johnnypez.com

I’d like to thank Adobe CS3 developers for my source of utter frustration last night and this morning.

Last friday I did a clean install OSX 10.5.2 on my iMac. When presented with the choice of two filesystems, HFS+ Journaled, or HFS+ Journaled, Case-Sensitve. I chose the case-sensitive option because I am a web developer, I deal with linux OS’s all the time, I’m used to it. It makes sense. How was I supposed to know that 3 days later, when I begin to install Adobe CS3, the installer would drop out immediately with an error.

"the file system of the OS volume is not supported"

I found this on their support area : http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb400587&sliceId=2

What? Why? I’ll tell you why, because those CS3 developers are the laziest damn developers I’ve heard of. A problem like this is completely ridiculous. I can’t begin to comprehend how Adobe developers could blatently ignore some basic common sense coding practice and cause so much grief.

Adobe doesn’t care that they have caused this issue. They know about it alright, it hasn’t just surfaced with CS3 it’s been around for a while. I’ve read that CS2 would go through the install on case sensitive systems and then give problems when it couldn’t find files as you started apps in the suite. Well at least I might have had an opportunity to fix those issues if CS3 would go through the install. But no, this was their fix. Rather than just address their sloppy coding and fix the filenames referenced. The installer refuses to continue.

The only real solution seems to be reformat, don’t use case sensitivity next time.

Nice one Adobe. Stand up and take a bow.

Up to this week I’ve had no trouble with FAlbum (ver 0.7.1). It’s a very useful WordPress plugin for quickly integrating your Flickr gallery into your site.

I have been using it drive a client’s photo gallery for the last 3 months when this week it decides to stop working. It still showed Recent photos without any trouble, and it could also show a list of photosets, but If i tried to go to any page of photosets/albums or try to view photos in a photoset/album it would just display a blank gallery.
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Recently a client raised concerns that their Webtrends traffic reports were showing traffic well beyond what Google Analytics was reporting. I have good faith in Google Analytics, it would be hard for their reports to be wrong I thought. Fair enough there are cases where the tracking script may not run but that shouldn’t cause the kinds of gaps we were seeing. Webtrends was reporting almost 100% more page views than Google Analytics and roughly 30% more unique visitors.

I had to see for myself which tool was wrong so I took a sample of the server logs from Feb 1st to run a comparison.
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I’ve recently started using Ruby on Rails. I use Noobkit.com constantly for reference. It’s the best Ruby/Rails reference I’ve seen. It just drives me nuts that I have to scroll back up to the top of the page any time I want to search for something. I always felt that the header position should be fixed. It would be more consistant for the design and more usable.

I created a simple Greasemonkey script to put me out of my misery.

Download it here (Right Click > Save As): Noobkit Header Fix

Just apply it to http://www.noobkit.com/show/*

How about that eh? I found no reference to any problem like this online, but I found a fix myself so I’m posting it in case some unfortunate soul encounters the same problem. It’s really quite easy.
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I have a little bit of time for reading in work today.

I was going through the Information Architects Notebook when I came accross this post : ‘The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard‘.

It’s a must read for any web designer. These are simple rules to follow and can help your designs instantly. It should be common sense but examples of designers shooting themselves in the foot are just everywhere.

So my girlfriend won an iPod Touch in work a while back. Naturally I was more excited than she was at the news, and when I proceeded to explain why the iPod Touch was so cool, she didn’t really get it.

The iPod came in the post just last week, and we (I’ve) been playing with it since. She gets it now. My father picked it up and found his way around with very little help, Even my 60yr old Uncle found it to be incredibly intuitive. I’m totally impressed. I love that it’s slimmer than the iPhone too. The UI is so smooth and quick it’s an absolute pleasure to use. For those of you who have only had the Apple experience through the likes of iPod, using an iMac gives you the same satisfaction every time, go and buy one of those too!

Anyway, I find myself wondering which product do I really want. A jailbroken iPod Touch with the iPhone apps installed is only missing the phone and camera. I could live with that, I have a phone with a camera that I’m quite satisfied with (Nokia 6234). I’m not sure how well the iPhone works handsfree in the car either, can you get loudspeaker over an iTrip?

I think to be honest I would go for an iPhone if it was readily available here in Ireland right now. As it’s not I have two options; pay €999 for a sim free one from France; or get one in from the US and unlock it, voiding my warranty and causing me to hesitate at any software update.

Feck it, I want an iPhone, I want it now. But it seems like I can’t have it. So for now I might have to settle for the iPod Touch. Decisions suck.

After buying a domain name and building your website comes the step of choosing the best web hosting service for your site. Good options of the various hosting providers are lunarpages that is reliable and economical and startlogic with exceptionally good up time, There are certain service providers that provide some additional services like email , special prices and bulk packages, along with a cheap hosting site. An exhaustive list of the best hosting providers can be found in the latest edition of the local web hosting service review.

Having moved house nearly 3 months ago, I finally got my broadband connection up and running yesterday. Many thanks to Esat BT for getting that up and running very quickly once Eircom had got the finger out and connected my phone line. I have to mention that I had a very good experience with Esat BT’s broadband sales and support staff and I would recommend them to anyone.

Being back online allowed me to scratch an itch that had been bothering me for ages. The look of this site was desperate. So after a couple of hours last night and half of today, here it is. A brand new look. I hope you all* like it.

*all : my 2 readers. Thanks Ken and Dad

Been slow posting lately as I still have no broadband at home! God dammit.
Been doing a bit of web design work in the evenings and Clive Barnes has been helping me keep going. His music really seems to get my creativity going. Cheers Clive

I’ve seen him live in Kilkenny last year, word has it, he’s knocking about Kilkenny fairly regular these days, gonna try to catch a gig again asap!

In the meantime, enjoy.

This is the best ad I have seen in a long time. Cadbury’s can give their advertising people a great big pat on the back. Although I’m sure they knew before this ad aired that it was going to be a major hit.

See it in better quality on the dedicated site : http://www.glassandahalffull.com/