Chris Dalby Untangles Networks

links for 2009-06-23

15 jQuery Plugins To Create An User Friendly Tooltip

15 jquery tool tip plugins

(tags: jquery tooltip)

links for 2009-06-18

SimpleTabs - Unobtrusive Tabs + Ajax » digitarald:Harald Kirschner

ajax tabs using mootools.

(tags: ajax mootools tabs)

links for 2009-06-05

How To Build Quick and Simple AJAX Forms with JSON Responses | TutorialSwitch

Building an ajax jquery form with json response.

(tags: jquery form json php ajax)
The World Clock - Time Zones

allows you to set a time and date and for other time zones to see their corresponding time.

(tags: time date clock)
Google Maps API for Flash - Flex SDK Tutorial - Google Maps API for Flash - Google Code

google and flex tutorial

(tags: flex google maps flash)
gotoandlearn.com - Google Maps with Flex & PHP

flex mapping with the google api

(tags: flex flash map google)
Making an interactive country map

creating an interactive map in flash.

(tags: flash map)

links for 2009-05-30

INSTALLATION PROBLEM ON FEDORA 8 - Ruby Forum

(tags: ruby centos linux)
Slicehost Articles: CentOS setup - page 2

(tags: ruby centos)
Slicehost Articles: CentOS setup - page 1

(tags: ruby centos)
How To Install Ruby on Rails on Centos 5.2 | How To Linux

(tags: ruby centos linux)
How to Install RubyOnRails on CentOS 5.2 | My Online Log

(tags: ruby centos linux)

The Geek Paddle Fest

So this has been an idea festering for a bit. The Geek Paddle Fest. The main idea being that we go to the National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham and have a big Yeee Ha! on the white water course.

For the uninitiated, you will be able to join in and enjoy the day. Come along and enjoy the fun. This really will be a fun day for anyone, whether you have paddled before or not.

So the idea: A day on the white water course at the national water sports centre in Nottingham. I figure some of us will be ok paddlers and some of us may be complete virgins. I intend the day to be something for everyone.

White water rafting is a big thing on the course, and we have the chance to get stuck in and have a fun time. No experience is needed and we will have a guide to look after us. It is a fun filled ride down a bouncy course.

We will have access to demo boats and equipment, so come along and try the latest kayaks on this newly improved course.

I am yet to set a date on this trip. I’m interested to hear from people with ideas for potential dates. I’m thinking late July, early August?

If you would like to sponsor this trip, then get in touch!

Who knows, we could even enter a geek raft in the British Rafting Champs in October??!!!!

Hoping that @ActionLamb and @girlygeekdom come along. I think we probably need a wiki. But in the mean time, if you are interested in this, leave a comment and lets get this happening.

Image courtesy of Ebygomm under a Creative Commons license.

links for 2009-05-28

Your Canterbury News

Adam Holloway's comments on the terrorist threat and security of Kent

(tags: kent adamholloway torys)

The River Canche - A day in Northern France

This weekend I did a whistlestop tour of the River Canche, in the Pas-de-Calais department of Northern France. Only an hour south of Calais, the River Canche is almost certainly my closest white water river in terms of driving miles.

I first heard about this river towards the end of last year, when my local canoe shop was organising a trip over the New Year holidays. I wanted to go, but we were committed to other things on the dates. So I’ve been itching to go and have a look at it.

If you’ve been following my paddling exploits on this blog, you’ll realise that I have spent time working in the Ardeche in the South of France. I also spent six months working in Normandie, and I never heard of this river at the time. I didn’t even think there was any white water in Northern France. Afterall, it’s flat.

The Ferry cost £45 return on Sea France, 15ft open canoe on the roof included. Cheaper than a night down the pub. I’ve since noticed norfolkline.com do £19 each way Dover to Dunkirk, which is 20 minutes drive closer to the Canche and cheaper. So there will be a regular thing happening here.

If you would like a good river guide for the Canche, then Kent Canoes have an excellent river guide. I used this to plan the trip and work out the get in and get out places. We didn’t do the complete two day trip that they have planed. We simply did Day 2 of that trip. Day one sounded a bit tame and I wanted to see the white water in a day.

I caught an 8am ferry from Dover to Calais and drove down to meet up with friends working in an outdoor centre located 20 minutes away from the Canche that we would be paddling with. We then drove to the Canche and dropped a car off at the get out point so we could shuttle back to the car at the get in. This took a bit of nosing around to find the right places as we had driven from a different direction to the guide we were following. But we soon worked it out and hit the water.

The day started off bright, sunny and hot, but true to Northern France weather, the day was punctuated with a few light showers meaning the anoraks had to come out.

