Welcome to Simon Philp's Blog

Spammers – Wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire

Si Philp — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:32:03 GMT

Ok maybe the title is a little harsh? I hate spammers with a passion. If it’s not online drugs, it’s casinos or fake banking site phishing for details.

I don’t usually write about the random junk I get but this email stuck out. Did you know Microsoft had a consumer award of which you can win a cool half mill? I don’t believe for one minute that anyone would take such a thing seriously? This reminds me of the 419 eater site which tempts me to setup a temp email address and fire something back to this person, have some fun? Can we get this person to Photoshop a passport together to prove their identity?

Who’s to blame? What can we do to stop these pests from using server resources? Looking at message labs statistics for spam on a global ratio May/June 2009 was a staggering 90.4% (1 in 1.1 emails). If you put this into the context of millions/billions think of the bandwidth and processing power used to send/block all these emails, someone has to pay these bills.

Fortunately technology moves on and as the end user we tend not to see alot of these emails. Companies take on managed services that use sophisticated algorithms and anti-spoofing checks to ensure spam doesn’t get through to their users. Chances are there will always be a small percentage that get through the once, but then the system learns and once more the door is shut. Is a vicious circle and luckily enough vendors are usually quick off the mark.

Enough of me ranting on, to my “winning email” :

Note: if you’ve not gathered already this is NOT a real Microsoft competition and this email is not associated with Microsoft nor did it originate from them. I have removed Microsoft’s trademarks that was used in this email and a known Microsoft Address.

Subject : SPAM-LOW: You are a Winner

Your Email address has been picked online in this second quarter's 
MICROSOFT CONSUMER AWARD as a winner of a lump sum payout of Five 
Hundred Thousand Pounds Sterling "£500,000.00" in the international 
winners category.

Please complete Cheque Requisition Form / Worksheet below

1. Full Names:.........
2. Home Address:.......
3. Age:................
4. Sex:................
5. Marital Status:.....
6. Occupation:.........
7. Tel/Mobile No:......
8. Country:............

Attested information should be emailed to Mr Tony Adams: 
fiduciarytonyadams@live.co.uk

Congratulations from Microsoft promotions program.
Best Wishes.
Award Committee.

Looking at the raw headers it would seem that the email was sent from a mail server in Italy. I have forwarded the email to the abuse email address given when looking up the IP address, will anything be done about it? Probably not.

For more information about being safe online please check out Get Safe Online.

Domains for sale – clear out

Si Philp — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:28:08 GMT

If you follow me on twitter then you’ve probably heard about my clean out of old domains. Some are on sedo others may be a holding page. If the site is on sedo and you’re interested then please follow the online steps, most are open to offers. If it’s a holding page then please contact me stating domain name and offer :)

Here is the list:

deejaypodcasts.com
podcastkicks.com – this was a production site and has backlinks
unofficialjackass.com
youtubekicks.com
caravanforums.com
caravanforums.co.uk
clanwebhosting.co.uk
contentsystems.net
doomweb.co.uk
freeukwebhosting.co.uk
mypanasonicgames.co.uk
outstandingstock.co.uk
spamkeeper.co.uk
housepodcast.co.uk – think about sub domain i.e. http://funky.housepodcast.co.uk or http://electro.housepodcast.co.uk
podcastreviewer.co.uk
blogreviewer.co.uk
centreview.co.uk
classic-comedy.net
concept-creations.co.uk
floatnone.co.uk
myonlinemedia.co.uk
photo-graph.co.uk
sblog.me.uk – think about sub domain use i.e. http://steve.sblog.me.uk
spareplace.co.uk
visual-waste.co.uk
websiteoffline.co.uk
whathavetheydone.co.uk
whathavethedone.com
dailydance.co.uk
snowboardinghq.co.uk

Some fantastic possibilities with the above. I will update the list as domains go.

On going website maintenance

Si Philp — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:18:52 GMT

It’s been a long time coming but over the next couple of weeks you’ll be seeing quite a lot of changes going on. My website will be under going a big face lift. With all this in mind, should you hit an error page then I can assure you that if you leave it 5 minutes and refresh all will be back to normal. During this time I will be upgrading to the latest version of subtext of which I won’t be “tweaking” the admin area which i normally do.

Not only am I hoping to implement a new subtext skin I am also planning on making it a better user experience. As normal, daily backups will be in place so nothing will be lost :) Below is a quick outline of what I am hoping to gain and change.

