Joonha's Blog

Self Deception Experiment

2012-02-14T00:52:00.000-08:00

I tried an experiment once when I was a teen. Humor me and try it for yourself one of these days. Its a psychological experiment that will work for you and you probably won't like it because it works too well. It will demonstrate how it is far too easy for us to project belief and feel a connection of reality onto things even when we know they are not real or possible.

Pretend there is a large blue man similar to a ghost in that he is see-through and can pass through walls. He has no real physical form other than he can appear as a large blue man shape but only to you. Don't be scared! He is your true and lasting friend that will never leave you. He is always looking out for you and advises you telepathically. You can call him Bah-loo and his name is pronounced with a thick East-Indian accent.

The thing is you can only see him on the very very edge of your peripheral vision so you can just make it out that he is there if you squint a bit. He will whisper to you so quietly that you can only hear what he is saying when you think it and no ones else can hear him except you.

Try picturing him before you go to sleep and just before you eat something or whenever something good happens and make sure to thank Bah-loo for watching over you as often as you can. Also, you must trust that inner voice of yours is actually Bah-loo telepathically talking to you, not your own mind. Yes, for real.

I guarantee, if you keep doing this for 7 days, you will start to feel his presence and start listening to him speak to you. For some of us, this may be even in the same day! You will start seeing him just outside of your vision. If you continue to do this as a normal practice, your mind will dedicate a huge portion of its neural pathways to this belief and it will overtake you to believe Bah-loo is indeed as real as you or me. Try to stop the experiment before that happens as you may indeed become mad if you continue.

Don't worry yourself if you do become mad because you are not alone. A similarly named self-deceptive trick is already working on much of the human population but we do not categorize this as madness, rather we support it as a fundamental freedom in civilized democracies. Also note, if madness is a collective thought then it is no longer considered madness as enough people can vote the madness as legitimate and make policies and laws around it. Comforting isn't it?

The irony of twitter and facebook

2012-02-12T15:57:00.000-08:00

If you are actually doing something really interesting and all engrossing in your life, you don't have time for twittering and facebooking. The mere act of it detracts from the experience you are writing about.

This is similar to taking so many photos and videos of your vacation.

Hey what a fucking revelation! Technology that records shit without you worrying about it.

I guess there is a movie about that already with Robin Williams and it sucked.

An advanced and lazy SEO trick for developers

2012-02-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

I'm a lazy developer when it comes down to it. I don't want to spend everyday tweaking SEO to build traffic or go out and blog a million blogs just to get some piddly starter traffic. I want some program or approach to just do that for me that I can write once and forget about.

After watching the Social Network movie it inspired an experiment so I tried it back then. Today I can say it completely worked and so much so that I'm a little bit pissed off I didn't think of it earlier.

This technique is something that may take up to a year to start to really work because of the time search engines take to index but you get 100% organic search results and you are not polluting other blogs or websites with your crap. Read on knowing you must be patient.

I'll call my approach "Mass Subject Indexing" which took me a couple of hours to program. Here are the steps you take:

Find a comprehensive well defined subject terms that you can screen scrape. In my case it was all the first name and last names in the entire world. There were some websites that listed first names and some for last names and I took full advantage of this.
Write a program or screen scrape to save all the things in the subject individually by term in a database that you can query later.
Program a website to read from that database and page the results of the terms with links at the bottom so search engines can spider through all the results. In my case I had millions of names that were search engine friendly.
Think of a hook related to your product that will draw them in. In my case I created Spooky Fate that lists all the names in the world then shows their fate. The actual fates are very limited and just randomly given to the result page. All the pages and URLs are dynamic and built off the database on the fly so you must be comfortable with dynamic URL programming with .htaccess or URL Rewrite or MVC etc.

So the net result is I have a decently popular site named SpookyFate.com that is essentially a retarded idea with low content value but yet it gets over 1000 hits per day and growing fast without any effort in marketing, simply listing out all the first and last names. This leverages the curiosity of obscure people's names which are not on normal indexes already. Of course popular names will not come up because the links have no real value other than being obscure but there is just a lot of obscure ones so it totally works. This is a gorilla approach for sure but it simply works by the shear number of indexable links. Since all the pages are dynamically served, I'm only storing the data and not saving millions of pages. Its quite stupid yet effective.

Its a lazy-mans approach to SEO for sure and I'm sure they are much better ways of doing SEO than this. This requires lots of patients but very little actual work if you just let it go for a while in Google Analytics and don't keep checking it every 5 minutes. If the product or end result is actually worth anything, it will become popular anyway. This is just a nice broad sword approach that gets the job done for the initial bite of traffic.