I really enjoyed the paddle. It was great spending time time with Davy and Lindzy and a lovely paddle of around 6 miles, meaning we were never under pressure of time to cover distance. Simply to enjoy the paddle.

On the whole, the Canche is a very safe environment to experience white water. The rapids do not contain any obstacles as such, just bouncy waves. No rocks, walls or caves to avoid. A stones throw from south east England, the Canche should be a staple for every southern paddler and a great learning venue for white water skills, open boat or kayak.

There are three decent grade 2 play waves on the section that we paddled and a couple of weirs that are shootable. The play wave on the slalom course is a classic grade 2, fed by two sluice gates. We played here for about half an hour. Unfortunately all the video footage of this is over exposed. You’ll have to take my word for it that we were popping cartwheels in trad boats

One thing that did keep the senses heightened was a couple of fallen trees that we encountered that were completely blocking the river.

I can imagine that with a lot of rain and a high river level, this could potentially be an accident waiting to happen, but at these water levels, it added to the fun. It also appeared as though some of the houses backing onto the river had very basic home-made sewage systems going from the house direct into the river. There was also a sighting of a floater. So the jury is out on the water quality, although it didn’t stink and look stagnant, and the river flow and current was fast, even on the flat sections, making paddling easy.

I had a chat with a couple of the guys from the canoe kayak club located on the slalom course and they said that the water is always maintained at the level we saw, as it is regulated and so always has a decent level of water with guranteed play waves. Just so pleased to find a decent play wave within an hour and a half drive from home. The fact this is in northern France, and a great excuse to see Davy, is the added spank on the bum.

links for 2009-05-22

Eauxvives.org

A goog river level guide for France.

(tags: france river waterlevels)

links for 2009-05-21

ActionScript 3 event handling tutorial - EduTech Wiki

A good ActionScript 3 event handling tutorial

(tags: as3 actionscript3 adobe flash)

It’s all about the bivvy

Last weekend I did a smash and grab long weekend in the Ardeche, South of France. A smash and grab because I flew in on the Friday, enjoyed the customary first night sherbets, then hit the river for a two day river trip down the Ardeche, then flew back the next day.

The mighty Ardeche. And mighty it was. Great water levels. Decent paddling. At this time of year it’s the maker and breaker of legends. And it lived up to it’s reputation.

Getting to the Ardeche is easy. Fly to Nimes or Marseille, courtesy of our least favourite budget airlines, then a transfer of about an hour to the lovely Ardeche region.

Going on an Ardeche river trip at this time of year means so much to me. It means being 20, forgetting life, loving nature, working hard, caring for your friends, paddling hard, decent water levels, sleeping under the stars, enjoying life! It means so much more. For me, the best days of my life were as a canoe instructor in the Ardeche. When I go back, I am in that exact same instance.

So having real leisure time with my mate Blue and his wife Caroline was a treat. Coupled with a bivvy at Gaud and a BBQ that turned into a superb party with a group of French ski guides. Quite a mad night. There is nothing like a good bivvy and the smell of canvas.

Living the dream baby. Living the dream

Chinposin Gets an Enterprise Client

I am completely beside myself to say that we have our first paid enterprise client for Chinposin. What started as a laugh has turned into something useful and of relevant to visualising communities online using twitter.

The Eclipse Galileo Birds Nest has been put together to help spread the word about the lastest release of Eclipse and to act as a central resource to see twitter activity around the Galileo release.

I’d like to say a huge thanks to James Governor for continuing to hand wave on this one. He has shaped this release and relentlessly kicked me to make it happen. This is his baby. I am simply the puppet that has turned the hand waving into php.

We now have something that is actually quite useful for building a community around twitter and this reflects James’s vision in terms of functionality and usefulness.

What I hope this does is to start to visualise the conversation and the faces in the community. We will continue to build detail into the Eclipse Galileo Birds Nest and I’m looking forward to seeing the journey.

The main functionality:

Anyone that follows @eclipsegalileo joins the Birds Nest

Everyone gets a permalink avatar with an Eclipse Galileo overlay on their image to show support and help spread the word, like http://galileo.chinposin.com/a/yellowpark/avatar.png

Everyone gets an rss feed of their avatars http://galileo.chinposin.com/a/yellowpark/avatars.xml

The Eclipse Galileo Birds Nest has an avatar feed at http://galileo.chinposin.com/rss/mainavatars.xml

Various widgets to embed the avatars wherever you want

Track the twitter conversation around the Eclipse Galileo release.

Tweet commands to change your avatar overlay image

links for 2009-05-12

80+ Fresh New Textures for Creating Web Site Backgrounds | Web Design Ledger

free textures for websites

(tags: texture)

Retweeting Locations

If you read this blog or follow me on twitter, you might know that a few weeks ago I wrote a script that queries the twitter search API for instances of the words Barnet, Hackney and Medway and retweets the original message.