Current issues

YSlow Score

Home page is averaging 120k which i think is far from ideal. Looking at my YSlow stats:

Following the YSlow rules when the new skin is fully complete i hope to achieve a much higher score, this includes:

Reduce the amount of script/css files
Reduce DOM elements
Compress script/css files
Place script files at bottom of the page

Usability

This has been annoying me for some time now. Main menu isn’t dominant enough, and I don’t like the single sidebar. I have been playing about with many ideas from other designs i have seen and posts from design blogs I follow:

Main areas that I am not happy with that will be changing

Navigation
Contact Form
Comments Display/Form
404 page not found revamp

Re-Introducing

I will be adding back into my new skin the following:

Gallery Loader - Subtext Galleries, using jQuery for funk
Sharing the love
A couple of things from - 10 quick things you can do to your subtext blog
Out with Galleries in with Flickr

When the transition has taken place and you see something out of place, or if you think something could be improved that I haven't mentioned please get in touch my either commenting or emailing

How to call JavaScript functions based on the querystring

Si Philp — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:40:50 GMT

jQuery Plugin – Fun with Query String Object

I have been working on an internal application which uses ajax and modal popups so that the user/manager/administrator doesn’t need to navigate to different pages to do different actions. While this looked the part and done everything it said on the tin I ran into a problem. When a user acknowledged an event that needs authorisation a email is sent to the appropriate manager asking for action. This email needed to contain a link that when the manager clicked it, the appropriate section was shown.

No point in re-inventing the wheel and writing individual pages so I had an idea about using querystrings to show the appropriate modal popup. I found a nice little jQuery plugin called query object. As you can see from the documentation it’s very easy to use.

If the link in the email is showing the manager a listing of say New Contacts added

http://app/view/manager/?showModal=LoadNewContacts

Within the document ready we could do the following:

   1:   $(document).ready(function() {

   2:         var section = $.query.get('showModal');

   3:             var allowedFunctionsArray = ['LoadNewContacts()', 'AlertMe()'];

   4:             if ($.inArray(section, allowedFunctionsArray) != -1) {

   5:                 eval(section);

   6:            }

   7:        });

8:

   9:        function AlertMe() {

  10:            alert('this is an alert');

  11:         }

  12:         function LoadNewContacts() {

  13:             $('#Contacts').toggle();

  14:         }

Line 2 assigns the local variable section with the value of the querystring “showModal”. Notice live 5 with the eval(section).

“The eval() function evaluates a string and executes it as if it was script code.” – w3 Schools

The querystring value is the name of the function we want to call and the eval function makes this possible. However, using the eval() function can lead to cross site scripting(XSS). I have added a check to only allow what I want to run, in this case only the following two functions can be called “LoadNewContacts” and “AlertMe”. What you’re not seeing is the fact that the files that have these functions are served via a secure http handler based on windows authentication and that checks are in place to make sure managers can only see/action what they’re meant to. Is simple and effective.

View demo of running different functions via querystring

If you would like to see more posts in relation to jQuery please use the following link: View jQuery post listing

jQuery – Revisit - Fun with Radio Button lists, checkboxes and labels

Si Philp — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:20:19 GMT

In my previous post I outlined how easy it was to grab text from a label tag associated to a form input element.

jQuery – Fun with Radio Button lists, checkboxes and labels

I have quickly thrown together a demo page that shows a “tra la” aspect.

All I have done here is added in a couple of styles, a new radio list for the colour selection and an express delivery option. The green div shown above the colour radio button list has it’s background colour controlled by whatever colour the user selects.

Change Background colour

Add an onclick event that captures the value in this case colour and passes it into a simple function:

   1:   $("input[name*='grpColour']").click(function() {

   2:              SetTShirtDivColour($(this).val());

   3:          });

The function is is very straight forward:

   1:  function SetTShirtDivColour(colour) {

   2:          $('#tshirtColour').css("background-color", colour).text(colour).css("color", "white").css("font-weight", "bold");

   3:          var border = "2px solid " + colour;

   4:          $('#ColourHolder').css("border",border);

   5:       }

The above adds styles to the tshirtColour and ColourHolder div using jquerys ability to chain methods. As you can see on line 2 the colour passed into this function is used when setting the background colour.

Adding a popup div

To add a quick popup I have attached an onclick event to the Yes radio item Express delivery.

