Big Kids Did It - Mark McAulay and his Blog

Aberdeen web meetup needs a name

2008-08-18T10:08:00Z

Yep, it's time to put your thinking caps on and come up with a name for the new and shiny Aberdeen web meetup. Post your suggestions for it or email them over to me and i'll get the next stage of this underway in the next couple of days. Be creative.

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First Aberdeen web meetup a success

2008-08-17T10:08:32Z

6pm, Friday 15th August 2008 saw the first "web types" meetup in Aberdeen and we all had a good time. The chat ranged from who everyone was, who they worked for and what they were working on at the moment to normal sort of pub chat that we all know, love and laugh at. This meetup had an attendance of 9 people from mostly different companies which was pretty good and although I had to do a shoot at 8pm, I believe the night went on for several hours afterwards.

I am really pleased that it was well received and that people actually came out for it. I know there are a good few others who couldn't make it for this one but we'll see at the next one...overall a worthwhile meetup.

As always, I am interested in any suggestions people have for these meetups so feel free to reply here or email me direct if you're shy ;)

I forgot to take any pics of the meetup so unfortunately I dont have any to post here but if anyone else took pics, feel free to forward them.

I think we all agreed that the meetup needed a name and blog of it's own so feel free to start discussing that too...would it help if I set up a google group for this? (James B mentioned this previously)

Let me know...and cheers to all who got involved to make this happen.

As a side note, quote of the evening(at least up until the point I left) goes to East Coast Interactives very own Mike Duguid in arguing the case for coldfusion over php (yes...i was as surprised as anyone...Mike's a php developer!) and it went like so:

"Mark lives in Bridge of Don and so how does he go about getting into work in the middle of Aberdeen?....does he buy a car (the commercial solution, in this case coldfusion) or does he buy a box of nuts and bolts and build a car (the open source solution)?"...point made!

what others are saying:

http://www.seandelaney.co.uk/my-blog/31_aberdeen-web-types-meetup/

Aberdeen Web Meetup Update

2008-08-12T09:08:20Z

Friday 15th August 2008 at the globe on North Silver Street (next door to Under The Hammer) from 6pm is the finalised date, time and location for this one. Hope to see you there. get in touch with me through my contact form if you need any more info on this.

cheers

mark

Flash Online Designers

2008-08-08T02:08:20Z

This week at East Coast Interactive, we have launched our side project in the shape of flashonlinedesigners.com. This website showcases our most popular online design applications built using flash and available as licensed products for a vast array of industries with almost any kind of design requirement.

As more online designers are requested, built, tested and added to the site, they will be announced on the flash online designers blog.

mcaulay has more ink

2008-08-05T08:08:55Z

Today for the first time in 10 years, I got my ink on! I sorted my design and got my apointment booked with my good friends at draconian tattoo. Here is the result, permanently residing on my left inside wrist...i LOVE it!

Aberdeen web meetup on 15th August 2008

2008-07-23T09:07:02Z

So the initial emailing of 10 people I knew to be interested has resulted in very positive feedback and interest from several others that I wasn't currently aware of.

To bring everyone up to date I'll be sending another email within the next week but I can confirm that the unanimous decision for the date it is to be held will be Friday 15th August. Details of the venue, and any other points will be in the email and also posted here.

This is an opportunity for those of you in the know to let others that I'm not in contact with to explain that there will be a meetup for those in and around Aberdeen to meet, chat, generally "geek out" and have some beer. At a basic level, if you can get me email addresses for others, i'll add them to the list of people to contact. I'm not too comfortable with the idea of basically "cold calling" people so this would really help.

Discussions are about to take place about some great ideas for the future of this event and I encourage anyone with any interest to pipe up and get involved too. This will be a worthwhile thing to be involved in if the current feedback is anything to go by so if you want it even better, get yourselves involved.

Removing spaces from a string with coldfusion

2008-07-16T07:07:12Z

Ran into this problem today and it seemed to take quite a long time for me to find a solution so I'm posting how it works here for the benefit of others. This method uses a regular expression to do it's bidding.


<cfset mySpaceFilledString = "a brand new combine harvester" />


<cfset mySpaceFreeVariable = ReReplace(mySpaceFilledString, "[[:space:]]","","ALL")>


<cfdump var = #mySpaceFreeVariable#>

this returns "abrandnewcombineharvester" - all spaces removed from the whole string

To simply remove the spaces at the beginning and end of a string (a form field for example) it's much easier...


<cfset form.myTestString = " mark mcaulay " />


<cfset mySpaceFreeVariable = Trim(form.myTestString)>

this returns "mark mcaulay" - only the spaces at the start and end of the string have been removed

Hope this helps someone!

