Over the time I got into web development, I’ve headed to google a lot. This has resulted in running in to countless handy resources I didn’t know of before.
In this post I’ll try to make a summary of a good set of links regarding webdev. If it’s not obvious, the paragraph headers link to the pages I’m talking about.
Note: my first one used to be W3Schools, but I found out that W3Schools has multiple cases of misinformation in their tutorials, as is more thoroughly explained here.
On Html Dog, you can learn the basics of HTML and CSS, and go from there. This is a lesser known tutorial site, but is very clear in it’s explanations, and more technically accurate.
Whenever I run in to a good site that gives an introduction to PHP or JavaScript, I’ll add it on here as well, since the removal of W3Schools takes those away.
If you’re developing pages in PHP, and need to know what the order of the parameters of the explode function was, you can find it here. PHP.net has a really nice manual for every function that’s built in the language, and trust me, that’s a lot. The manual goes in detail about what the functions do, with added examples to help clarify. What helps is that when you just type ‘php’ [function name] in the url bar and hit enter, it takes you right to the function page 95% of the time. That is, if you’re using a decent web browser.
jQuery is with good reason the most popular JavaScript library. It does exactly as it promises: write less, do more. Using jQuery makes JavaScript fun again. jQuery is not only easy to learn, it also has a whole lot of support. At api.jquery.com, you have the whole manual at your fingertips. I can comment the same thing on the jquery manual as I can on PHP’s. The same thing goes here as well, type ‘jquery’ [function name] in the url bar, and you’re there in seconds.
Once you’re starting to have a decent grasp of your (x)HTML and JavaScript (and perhaps jQuery), you will probably get into ajax. Ajax basically is a technique that allows you to send/receive date to/from the server, without having to load a whole page. Since using this technique will often cause the user to have to wait for a little while, it’s always handy to show a little spinning animation, so the user doesn’t get the idea it’s not responding. You’ve probably seen them all before, but where do they come from? On this website, you can easily generate one of these nice gifs, in custom colours. It’s straight, to the point, and very handy.
Every decent website has its own custom icon that show up in the url bar and in the tab its loaded into. Such an icon is called a ‘favicon’. On this site you can import an image to convert it to an icon, and you can alter it after that. That or you can just start from scratch and start clicking pixels on the neat JavasScript-driven web app.
I found out about this little gem not so long ago, and I’ve fallen in love with it. JsFiddle allows you to- you guessed it- fiddle with JavaScript. The interface is as simple as it can get, yet it must have quite a complex background engine. You get a HTML editing area, a CSS area, and a javascript area. The fourth area is the resulting webpage. This website saves you the hassle from saving/refreshing the whole time with a text editor/browser combo. Just a click on the “run” button suffices here. The app also has a really nice tidy up function, which fixes all your indentation failures. On top of that, you can choose to use one of the javascript libraries that are available, which makes jQuery testing handy. And then you can save your fiddles as well, so you can share it with others. The update button makes sure you don’t mess up what you made completely, as it saves it as a new version of the fiddle automatically. I love this site.
Pastebin is a handy tool for collaboration. Basically, you can paste your code snippet, and select which language it’s in. It’ll automatically highlight the syntax accordingly. You can select how long you want to have the entry up on the site, and then you can share it. It has some handy embed and download functions as well. I think this is mainly handy for sharing code, showing examples, and letting other people check your code.
This beautiful website helps you out a lot when you’re failing at selecting good colours for your design. It has a variety of options to build fresh looking colour schemes. It has many features for things you wouldn’t even think about.
That about wraps it up for this post, I think. If I’ve missed any significant web apps/resources, please let me know. I’ve only included those I personally have experience with, so it’d be great if you could introduce me to some others as well.
As I mentioned in part 2, there was no concrete in the floor, but instead, a whole lot of sand. Over the last weekend, we’ve been working on digging that out. (Where we = my mother, my sister, and I). Unfortunately, it wasn’t just sand; it was merely a thin layer of sand on top of a thick layer of clay.
Onto some photos of that progress after the break.
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I decided to split this whole mess in parts, as otherwise, we’d eventually have so many photos on one page that it’d take too long to load.
Day 2 of the renovation, August 4th.