   1:    $('#RadioDelYes').click(function() {

   2:              ShowHideDisclaimer();

   3:          });

Along with some css we can do the below. The ShowHideDisclaimer method just toggles the visibility of the background black div “transp” and the disclaimer div “ExpressDelivery”. I could of added a “you clicked Yes/No” to the disclaimer div but I wanted to show that you can attach the onclick event to a single item within a list.

  function ShowHideDisclaimer() {
        $('#transp').toggle();
        $('#ExpressDelivery').toggle();
        
    }

View live demo and see full source code.

jQuery – Fun with Radio Button lists, checkboxes and labels

Si Philp — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:58:27 GMT

Previously I have written about how to attach an onclick client event to a radio button list on databound and adding some flare to show what the user has selected.

In this post I am going to use jQuery to attach the onclick events to a radio button list and to a group of checkboxes.

Looking at the picture above. When the user selects one of the radio list items the message at the top is created outlining the items value and the text in associated label control. In this case “Glasgow Item” is in the label and “Glasgow” is the value of the control. With the checkboxes, everytime a user checks an item an unordered list item is created with the text within the associated label and the value of the item. As shown above 3 items have been selected that are shown in the listing.

The messages/list could be styled and used in many occasions giving any web form more “tra la”. In my next post I’ll put together a mock page that is styled up. A live demo of above picture can be seen here. Onto the code:

HTML:

   1:  <div id="Message"></div>

   2:  <ul id="listM"></ul>

   3:  <input id="grpLocation_0" type="radio" name="grpLocation" value="Edinburgh" />

   4:  <label for="grpLocation_0">Edinburgh Item</label>

   5:  <input id="grpLocation_1" type="radio" name="grpLocation" value="Glasgow" />

   6:  <label for="grpLocation_1">Glasgow Item</label>

   7:  <input id="grpLocation_2" type="radio" name="grpLocation" value="Aberdeen" />

   8:  <label for="grpLocation_2">Aberdeen Item</label>

   9:  <input id="grpLocation_3" type="radio" name="grpLocation" value="Scotland" />

  10:  <label for="grpLocation_3">Scotland Item</label>

  11:  <hr />

  12:  <input id="Radio1" type="checkbox" name="Location2" value="Edinburgh" />

  13:  <label for="Radio1">Edinburgh Item</label>

  14:  <input id="Radio2" type="checkbox" name="Location2" value="Glasgow" />

  15:  <label for="Radio2">Glasgow Item</label>

  16:  <input id="Radio3" type="checkbox" name="Location2" value="Aberdeen" />

  17:  <label for="Radio3">Aberdeen Item</label>

  18:  <input id="Radio4" type="checkbox" name="Location2" value="Scotland" />

  19:  <label for="Radio4">Scotland Item</label>

Script:

   1:  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

   2:  <script type="text/javascript">

   3:      $(document).ready(function() {

   4:          $("input[name*='grpLocation']").click(function() {

   5:              var defaultValue = $("label[for*='" + this.id + "']").html();

   6:              var defaultm = "You have chosen : ";

   7:              $('#Message').html('').html(defaultm + defaultValue + ' | Value is : ' + $(this).val());

   8:          });

9:

  10:          $("input[name*='Location2']").click(function() {

  11:              GetCheckedValues();

  12:          });

13:

  14:      });

15:

  16:      function GetCheckedValues() {

  17:          $('#listM').html('');

  18:          $("input[name*='Location2']").each(function() {

  19:          if (this.checked == true) {

  20:              var defaultValue = $("label[for*='" + this.id + "']").html();

  21:                  $('#listM').append('<li>'+ defaultValue + ' | Value is : ' + $(this).val() + '</li>');

  22:              }

  23:          });

24:

  25:      }

  26:  </script>

Breaking down the script.

When the page is loaded jQuery adds the onclick events to the group of radio buttons. When a radio item is selected the script finds the associated label (line 5) and grabs the text. Next couple of lines sets up the message div by displaying the text from the label and the items value $(this.).val().

The checkbox functionality differs as more than one item can be selected. When the page is loaded jQuery finds the checkboxes(line 10) and attaches “GetCheckedValues()” function to the onclick event. When the user checks/unchecks an item this function is called. The function goes through each appropriate checkbox object (line 18) and if the checkbox is checked the label text and the value is added to the unordered list (listM).

I would thoroughly recommend the following book if your looking to learn jQuery : jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz.