I've started doing this in my businesses to draw in traffic for various subjects such as finding prospective clients and giving them their own personalized pages etc so they will find me out of shear curiosity when they ever search on their domain name or business name for example assuming they are not too big yet. I've done this for cities and places with zipstory.com but made each city a subdomain. I just keep doing it now because its so simple and works, I keep coming up with new subject ideas to generate more traffic.

Happy SEO-ing. Please comment and give any tips etc to me as well. I'm new to SEO stuff and really could use some tips myself. This is kind of fun. Its like hacking but not doing any illegal stuff or harm.

A totally different way to do Content Management

2012-02-12T12:31:00.000-08:00

This is written for web developers so read on knowing that.

The current problem with content management systems or CMS(s) is they require an installation to use them. They require coding in the paradigm they dictate and learning quite a lot about the system if you must extend it. These restrictions can be quite limiting or even disruptive when it comes to building a new website or worse, placing CMS into an existing website. It is not necessarily in the best interest of the web site or web application to be built around the CMS.

Next comes along Content Management as a service or CMAAS, pronounced "see-mass" not to be confused with CMOS :) . Because of how robust internet connections are these days it makes complete sense to provide remote functionality.

There are two distinct approaches to CMAAS.

To FTP or Not to FTP.

FTP-based CMAAS offerings such as PageLime and Surreal CMS are the most simple to use and really good for designers to implement. They are best for smaller websites where changes are based on a one-to-one mapping of a file to a modification because changes are saved directly on the file system themselves. It is only necessary to declare a CSS class declaration to make an item editable. You must have a site with traditional URLs that have file-system based content which is the main limitation. You cannot use dynamic content in other words such as pages from a database etc.

Feed-based CMAAS offerings such as feed.us and kitgui are built for larger web applications that can have dynamic URLs. Feeds enable much more powerful behavior in that your content moves to a new website seamlessly and can be shared across a number of websites in any technology. This has really amazing implications which a designer approach can never match. Both of the feed-based products are great but do very different things to achieve them within the feed CMAAS space.

Feed.us has a complete back-office management suite that is a separate website. It has a more traditional feel in terms of managing roles and privileges as you would expect a CMS to include. The management of the content is done through the feed.us website while the website using it consumes the content through a feed. Feed.us is based on a traditional database system internally to provide content on demand. This is a very polished product in terms of the back-office experience.
KitGUI is similar to noSQL in how it has no structure what so ever. KitGUI has no back office at all. In fact, you manage content directly on your website inline on the page. It uses HTML5 to overcome cross-site scripting. Your website becomes the back-office when you are signed in. This product also offers a CDN to store all your content and serve your images from which is a nice benefit. KitGUI needs some polish on its interface but is very scalable since all your content is served from a CDN rather than from a database.

I find it refreshing that CMS is headed in the cloud direction and am going to try out all these solutions and use the one that fits me best for the job. So far I've used PageLime and KitGUI. I am using KitGUI for any programmatic websites as the editing experience is really great as client's have commented. PageLime is better for when I have designers setting things up as they can't do simple programming tasks usually.

Religion and Science: the core difference

2012-02-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

What are you comfortable with as "truth"?

Religious proof to an individual can come in many forms such as scripture, personal experience, testimonials of miracles, or simply from the act of believing in itself or a feeling of common sense. The source of the followers or believers are usually a single book and/or organization responsible for guiding the doctrine. If guided by an organization there is usually a handful of advisors responsible for continuing the doctrine. The book and/or organization's truth is directly accepted as a fact or a metaphor inline with the conclusions of the religion. The religious individual is motivated through a divine purpose and holds the core beliefs as sacred and eternal developing over time as a strong sense of personal identity which also ties the person strongly to their religious community.

Scientific proof starts in the form of an hypothesis based on observing nature. If testing the hypothesis demonstrates consistent repeatable results, the results are submitted for peer review by the world's scientific community as a whole for scrutiny and independent verification. If results are repeatable throughout the independent tests then the hypothesis can become a theory or a law. A "law" describes the behavior of a phenomenon and a "theory" explains why the phenomenon occurs. So both a theory and a law are considered scientific facts which is commonly confused. The scientific individual is motivated by understanding more about why and how the universe works and makes no definite conclusions about things unproven without using the scientific method to get there.

Religion and Science require very different mindsets. It is difficult for most people to hold these two patterns of thinking together because its core is contradictory in how one obtains a conclusion. Some people pick and choose what is religious territory and what is science which allows them to cope with the severe difference.

