button as it will look like you are going two pages back.

document.location = ‘http://mysite.example.com/myurl.html’

will go to the new location.

YUI().use(''yui2-tabview', 'yui2-element', 'yui2-connection',  function(Y) {

//Do all sorts of cool things here.
});

You see this pattern all over the place, and infact it is how you use YUI3.

After watching some of the excellent videos at YUI Theatre, I figured out that it was really easy to use the YUI.add method to add my own module, but all the code I could find was one slide in the presentation which sort of described how to do it, so I thought it would be useful to do a little how to here to help people out.

Basic Module

Adding a module to YUI is super easy, so easy infact that you will never write YUI code again that isnt part of a module.  I guess thats the point.

Instead of just writing functions or objects in your .js file, do this.

YUI.add('mycoolmodule-core', function(Y){

var privatevariable = 'Private Value';

var privatefunction = function(){ //dos something };

Y.namespace('mycoolmodule');

Y.mycoolmodule.core = {

//declare object with public functions and variables.

}

}, '0.1.1' //Version String is Third parameter to add function

//,RequirementsObject  //if you wish fourth param can be a Config Object, see API reference for details.

);

Note we do not execute YUI as in the use pattern.

In the above code, the object assigned to Y.mycoolmodule.core is our public module.   The public code you would have had in your .js file is in this object, and available to your other code .  In order to use it you just need to include the .js file in your page as expected, and call use.

YUI().use(''yui2-tabview', 'yui2-element', 'yui2-connection','mycoolmodule-core',  function(Y) {

//Do all sorts of cool things here with my own module.
});

Thats it!  It works, and you have all the sandboxing that YUI provides for your code.  How brilliant is that?

How do I reference Stuff

One of the things I found confusing initially was how to reference stuff within this module structure, so I’ll show you what I did (if someone wants to correct me to make this better please do, I find the whole this, that, these, those a bit confusing).

YAHOO!

Most people are still using YUI 2 so a reference to the YAHOO object is essential, the way to do this is to declare YAHOO as a private variable in your module, which makes it available to all your module functions.

YUI.add('mycoolmodule-core', function(Y){

var YAHOO = Y.YUI2;

var privatefunction = function(){ //dos something };

Y.namespace('mycoolmodule');

Y.mycoolmodule.core = {

//etc

Your Module

Stuff within your module, such as dialogs, functions, objects , array etc, can be referenced in a number of ways, I suppose you can use ‘this’, but I find this confusing.   In my case it works well to refer to it by full namespaces

YUI.add('mycoolmodule-core', function(Y){

var YAHOO = Y.YUI2;

var privatefunction = function(){ //dos something };

Y.namespace('mycoolmodule');

Y.mycoolmodule.core = {

PublicVar : 'A Value',

//etc

I hope this helps out with someone needing to get a YUI module working by using YUI.add