UPDATE: New Post - jQuery – Revisit - Fun with Radio Button lists, checkboxes and labels

Technorati Tags: jquery

Javascript unit testing frameworks

Si Philp — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:31:07 GMT

Myself and Simone have been in discussions about creating a jQuery plugin for many months now. With real life, time on both parts hasn’t been on our side. Simone has co-authored a MVC book entitled “Beginning ASP.NET MVC”. I’ve been busy with work, getting fit, holidays, and other projects (more details coming soon).

We've both now managed to make a start on the plugin which resulted in me looking at unit testing frameworks for JavaScript. I was quite surprised to find the amount I did hence this short and sweet post.

List of JavaScript testing frameworks

QUnit - jQuery testrunner - http://docs.jquery.com/QUnit
JsUnit - port of JUnit to JavaScript - http://www.jsunit.net/
JsUnitTest - http://jsunittest.com/
Yahoo UI library - YUI Test - http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/yuitest/
UnitJS - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/scripting/UnitJS.aspx

With the project being jQuery orientated we're going to use QUnit for our testing needs. As a personal learning curve I am going to play about with YUI test suite and JsUnit framework on some other projects. I would like to compare the differences, advantages and disadvantages to using each one.

Borovets snowboarding holiday 2009

Si Philp — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:34:13 GMT

It's been a couple of weeks now since we arrived back on British soil after having a fantastic week in Borovets. I have been very busy working on other projects during this time (hence no updates) these will come into the light in the next couple of weeks.

We arrived in the shack they call Plovdiv airport. For anyone who hasn't experienced this airport then you are truly missing an experience. The airport itself can't handle masses and masses of people. This was shown in the single baggage reclaim area whereby you couldn't move while waiting the 30 minutes for the 1st lot of bags to be unloaded. I would like to say that it has got better over the years since our first venture to Bulgaria back in 2006.

Once we got all our stuff the transfer began and in no time we were at our hotel. The Bor-Edelweiss is a 3 star hotel that is about a 15 minute walk from resort centre. The hotel and the rooms where adequate but nothing special. The rooms were cleaned every day as well as bed covers and towels changed. The television in the room had cable but I think we only managed to find 2 English channels that consisted of News and Eurosport. Watching family guy in Bulgarian on MTV was quite amusing for a whole 10 minutes, thankfully we came prepared with a portable DVD player. Staff of the hotel sat daily in the corner of the bar with their laptops and friends using the unsecured wireless Internet. Over the week they did get grumpy and started to "not understand" or ignore us. Breakfast was good, dinner was a different kettle of fish. Some nights we ate out as dinner just didn't look inviting.

Out on resort we ate most days at the bottom of the slopes at the "Black Tiger". During the day it serves up fantastic food. We tried most things on the menu, pizza, burgers, soup and chips (yes we weren't being daring) and had no complaints.

At night the "Black Tiger" turns into karaoke bar and what an atmosphere it has. By 10pm the place is packed, people are singing, well trying and happy hour is in full flow. We did drink in other places but we always managed our way back.

One thing, to save some hard earned cash if you're thinking about taking any alcohol back to the UK or even if you're stocking up on food etc (no cigs though) don't go to the shops in the resort . Head down towards the Bor-EdelWeiss and at the last junction there is a local shop which is far cheaper than anywhere we found.

We enjoyed ourselves at Borovets. If we were to go back we would stay at the Rila as it certainly looked nice and had a reputation to follow :). Would like to say a big hello to all new friends thanks for such a fantastic holiday. Hope to see you all again soon :)

I will be posting the rest of the pictures up on my Flickr page soon.

UK/US Whose Line Is It Anyway

Si Philp — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:19:15 GMT

For those who have never heard of "Whose line is it anyway" you're missing a great show. I recently re-discovered it while at the gym on Five US and I am convinced that the US version is funnier? The UK show has had such comedians as Stephen Fry, Caroline Quentin and Ardal O'Hanlon. The US version Whoopi Goldberg, Brad Sherwood and Jerry Springer. Not sure what it is but the US show has an edge I just can't grasp, maybe it's Drew Carey?

One of my favourite clips from the show:

Lots more on youtube...

An Idea!

It would be a fantastic idea to bring back the show as there are many talented comedians out there that I think would give show such an attraction. Thing is who would present it? No disrespect to Clive Anderson but I think the perfect person for the job would be Jonathan Ross. Imagine, Jonathan Ross presenting with 4 of the following guests:

The list could go on and on but that would make good tv. All the above and many others surely have more life experience to bring to the world of improvisational comedy.

