Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Monthly Archives: February 2002

Syndicate Dougal

In case anyone cares, and you haven’t noticed already, you can now get an RSS headlines feed from this site. See that orange “XML” button in the menus? Nooo, don’t click it — it’s just there to give you the URL (which is http://dougal.gunters.org/myphpblog/rss.php). RSS is a way to get headlines from other sites into your own. For example, check out this really boring page. Those headlines come from a bunch of other sites, and … Continue reading

Scottish Mood-Enhancing Ice Cream

Scottish ice cream maker Mackie’s is launching what it claims is the world’s first mood-enhancing ice cream, according to a report in Scotland on Sunday. The company, based in Aberdeenshire, Scotland has added the essence of an orchid native to Alaska to a low-calorie ice cream, a recipe it claims makes people happy. I never thought that ice cream needed anything extra in it to make me happy. Mmmm…. Ice cream…. Dr Bernard Senior, a … Continue reading

iStockPhoto Relaunch

We web designers are always on the lookout for sources of images to use in the sites we create. Most image sources are either low-quality, or very expensive. One great exception is iStockPhoto, which offers royalty-free images uploaded by its own members, many of whom are professional photographers or designers. To support the site, they are now charging $0.25 per download, $0.05 of which goes back to the original artist. I’m hoping that this will … Continue reading

World Wide Web

Emphasis on the “world wide” part. I chatted with tjp from Hungary(!) earlier. tjp asked me to look at this cool little drawing app. The page is in Hungarian, but tjp’s English was fine, and I was able to get some tips to get me going. caps-lock will toggle you between “click” mode, “pen down” mode, and “pen up” mode. right-click a pixel to set it to the background color. The links at the top … Continue reading

Blogchat!

New web site feature: blogchat! Courtesy of Brent Ashley. In my menus, you should be able to see whether or not I’m online. If so, you can pop up a chat window. Hoopy!

Sarnik

Sarnik is a graphical role playing game written completely in cross-browser client-side DHTML. Impressive.

Olympic Blogging

You want to know what’s happening behind the scenes at the Olympics? Check out the latest news from b-may.

The Iceberg Secret, Revealed

I wish I had seen this article a couple of years ago. It might have saved me some grief on projects I’ve worked on. Joel Spolsky’s The Iceberg Secret, Revealed explains: If there’s one thing every junior consultant needs to have injected into their head with a heavy duty 2500 RPM DeWalt Drill, it’s this: Customers Don’t Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want. It’s just never going to happen. … Continue reading

The Straight Dope

You’ve got questions? Well, Radio Shack ain’t got nothing on Cecil Adams, who has been giving people The Straight Dope for many years now. Check the archives for answers on topics that range from the lyrics to “Louie, Louie” to moon cheese.