January 21st, 2010
Firefox 3.6 was released today. I love it. Love it. One thing I wasn’t crazy about was a behaviour change when opening links in new tabs. Before 3.6, they opened at the end of the tab row, but now they open beside the tab you are currently on. Want to change it back?
- “about:config” in your address bar.
- search for “insertRelatedAfterCurrent”. The full config is “browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent”.
- Set it to “false” (just click it until it toggles).
Enjoy!
Continue reading “Opening Firefox tabs at the end of the tab row”. Posted in
Browsers, How-To with 9 comments 
January 18th, 2010
There’s been some really neat activity on the CodeIgniter front recently. Great stuff.
Jamie Rumbelow has taken over as CodeIgniter Community Cheiftain, after an admirable job by the imminent Michael Wales. We’re lucky to have both as part of our community.
Rick Ellis has discovered Twitter (see him @rickellis) and is dropping all kinds of cool news about CI and EllisLab.
The CodeIgniter repository itself is getting a bit more love recently due to a few folks putting in their own time. Here’s how I spent my weekend (check out both the time (yup, 3am) and message of rev 1789 :)
There’s a lot of exciting things ahead for the framework - its a great time to be involved!
Continue reading “CodeIgniter update, Jan 2010”. Posted in
CodeIgniter with 10 comments
December 09th, 2009
I just wanted to take a moment to update everyone about BambooInvoice. Although a new version hasn’t been released since April, it is still very much under active development. The next version will be 0.9, and features a series of enhancements to make Bamboo more flexible, robust, and suited to a broader array of uses.
Despite earlier concerns about my choice of license, I can definitively say that for the near future, BambooInvoice will remain GPL. If I do change the license, it will be to another Open Source license.
On a technical level, I’ve put up the project at GitHub (http://github.com/derekallard/BambooInvoice) as an experiment in using Git as a code repository. This is my first time working with the system, and while the code is up there now, I’m not sure I’ll stay with Git - although it does feel nice so far, working with Git is pretty different from what I’m used to with Subversion. At the very least, major versions of the code will be put up there (ie: releases).
To the question of when, I’m honestly not sure yet. Its pretty close, but there are a few important pieces not yet in place, and I don’t feel comfortable even giving estimates or guesses. I can say development on the next release has been fast and furious as time allows, however the release of ExpressionEngine 2 has been taking up all my time in the last few months. That said, there is real progress; most notably
A full rewrite of the tax system from the ground up. Unlimited taxes, configurably applied to your invoices and items.
Additionally, here’s a sampling of the current changelog:
Continue reading “The future of BambooInvoice 2009”. Posted in
BambooInvoice with 17 comments
November 06th, 2009
A new small Mac app has been getting a bit of attention lately called TinyGrab. Its function is really straight-forward; it intercepts screen grabs you make and uploads them to its webserver for public sharing. Very nice little idea actually, and whenever I’ve needed to solve this task I’ve just used DropBox, which I am absolutely in love with (my DropBox referral link if you don’t have a free account yet).
So I got thinking, how can I automate this for my needs? First of all, I don’t want all my screenshots going up to DropBox, but I do want the ability to easily add them. A right-click option to “Send to DropBox” would be perfect. 10 seconds of Googling reveals Post to Dropbox Service by Oliver Stengele. It does exactly what I wanted… and why I hadn’t thought of looking for it before today is beyond me.
I made some quick adjustments; since I always wanted these sent to a subfolder called “Screenshots” I simply created it inside my Public DropBox folder.
Addendum: I had a note here about changing your dropbox id to include “/screenshots” after it, but that isn’t needed with the new workflow files.
After the files are downloaded (there are 2 *.workflow files included, just move them into ~/Library/Services/) you’ll need to edit them to include your user id. This is where the path for DropBox comes from, so instead of making mine:
dropbox_id = '906310'
Make it:
dropbox_id = 'whatever your dropbox id is'
Addendum: I also changed the “Copy Finder Items” folder to “screenshots” in Automator. If you want to save yourself the trouble, here are my revised scripts (DropBox_tools.zip). Please note that you must change the “dropbox_id” line above in each to get it working. Do do that, just double-click on the workflow and it’ll open in automator. Then edit away!
And now anytime I’m ready to share a screenshot, I right click it and it is automatically moved into DropBox for me, and the URL is automagically copied to my clipboard.
Handy!
Continue reading “Automatic screenshot sharing via DropBox on a Mac”. Posted in
Mac with 9 comments
November 05th, 2009
Last week my good friends over at EE_Insider focused on the imminent release of EE 2.0. If you haven’t read it yet, go read it now. They feature articles, interviews, and news, and always with a bit of humour (yes Kenny…. there’s a “u” in that word). They asked me for an interview, but after EECI2009 my wife and I took a few more days to tour around Holland… and l long story short… the interview only got finished right now :)
Go read EE 2 Week Straggler: The Return of Derek Allard! (Interview) for my thoughts on the future of CodeIgniter, the development of EE 2.0, and what it means to unite CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine.