There is an official facebook page and I am sure there will be a couple of good fan sites out on the world wide web.

*Update An online petition to bring the show back.

Whose Line Is It Anyway UK - Series 1 And 2 [1988]

Whose Line Is It Anyway US - Season 1, Vol. 1 and 2 [1999] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Technorati Tags: comedy,whose line is it

New additions to the snowboarding playlist

Si Philp — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:02:31 GMT

A couple of days ago I announced that we're heading back to Bulgaria in the next coming weeks and it's time for a revamp of the playlists. While my podcasts haven't been that active I have been doing mixes offline which I might be posting up in the future. Talking about podcasts it was good to see Simon aka One Phat Dj post another podcast entitled encore. Lets hope that we can persuade him to do the best of 2008 :). Also Marc aka Dj Cruze has put up his Christmas edition podcast - sexy dancer.

What other podcasts have I been listening to? Well not many has been added to the list since last couple of times:

What's new - Podcasts?

What's new - Compilations/Albums?

I am going to quickly outline the last 5 as this post would get a little long.

Kings of Leon - Only by night

Hed Kandi - The mix 2009

The Killers - Day & Age

Stereophonics - Decade In The Sun

Ministry of sound - The Annual 2009

and back to Bulgaria... Borovets.

Si Philp — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:40:47 GMT

Having been to Pamporovo twice now and making the decision of never going back we've decided to give Borovets a try. When initially at the travel agents we priced up a couple of resorts in France and Italy but being so soon and with Christmas coming up we opted for Borovets. After adding on the price of lift passes, board carriage etc it turned out to be a right bargain. Most of the other holidays cost more without the lift pass at self catering so was a very easy decision.

Photo courtesy of Simon Reip

If anyone can recommend, bars, places to eat please get in touch or comment.

Happy Holidays

Si Philp — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:44:16 GMT

Not long now before Santa is visiting all of the people that have been good this year ;) This year has been a difficult year, full of ups and downs. I hope that you all have a safe and fantastic Christmas.

*picture source Terry Bain

Site Update and subtext

Si Philp — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:06:44 GMT

Subtext 2.1 was officially released about 10 days ago. At the beginning of the week I tried to upgrade from 1.9.5 to 2.1 and I ran into a series of problems so reverted back. Tomorrow I am going to update my site to the latest version so I can use all the new features. Links regarding the release:

Phil Haack - Subtext 2.1 released
Simone Chiaretta - Subtext 2.1 released

Also the Illacrimo skin I was working on is now finished on Andy's site. He's constantly playing around with it but I will be putting it all together and uploading it to subtextskins.com. While creating the skin I came across more limitations of subtext which I will be outlining to the dev list. This will hopefully make it possible to create more complex skins should future versions fix these issues.

Dual Monitors - backgrounds and applications

Si Philp — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:41:54 GMT

Having dual monitors is now really a common element for any developer or designer.

I thought I would share some of the links I have collected in relation to backgrounds and applications that can make the dual experience better.

Backgrounds

Applications

UltraMon – Lots of useful features.
Display Fusion - Free Multi-Monitor Desktop Wallpaper Software.
Multimon – Expand taskbars and more.
Samurize – Ability to monitor system resources and desktop enhancements.

Blog references

Life Hacker – Embed Outlook on the desktop
Life Hacker – Google Calendar as your wallpaper

If you know of anything that I have missed that would benefit please get in touch/leave a comment.

Sneak Peek at new Subtext Theme - Illacrimo

Si Philp — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:14:30 GMT

A while back I had a conversation with Simone about subtext themes. This conversation was along the lines of “have you seen any themes out on the world wide web that we should convert to subtext?”. Being organised as I am the email with the outcome of this conversation got buried in amongst the masses, however, after getting organised last week this email emerged again and I am pleased to announce that one of the skins on the list is nearly complete. As you can see from the title of this post the theme is called Illacrimo and was initially created by Design Disease. I have had to make slight changes due to some limitations but overall I think it looks fantastic.

I am hoping to get it out there and tested as it’s on my local machine running subtext version 2.0. I haven’t been able to upgrade yet due to a trust issue but hoping this will be resolved soon :) If you’d like a copy then get in touch or grab me on twitter.