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**UPDATE - Just for good measure, and of course, to keep James happy ;) here is the equivelent in php

<?php

// set up a test variable

$mySpaceFilledString = " a brand new combine harvester ";

// remove all spaces from the string

$mySpaceFreeVariable = str_replace(" ", "", $mySpaceFilledString);

// check it works

echo $mySpaceFreeVariable;

this returns "abrandnewcombineharvester" - all spaces removed from the whole string

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To simply remove the spaces at the beginning and end of a string (a form field for example) it's again, much easier...

<?php

// set up a test variable

$myFormVariable = " mark mcaulay ";

// remove spaces from start and end of the string

$myTrimmedVariable = trim($mySpaceFilledString);

//check it works

echo $myTrimmedVariable;

this returns "mark mcaulay" - only the spaces at the start and end of the string have been removed

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Why you should upgrade to IE7

2008-07-10T09:07:47Z

Firsly, I cant believe I'm actually having to write this post...IE7 has been available since 2006, IE6 came on the go in 2001...that's a LONG time ago in todays online world and IE8 is already available as a beta download so we can only assume that it'll be here prety soon....oh and the browser is free in case you were wondering.

So, why do I care which browser you are using? well, by trade I'm a web developer which basically means that I know a bit about how web browsers are rendering the websites that I and countless thousands of other competent web developers build for you.

Today for the umpteenth (sorry, had to get that word in!) time, I hit the "doesn't look right in IE6" problem which follows us developers around like a rancid, soggy, beast from the swamp. Thats right, all web browsers display websites with their own little quirks. IE6 on the other hand doesn't believe in "little quirks" oh no, IE6 is too dumb for that, IE6 displays sites in a deformed, mutant from hell manner. In all honesty, it's not really IE6's fault, it was built to do a job many years ago and just isn't suited to the advances in technology that have happened since.

The way us develpers get around the IE6 problem (in case you were wondering) is by conditionaly serving up slightly less clever solutions, or even implimenting hacks in the code so that "stoopid IE6" can fathom that yes...users may actually want to view the lovingly created website, built to be a thing of beauty, that it's having to bother to render, while back in the studios the world over are countless developers ranting about how they hate "bloody IE6". Dont believe me? check this out, and this, and this...oh...and this too...i could go on and on but developers already know this and hey..you have google, go check for yourself the opinions voiced on this browser the whole web over.

So, time for a little insight into the solution to this problem...its called the web standards project and it exists to bring some kind of synergy between what should and shouldn't be supported by all the various browser manufacturers out there so that maybe one day, we'll have a level playing field for how websites are rendered...of course this will make the job of a developer like myself much less frustrating too. As browsers mature through versions they typically impliment more and more standards compliance as well as being tailored more for all of todays new website uses and also to increase security...yes...security...it's important! Microsoft by it's own admission states that IE7 is more secure and more capable than IE6 "Internet Explorer 7 isn't affected by the majority of vulnerabilities affecting Internet Explorer 6 and earlier", even if you don't care about the frustrations of poor overworked web developers, this should make you sit up and take note. This is what Microsoft themselves state as the reasons to upgrade.

So please, do yourselves and the whole developer community out there a massive favour and finally upgrade IE6 to the latest version, it's served it's purpose but is long overdue for the bin. You know it makes sense!

here's a link to go and download it right now

Aberdeen meetup for web people

2008-07-08T09:07:02Z

A few of us have been mulling this over for a while and decided that we should push ahead with it and have a social get together in a pub for people in and around Aberdeen who are involved with web design, development, programming, video, multimedia etc etc. A quick question to a few people I know show this to be a popular thing to attempt although it'll need someone to say "be here at this time", so, I've nominated myself to get the first one sorted and we'll take it from there...if I do a good job, i'll probably organise the second one...if not, someone will brush me aside and grab the reigns. This is a heads up for all those interested. If you want to post your interest here or contact me using the form on my "contact" page, we'll see what kind of numbers we're dealing with and then choose a date.

It should be noted that I currently attend an Aberdeen coldfusion meetup which I would recommend to anyone as well, although the focus is (quite rightly) coldfusion first, there are often a good mix of people with different skills in attendance and due to it's (slightly) more formal structure, there's the opportunity to see someone present on a subject and there's also a ton of discussion on geeky matters as well as huge scope for booze.

The main difference with this new meetup will be it's not tied to any one thing which will hopefully attract a wider base of people for informal chat etc, it's a perfect opportunity to meet others in Aberdeen working in the industry and figure out who's doing what...as well as the fact that we'll meet in a pub so there's even MORE scope for a beer or two.

Another thing we'll need is some kind of web presence, so if people want to start thinking about that, we can maybe form a little working group of volunteers to get that done too.

thoughts people?