I have had mixed feelings about these bots since setting them up, but it has been interesting watching them grow organically. I have never actively promoted any of these twitter accounts and currently their follower count is:

medway_tweet - 99

hackney_tweet - 172

barnet_tweet - 23

Last week I had, what I described as a “fruity” comment left on my blog about these bots. So I asked whether people thought I should kill these bots. The responses that came back both on my blog and over twitter were all in favour of keeping these bots. So I decided to keep them running.

Given the number of followers on each account, clearly people see the value in using twitter as a local conversation tool. These accounts were not setup as a spam mechanism, but a way of building a local community over twitter and promoting local conversation.

This morning I have had a heated exchange over twitter about these bots again. I can appreciate why they might annoy some people and I have always been sensitive to this. Also, the last thing I want to do is to get up in the morning and have to deal with this type of conversation. It’s not why I get up.

So for that reason, I am stopping @medway_tweet, @hackney_tweet and @barnet_tweet for the moment. As these bots also use backstage.bbc.co.uk API for local news, I will figure a way of incorporating other news sourses. Perhaps the bots should only retweet messages from followers - if you follow, you don’t mind being retweeted?

I am interested to hear peoples opinions on this and possible ideas to avoid annoying people.

links for 2009-05-01

Bug 272691 – Design a Galileo Graphic

(tags: eclipse galileo)
Eclipse logos and artwork for members and providers

(tags: eclipse galileo)
PHP+GD Scale and Overlay Demo

image overlay and scaling using GD and php.

(tags: gd php images)

HomeCamp 2 is this Saturday

Following hot on the heels of the first HomeCamp, so HomeCamp 2 happens. For the uninitiated, HomeCamp is the home hacking, automation and green technology community. Think smart meters, monitoring and graphing energy usage.

HomeCamp 2 is on Saturday 25th April 2009, 10am until 6pm at Bash Creations, 65-71 Scrutton Street, London, EC2A 4PJ. A map of the venue is here.

HomeCamp 2 aims to build on the success of the first event, with an OpenSim event running alongside for virtual participation and to demo the RealWorld and VirtualWorld modelling and automation that the community has been doing.

I’d like to say a big thank you to our sponsors, CurrentCost, Greenmonk, Pachube , ReactionGrid and Onzo, as without them this event would not be happening.

theattick.tv are the official Media Partners for HomeCamp and will be streaming the event over on the HomeCamp ustream.tv channel and also streaming into the HomeCamp sim on ReactionGrid. They will also be interviewing people thoughout the day and putting together video footage from the day for HomeCamp TV. So if you are coming to the event, be sure to get yourself on film!

So far have around 75 people signed up. If you can’t make it, then you can tune in either on the live video ustream, or sign up on ReactionGrid and join us virtually on OpenSim.

More details and videos on the blog http://homecamp.org.uk

For the wiki, which includes signup and is the main portal to all the online activity: http://homecamp.pbwiki.com/

Live video stream on the day of the event and recordings from the first HomeCamp: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/homecamp

Virtual HomeCamp meeting today at 3pm BST

We have a Virtual HomeCamp meeting today on the HomeCamp sim on ReactionGrid. It is a planning session for the real event which takes place this Saturday.

As we have people attending the session today from all over the world, and what with all the daylight savings, I have been scratching my head about this. So I decided it would be best to put a clock somewhere and I came accross these excellent clocks.

So the meeting today is 3PM BST (GMT+1). Here is the time now in BST:

Here is the time in Second Life Time (SLT) is in (PST / GMT -08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada):

links for 2009-04-14

jQuery Edit In Place (JEIP) || Joseph Scott

A great edit in place tool ajax that uses jquery

(tags: jquery ajax)

Twitter and PBWiki Integration

I decided to have a go at writing a script to integrate twitter with PBWiki. The main reason for this is because the Tuttle Club uses PBWiki to organise their events and attendees add their name to the list on the wiki if they are attending.

After seeing Lloyd Davis’s blog post on the idea, I thought I should whip something together as I already have scripts that can monitor key words. So this was just adding PBWiki integration.

This script means you can add your name to the list of attendees on PBWiki just by typing “#tuttlebot going” anywhere within a tweet. The script simply scans the twitter search api for the #tuttlebot hashtag and if the tweet mentions “going”, the twitter name and tweet is added to the PBWiki page.