On the extreme of both, the religious are deeply vested in its doctrine and will reject scientific facts that contradict their beliefs. The science-minded are deeply vested in the process of how conclusions are made and will reject any religious ideas or otherwise not passing through the scientific method.

The very basis of what constitutes proof is not agreed upon between the two in other words.

My best friend and I had this core difference and we both realized it and moved on. We are still best friends to this day and happily co-exist without arguments.

So what is your "truth"?

new business and nothing is happening

2011-12-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

Life is trying to tell you something. What are you doing right now to make your business happen? Are you advertising effectively? Are you asking for feedback from others? Are you proactive in finding new clients? What actions are you taking now? Its about action, make no mistake. But its also about the right actions.

Examine yourself. The root cause is you. Taking responsibility is the first step. Know your strengths and admit your weaknesses. Learn about promotion and examine deeply what you are selling. Are you offering a useful product and/or service?

The best leaders leverage others around them to do what they could not do alone, to forge ahead. Build a team you can trust whether it be individuals you hire, partners or products and services to move you forward.

Stop contemplating and start doing as the only thing holding you back is you.

Converting ASP.NET MVC Compiled website to JIT App_Code website

2011-11-17T14:42:00.000-08:00

Working with MVC can be a pain when you want to make simple changes like adding a web page. You must open up a solution in Visual Studio, modify code then compile, then copy your files to your server. This is too many steps for web programming as web programming is supposed to be light weight and fast.

Working with the App_Code folder allows you to make your changes rather quickly and does not require Visual Studio to compile.

In order to do this here are the steps for a typical ASP.NET MVC 3 project:

Open up as a website instead of project in visual studio or web express
Move the Controllers and Models folders into the App_Code folder. Basically this is taking class files and moving them to App_Code so other class files apply as well if on another MVC project like Nop Commerce etc.
Modify the global.ashx file to require no code behind. You do this by taking the contents of the code behind's class file and copy paste into a runat server on the global.asax directly. Then remove the code behind references and inheritance.
In the bin directory remove the project's DLL reference but make sure to keep the MVC Dll from Microsoft.

Try it out. This should work like a charm. I typically do this for the new MVC 3 Nop Commerce because I want to be able to modify things very easily and quickly without having to go through builds.

dynamic "fixed" positioning eliminates jerky effect

2011-03-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

This is deeper than what your expecting so read on.

If you position things continuously and dynamically via "position:fixed" there are no jerky movements. For example, I needed to have an icon float on the right of the screen relative to the center point of the floating centered DIV container page content, NOT relative to the window edge. This is not a simple CSS setting, but having to do align it to the left edge just outside content area for a "back to top" button having to ensure it didn't float over the content nor be aligned to the window edge when the window was expanded and also had to be exactly in the middle of the height of the window.

The JavaScript is continuously updating the position as you scroll or change the window size yet there is no jerky movements. If you try this via "position:absolute" you will have the jerky movements.

I am guessing the jerky movement does not occur on scroll because you are letting the browser first do its native fixed positioning which is fast so it has much less work to do after it gets your dynamic setting. Before I used setTimeout to continuously call back itself when the position changed and to fire after the scrolling or resizing stopped so it had the easing affect. No need on this one.

This tackles the DELL and Apple cart problems that unstick themselves and then follow down the page as you go while being left aligned to the main content via a center point and also for a "back to top" button that follows you. You can see the DELL unsticking behavior on the left icons as well.

I've implemented this as a plugin called "jquery.dumbfixed.js". You can get it at GitHub here https://github.com/sebringj/jquery.dumbfixed

comment on "The Singularity"

2011-03-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I saw the film "Transcendent Man" which made me intrigued to read more from ieee.org and http://singinst.org/ and wikipedia.

"The singularity" refers to a point in human history where artificial intelligence or human-enhanced intelligence or some form of that will speed up technological advancement so rapidly similar to an exponential curve that it will approach a point to human perception as infinite change where our current brain capacity is unable to keep up. To put it in simpler terms, we just aren't smart enough to understand what is smarter than us and what the world could be from beings with far superior intelligence. Its like a chimp predicting the next Apple device or even understanding what a computer is.

