Funny, weird or cool videos I’ve enjoyed recently in no particular order.

Scissor Sisters – Invisible Light (official video) [NSFW?]

Cat vs Printer – the Translation

Science Saved My Soul

$("#popup-dates select").change(function() {
        var fromMonth = new Number( $('#month-from').val() );
        var toMonth = new Number( $('#month-to').val() );
        if ( fromMonth > toMonth ) {
                $('#month-to').val($('#month-from').val());
        }
});

I’m working on a project where the visitor searches for info in a date range, selecting a From: month (#month-from) and a To: month (#month-to) within the same year. This code automatically advances #month-to to equal #month-from if the visitor tries to make a selection where #month-to would be earlier than #month-from, creating a reverse timespan (ie. trying to search from June to January within the same year).

The code does the following:

1. Gets the values of the selected options (January’s option should have value=”1″, February’s “2″, etc.) and converts them to Number variables.
2. Compares the two values.
3. Updates #month-to to equal #month-from if one of them is changed to create a reverse timespan.

The most important part to note, though, is using $(“#popup-dates select”).change() as opposed to $(“#popup-dates option”).click(). For some reason the latter, which is semantically more accurate, simply doesn’t work in WebKit browsers like Chrome and Safari. Using $(“#popup-dates select”).change() will work in every browser, even IE6.

Hope this can save someone some time.

I’m currently on the hunt for a second cat to keep Moose and me company. There’s an amazing organization here in Atlanta called FurKids that’s a network of no-kill shelters and foster homes. They take excellent care of every cat in their possession—young and old, healthy and sick—until he’s adopted, however long it takes. I went to their main shelter two weeks ago and spent 3 1/2 hours wandering from room to room, playing with all of the dozens and dozens of cats. (I spent over an hour in the kitten room alone, because time ceases to exist when you are sitting cross-legged on the floor, covered in purring kittens.)

It’s a decision I’m bound to agonize over for a little longer but I hope to bring someone home next weekend. I wish I could adopt all of them. Deep down I’m just a crazy cat lady trapped in a gay man’s body.

WordPress is a platform that I use heavily in both my personal and professional life as a web developer. Most of the websites I build use it as a CMS in some capacity and while it’s far from perfect, its customizability and huge support base make it a great, client-friendly tool. One of the first big WordPress-backed sites I worked on a few years ago, for which I did a lot of custom templating and PHP functionality, is actually in the WordPress.org Showcase, which remains a huge honor for me.

As many projects as I work on, though, each one still manages to teach me something new or an even better way to approach a routine challenge. I hope to use this space (in between ramblings about myself and pictures of my cat) to share some of the tricks I find or develop. They can always be better, I’m sure, but hopefully they can help out someone else who’s hopelessly stuck before a looming deadline and furiously Googling for an answer.

The Challenge

The portfolio website of San Antonio-based photographer (and all-around amazing dude) Mark Menjivar is organized into series, each of which has multiple photos displayed one per page. I needed not only to incorporate a way to navigate forward and back between pages in an ordered set but to display the visitor’s progress so they know where they are in the series.

Setting Up Previous/Next Navigation Between Sibling Pages

This is one of several basic features that WordPress somehow doesn’t have—there are functions like next_post_link() and previous_post_link() to navigate between posts but none for pages. Thankfully, the Next Page, Not Next Post plugin by Matt McInvale seamlessly adds this functionality to WP and saves the rest of us a lot of custom hacking.

Creating the Progress Marker

This was a little trickier. I didn’t find anyone sharing code to accomplish this, so I found my own solution:

<p class="progress">
<?php
	$current = $post->ID;
	$children = get_pages("title_li=&child_of=".$post->post_parent."&echo=0&sort_column=menu_order");
	$pagecount = 0;

	foreach ($children as $child) {
		$pagecount++;
		if ($child->ID == $current) {
			  $currentpage = $pagecount;
		}
	}

	if ($pages != 1) {
		echo $currentpage . "/" . $pagecount;
	} else { echo "&nbsp;" }
?>
</p>

This does the following:

1. Pulls all child pages of the current page’s parent, preserving their admin-set menu order.
2. Iterate through each page, finding the place number of the active page.
3. Count the total number of pages.
4. If the total number is more than one—ie. if the active page is not the only child of its parent—output the progress info.