Today, the guy that’s doing all this let us know that there’s actually no concrete under the kitchen and bathroom. The two rooms where built separately, after the rest of the house was built, and apparently, they though it was al right to just build it on the ground, with no support under there. We’re lucky we didn’t have any water problems in there earlier, actually; or worse, the ground could’ve moved away due to ground water – which could’ve caused walls to break etc.
This new discovery means that everything will take longer than expected. We’ve got a whole lot of sand to get out there, so we can add a good layer of concrete before we go on with building in the new kitchen stuff. There’s still some work left until we get there though.
Today the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom was broken down, among other things. The bad-ass part is that this wooden wall was mostly cut down with a chainsaw.
Onto to the photos.
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We’ve just started renovating the kitchen and bathroom in our house here. (We meaning my mother, my sister and I). I decided to take photos frequently so I can look back at the progress. Should be fun.
On a side note: the photos weren’t taken for the purpose of great photography, but rather for documenting.
Firstly, I took a couple of shots before anything was done:
Kitchen:
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So, since Monday, school is over for this year. I had my last exam (analogue electronics), and I think it went pretty well, my results will be good enough.
This means that it’s time to relax a bit, which I’m glad about. Tomorrow, I’m heading to England, to see Brittany again after 4 months apart. I’m pretty pumped about that. Packing is mainly done, I’m ready to leave tomorrow. Up there we’ll probably being playing ITG and DDR often, as Britt has her own machine. I’m looking forward to that too, as these dance games are next to exhausting also a lot of fun.
Britt will be following up on the world cup, which might just give me an opportunity to do some coding, as I’m frankly not interested in football, that’s not to say I find it boring and over the top (but let’s not go on about that).
Tomorrow I’ll be spending quite some time on trains, so I had to find something to do in that time. Part of the time I can still use Internet on my mobile phone, but the bigger part will be Internet-less. I’ve decided that I won’t be spending that time on my laptop, instead, I’ll be boring and read a book. Recently, upon reading a friend’s blog, I realized that my English vocabulary really isn’t all that. From chatting and general Internet communication you don’t get the more ‘advanced’ vocabulary down.
The best solution I saw was to get my hands on some English literature, so I let Derek, of whom I know reads/has read a lot recommend me a book. He recommended me Robert Heinlein’s “Have Space Suit- Will Travel”, which is a science fiction story. Apparently it is his favourite book, so I decided to just get me the book with ebay. I got it for about €6, for that matter.
So here’s hoping I can enjoy the book, and improve my vocabulary a bit. I’m off to have a great 9 days, see you guys later!
In Belgium, and probably in multiple other countries too, there’s some government service where you’re eligible to receive money when you’ve been unemployed for a certain amount of time. Since I technically finished day school little under a year ago, and only did a month-long summer vacation job, I apparently am eligible for this. Obviously though, since it’s the government providing money to citizens, there’s a whole load of paperwork connected to it, to eliminate the chance they’d give one eurocent too much.
To be honest, I don’t care much about money. All I wish for is to live comfortably, and to be able to do what I like to do. Unfortunately that’s not how society works—everything costs money, and you need this money to survive; there’s no other way, unless you decide to walk the criminal road, which I’m frankly not planning to do.
I wish I could just continue working on The Audio Portal. It’s my passion, and I like to invest my time in it. Instead, I’ll have to push most of my time aside and find a paying job, because soon, my mother will no longer receive any so-called “child-money” for me anymore, as I’m no longer in day school. I find this terribly annoying, but I guess I’ll have to live with that fact.
So now I’m dealing with a whole lot of paperwork; I need to make sure I’m registered here, there, there, and make sure I fill in this information here, bring that document to that office, get this document filled in over there to then bring it here, and so forth. I find this very tiring, running around with documents just so I’d get a bit of money for my mother, to sustain our living.
Here’s hoping I can get hired for the job as web developer I applied for. It’s the first job I found that I’d actually love to do, which I also qualify for (at least that’s what I think). I really don’t feel like doing a boring, non-challenging job as a cashier somewhere… that feels like I’d be wasting my time, just to get some money.