I think people worrying about how humans will be treated by this superior intelligence are not thinking about one thing that the most intelligent humans portray. Look at www.ted.com for a bit and see what i mean. Philanthropy and empathy are rampant in people that are genius which is the closest thing to a far superior intellect. The smartest people in the world portray this trait. They care about humanity as a whole. They address world problems to better humanity and consider other creatures and the environment. They also respect other lifeforms that possess subsets of human intelligence. We appreciate chimps and dogs as portraying some subset of traits similar to human intelligence and therefore we value them more because of that. We value less those beings such as flies or insects and lower that do not demonstrate subsets of human intelligence. I believe that is a strong enough argument to alleviate people's fears in that regard. "The Matrix" and "The Terminator" for example is based on a war-like mentality of violence and extermination as a solution which none of the world's brilliant minds see as a solution.

client-side way to persist form entries for later visits

2011-02-24T07:33:00.000-08:00

If you have done any web programming you have dealt with forms before. Users complain if they start filling out a form, go to another page, then come back to find out they have to fill out the form again. This happens so often and web programmers either ignore this or make some complicated session-based saving functionality to make up for it which takes time to do and the server takes on that memory load.

If there was a way to completely eliminate all of that and have it automatically handled, that would be great. With HTML 5 and offline storage, now there is dumbFormState jQuery Plugin which just works for IE8+ and all the other modern browsers out there today. All the documentation is there and its just a couple lines of javascript and you're done.

Helpful tip for Amazon S3 URLs for SSL and NON SSL for mixed-content warning

2010-09-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

On Amazon S3 in particular, if you end up hot linking to them for your image assets and script etc (static stuff) like I do nearly 100% of the time, this tip will help you eliminate lots of headache when switching between protocols and eliminating the worry about mixed-content warning authentication in all browsers, especially in IE which breaks the asset entirely.

First, take your bucket name in S3 let's say its "www.mysite.com" for example and that you want to link to the key "images/logo.gif" for example. In order to make this work for SSL and NON SSL as well as having the browser automatically determine what protocol to use for the URL, do the following:

img src="//s3.amazonaws.com/www.mysite.com/images/logo.gif"

Placing the "//" as the first part tells the browser to use whatever protocol its currently using. This works great as long as the browser is requesting HTTP or HTTPS which it always is when you have it online. Only time it isn't is when you are doing FILE protocol for local development. Small price to pay. Just do a search/replace big whoop.

The "s3.amazonaws.com" is the actual domain name of Amazon S3 web services and has an SSL key defined for it then placing your bucket and key after that point works great.

Remember, the S3 URL is case sensitive so ensure case is right for your bucket and key. Also remember to set your Access Control List to public-read.

Hope that helps you.

God is as real as "me"

2010-09-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

Do you agree the most important part of you is your mind? The mind allows you to be self aware and to be aware of others and the world in general. It allows us to feel everything and guides all the actions we take. It is what makes us who we are because without it, we cannot know existence or affect change in the world around us. Some would say it is our soul.

What is the mind? The human brain is comprised of a network of billions of neurons and all the matter that surrounds it for its structure and function. The brain is essentially organic hardware that allows the mind to exist. The mind being a pattern of electricity in constant change lighting through a vast network of neurons.

Is the brain and mind separate things? If you could create any type of hardware either organic or inorganic that allowed for the electrical pattern you would have a working mind. It is not important then what the hardware is in that line of thinking because the result of a mind is the same. If it is not important what comprises the hardware, then you could think that being organic is not that important in terms of having a sense of self. Since our consciousness arises from an electrical pattern, our sense of self and everything we experience is a result of that. The "self" we know is only in existence while the electrical pattern is in existence. Our most intimate and cherished part of ourselves is our mind and it is an electrical pattern.

How does this relate to God? From a scientific viewpoint, there is no evidence to support the existence of God but everyone can agree, at least God is a concept. In other words, God is part of an electrical pattern comprising the minds of human beings. That means that the concept of God is as real as our sense of self because they are both only electrical patterns. On top of that, the electrical pattern of God is in the minds of so many that it is indeed greater than any one man's sense of self. But you may think, "if that is true then any idea that collectively lives in the minds of many is greater than the sense of an individual's self" and you would be right.

Did this affect your electrical pattern or is this nonsense? Curious to know what people think.

blu-ray is slowing online sales for streaming and downloadable content

2010-06-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

Case in point the most successful blu-ray movie "Avatar". iTunes and Zune which are the most popular streaming internet-based movie-to-tv options are not offering Avatar HD (or 3D when it comes out?). The industry wants to sell plucking blu-ray discs so they can sell more blu-ray players and blu-ray drives to perpetuate old-school thought. When will hardware for media go away? It will be brilliant when it does. Just have your entertainment collection in the cloud, etc. and you can instantly stream anything on any device, anywhere in the world. Pluck blu-ray and all its cousins. This is kind of a pattern with all technology where profit gets in the way of progress to back feed slacking product. I refuse to buy a blu-ray player.

