Gordon’s Place

I’ve pointed this out to a couple of people over the last week, so I though I’d try and double that number by posting about it. If you need to search through progress code, or for that matter any text file, on an XP box then you should investigate findstr. It’s virtually a grep for windows which is pre-installed on any modern PC. It doesn’t require or use an index for searching, although it does seem to have a temporary cache of the files which have been searched recently, and it’s text only.

cd templivesource
findstr /sim "G.Robertson Gordon.Robertson" *.i *.p *.w

My last PDA cost me well over £200. I can’t remember about the one before that, but it was at least the same. This time ‘round I’ve lucked out with a brand new, Windows Mobile 5 PDA with built in wi-fi, keyboard, camera and phone. The best bit of all was the price. While stand alone PDAs are still selling for up to £500, thanks to the wonders of subsidised handsets, I picked up mine for £50, albeit with a 12 month contract. So forget about buying a stand alone PDA, nip in to your local phone shop and get it from them.

Update: I suppose you get what you pay for. It was so slow as to be almost useless as a phone – it would take over 5 seconds to actually start ringing on an incoming call, which would mean that by the time I got to the phone, the voicemail had cut in. So it went back, in exchange for a smartphone which, er, works.

Based on a conversation I had a couple of days ago. There are 3 things, or 3 rules, you need to remember when using CSS floats. If you understand and remember these three points then you should never have any bother with floats. Otherwise, well, you might be lucky….

1. Give it a width. Everything that you want to float should have an explicit width, simple as that.

2. float: left/right means just that. If you float:left a div, it will go as far to the left of the containing block as it can. IOW it will go immediately to the left of the right hand edge of the previous element. If there isn’t enough room in the containing block for an element of this width ( see point 1 ), then it will shuffle down until there is enough room for it. float:right follows the same rules, just mirrored.

3. Subsequent elements can wrap around. Floating an element will have no effect on any preceding elements in the HTML, but subsequent elements can and will wrap around any free space to either the right ( for float:left elements ) or the left ( for float:right ). To prevent this, use clear:left/right or clear:both on the subsequent elements styling.

That’s it. You have just mastered CSS floats.

I’d just finished converting that moon shot into a wallpaper for my PSP when it occurred to me to “tag surf” flickr for other PSP wallpaper. Check it out. I especially like this guy’s shirt.

Steady….

My mate Nigel has just started blogging. Nigel and I have been working together on what we are both convinced will become the Next Big Thing over the last couple of months. It’s too early to go giving any details but watch both of these spaces….

My mate Ian was recently bitching about the price of videos in the new version of the iTunes Music Store. Got to agree with him, there’s almost nothing they sell at the moment that I would drop a couple of quid on. Perhaps if I was hooked on Lost ( which I am ) and had missed an episode, I’d buy that episode but that’s about it. If I wanted the series I’d get the DVD, as Russ pointed out you get so much more for your money. As for music, it’s an audio thing, not a video thing. I do other things while I’m listening. I don’t just listen.

I’ve been thinking about what I would drop £2 a pop on a semi-regular basis for and I can only come up with one idea. I think Apple should follow the example set by the big broadcasters and get sports clips into the iTunes music store. Specifically, I want to pay £2 on a Saturday night on one of the few occaisons that my team score a couple of goals and download the highlights of the game. It could be as short as a couple of minutes, that’s plenty to show all the goals, near misses and any controversy. A mate gave me a demo of a “3” phone a year or so ago, and that was the most compelling piece of it. He paid 50p, waited a couple of minutes and then we watched all the action in a 4-3 thriller. Sitting in the pub. The thing is, the iPod has become a mainstream device, it’s not just the province of geeks anymore. As such, it can learn from mainstream broadcasters like BSkyB who have come to dominate the UK Pay TV market almost entirely on the back of their sports coverage. They could even pick up on the subscription idea. I think some of the phone companies already do this. Charge me some kind of subscription and give me an RSS feed that allows me to download all the highlights of my team / country’s games.

PS This thinking came about as a direct result of Scotland winning 3-0 the other night. I’ve heard the goals were spectacular, but I haven’t seen them and once I’ve missed the televised highlights, I have almost no access to ever see them.

I have a voucher for £10 off any wine order worth £50 or more at www.tesco.com. It expires on 31/10/05 and since I’ve just ordered 3 cases of wine using another discount voucher I had, I’m not going to use it. So it’s up for grabs for anyone who wants it. One condition – leave a comment saying that you’ve used it. I’m not sure whether it’s a one-off or not and would be interested to see if more than one person can use the same code.

From the instructions – “At the checkout enter the code XXNJCT to receive the £10 off your order”.

86 out of 250! It would appear I’ve got some watching to do.