Instead, I wish to get that job, which can challenge my skills every single day, and from which I can learn new, useful things every day too. Added to that, I wouldn’t have to deal with these government offices as much anymore, and just get paid for something I like to do instead. Earning the bread on the table looks much more attractive than being given the bread because I can’t find a job.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
I have a problem. That problem is that I’m not sociable at all. One problem usually causes other problems. In my case, not being sociable has caused me to spend most of my time in front of my computer, alone in my room up here. Which is obviously not good for one’s physical and mental health, and only causes the problem to get worse.
The interesting part is that I am very sociable with people online. I’ve met well over 60 people online which I still talk to every now and then, some of them daily, all over the course of 2 and a half years. When it comes to getting to know new people in real life though, it’s a bit tougher for me. I feel uncomfortable whenever I get in a situation where I have to talk to a stranger. This causes me to avoid social contact with them as much as possible, as I feel far more comfortable in my own little world of thoughts.
When you see me on a train heading for evening school, you’ll notice I have earphones in, and I’m mostly using my my mobile phone. What I’m doing on my phone? Chatting with people online. This can be the people in the chatroom of TAP, or just people on MSN. In fact, I get really annoyed when I don’t have network coverage on the train, because that means I’m alone. It’s kind of ironic that I can’t stand being alone when I have nothing to do, yet I don’t talk to people (in real life). I basically take my Internet social circle with me everywhere I go.
Anyway, I think I’m the most comfortable with getting to know people in real life by first having relatively short moments together, preferably with someone I already knew around. I’ll be honest: at first I didn’t feel very comfortable with my classmate and electronics teacher in evening school, simply because I didn’t know them. By now, the end of the year, they’ve become good friends, and we have inside jokes and everything. At the very start, I was uncomfortable with them, mostly because I don’t know how to behave myself with people I don’t know. I seem to be petrified to get into awkward situations.
Needless to say, I won’t be the one that starts a conversation with a stranger, unless it really is required for something. I do want to get over this. I’ve been told by people that I’m a friendly guy, but I’m pretty sure that’s only from people that have known me for a while. I may be friendly, but I don’t think many people who only know me in real life know what’s really spinning in my head. I’m a closed box, because I’m scared to be judged about things. I wish I could just stand up and not care about judgments, and just be who I am, talk about it to people without constantly fearing awkwardness. I’ve realized that being afraid of awkward moments just attracts said moments. This knowledge hasn’t solved that problem in its entirety though.
I want to get over this, I want to actually become sociable and dare to talk about myself, talk about things I actually care about more openly, while actually stating my opinion. I can’t get more sociable by just being forced to spend a long period of time with people I don’t know; I want to find another way to slowly build myself to not be a ‘wuss’ and just shamelessly talk to people. Without the need for a bit of alcohol.
EDIT 2016-07-10: TheAudioPortal no longer exists, meaning a lot of the original links in this article are broken. I’ve replaced most of them with the label in square brackets.
Well, the secret project has been out for nearly a month now. It is named “The Audio Portal” and can be found here: [link removed]
That’s right, I’m only now getting around to make a blog post about it. TAP, as I like to call it, has been in development since August 2009. I’ll admit, the site was inspired by Newgrounds. As if it wasn’t obvious yet. Over the 2 years I’ve been active in the Newgrounds audio community, I kept hearing about the same problems with the system, as well as experiencing them personally.
We all (we being the active community) realized that complaining about it wasn’t going to fix the problems we experienced, instead, we frowned upon forum topics regarding so-called “zerobombing”, or topics about missing genres and so on. I felt that there should be something like Newgrounds, but focussed just on music.
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Hello there, my name is Michaël, or just Mich if you prefer that (I do).
I actually had a blog before, but I set my standards too high, so eventually I didn’t have anything to write about. That and the fact wordpress somehow failed while updating and I couldn’t be bothered to fix it.
The plan is that on here, I write about things I occupy myself with. These can be posts about programming, music, or even philosophical topics.
I am currently working on a rather big website project, which I plan to release into the public in little over a month; this blog may eventually discuss subjects regarding said site too, as it is becoming a rather big part of my life.
Either way, there’s an ‘About’ page on here too, which I may or may not update in the future.
I’d also like to mention that I chose this wordpress theme because it suits the overall style of the rest of my website. I tweaked around a bit in the style file, added a header etc… I think I like the outcome of it. The picture in the header is one I took when I went wandering yesterday.>