Thomas Stig Jacobsen’s constant why

So after a not of attention after my first release of the Twitter Add-on for Google Chrome I decided to rewrite the whole thing today.

This has resulted in some dramatic changes and improvements. But I’ve also got some things I would like to investigate further to improve the extension further.

Why doesn’t the extension (toolstrip) catch backspace key press but it does catches a normal key press like an enter key press or a simple letter?

Furthermore I’m considering letting an “enter” key press in the input field call the TwitterMe() function instead of letting the button (id=”submitMe”) doing so.

If you got some thoughts on this please comment this post.

Now for the changes and improvements of the new version of the extension. As Aaron suggested in my last post as a comment to the first and earlier version I let the Twitter-icon be a controller for toggling the visibility of the input and button. This works quite well after I decided to use jQuery as the JavaScript framework in this extension. I would have liked to expand the extension in the height but I couldn’t get Chrome to “dynamically” change the height of the toolstrip, only the width. I think the below quote should be rewritten if it’s only possible “dynamically” change the height of the toolstrip.

The toolbar automatically detects how much space a toolstrip needs and reflows. So you can resize your toolstrip dynamically if you need a little more room temporarily. - http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/toolstrips

Aaron also asked why I didn’t use a XHR call to the (brilliant) Twitter API instead of using the server-layer and that me research the possibilities of such a solution. After some investigation it’s now working fantastic.

Furthermore I decided to kick out the username and password fields since they were ruining the flow of extension. Your username and password is now to be entered in the “twitter-interface.html” which now also is XHTML Strict 1.0 valid (if that matters anyway).

Underneath I’ll include the download link to the new version as well as some new screenshots. Have fun and comment please!

Download link: http://e-x-e.dk/labs/chrome-twitter/twitter-addon_v_0_2.zip

Did you enjoy this post? Have a look at the post before, in this post there are some more information about installing the add-on (extension): http://www.e-x-e.dk/2009/05/29/labs-twitter-add-on-extension-for-google-chrome/.

Did you like this post, take a look at the new post and the new version of the add-on (extension): http://www.e-x-e.dk/2009/05/30/labs-twitter-add-on-extension-for-google-chrome-new-version-new-post/.

So, today I saw some article about the Google Chrome add-ons (extensions as they also call them). And since I’m a Chrome user myself I decided to play along by creating a small basic extension for Chrome.

I went along and created a small extension which would update a persons status on Twitter (and possibly also Facebook - through the Twitter application). It works in a really simple fashion using a client-part and a server-part. I had to do so since Google Chrome doesn’t support native cURL yet. So this is how it works:

Client-part: A simple form containing the status, username and password which is posting to a php file (post.php).

Server-part: The server-part consists of the post.php and the twitterAPI.php. The post.php handels the post from the client and calls the function (in twitterAPI.php) which does a cURL post to the Twitter API. The function returns a fresh form ready to update the status after entering the new status and the password (username has been passed on after the return). The twitterAPI.php is a modified edition of the original work of Antonio Lupetti (http://woork.blogspot.com/2007/10/twitter-send-message-from-php-page.html)

For testing I just used the commandline option by editing the shortcut:
Target:
    "path_to_the_chrome.exe" --enable-extensions --load-extension="The_path_to_the_addon_folder"

    fx.
    "C:\Users\Thomas Stig Jacobsen\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --enable-extensions --load-extension="C:\Users\Thomas Stig Jacobsen\Documents\Chrome addons\twitter"
Start in:
    "path_to_your_chrome_application_folder"

    fx.
    "C:\Users\Thomas Stig Jacobsen\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application"

I’m allowing anyone to use my server as the server-part (there is no kind of logging, I’m using the files that you can download underneath).

All the files can be found here:

http://e-x-e.dk/labs/chrome-twitter/twitter-addon.zip

Screenshot:

The last few days I’ve been in a city called Horsens to work. As a programmer and a night hawk my mate Martin and I have been working the late hours.

