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I am 2!
Can you believe it! I've been here for two whole years! It's my birthday today and I had a party on Saturday with lots of friends and family. We had balloons, sandwiches, jelly and ice cream and cake. But best of all was presents - I can open them by myself now, and I got some lovely things.
Daddy says he will put more photos on the web when he recovers from organising the party!
Stuart, Nicola and Abigail
Easter eggs
Today we went to Gran's for dinner as it was Easter Sunday. After my nap in the afternoon we did egg decorating, and we made a rabbit egg, a chicken, a mouse, and even an Upsy-Daisy egg!
I am one!
Today is my birthday! I've been here a whole year and it's gone SOOO quickly. I've gone from being a little person who was very cute but couldn't do very much to someone who can crawl, eat lots of different foods, sing, and give really nice cuddles!
Right back at the start of last year mummy and daddy decided to keep a web diary for me because they know that some people live a long way away and can't always come to visit that often. That means that there is a whole year's worth of stories and pictures here on the web!
Daddy has written a clever animation for me to celebrate my birthday. It shows you all the different pictures that come from stories about me and my year. If you click on a picture then you can read the story that goes with it!
I wonder what I will do in the NEXT twelve months...
Flash module is being used in the real world!
The little module for Drupal that I wrote and that makes it very easy to add flash content has been downloaded a few times, and every now and then I get a request for help or a bug report.
The latest request was from this site. My module is being used in the real world! How cool is that! You can see an example of the flash content they are embedding on this page.
The rest of the family
Welcome to the world Louisa Whyte!
You can see the "Welcome to the world" animation that I wrote by viewing the full version of this post.
You can leave a message for Darren, Sarah and Louisa by clicking here.
My sister loves e-bay!
My sister has got really addicted to e-bay, so this little song is perfect for her.
You can read the lyrics by viewing the full content of this post!
Gabriella's birthday cake!
Mum has made a birthday cake for Gabriella! It's her birthday tomorrow - one year old already!
Friends (and jokes!)
Dave on beer...
Dave has created a new website - DM on beer. The site has a simple mission...
Trying to show that beer is as simple or complex as you want it to be...
No more excuses for ending up in a bad pub or drinking bad beer anymore!
If operating systems were beers...
I meant to upload this ages ago - it perhaps needs an update to include new BeerXP and Windows Vista Beer...
DOS Beer
Requires you to use your own can opener, and requires you to read the directions carefully before opening the can. Originally only came in an 8-oz. can, but now comes in a 16-oz. can. However, the can is divided into 8 compartments of 2 oz. each, which have to be accessed separately. Soon to be discontinued, although a lot of people are going to keep drinking it after it's no longer available.
Mac Beer
At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.
Congratulations...
I've seen this before, but not in a long time, so I thought I'd add it to the site!
Congratulations to all the kids who were born in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
Films, photos and flash
Flash content stops working with Flash Player 10
I am doing some work on a new Drupal module at the moment that will add my flash node functions to the content constructor kit (CCK) (see the FlashField project page for details). It had all been working well until today when I installed the Flash Player 10 update, and then the content no longer appeared in Firefox or Safari.
A bit of fault finding pinned it down to using the private file system, and then only private files associated with the FileField module (which my new FlashField module relies on).
Inserting an Aquafadas BannerZest banner in Drupal
The flash banner below is a BannerZest banner, inserted in an iframe. The banner animation is from the Aquafadas website to show that it can be done.
To insert the content on the page you need to upload the banner directory and all its files to somewhere on your webspace. Next create a node, set the input format to full HTML input, and then put something like <iframe name="bzAnimation" src="http://www.yourwesbite.com/files/banner/bzAnimation.html" width="600" height="250" allowTransparency="true" frameborder="0"></iframe>.
View the full node to see the banner in action.
Flash node xml example
A few people have posted over at drupal.org asking about getting flash node working with xml files, for example, as a means of loading content in to media players or image rotators.
Virtualization!
Our new PC had (and still has!) Vista on it, and the newest Office with the weird ribbon system. At work we both use Office 2003, so we were keeping our old XP machine just to run the older office. But that machine is really playing up and is incredibly slow, plus it takes up a lot of space.
PHP error reporting in Drupal
When developing modules it can be useful to increase the level of error reporting within Drupal. To do this (in D6) edit common.inc and change the line
<?php
if ($errno & (E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE)) {
?>to
<?php
if ($errno & (E_ALL)) {
?>This will report all errors, including notices, whereas normally they are suppressed.
Vista remote assistance not working
Dad's computer wouldn't connect to our desktop machine, but it would connect to our laptop (Vista to Vista), so I knew it wasn't the router or NAT or similar that was blocking access.
Both machines run McAfee and it turned out that on the laptop the firewall had been configured to give Windows Remote Assistance (msra.exe) Full Access, while on the desktop it was set to Outbound Only.
Changing the firewall settings for the program on the desktop to Full Access fixed it!
Restoring graphics in Vista Help and Support
I don't use the Vista Help and Support tool very often, but when I opened it today there were no graphics or images, only red crosses in the placeholders where they were supposed to be.
It seems some registry settings are corrupted or missing (as described on this page). That page includes a registry file that repairs the settings.
I've just discovered Firebug
I'm probably way behind here, but I just discovered Firebug for Firefox! REALLY useful for debugging the HTML / CSS etc associated with the website, and at last I've got rid of the annoying empty line at the top of the page! I always wondered why it was there, and it was an "empty" block.
Multitasking!
Nikki's mum and dad were clearing out some old stuff and found an old flat panel monitor that I gave them AGES ago. I decided to try plugging it to our "spare" PC as whoever was working on that finds they really miss having a wide screen!
It works great - for me doing my Drupal stuff it's maybe even better than the wide panel as the combined width is even more than the widescreen, so I can have Eclipse open on one screen, and run IE/Firefox/Safari on the other for testing, or for looking up help.
Testing xml data loading in to flash
This loads a news item from xml...
The xml file was uploaded via the upload module, and is therefore stored in the Drupal files directory. If the base parameter doesn't point to that location too then the Flash engine can't find the xml file and the content doesn't get loaded.
Flash node macro example
This node is NOT a flash node, but it is displaying some flash content by using a flash node macro. The original flash content is actually in this node.
By using a flash node macro you can add the flash element from a flash node to any other content that has the flash node input filter configured in one of its input formats.
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialise correctly.
A basic flash node
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialise correctly.
This is just a basic flash node and has been created to provide some content for use in this node which demonstrates how a flash node macro can be used.