That would be great if iTunes and Zune offered a fee to handle this sort of thing transparently to their customers. Please.

The Origins of Morality

2010-05-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

Imagine its 10,000 BC and you are in a small, nomadic tribe, wandering to survive wherever the best and most plentiful food exists. You have a spear and so do your fellow tribesman. You spot a buffalo grazing a bit away from the herd on the distant plain.

One possible approach to kill the buffalo:

Scenario 1: You alert your tribesman and grunt and sign quietly to them to sneak about to form a large circle around the lone buffalo before it spots you and then tell them to attack it from all sides. If the kill is successful, you will share the meat equally among the all the tribe.

Another approach to kill the buffalo:

Scenario 2: You sneak away from your tribesman and wait till they are out of sight. Then you attempt to sneak up and kill the buffalo yourself in order to have more meat for you and your immediate family.

Which approach will more likely end up in eating for the day or rather which approach will end up in a more consistent survival rate of the individual?

I argue that Scenario 1 is overwhelmingly the better choice for the survival for both the tribe and the individual. The individual will benefit from a more successful chance the buffalo will be killed with more hunters there to kill it. The individual will also be in less danger of being trampled since there are more tribesman to distract the buffalo and confuse it. The tribe will benefit as a whole in that everyone will be fed for the day to see another.

Cooperation is the origin of morality.

jQuery Wizard Pattern

2010-05-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

jQuery is so elegant and you can do quite a lot in a very small amount of code. Here is a simple wizard pattern you can use to move between screens.

jQuery Wizard Example #2

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

jQuery MVC trumps ASP.NET MVC

2010-04-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

Here is what I do for an MVC-style approach with RESTful URLs while still allowing for the file system to be used normally whenever you want and to use Web Forms whenever you want:

URL Rewrite is responsible for the mapping of URL requests. This is easier and more powerful to define URLs with Regex matching than doing it with code as the ASP.NET MVC camp does and is much less code, in fact no code at all. This used as the CONTROLLER.

HTML pages + jQuery are used as the VIEW while ASHX handlers are used as the MODEL along with using LINQ within those handlers. The ASHX handlers output JSON responses to the jQuery requests in a standard way such as {"success":false,"msg":"email address already in use"} or {"success":true}. For testing in debug mode, I output any exceptions in the JSON "msg" property so I can trouble-shoot a bit easier and avoid having to step through.

At times I use ASPX pages or ASHX pages over HTML when the initial page load has to be dynamic but this isn't that often. This is necessary to do for SEO in some cases. On those exceptions, I still use the jQuery CONTROLLER to the ASHX handler MODEL so its all consistent after the initial page loads.

Since Web Forms are quite useful for adding quick functionality but are clunky in design and heavy in page size, I typically reserve them for the back office admin-side where no one else will see them except website administrators that are not customers. I can then use all the great Web Form data controls and other Web Forms related goodies.

In summary this approach gives you the full control that you want over your URLs, does not prevent you from using Web Forms as needed, and is much lighter-weight in terms of code execution and code management than ASP.NET MVC simply because there is way less code. I didn't even test this claim, just that is obvious, like 80% less code for example. I call this approach jQuery MVC and it can be used in most any server-side programing language. I've used the jQuery MVC approach now for nearly a year. It has become very easy to reuse the handlers and I am able to let the designers make complete HTML pages with CSS, then I just hop in there with my team and plug in the jQuery and ASHX handlers. Its more elegant than code-behinds and the approach is nearly identical when we do PHP sites. jQuery MVC is just a damn good way to go in terms of productivity and reuse, even across server-side languages since you can reuse the VIEW and CONTROLLER (HTML and jQuery).

simplest way to override SAVE event in CKEditor

2010-03-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

Lots of people are asking this question with no success. The fact is that CKEditor is a bit complicated and annoying at times although it is wonderfully free and thank you for making it CK dude.

All you do is put on the form tag action is this:

action="javascript:handleCKEditorPost();void(0);"

Make sure to define a function "handleCKEditorPost()" or whatever you want to name it and have it do some ajax. Inside this function, you can access your editor instances based on the ckeditor documentation as you like. I use jquery like so:

http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/Developers_Guide/jQuery_Adapter

Firefox 3.6 not working with Forms Authentication in ASP.NET 3.5 (fix)

2010-03-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

When doing FormsAuthentication in ASP.NET 3.5, only Firefox 3.6 was breaking and all other browsers seem to work fine.

