In usual, dependable fashion answers were forthcoming from accessibility stalwarts (if that is the right term) Patrick H. Lauke and Bruce Lawson who offered the following responses respectively:

@cole007 fieldset, legend “date of birth”, hidden labels “day”, “month”, “year”

@cole007 3 separate inputs, each with a unique title, no label, in a fieldset with legend “Date”

These two solutions are perfect for my example of day/month/year, but what about less obvious examples and what about inputs that might have no obvious label or title.

At Net Resources, we are currently working on a search form for a client to query against a database on tartans.

One of the criteria you can search against is ‘slog’ which is to do with the thread count of a particular tartan. In official tartan parlance, a slog comprises of two three letter groups divided by a colon, eg. BGK:WRK. The logical break in the data means that the query input should ideally be broken into two divided with a colon, eg:

Slog :

<label>Slog <input type="text" size="3" /> : <input type="text" size="3" /></label>

However, these slog fields do not have obvious names that can be applied through a title or hidden label, so my question is this. How best would you mark a form with these two inputs divided by a colon?
What – in your opinion – would be the most accessible, semantic, dogs bollocks approach to marking up this particular part of the form?

since then being a smoker has been a large part of my identity, rarely venturing far without a packet of rolling tobacco to hand. i would readily admit that i am addicted to a bunch of chemicals which are primarily poisonous but i would also say – despite this knowledge – that i enjoy smoking. the act of rolling a cigarette, the act of sharing a cigarette, the sense of camaradre shared by those who huddle round the ashtray on cold, wet autumn evenings outside the pub.

however, today marks a whole week – that’s a whopping 168 hours – without smoking which is pretty much the longest i have been without nicotine since my early teenage days (except for the aforementioned hiatus). i’m not sure when or even if i will ever have another cigarette but one thing i can be sure of is that i haven’t given up. i’m just taking a break.

so why the break? well three factors really. one the birth of a son, the other a death of father-in-law, the last a killer hangover. for the past few months i have certainly been acutely aware that i have been smoking too much. psychologically, smoking has been a valiant ally in times of stress in my adult life and since january i have embarked on a series of new (and unfamiliar) experiences: a new job, taken on more freelance work than i perhaps should’ve and seen the arrival of our youngest, Felix (as well as contend with the competing affections and emotions from our eldest, Gethin).

in the past 6 months smoking has become more than a habit and i was not particularly happy with how something that i had enjoyed was having such an impact on my life (and to some, lesser extent also my wallet).

this sense was exacerbated with the sad and relatively sudden passing of my wife’s father two weeks ago. the idea that i could make a decision now which might affect the amount of time i have to spend with my children (and their children) was something really powerful and made me think for the first time in a long time about not smoking.

i have tried to give up before but always failed: bad timing, bad planning, bad willpower. the two things i knew were:

1. that there is never a perfect time to give up smoking, and
2. that I would know when the time was right.

last Wednesday the time was right. the night before – at my father-in-laws wake – i had indulged in a few gins too many and as a result the following day was spent in a state of utter self-pity, without caffeine or nicotine: the two biggest vices in my life (the third being twitter, which I also somehow managed to abstain from).

am now back on the caffeine and twitter but have somehow managed to stay off the fags. each day since last Wednesday i have said to myself “no, i won’t smoke today”. if i thought to myself i had given up i think there would be too much pressure but as long as it is just taking a break then i can take one day at a time and hope that tomorrow, is just another day when i feel like having a break…

For anyone running their own data-driven site this would traditionally be achieved through running a cron job – a task scheduled to be performed on a regular basis on a server irrespective of whether that site is being visited or not. However, running cron jobs feature two complexities:

1. the cost in learning how to configure and manage them (though having never done them it could be a piece of piss), and
2. the cost associated with hosting a site that has cron capabilities (this functionality is chargeable as extra on my hosting account)

So what about a compromise – scheduling visits to your site to take place periodically rather than scheduling the server to perform task at regular intervals?

This was something I set about figuring out when I realised that a technology already existed which periodically checks a website: RSS. If we can set up an RSS feed to process a script as it is requested could we harness the power of RSS to semi-automate updates on your website? Hell yeah!

Setting up a test script on a server, I created an empty RSS feed and then subscribed to the feed using Google Reader. Everytime the feed was requested the time was logged in a separate text file. Like clockwork it transpires Google Reader (other feed readers are available boys and girls) was requesting the feed every three hours on the dot. So it might freak out if more complex scripts are attempted but in principal this might prove one way of scheduling relatively simple scripts to run on your server with relative frequency if you don’t have access to running cron jobs on your server.

So, as a habitual web-tinkerer have set up a wee website to promote the car at http://panda.cole007.net/

If you are in central Scotland and looking for a wee runner (and I’m not talking about Shane Williams) then this one comes heartily recommended and a mere snip at £1800 sterling (which is about the same as a packet of crisps at the current exchange rate). Bargainous!

Am sorely tempted to get myself yet more moo cards

It was especially sporting of someone who’s namesake is a regular feature of Bond films to have decided to make an appearance at 0.07 hours.

Young Felix is in fine company, sharing a birthday with Samuel Pepys, Handel, Peter Fonda, plutonium, ISO and the Gutenburg bible, the first Western book printed from movable type.

True to form, it is nice to see that Felix’s Gramps has already adopted the pseudonym Teddy for him. 10 hours old and already has an alias.

Images and more to follow on the soon to be resurrected bairn blog shortly

PS bonus points if you can name the film quoted in this blog title ;)