This snippet simply outputs the two values inline but they could be used in other ways, such as to generate a progress bar. However you use it, though, it’s a great way to let visitors know exactly where they are in a series of pages. Feel free to share your alternate versions or uses of it.

If you know me you’ve probably already met Moose, or at least heard me talk about him. He’s a purebred mitted blue point Ragdoll, which means nothing to me but sounds very fancy. All my previous pets have been mutts but my then-partner and I thought the breed’s relaxed and sociable disposition would be a good fit for our home. I picked him up on Valentine’s Day 2009 when he was a tiny white poof that fit in your hand. Now he’s a huge clumsy adult that sheds more fur in a day than should be scientifically possible. He likes to eat baby spinach, loves people’s feet, and occasionally runs into furniture. And he’s a big part of my life, so you’ll be seeing him around here again.

“David v. Goliath, Now With Public Relations”

Original post date: September 13, 2009

There are a lot of great sites and pages out there with information on Opera Software, the company most widely known for the Opera browser used on computers, mobile devices and even the Wii and Nintendo DS. That’s all well and good, but boring. On the other hand, Opera’s caustic relationship with Microsoft, and the way both companies handled the conflicts, is fascinating from a public relations perspective.

Conflict 1

What Happened:

Although the software leviathan’s Internet Explorer easily reaches MSN, other browsers–such as Opera, Mozilla and some versions of Netscape–run into trouble…. MSN brings a message from Microsoft saying it has “detected that the browser that you are using will not render MSN.com correctly…. Additionally, you’ll see the most advanced functionality of MSN.com only with the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer or MSN Explorer.” … The page then provides several links for users to download versions of Internet Explorer for Windows, Macintosh and MSN Explorer. (source)

What Microsoft Said:

“All of our development work for the new MSN.com is … W3C standard,” said Bob Visse, the director of MSN marketing, referring to the World Wide Web Consortium, which is developing industry standards for web technologies. “For browsers that we know don’t support those standards or that we can’t insure will get a great experience for the customer, we do serve up a page that suggests that they upgrade to an IE browser that does support the” standards. (source)

What Opera Said:

Quite a lot. In an editorial on A List Apart, Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie obliterates Microsoft’s claims by viewing the source code of 63 pages on MSN.com and its related portals, finding that none of those 63 pages was valid W3C standards, and only ten of them even declared a doctype.

Who Was Right:

Microsoft comes out of this fracas looking both dubious and immature. Altering the MSN.com content served to Opera browsers to include a helpful message to switch to IE because of various features in the browser would still have been rather unnecessary, but it would have gone over much better than a) blocking the content altogether and b) claiming to base its motives on facts that were entirely specious. Lie handled the situation well by methodically researching Microsoft’s claims and proving their hypocrisy.

Conflict 2

The fact there even was a second conflict already makes Microsoft look poorly, as one would hope they’d learned from the experience and taken extra precautions not to cause further problems. That, however, wasn’t the case.

What Happened:

Click to enlarge. (CNET)

“Opera Software on Wednesday said Microsoft has been sending its browser a faulty style sheet…. Not only does the code not work in Opera 7, it doesn’t work in Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer 6 either, CNET News.com confirmed.” (source) The stylesheet moved various sections of content 30 pixels to the left, causing the some of it to be hidden.

What Microsoft Said:

After an initial denial of any problem, Bob Visse, director of marketing for MSN explained: “We have different style sheets and different code for various browsers,” said Bob Visse, director of marketing for MSN. “That’s something we do to try optimize the experience for our users…. There’s no reason we wouldn’t want to have the best experience for all the browsers out there, so we’re certainly going to look into that.” (source) Their stance was basically that they served outdated code to other browsers because the browsers themselves were outdated.

