Following a post on an Internet forum, here is a small expansion on my Country / State dropdown selection script to enable a third level drop down. This additional level would allow for a country / state / city drop down selection on an XML file as apposed to just a country / state drop down selection.

(read on…)

The regular visitors to my website would have noticed the new website structure and design that I finally got together; to say that I am proud of my work would be understating the huge pride I have in my website.

Humbleness aside, I have not been the only website to recently update it’s design:

TheOpenSurgery an open source and tutorial based website by Jason Dugmore recently finished with updating a new layout and logo.

TechMongrel another technology based tutorial and review website by Matthew Vorster had a great monster logo addition.

And lastly NoBoxMedia an Ajax, DHTML and JavaScript site by Robin Pietersen finishes off my list of new website updates (the Noboxmedia website update coincides with a SEO competition which springleap.com is currently running).

All three website owners are colleges from my University days and I believe these are excellent examples of great websites, for content and design, to assist any developer in today’s chaos of information.

A special Thank-you to Robin Pietersen for introducing me and teaching me the basics of Adobe Photoshop; I wouldn’t have been able to put my current or past website designs together without the initial teachings I got from him.

Getting your blog (and blog posts) out there into the Big Wide Internet can be difficult at the best of times, but trying to get people that do visit your website to help you out shouldn’t be.

Social Networking websites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Facebook all have methods to allow their users to submit links to web pages that they find interesting, funny or just worth sharing. Allowing these users to quickly and easily add your blog post to their favorite website is a must for any blogger.

Below I have started making available the images I made for use on darwinshome (both the current size of 20px X 20px and the previous incarnation of 45px X 45px). Listed with the images are the links used to submit your website page to that Social Networking website.

This is not currently the full list of all the social networking websites available, as the weeks progress I will add more to the list until complete.
After a few weeks I will also design a wordpress plugin, to join the ranks of many like it out there, using the images and links listed.

[YOUR LINK URL] means the full URL of your blog post on yout website (eg: http://example.com/post/ )
[YOUR LINK TITLE] means the full title of the submitted page (eg: My Blog Post)

In alphabetical order:

Bloglines

http://www.bloglines.com/sub/[YOUR LINK URL]

De.licio.us

http://del.icio.us/post?url=[YOUR LINK URL]&title=[YOUR LINK TITLE]

[More images and links after cut]
(read on…)

Making use of my XML based Country and State/Province file I have put together a small script to populate two drop down lists with the complete Country and the selected countries Province or State list.

The code is ALL client-side based, so it will suffer from browsers without JavaScript enabled, but it is a very fast and light weight script to use if you want to quickly add a Country and State selection box to your registration forms. This script does not require any database to function.

Demo page
Download Country/State Code (10)

(read on…)

I have been looking all over the Internet for an AJAX or similar dynamic drop down tool for Country and Province/State selection (You select a country from a drop down list and the country/state drop down selection automatically populates with that countries list of provinces or states)

The good news is I found various versions, from ASP.NET controls, to simple JavaScript files, but the catch was that although I had the tool, the tool didn’t have all the counties of the world, never mind their respective states or provinces.

So after much trawling, and searching, I have a complete world country list (including Antarctica) with their respective states and I have placed them all together into an XML file for ease of development use:

Country State/Province XML list [29.3 KB ZIP file]

Please leave a comment should any errors exist in the file, from broken XML, to incorrect spelling, to having a province not listed, I will fix it if it checks out.

Hope it helps.

[EDIT1 11/03/2008] - Removed Yugoslavia. Changed “Macedonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of” to “Macedonia”. Added Serbia and Montenagro, with states. Thank you omBRE for pointing out my error on the NoBox Media blog.

[EDIT2 24/04/2008] - Corrected spelling of Antarctica (Thanks Ryan) and updated the “Regions” in New Zealand (Thanks David for pointing that out over on the NoBox Media blog).

[EDIT2 08/05/2008] - Corrected spelling of Czech Republic, Thanks Tim.

License and Copyright:
The country and province names in the file are public domain.
XML file in its current format is licensed to Michael John Grove under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 South Africa License.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
 There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

- A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

- A Return to Love using Wordle

I was thinking of making the title of this post “The quest for the perfect burger” just because I know the quest for the perfect burger is easier than the near on impossible quest for the perfect piece of code; but burgers (as tasty as they are) just don’t fit with this post.

In my work, I have recently been shipped into the cold storage unit called the server room - this being the only place where there are NO disturbances from other staff - and from this new cold location I am to develop/change/optimize/fix an existing system for our company.

This isn’t such a bad thing, I can deal with the cold, I like being on my own (sometimes) and the system is workable - so optimizing it is ok. The drawback is that the system is HUGE, and the company also wants new features designed, developed and implemented in this system - and the time frame given to me for this massive 6 to 8 month project - 2 weeks.

So here lies my quest - for that one piece of code that will make my life easier… slowly but surely I will either find it (Google is my friend), or in a “Eureka” type moment realize what it is I actually need.

Excuse me while I stress a little during the interim.

I recently downloaded a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Professional.

During the download, Microsoft emailed the trial licence key to my Hotmail email account.

Turns out Microsoft’s Hotmail service does not like its Try Microsoft Office service. “Attachments, pictures, and links in this message have been blocked for your safety” “This message may be dangerous”

Really? Maybe Microsoft Licence keys are dangerous.

When people talk about the number of fans Leo Laporte of TWiT has you don’t really comprehend the numbers until he posts something like this and the majority of his ‘TWiT Army’ decideds to follow suit.

Late last night I watched this effect first hand as people read Leo’s post and created Jaiku accounts, I watched as the Jaiku developers scrambled for their notebooks to make changes to cater for this mass mobilisation to their network. Jaiku wasn’t ready for this, but they managed, and they still seem to be going fine.

Now for the comparisson.

- Twitter is fast, and allows for multiple notification options (IM, web and Mobile), currently Jaiku only offers email notifications, but seems just as fast.
- A debatable difference, but I prefer the look of Jaiku, twitter has always seemed half done to me.
- Comments are definitely done better in Jaiku, although just as confusing as twitter when reading the public timeline / post list.
- I currently prefer the twitter badges for my blog, people are able to view more than just one of my posts from twitter. Jaiku allows only one.
- Jaiku offers icons to go along with your posts; this is a neat little feature to add some emphasis to some of my posts.
- Currently there are more desktop utilities for twitter.
- There is no way to view how many followers I have in Jaiku, yes this prevents follower envy (something that has formed in twitter) but having this feature for private viewing only may be a good idea for the Jaiku developers to add.
- The feeds feature in Jaiku is great, I can even add twitter feeds, so if I want to carry on viewing what my non-moving friends are doing on twitter, I add the feed and viola - I get the tweets.

Conclusion:
I believe that twitter has a large enough fan base to maintain afloat, this wont kill it (yet?), and those movers that are sceptical of Jaiku because of missing feature will have their doubts quelled when Jaiku releases similar tools. I think this move by Leo fans has been huge for any site to take, (losing or gaining) and the next couple of weeks will see if there is a clear winner, or a begrudging tie.

Would this work here, in a busy SA street?

The UK is adding loud speakers to its public camera system to allow the watching controllers to tell people to stop misbehaving. I think the first few times would scare the person into stopping, but what if they don’t understand English? Or what if the person breaking the law ignores it, send out the flying squad?

This 500 000 UK pound project will see many more cameras with speaker attachments in the UK, lets hope it’s money well spent.