The line of code that got me in trouble was this after checking a valid login then manually calling this code:

System.Web.Security.FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(email, true, "/");

Firefox 3.6 (Windows) doesn't accept a cookie that is persisted across sessions for some Buddah-Christ-Alah forsaken reason. Gods be damned. Change it to this:

System.Web.Security.FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(email, false, "/");

phuken Ehg, noob!

Artificial Intelligence - What motivates the AI?

2010-03-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, I'm not learned enough in this field to have anything else than a pseudo-scientific / philosophical type of idea on the matter. I am a programmer but need more research into whats currently being done and more study on human motivation so read on knowing that. This is merely a note to self since most likely no one else will read this.

I have "felt" things ever since I was born and started processing information. I was motivated by how I felt when I processed the information and then corrected / enhanced my behavior based on that in order to get into a more pleasant or exciting or least pain state. If the goal of AI is to mimic intelligence, there needs to exist a motivation for that intelligence in order for it to grow / expand / adapt in an independent way. Having a simple system of prime directives isn't good enough and isn't flexible enough to be human-like since we are not that way.

We feel things automatically from a result of stimulation. We can't control this unconscious instinct of emotion without a conscious effort (meditation, relaxing, smiling etc) which is another form of stimuli that we have found to bring us in a more pleasant state of emotion. In other words, emotions are a subsystem of ourselves that is at the base of who we are which we have no control over other than our attempt to control emotion based on changing our stimuli through different behavior.

If the above is more true than false, it would make sense to program AI in this matter in order to have autonomous motivation. We create a subsystem of emotions that occurs based on external stimuli. We could create a more caring AI if negative stimuli was sensing negative emotions from humans and positive stimuli was sensing positive emotions from humans for example. Discovery of a new thing would initiate a positive / excited emotion for example.

Currently, I have no other thoughts on this. I will try to think of actual math and code that could simulate the basis of this prior to writing more on this since currently, I am a moron in this area.

jQuery Ajax Strategy

2010-02-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

If you are thinking there may be a better way to do AJAX here it is. Its based on jQuery 1.4.x

What this strategy enables:

Clean separation of client-side (view and controller) and server-side (model)
CSS and JavaScript can be executed from content pulled in from AJAX request
Content pages can be coded as a normal HTML page with its own script resources and CSS

The scenario for this example is you have a parent page that loads in content through AJAX requests.

Live Demo

Parent Code:

<html>
 <head>
  <title>load test</title>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
 </head>
 <body>
  <div id="menu">
   <a href="page1.htm">page 1</a> |
   <a href="page2.htm">page 2</a> |
   <a href="page3.htm">page 3</a>
  </div>
  <div id="content">

  </div>
  <script type="text/javascript">
   $('#menu a').click(function(ev){
    ev.preventDefault();
    var $content = $('#content');
    $content.slideUp('fast');
    $.ajax({
     url : $(this).attr('href'),
     dataType : 'html',
     cache: false,
     success : function(html) {
      var bodyIndex = html.indexOf('<body'),
      startIndex = html.indexOf('>')+1;
      html = html.substr(startIndex).replace('</body>','').replace('</html>','');
      $content.html('');
      $(html).appendTo('#content');
      $content.slideDown('fast');
     },
     error : function() {

     }
    });
   });
  </script>
 </body>
</html>

Child Code

<html>
 <head>
  <title>my page</title>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
 </head>
 <body>
  <div class="content">
   <style type="text/css">
    #content form { font-size:10px; }
   </style>
   <form>
    <button>testing 123</button>
    <div style="display:none">
     text blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
     text blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
    </div>
   </form>
   <script type="text/javascript">
    (function(){
     var $context = $('#content');
     $context.find('form button').toggle(
      function(ev){
       ev.preventDefault();
       $(this).next().show('fast');
      },
      function(ev){
       ev.preventDefault();
       $(this).next().hide('fast');
      }
     );
    })();
   </script>
  </div>
 </body>
</html>

iPad from Apple is a big dissapointment

2010-01-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

I have to retract my previous writing to some degree based on this video blog: http://www.cultofmac.com/the-real-reasons-iphoneipad-wont-ever-support-flash-they-cant/31097

I had the general lemming understanding from Adobe's propaganda. In practice, I don't even develop on flash because I hate programming on it but I love JavaScript and jQuery which can do a lot of stuff flash can do. I did think the iPhone needed flash but now I don't agree now. The iPad experience won't be the best ever without flash simply because its used so much but Adobe is opposite of web standards which I don't support. The iPad still needs a web cam though. Adobe's dominance will go away when HTML 5 is embraced hopefully.

