Jeremy's Blog

I have to admit that I’m a little concerned about this. Apparently, Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo and threw $44.6 billion at them in an offer.

My question is what does this mean for PHP if Yahoo accepts the offer? Not enough major players use PHP and Yahoo was one of our best aces to throw when people started talking down about the language. What’s Microsoft going to do with Yahoo if they buy them out?

Maybe someone with a little more knowledge on the issue can shed some light somewhere …

Fix it. This is unacceptable. If you want me to continue using your browser, this should never happen again. Period. I wish some of the stuff I used wasn’t so flaky in Opera, or I’d be using it as my main browser.

Have any friends or relatives that you help with computer issues all the time? Always think it would be easier if you were right there with them to see what was happening on their computer, but didn’t feel like bothering with a tool like VNC?

Fog Creek Copilot is now free on the weekends. I’ve used Copilot in the past, and I think it’s a great tool to handle this kind of stuff. No VNC setup, you just get an invitation code and their software. Give your invitation code to the person you’re trying to help, they get the software and away you go.

Try it.

I found this to be an interesting read. Apparently, JavaScript frameworks that are using JSON to handle their XHR / AJAX are presently vulnerable to “JavaScript Hijacking” – Vulnerable frameworks include Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX (aka. Atlas), XAJAX and Google Web Toolkit, Prototype, Script.aculo.us, Dojo, Moo.fx, jQuery, Yahoo! UI, Rico, and MochiKit.

Take a look.

Leave it to Web Comics to show exactly what the world is feeling with things. Ctrl+Alt+Del put up a very… accurate comic on Windows Vista.

Have a look.

I’m a Trillian user. Specifically, Trillian Pro. I really like v3 of Trillian, but from the looks of their development, v4 (Trillian Astra) is going to be a huge step forward.

Check out the sneak preview.

My new laptop, a pretty cheap Compaq Presario, arrived yesterday. Comes outfitted with a AMD Turion 64-Bit processor, clocking in at 1.60 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. It’s a really slick machine, I think. Considering as soon as it come out of the box, I was in the process of installing Linux on it … It’s going to be a great machine, for my purposes, and I’m currently typing up this entry with it.

Running the latest release of Ubuntu, 6.10 Edgy Eft. Took a little bit to get the wireless functioning properly, but thankfully I remember how to do a lot of stuff. Ran into a little complication part way through, but I think that’s because it’s a 64-Bit machine (my first, by the way), but that was resolved after I changed a few things up and swapped out my usual solution for an alternative. Now, wireless works great, and I’m not hogging Shawn’s ethernet cable (considering his desktop doesn’t have a wireless card ).

Overall, I’m pleased with the purchase. It’s the reason we got under such a financial strain, but everything’s resolved now, and the laptop runs great. Back to the hunt, I say.

I have to admit, I’ve got mixed feelings about IE7. Aesthetically, it’s much nicer-looking than IE6 was. The tabs are definitely a welcome addition. Support of standards? Increased … Kinda. IE7 has just been released, and it’s already going to cause issues for us, at work. Some things that render beautifully in every browser from IE6, to Firefox 1.5.x, to Opera 9, are breaking in IE7. So, we’re going to have to see what’s causing the issues. It looks like we may have to go as far as to implement some server-side code changes to make the client-side UI render properly in both IE6 and 7.

*sigh* Why am I not surprised?

Update: Looks like our kickass designer fixed the problem without breaking it in other browsers. Go dude.

Will this release make me change my primary browser? Definitely not. I’m currently using Firefox 2.0 RC 3, and loving it.

( Two in one day, I’m on a roll. )

It’s amazing what kind of a world the internet has opened up to people. The best friends that I’ve got have time and time again proved to be my online ones, which may be a little sad, but it’s true. I really realized this while reading the responses to my entry “Moving On …” … The people that I felt so bad about leaving behind in Alabama … I’ve only been contacted by a very small few of them, even after attempting to contact some of them, myself.

So, this is my little tribute to the internet. May all of you continue to find good friends in so many different parts of the world.

Over at Completely Unique, we needed a more efficient way to track bugs and feature requests. I tried to setup a number of different free systems like Flyspray, phpBugTracker, and Mantis, and none of them fit our needs. Some of them actually sucked pretty badly. So, we purchased a copy of Arctic from Olate, Ltd. It is by far the easiest to setup, use, and maintain as far as any “issue” tracker I’ve ever used. As you can see, our Development Team has already started using it. And it’s called an “issue tracker” because it is designed to already be able to track not only bugs, but features as well. And with some slight adjustments, it could also be used to allow us to assign tasks to developers as well. Adding new projects and versions to projects are a snap. Really simple and easy to do. One of Arctic’s biggest advantages, and I have already fallen in love with this feature, is the fact that it automatically generates changelogs and roadmaps for you. So, if you use the issue tracker like it’s designed to be used, then you don’t have to spend any time building up roadmaps or changelogs. It’s all done for you. The only problem I’ve had with it so far is it’s licensing system phones home in the Admin CP’s Home, which if it can’t hit Olate for some reason, it lags the Admin page pretty badly. Overall, I’d give it a 9 out of 10. Very solid product.