This has resulted in sleeping until 13 every day. So, is that healty or not? Properly not at all. But eventhough why is it programmers and youngsters tend to be that active in the late hours? We have been a lot more effecient working in the late hours than working in the day hours.

Maybe it’s because there is no external things to distract you, or is it just some foolish excuse to be up late and sleep long into the next day?

Jeg har kaldt dette blogindlæg for “Kunsten at falde ind i musikken” af den grund, at når jeg hører musik, om det så er jazz, pop, rock eller klassisk så kan jeg ikke undgå at “falde ind i musikken”.

Det er et “state-of-mind” som kan ændre ens humør og livsanskuelse på de få minutter som et nummer varer. Det er derfor fantastisk at kunne tage musik i ørene, lade sig falde ned i det store hav af følelse, toner, finesser og beats og derefter være “frisk”. Frisk på den måde at dine tanker er renset og du er atter opfyldt til randen med livsglæde. Det er et kick som ikke kan sammenlignes med noget som helst.

Derfor er det mit håb at flere vil lade sig falde ind i musikken, få renset deres sind og få det overskud som betyder at de kan give et smil eller en hjælpende hånd som giver menneskene i deres nærvær en god dag.

Så næste gang du skal høre noget musik så vælg noget dejligt musik uden vrede og skrig. Vælg noget som musik som gør dig glad eller får dig på tanker som betyder noget specielt for dig. Luk derefter ørene op og i på en og samme tid. Luk musikkens fortryllende toner ind og luk omverdenens larm ude af dit sind. Når musikken så er lukket ind og er det eneste som fylder dit sind kan du endelig nyde et nummer som f.eks. “Dreaming With A Broken Heart” af John Mayer. Lad ikke noget forstyrre dig og giv dig god til at nyde musikken.

Jeg kan garantere dig en bedre dag, jeg stopper nu denne post for nu vil jeg tillade mig at “falde ind i musikken”…

Her sidder jeg så, strandet på Aalborg Banegård uden nogen form for udsigt til at komme videre. Turen startede fantastisk med en stille kupé og en vinduesplads uden sidepassager, med masser af plads at boltre sig på. Jeg kom til Århus til tiden, vi vendte og drejede og lystigt gik turen mod den mørkeste del af det ganske land; Nordjylland.

Ved ankomsten i Aalborg var jeg midt i arbejde og musik og bemærkede kun svagt at mange af mine medpassagerer steg ud af toget og samles i grupper udenfor. Da jeg stoppede musikken lød den grufulde besked i højtalersystemet: “Toget kører ikke videre, busser kan findes…”.

Panikken greb mig i et splitsekund af forvirrelse og jeg pakkede hurtigt mine ting og steg ligeså ud af toget. Jeg fulgte strømmen af mennesker mod P-pladsen foran Banegården. Det hjalp bare ikke meget for da de to mini-busser som DSB havde fremskaffet var blevet fyldt for mange splitsekunder siden.

Mange splitsekunder og megen forvirring senere finder jeg mig selv i dette tog, som venter på at få grønt lys til at komme videre…

Opdateringen følger, måske……

It had been a lousy morning, minus 4,4 degrees celsius and my train had broken down meaning that I had waited about 45 minutes in the cold Danish spring.

I finally got with the train and got to a city called Hjørring where I go to school. I catched a bus to school and sat down listening to some music. Then the bus stops to get on new passengers, a older woman steps in and is looking for a place to sit. No avalible seat is to be found in the bus, suddenly – out of nowhere (no conversation nor eyecontact) a man raises up and directing the older woman to his old seat.

At this time I can’t help smiling seeing that gentlemens are not a extinct specie.

So today I got up with this crazy and kind of fun theory of where the rest of the gentlemens are. Furthermore I’ve writtin’ down some questions for you to answer.

I think that this true gentleman I saw has escaped a hidden dimension in where all the gentlemen are being hold captured by some evil dude. The great question in this matter is, HOW DID HE ESCAPE?