The Key Note definitely had a lull when Steve Jobs sat down and showed the browsing experience of the iPad. It was like, yah, this thing browses the web and watch me touch around it and see the broken flash everywhere.

Still no flash support. Where is the web cam? This has to be better in order to warrant the price tag.

The ironic nature of faith and religion

2010-01-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

I give respect to the nature of faith and what it can do in terms of motivation. Somethings can be completely untrue but believing in them can motivate us to take action and get us from point A to point B when we might otherwise give up. It can be faith that God is helping us or will give a good place to go to if we are good and persevere. It can even be just a belief a fledgling CEO has in himself to make it big from out of his garage like Apple did for example. Faith is a powerful push to take action so I do support it as long as getting from A to B works without hurting or oppressing anyone else.

So next time you want to argue about religion or that God exists, etc. there is no real point in doing so other than to try to squash someone's hopes and dreams and really piss them off. Besides, they are happy in their own world so let them be and it may just help them do something extraordinary.

So in summary, religion and faith are ironic in that what they are based on is not scientific but despite that are power motivators that help most people succeed and cope with the ups and downs of life.

jQuery plugin pattern, getters and setters for jQuery plugin instance !!!!

2010-01-24T18:16:00.000-08:00

Where in the hell is this on the internet and in books? I couldn't find it anywhere. Not even John Resig said anything about this. How can you create a jQuery plugin, then do method calls on it or set properties after creating it? There is nothing to help you out so I got angry and made my own...

This code enables a jQuery plugin author to make the plugin have instance methods in the jQuery chaining style such as
jQuery('some selector')
.myPlugin()
.myPlugin('dosomething','some argument');

I've used this pattern for the plugin I made for my companies which you can see here -> dumbCrossFade jQuery Plugin.

FYI, the code highlighted in yellow is awesome.

(function($) {

$.fn.myPlugin= function(settings) {

   /* define a data key in order to access your public instance methods later */
var dataKey = 'myPlugin.publicInstanceAccessor';

   /* this block is only entered if called more than once on the same jQuery selector */
if (typeof(this.data(dataKey)) !== 'undefined') {
   /* dynamically determines method to call with n-number of arguments */
var pa = this.data(dataKey);
if (arguments.length === 1) {
pa[arguments[0]]();
} else if (arguments.length > 1) {
var args = Array.prototype.slice.apply(arguments);
args = args.slice(1,args.length);
pa[arguments[0]].apply(this,args);
}
   /* returns jQuery instance for method chaining */
return this;
}

   /* define default settings */
var config = {'somesetting':somevalue}

   /* extend default settings */
if (settings) $.extend(config, settings);

     /* define private vars and methods */

   /* loops through each dom element in the jQuery selector */
this.each(function() {

});

   /* define your public accessor object */
var publicAccessor = {
'dosomething' : function (someparam) {
/* call your private methods */
},

'dosomethingelse' : function (someparam1, someparam2) {

/* call your private methods */

};

/* set your data key */
this.data(dataKey,publicAccessor);

/* returns jQuery instance for method chaining */
return this;
};
})(jQuery);

C# JavaScript Encoder

2010-01-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

   public static string JavaScriptEncode(string s)
   {
   if (s == null || s.Length == 0)
   {
   return string.Empty;
   }
   char c;
   int i;
   int len = s.Length;
   StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(len + 4);
   string t;

   for (i = 0; i < len; i += 1)
   {
   c = s[i];
   if ((c == '\\') || (c == '"') || (c == '>') || (c == '\''))
   {
   sb.Append('\\');
   sb.Append(c);
   }
   else if (c == '\b')
   sb.Append("\\b");
   else if (c == '\t')
   sb.Append("\\t");
   else if (c == '\n')
   sb.Append("\\n");
   else if (c == '\f')
   sb.Append("\\f");
   else if (c == '\r')
   sb.Append("\\r");
   else
   {
   if (c < ' ')
   {
   //t = "000" + Integer.toHexString(c);
   string tmp = new string(c, 1);
   t = "000" + int.Parse(tmp, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber);
   sb.Append("\\u" + t.Substring(t.Length - 4));
   }
   else
   {
   sb.Append(c);
   }
   }
   }
   return sb.ToString();
   }

strip HTML characters and comments using regex c# and vb asp.net

2009-11-30T07:52:00.000-08:00

This works very well for stripping out HTML and comments. I use this sometimes for content coming in from BlogSpot and then rendering on a web page. I let my clients use Blogspot as a content manager into their websites and sometimes don't want them to muck up their own site.