Install Eclipse on ubuntu

2008-07-08T09:07:19Z

During my recent reinstall of eclipse(long story but all my own fault!) I decided to do a bit of searching around for the "right" way to do it and came accross the following post: http://www.ubuntued.com/?p=40. Just posting it here for both my own future reference and for those of others looking for a step by step method.

Using the above link I've just installed the latest build (3.4) with no problems what so ever. Hope it helps someone else.

Enthusiastic student

2008-07-02T09:07:07Z

Today at ECI, we had a visit from a 1st year graphic design student from Aberdeen College who is after a work placement over his summer holidays. I don't usually post about these things but I was so impressed with this guy's drive and enthusiasm, I thought I'd share my thoughts a bit.

To be honest, we were a little uncertain about what the guy actually wanted to do so we asked him in for a chat and got him some coffee. From the off, he was personable, interested in who we were and what we are about and wiling to turn his hand to anything that would further his goal of succeeding in the industry, on top of this, we saw potential in his work. We pitched a few ideas at him, got his opinions on several things, passed on some advice and basically got to know him a bit and the result of our chat was that we all liked him and will be offering him a placement with us.

I remember when I was starting out and had a relentless ambition to do what it took to get my foot in the door and prove that I was capable and in some ways he reminded me of myself. Over the years, I've spoken to loads of people just starting out and I always make a point of visiting local degree/end of year shows to see how the current crop are. More often than not I've been a little dissapointed at the lack of ambition and recently at a degree show, one student was more interested in heading off with his mates early than answering a few questions I had about one of his projects. His work was good, however, in my opinion, that's not enough, to make it you have to have a spark about you, a love for your art and a lot of drive. Needless to say when the guy emailed me directly a week later, I didn't reply on this occasion, he'd missed his opportunity this time.

It was refreshing to see the ambition and enthusiasm I thought was non existant from a student today, it resurected my faith in students and I look forward to helping him out as much as I can....well done Leigh.

Graeme Benzie is blogging

2008-06-30T01:06:58Z

The newest addition to the east coast interactive team has gone and installed wordpress. Graeme works with server side technologies and Actionscript and is a bit of a clever sod when it comes to making the 2 speak to each other. Doubtless there will be a few usefull bits and pieces pop up there so definately one to keep an eye on.

You can read all his latest articles/news etc here: http://www.datafake.com/blog

What's wrong with twitter

2008-06-28T12:06:58Z

For as long as I've used twitter, there's been something niggling me about it that I couldn't quite figure out, like most things of this nature, the problem was right there in front of my face.

Now, before I get into this, I need to note for the record that I love twitter. Of all the "social networks" that I've been exposed to, it's twitter that I'm hopelessly tuned to. I've had (and still do have a couple of these) facebook, bebo, plurk pownce, lastFM, coldfusioncommunity(of course) accounts but the difference is that whenever I boot up a computer, and I mean *every time* I get myself an interface to twitter, whether it's twhirl or the website itself, if I'm online, it's a given that I'm also on twitter and as such, I've made one or two observations about the service over the past 770(to date) "tweets".

I'm going to bypass the downtime completely, we're all aware of the problems, instead, I'm proceeding to a much more overlooked flaw. Now this "flaw" as I've called it wasn't always so, it's become one over time and by the evolution of how people use twitter, it's by no means anyones fault or anyones shortcoming, it probably couldn't have been seen coming, but I reckon (IMHO) that it's probably now worth addressing...hence this post. It's there on the interface every time you log into twitter, wrapped up in a simple h3 tag and it reads "What are you doing?" It is the absolute bedrock of what twitter was born on and grew up on but I argue that today, although it is still relevent, it's perhaps not telling the whole story.

Like many other twitter users, the service has become much much more than a simple question of what are you doing?, it's become a service for communication way more than that. I use twitter as a news feed, point of communication with clients, friends and mentors, means of finding out stuff and also, like a ton of other people, means to voice an opinion on one thing or another...therefore I move for the question to be changed to something like "What's on your mind?" or "What do you want them to know?" or something like that. I'm sure the massive twitter community will have other ideas about this and I'm interested to know what these would be so feel free to comment here.

right, thats tweet number 770, what can i do for 771....my twitter addiction is complete!

Python code swarm

2008-06-23T09:06:16Z

fascinating animation about how the python language developed over the years condensed down into a cool little video. Apparently the visualisation was done using processing...which means it's cool.

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo

Best Man Duty

2008-06-21T09:06:08Z

Last night I was asked to be a best man, this is the first time I will have had the duty and am looking forward to it. My good friends Bruce and Emma are getting married a couple of months before Kathryn and myself next year and I've already asked Bruce to be my best man which now means that I have 2 stag do's to look forward to in short succession....oh dear!

If anyone has any ideas or advice for a best man, feel free to comment here...the stupider the better really!