You can see this in action on a test page that I have created on PWBWiki. Looking forward to hearing feedback on this and making modifications and adding more commands.

links for 2009-04-08

Mepal Outdoor Centre - Canoe & Kayak

an aquatic first aid course provider

(tags: firstaid canoe kayak)

Boating in Wales

The last few days I have been on a 4 Star Open Canoe training course at Llandysul Paddlers in Llandysul near Carmarthen, Wales. The centre is ideally set next to the river Teifi with prime positioning overlooking the slalom course down a 2/3/4 grade river.

Why am I doing this course? Well. I thought it a good idea to see best working practise for leading groups of peers in open canoes on various types of rivers and open water. I enjoy canoing and I want to canoe more. I guess that will involve canoeing with people. I suppose I should know what I am doing.

If you have no idea what I am talking about open canoes, think Canadian Canoes, kneeling and a paddle with one blade. The original type of canoe, whether a hollowed out tree or a hide stretched over a frame. The traditions of open canoing lives stronger than ever because of the development of these types of courses.

The Four Star Open Canoe seems to tick all those boxes when it comes to thoroughness for preparing to take peers on a trip, whether on white water or open water. I must say, I am impressed with the thoroughness of this course. Taking people on moving or open water is no mean feat. The task instills a certain amount of responsibility. Irrelevant of the situation.

Getting the opportunity to be trained by Ashley St.john-claire and Matt Blue was too good an opportunity to be missed. These guys seriously know their stuff. But Matt will always be 7 stone dripping wet, the way I met him during my last season in the Ardeche and his first season down there. He now has hands bigger than Bocca and races on the GB raft squad. Top of his game, my hat goes off to the way he has progressed throughout his skills exploration in outdoor education.

Ash has a coaching style that builds the person up and then maximises those builds. An inspiring coach embedded in making people paddle better and have fun. I love his dog and I want to paddle with Ash a lot more.

The first two days was run by Ash on the river Teifi.

Day 1 - River Teifi

We started the first day getting to know each other and showing off our skills on the River Teifi. Although we are generally in a low water situation at the moment, the Teifi still presented some technical and challenging rapids with grade 2/3 rapids. In fact the final rapid was technically challenging for everyone and a real test.

The center hosting the course was Llandysul Paddlers, which has great facilities to learn canoeing, kaying and rafting in a safe and controlled environment. I slept in the bunkhouse for the duration of the course, and apart from the fact that O2 appears to be the only mobile opeator not to work on in Llandysul, I enjoyed the facilities.

Next to Llandysul paddlers there is a slalom course and quite a few rapids worth playing in. A great location to learn and enjoy in a relatively safe environment. We had some flat water sections too, a few shallow sections, and stunning scenery as we covered about 10km on this day. I was also introduced to poling. Something I have been avoiding for many years because I thought it was too geeky. But I stand corrected. I enjoyed poling. I am buying a pole.

There’s a lot to see from this river and it is a gorgeous environment to paddle in. Challenging and playful rapids allowing you to explore your skills and the outstanding beauty. Our exit from the river was quite tricky. We were exiting 40 meters infront of a weir, described by our coach Ash as: ” Nasty Death”. More on this later. But the easiest exit from the river to the boat trailer and ride home involved carrying the canoes single style . So a canoe per person carried resting on your shoulders upside down. Lots of hauling using ropes and grunting the boats about 100m vertical later, the day for us was over.

Day 2 - River Teifi

The second day built on the experience of the first day and involved re-running and playing in the rapids of the Teifi. We as a group were responsible for the timings of the day, and true to form we over ran. So we ended up with a repeat exit from day 1. Lots of huffing and puffing and hauling canoes in a general upwards direction accessed up a set of stepladders and a 100 meter steep upwards climb with a canoe on your head.

Day 3 - Open Water - The reservoir

I have always avoided getting too involved with paddling on open water like reseroirs and lakes. It has never floated my boat so to speak. I prefer white water rivers. So in all honesty, I was not looking forward to a day on a huge reservoir. [I need to confirm the name and location of this reservoir. I will update this post when I find out.] Again I stand corrected.

Matt Blue ran the day. Packed full of information, no sooner than we had started paddling in formation around the lake than we had arrived at lunch. We navigated to a bank and tucked into our own version of lunch, which in my case always needs to involve macrels in mustard somewhere along the lines. It is truly the best river food, tried and tested in the Ardeche courtesy of Super U.

The next part of the day was to involve rafting up and building a rig and sail that we could use to sail around the lake using a tarpaulin as a sail, a log, ropes, a few roof rack straps and karabiners. This is not the easiest to explain, so a picuture paints a thousand words etc. Here is the story in pictures.

Lash two canoe poles together

Creat a raft using a log and two canoes.

The sailing rig

The Team

All in all I had a superb 3 days. Great peple, great paddling, inspirational coaching and new lessons learnt.