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August 31 Improving freebie hostingIts amazing what you come up with in the gym. This is what wandered through my head while gently torturing my body this evening.
"How can you get rid of those bloody banner ads that freebie hosts stick on your website?"
*TING!*
Use CSS to get rid of the damned things!
Start with a generic page. Anything will do as long as its got some content. Get it published and then access it. Finding the ads in the markup shouldn't be hard and if you're really lucky they'll already have given it a class or an id. If they have then just put a stylesheet rule in that moves the appropriate class to a couple of thousand ems off the screen or set to display: none;
If there isn't an identifier then the same thoughts apply only backwards. Set all the images (I'm going to assume that the ads are images) to display: none; then give all your images a class e.g. ownimage. This gives you an anchor to set to display: block; and bobs your uncle. Or in this case, the guy you nicked the idea off :) July 01 Google EarthFirst of all I'm surprised that noone else out of the usual suspects has blogged this, esp. Mr Hicks as its right up his street but here we go anyway.
Google Earth is a 3D model of the entire planet based on satellite photographs laid onto a big ball. So at its most basic is like a 3D atlas. On to this Google have added a few funky features tho. All the terrain can be height mapped so flying round Mt. St. Helens or the Grand Canyon (two of the built in places of interest) is like taking a helicopter trip there. Also there are 3D buildings for about a dozen US cities which really adds to the realism. All the usual accompaniments like roads and railways are in there as well along with all sorts of random things like crime stats for areas and coffee shop locations. It also has the ability to store and label points and has the best route planner I've seen since MS Autoroute.
There are a few problems which come in to spoil the party, from my perspective at least. Firstly its not very stable and has a tendancy to crash although I haven't experienced it personally. Its also very US-centric which is fine but I'm waiting on a UK port. Some of the lines don't line up with what they are supposed to be representing, esp. the railways. Finally, and this isn't Googles fault, a lot of the world is covered in lo-res pictures which only make sense from about 20,000 feet. Also the lat/long coordinates are in decimal for the search box and deg:min:sec on the screen.
BHut on the plus side when you get a good high definition photo the quality is unbelievable. I've bookmarked my desk in work cause the res is so good. type Marlow in the search box for an example of how good it can be. That and grab a fly through downtown NYC for the buildings and take a look at the Grand Canyon for the 3D terrain.
All in all its the current greatest geeks toy with a couple of really useful bits built in, esp. the route planner. June 13 Is Andy Budd moonlighting?I think the man from @media is leading a double life. What do you think? Photos nicked from webstandards.org and garyoldman.info June 12 @Pub 2005All the best networking happens in the pub. In my case it was Clinks Bar on Southwark Bridge Rd. After wandering down and catching the last 20 minutes of the Q&A session at @media I collected the Freshfields crew and followed the mass of orange bags down to the pub. We then spent about 2 hours wandering round collecting bloggers. I think I only actually scared Roger from 456 Berea Street with my opening gambit of "So is the hotel comfier than a floor?" from his 'where the heck do I stay' post a couple of weeks back. Fortunately light dawned and we had a decent conversation about Icelandic versus Swedish for 5 minutes. Also caught Andy Budd looking very scared at signing his first autograph and got invited (to stretch the definition slightly) to apply for a job at Stuff And Nonsense by Malarkey. Jon Hicks also wins the prize for the most words on one tshirt I've ever seen. I really enjoyed my first conference even if I missed most of it. Its good fun going to the pub and having a natter. June 08 @media 2005As everyone else has done one I'm going to do a post on the biggest web design and accessibility conference on this side of the Atlantic. Unfortunately mines going to start with: I can't go, boo hoo However I AM going to the pub on Friday night to hopefully meet a few of the speakers and catch up on whats happened over the two days. I really want to meet Andy 'Malarkey' Clarke, Andy Budd and the other guys on my blog roll. Thanks to my gf getting tickets I'll also be getting updates which I'll post on here when I've translated them from the drunk. :) To anyone who's gonna be there I'll see you on Friday night, have fun. |
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