When thinking of this there are pippeling more fancy questions up. Like: Will he go back and try to rescue the rest of the gentlemen and will he get help from someone? Like a gentleman-god.

Please answer my questions, I’m dieing to hear some wacky answers.

Fra i morgen og til torsdag i næste uge smutter jeg til Berlin på studietur. I den forbindelse vil jeg og mine klassekammerater forhåbentlig skrive lidt rejsedagbøger.

HTX aus Berlin 09

I’ve been a customer of one.com for over 4 years now (started: 08-11-04) and I’ve been very pleased so far. I hasn't had a lot of support cases and emails regarding the service or uptime from one.com

Though the years one.com has upgraded it’s offers from time to time and each time I and other old customers have been upgraded as well, for that I’m sure we all are very grateful.

Even though one.com is a nice, reliable and fast host it still has some lacks and the one of them that has been most frustrating has got be the fact that you CAN NOT connect to the MySQL server externally. The first year of my subscription with one.com I didn’t really use the MySQL at all since I was a HTML kid who didn’t got broadband yet and therefore did all my server-scripting (with a database) at home on a private local server. But the problem was shown it’s UGLY face each and every time I’m doing a new project on my one server for a change.

The main problem is really that I’m a desktop- and not a all-browser-guy. Summed up: I DOSN’T LIKE phpMyAdmin at all, in any way what so ever. I uses the desktop administrative tools from MySQL.com which I find a lot more useful. But in order to connect to your MySQL server externally, you need to know the servers IP or DNS address but even though I’ve been literally begging one.com for an IP or DNS nothing good has come out of it. So sad…

All of this frustration puts me in a kind of messy situation. I doesn't want to leave a good and reliable host for this one thing. But on the other side I doesn't want to be dependant on other peoples servers/hosts where it’s an option to connect to the MySQL externally.

So my question to you dear reader, what should I do? Should I leave my good old host one.com and jeopardize my reliable site, e-mails etc?

Yeah I’ve been following the trial as the rest of the internet-crowd  these days. I’ll not start to write any summary or stuff like that but I’ll post some links with some serious and some unserious stuff.

Unserious stuff:

http://soundcloud.com/obd/obd-nu-ar-jag-en-cider-feat-hakan-roswall  - A song created by some dude, really fun. If you understand it.

http://spectrial.virvelvind.net/ – The place I got the song from above, here is some really fun stuff as well. More song, a Roswall-nonsense generator etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_kong_defense – The wiki talks for it self.

Serious stuff:

The English translated version of all the news, twitters etc. from the case: http://74.125.19.132/translate_c?hl=da&langpair=sv%7Cen&u=http://live.piratpartiet.se/&usg=ALkJrhiLOLGPFWYRkZspxZZMrSFEJHQ1YQ

The place where you can listen to the trial LIVE: http://www.sr.se/webbradio/webbradio.asp?type=live&Id=SR-Extra01&BroadcastDate=&IsBlock

Except this I’ve used my 5 minute break on this wallpaper today. It comes in 2 sizes: 1600x1200 and 1900x1200 this should suit anyone.

1600x1200

1900x1200

The original PSD file for the 1600x1200 version

The TPB font

Please create more fun and fantastic wallpapers and such and post a comment or a ping to this post.

I thing I really like about trains and other timed transportation is even though you got up to late because you again went to late to sleep, you hang by the computer when you really had to get ready and go take a shower you can reset your lateness/hurry by getting on the train you where supposed to. Because now you’re on schedule again, the time is set and you can again start thinking clear.

The dangerous in thinking clear is that now your realizing all the things you did wrong in the stressed morning. You UNMATCHING cloth on, you didn’t iron your hair and you forgot to pack your thing right, which now means that now you’re in a hurry after getting off the train. You have to make 3 stops before going to work to find the things you forgot.

So now the train isn’t anymore a place of peace and calmness. Now it’s a prison, holding you back, making you even more stressed.

Imagine a fantastic day you could have had if you went to sleep in proper time!