Here is C# to do this:

public static string RemoveHTML(string input)
{
// remove comments
input = Regex.Replace(input, "", string.Empty);
// remove HTML
return Regex.Replace(input, "<(.|\\s)*?>", string.Empty);
}

Here is VB to do this:

Public Shared Function RemoveHTML(ByVal input As String) As String
'' remove comments
input = Regex.Replace(input, "", string.Empty)
'' remove HTML
Return Regex.Replace(input, "<(.|\s)*?>", string.Empty)
End Function

The regular expressions are using non-greedy matching so they will match everything inside  or < >, even white space and new lines, etc.

For XML, I recommend adding two more string replacements to remove "<![CDATA[" and "]]>" to be placed after the comment removal and before the HTML removal.

The Magic Computer Interface coming soon!

2009-11-19T14:18:00.000-08:00

There are some exciting technologies emerging that will transform the way we interact with computers. Several innovations are happening from various companies that will eventually merge to create something out of this world.

Project Natal - Microsoft threw a lot of money at this one and has huge support from the gaming industry. The XBOX attachment costing around 50 Euros due out November 2010 will enable you to be tracked by your motion down to the face and fingertips as well as your voice direction and what you are saying. The slew of cool games and innovations coming from this will be revolutionary. Microsoft will definitely be the winner in this one.

Phillips WOWvx - Imaging NOT having to put glasses on to see full 1080p resolution with high 220hz refresh rate in full 3D? Wow. Now imagine this will be supported on existing games and movies as they are now because of Phillips 3D graphics chip that will interpret the scene and create the 3D illusion for you. That is too cool. This is probably 2 years away from being unveiled due to the price being 20 K right now and only offered to businesses.

Brain Gate and similar - Brain to computer interaction is happening in the real world. Remember when Firefox was not a browser but a movie with Client Eastwood? I was nearly too young but he used to fly a jet with his mind with a special helmet that talked to the flight controls. That is becoming a reality very soon. As nano technology shrinks and the understanding of brain patterns becomes more precise, we will soon interact with machines simply by thinking. When I say "soon", that means in 10 years.

This isn't finished. Still looking into other technologies such as dynamic touch interfaces, holographic displays and prosthetic-to-nerve impulse technology.

Google Chrome OS will overtake all after today's unveiling

2009-11-19T12:30:00.000-08:00

Think for a second how technology evolves? The environment shapes where it goes, what it turns out to be. There is no better or worse, rather the most popular thing wins out for a time. This isn't necessarily a good thing (Walmart).

Sometimes things seem to be going backward before they go forward and then suddenly become the standard overnight. Google Chrome OS will be just that because the environment is changing to fit perfectly for Google OS. Right now, Google OS sounds too small, too limiting because it is but just right now. Things are changing rapidly within the next year to flip that on its head. Here are the trends.

Low Price Point wins - People are starting to buy a lot of $300 net books. People don't want to spend a grand or more on a computer. That's where Google OS will run.

We are nearly 100% web-dependent - When are you not depending on a network connection either for your mail network or the internet? Google Chrome OS just takes it a step further and relies on the net to store your data and practically everything else with very little local storage.

The Web Experience is set to match the Application Experience - With the advent of the HTML 5 specification coming out, along with the optimizations and features Google OS will offer, the web will make games look and feel the same as applications. Google Chrome OS only runs web applications, including its own featured ones (except the browser itself). There is no special applications running on it like the iPhone that nobody wanted to program web apps for. [correction] Actually, that is a stupid statement I said because obviously people like to program on the App Store and its a great revenue model for programmers to directly get paid. However, I do prefer a standards-based platform over the iPhone's approach but they do it so well I have to say. In other words, Google Chrome OS is eating what it cooks and practicing what it preaches.

All kinds of Applications are moving to the cloud - Even the most closed Microsoft applications are being moved to the cloud by Microsoft themselves. Even the most intense applications are going to the web as well. Onlive.com is soon coming out of beta with their latest game technology that allows someone to play the most intensely graphical game through a web browser and later serve any other type of computing through a web browser for that matter. Obviously, this is good news for Google Chrome OS.

Solid Netbook Manufacturers and Hardware Partnerships - Google Chrome OS is in bed with the top netbook manufacturers and hardware (driver) makers. Google is controlling the quality of how things are working together in terms of hardware support in Google Chrome OS.

Google Chrome OS will be available with the latest net books by November of 2010 but can be downloaded and installed as a developer build given the right combination of hardware.