We had sent out a set of interview questions that we weren’t sure we would receive for ExpressionEngine 2 Week. Derek Allard, one of EllisLab’s developers, was on vacation. Since he’d been slaving away for years on EE 2, we gave him a free pass. But Derek is what the kids call a “trooper” and he came back to us this week with the answers! It turned out to be a really great interview, timely due to the discussion and popularity of CodeIgniter and EE, and we got permission from the ‘Lab to post it. So, EE denizens, it’s my pleasure to give you our interview with the great Derek Allard
Continue reading “EE 2 Week Straggler: The Return of Derek Allard! (Interview)”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Personal with no comments
November 03rd, 2009
Back when I first setup this blog, one of the first things I did was setup akismet to catch spam (Sidebar:huge props to Lodewijk “Low” Schutte for his article on setting up Akismet for ExpressionEngine). I just checked today for false positives, which I do every few days. Generally the spam is very easy to spot and I delete it sight unseen, but today I took the time to read the few spam comments that were caught. 8 of them were banal, but the 9th was hilarious.
Now I know that that they often try to decieve filters with Madlib style randomly made up sentences, but this one couldn’t have turned out any better.
Your blog was of armpit awesome again even though it was petrifying for me to flagulate what happened.You turned what could have been a very folderol thing into something side-splitting and positive. Do pick with care! Also you dwell portable radio news programme show.I betrothed you xoxox
And doubly funny is that “folderol” is actually a word.
fol⋅de⋅ral [fol-duh-ral]
–noun
1. mere nonsense; foolish talk or ideas.
2. a trifle; gimcrack; gew-gaw.
Its a sad day when I learn that spammers have a better vocabulary than you do. The good news is that “flagulate” is not a word, and I get to keep holding my head high!
Continue reading “Its sad to learn that spammers have a better vocabulary than me”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy with 2 comments
October 23rd, 2009
The last night of EECI2009 is coming to an end. What an amazing time I’ve had. I’ve been under a fair amount of stress prepping for it, getting my speech ready, and getting ExpressionEngine 2 ready for release on December 1(!!). But it was all worth it!
Our fearless President Leslie Camacho gave an amazing speech. As he said, the cone of silence has been lifted! Highlights? Pricing details, licensing details and a release date! Exciting times. Punchline? Non-commercial License, $149. Commercial License,$299. Upgrade, $50. Coming (as stated) December 1.
I also had the opportunity to speak. “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants : How Community Shapes Development in EllisLab” went very well. It was recorded, and I’ll share the video here when its made available. In the meantime, here are my slides. I’ll be out of commission for about a week, but when I find more time I’ll post another blog entry summarizing and complementing the presentation for anyone who couldn’t be there.
Edit: the video is now available. EECI2009 Videos and Slides page, or directly on Vimeo.
I met an amazing group of folks, and this time I had a chance to hang out with some real superstars of the community. Everyone is just as awesome as you might think.
The city that hosted us, Leiden, is of course stunning; and our hosts from Whooz! WebMedia (particularly the eminent Robert Eerhart) made us feel welcome and wanted.
And now, I’m off to enjoy a (frankly, well deserved) few days of R & R with my beautiful wife storming around Europe!
Continue reading “EECI2009 all wrapped up, EE2 details announced”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, Personal with 10 comments
September 23rd, 2009
In a late-night bout of work, boredom and tiredness crept in. In that magical moment, this seemed incredibly funny. I wish now we’d thought to hashtag it first.
Continue reading “Late Night Twitter Fun”. Posted in
Personal with 2 comments
September 17th, 2009
The CodeIgniter manual is almost universally praised by the community*. I’m proud to say that we work very hard on our documentation at EllisLab - in fact as a coder, I’m forced to write the docs for anything I add or change. This means that they are pretty up to date, and reasonably complete. Could things be better? Of course! There’s always room to improve anything, and our docs are no exception.
What I’d like to focus on here is how to go about improving the docs, and one approach to giving your suggestion the best possible chance of getting included.
Continue reading “Getting changes made to the CodeIgniter manual”. Posted in
CodeIgniter with 22 comments
August 06th, 2009
Last year I had the chance to speak at the very first ever Annual ExpressionEngine Roadshow. I had a blast, I met a bunch of really cool people, and it was a great experience both as an EE dev, and as an EE fan.
Now in the second year – and second city (Seattle) – the ExpressionEngine Roadshow is coming up again. Its a conference designed to bring ExpressionEngine users and developers together offline. The conference offers something for everyone, newcomers included, but also provides in-depth development tips for advanced developers. So far, the day will include 6 excellent, varied sessions on ExpressionEngine with breakfast before the event, and a great party and networking event after.
If you have the chance to go, I strongly recommend you get down there. You’ll learn tips, techniques and development expertise from others who have been using ExpressionEngine for years, plus meet people in the EE community. From EllisLab this year, Rick Ellis, Leslie Camacho, and Lisa Wess will all be there; as well as Ryan Irelan (of EE Insider and Airbag Industries) coming, and they’re working on several other big names.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Seattle, WA
For full information hit up the ExpressionEngine Roadshow site.
Continue reading “Second Annual ExpressionEngine Roadshow”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with no comments
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