What Opera Said:

In response, Opera CTO Lie once again researched Microsoft’s claims and posted his findings. He compares the source code and CSS sent to various browsers and finds the specific attribute in the stylesheet sent to Opera that causes the -30px margin. Even more damningly, he alters the User-Agent string sent to MSN.com by Opera and shows that it is served the correct stylesheet, proving that Opera is both capable of displaying it correctly and that it is also specifically targeted to receive the incorrect CSS.

After Microsoft fixed the problem for Opera 7, though, the problems continued for Opera 6, which Lie also researched and proved to be deliberate. In response, Opera also released an update for its browser that replaced content on MSN.com with the repeated word “bork” in order to make the point that “the success of the Web depends on software and Web site developers behaving well and rising above corporate rivalry.”

Who Was Right:

Although Opera’s joking “bork” browser could be viewed as yet another hurdle from the users’ standpoint, it’s hard to argue with Lie’s research. In response to Microsoft’s claim that MSN.com is sending CSS that is simply outdated instead of flat-out incorrect, the CNET article also includes this gem: “Not only does the code not work in Opera 7, it doesn’t work in Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer 6 either, CNET News.com confirmed.” In addition, the fact that the issue was solved for Opera 7 but not 6 simply underscores Microsoft’s true intentions: to underhandedly interfere with one of their competitors. There is truly no excusing Microsoft’s actions, as what they claimed to be a series of moves in the interest of web users was clearly proven to be anything but. Their statements were not merely exaggerated–as most are in the real of PR speak–but outright falsehoods that were readily disproved.

And for what purpose? At that time, IE held over 80% of the market share; Opera had less than 5%. Even Netscape’s Navigator browser, Microsoft’s closest rival, had three times the market share of Opera. Considering also Opera Software’s ties to the W3C (both their focus on W3C compliance and the fact that Lie came to Opera Softwarefrom the W3C), an entity it would behoove Microsoft to respect, Microsoft’s actions are irrational to the point of being childish. These incidents from half a decade ago show precisely how corroded the priorities of a conglomerate like Microsoft can become, and how small upstart companies like Opera Software have been able to steadily chip away at Microsoft’s once-universal domination of the browser market.

Hi Aaron,
Congratulations! Your excellent Keyboard Cat costume won first prize in Urlesque’s HallowMeme costume contest! As outlined on the voting page, you are the lucky recipient of a computer key seat from Great Big Stuff (and other assorted Urlesque goodies).

Send your mailing address to me (Kelly!) at [email] and I will get the prize-fulfilling wheels in motion.

Thanks for entering and reading Urlesque! We love you!

Kelly

I think I’m going to be Michael Lohan for Halloween next year.

Costume

• V-neck polo or ugly knitted sweater
• Light-wash dad jeans
• Cell phone clipped to belt
• Penny or tassel loafers

Demeanor

• Obnoxious voice (check)
• Talk about Lindsay nonstop (won’t be hard)
• Constantly interrupt people’s conversations and get into their photographs (check)

Plus I already have the hair pattern for it. Brb, crying into some ice cream

1. “That’s a really big keyboard!”
2. “What are you, Satan playing a keyboard?”
3. “Are you like my cat that falls asleep on a keyboard? My cat does that at like 2 a.m. when I really need to type something.”

(For those of you who have no idea who this is: the original YouTube video, the background info, and the meme it inspired.)

I actually first wore this costume for Halloween 2009, when I made the entire costume start to finish on the day of Halloween with the help of some awesome friends. I enjoyed it so much that I brought it out again this year. The coolest part by far was the keyboard, into which I carved several hidden recesses that would hold an mp3 player, portable speakers and the connecting wires. This allowed me to actually play people off with the Keyboard Cat song. It was a huge hit and I had a blast!

This year I went back to Athens to hang out and walk around downtown with my friends there and won the Best Costume award at 283, one of our favorite bars. It’s silly, but it actually meant a lot to me that people enjoyed the costume so much. I even got a trophy.

I also entered myself into Urlesque.com’s 2010 HallowMeme Costume Contest. We’ll see how it goes.