I’ve had a couple of interesting comments recently which I thought I’d share:

Anda juga boleh menyediakan voucher percuma. Jika anda gunakan wordpress, plug in disediakan di http://www.stillbreathing.co.uk/blog/wordpress/voucherpress/ Ok selamat mencuba…

I couldn’t agree more.

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My phenomenal lucidity thanks you, Mr Spammer.

Try this on for size: Voucher 1

And this one should ask you for your email address: Restricted voucher

And a test of a voucher link with a preview:

• My Wordpress, BuddyPress and Wordpress MU plugins
• Performer, my JavaScript/CSS library
• My Twitter page
• Experiments in code

I had some Borrowers myself. They were Star Wars figurines, which were a little smaller than the real Borrowers, but suited my purposes well. Up to an embarrassingly mature age, probably 12 or 13, I would create worlds for my Borrowers out of shoe boxes, book covers, string and anything else I could find. I built houses and vehicles, systems for defence, drawbridges, pulleys and trapdoors. I stopped short of using dolls house furniture to furnish rooms (hey, I’m not *that* sad) but still, I remember spending far too much time playing with my Borrowers.

When I was a little older electronics took over. I would take apart old radios and try to put them back together. I always failed. In fact I never remember anything working better after I’d tinkered with it – in fact I never remember anything work at all after I’d tinkered with it. So I made pretend devices. I got into no small amount of trouble once when I built a fake bomb including a large lump of Blu-tack inside a box. I didn’t know there was an IRA bomb scare that day, and I certainly didn’t intend my device to be found. I grew up a little bit that day.

Looking back I see that – like everyone – I’m a product of my past. Those years spent building things out of bits I had lying around were teaching my brain to develop in two directions: technology and creativity. And tinkering with stuff to make something new is exactly what I continue to do today.

You see, the art of being a web developer is about the creative use of technology – taking bits we have lying around (HTML, PHP, JavaScript, SQL) and making something new. Both sides of the coin are as important as the other. You can start with the technology – the lines of code, bits and bytes – and apply some creativity to make them into something useful. Or you can start with creativity – an idea, a vision of a finished product – and then use the technology to make it happen. But you can’t have one without the other. they rely on each other.

A how developer makes thousands of tiny choices every day, from how to construct a block of code to what kind of button to use in a form. Sometimes lucky people may have UI designers to work with who make some of those decisions for them, but I would guess most web developers have to wear lots of hats at the same time. Database schema designer, UI designer, backend developer, front end developer, graphic designer, documentation writer and project manager are just the hats I’ve worn today.

Having both creativity and technology on your side helps you to wear all these hats, and stay sane. Creativity helps you make those small decisions that move a project in the right direction. Technology helps you put those decisions into action. Technology helps you know what options are available to you at every decision point. Creativity gives you the inkling you need to choose the right path.

It seems my brain, because I’m a product of my past, fits this technology/creativity mix quite well. For the same reason I love jazz music, as it is based on the two pillars of technology (chord structures and sequences, scales, arpeggi, melodies and more) and creativity. I’m sure there are many more things that have a similar mix of these two elements (architecture and cookery, for example).

As we start a new year I want to help develop my skills in these areas. I want to develop my technological skills by learning more about the technologies I use every day, and possibly some new technologies. And I want to develop my creative skills by looking closely at how other more advanced developers have used technology in creative ways. Hopefully by the end of 2010 I’ll be able to say I’ve moved forward.

Here’s a simple example. Click here to be amazed.

If you want more information please visit the main Performer website, or download the Wordpress plugin here.

> Subject: Attention - Important Notification
> Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:14:44 -0600
> From: tech-admin <tech-admin@myjournal.com>
> To: info@myjournal.com
>
> Attention!
>
> On October 22, 2009 server upgrade will take place. Due to this the
> system may be offline for approximately half an hour.
> The changes will concern security, reliability and performance of mail
> service and the system as a whole.
> For compatibility of your browsers and mail clients with upgraded server
> software you should run SSl certificates update procedure.
> This procedure is quite simple. All you have to do is just to click the
> link provided, to save the patch file and then to run it from your
> computer location. That's all.
>
> http://updates.myjournal.com.secure.digi1adm.org/ssl/id=7335328053-info@myjournal.com-patch30892.exe
>
> Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter and sorry for
> possible inconveniences.
>
> System Administrator
>
> __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
> signature database 4520 (20091018) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>
> http://www.eset.com

Scarily real, huh? The “http://updates.myjournal.com” subdomain makes it look very official. So, be careful out there.

element.innerHTML = element.innerHTML + '\n';
var clone = element.cloneNode(true);
targetElement.appendChild(clone);

But for some reason, despite the true parameter being passed to cloneNode() so it would clone children, no children would appear. Even stranger, this:

element.innerHTML = element.innerHTML + '\n';
alert(element.innerHTML);
var clone = element.cloneNode(true);
targetElement.appendChild(clone);

Alerted the element.innerHTML without its children. Turns out this line:

element.innerHTML = element.innerHTML + '\n';

Messes everything up, even in Internet Explorer 8. All I wanted to do was make the modified HTML source a little nicer, but it screwed up in the web developers nemesis.

Hopefully this helps someone else.

Anyway, I have a few sites I can share the statistics for. Here they are:

That’s pretty much what I expected, with a very large proportion of visitors to the more commercial sites weighted towards Internet Explorer and Windows. For the other sites, particularly those with a heavy web development slant, the statistics show a wider spread of browsers. It’s good to see Chrome making inroads, but these kind of results must be somewhat disheartening for Opera.

I finally got the page about Wibstats updated with some screenshots. If you’re looking for the best (in my opinion, anyway!) stats plugin for Wordpress MU – and it works with BuddyPress – head over here.

If you just can’t wait, here are some screenshots:

There you have it. A top-notch plugin for Wordpress MU and Buddypress that gives every blog in your system their own powerful statistics.

After being featured on PBS for taking our canine cancer survivor Jerry on
the road trip of a lifetime, viewers flocked to tripawds.com to find out
more. As blog and discussion forum traffic grew, we migrated the website to
WordPress MU so we can now offer free Tripawds Blogs for others to share
their own three legged dog stories.

We use Chris Taylor’s Personal Welcomes plugin to send each new member a
personalized message, welcoming them to the Tripawds Community, and
providing them with helpful links to make the most of their blog.

This handy plugin allows us to create different templates with specific
messages for those who signed up without creating a blog, or those who
created a blog but haven’t yet posted anything. The admin panel for Personal
Welcomes now provides convenient links to new blogs so we can easily edit
each welcome message we send with relative comments, thus creating a truly
personal welcome for each new user.

Many thanks to Chris for his helpful plugin, and quick attention to our blog
links feature request!

http://tripawds.com

It’s great to hear of someone using one of my plugins, especially for a site making a difference to people … or in this case, dogs! Good luck for the future Jim.