PhotosByColour.com

PhotosByColour.com is nearing completion, anyone who want to index their photos on the site can create a username and import their flickr or picasa photos into our index where they will be analysed for colour information and then be searchable by colour. The url is:-
http://www.photosbycolour.com
or, for the americans:-
http://www.photosbycolor.com

I am just trying to finalse the rules surrounding copyright - users should only import photos that are licenced under creative commons or are their own photos.

Immersion - 4th December

I'll be doing a set at Immersion - Flea Pit, London. 4th Dec 2008, 7:30p

This is pixselpushers regular Tuesday night thing, always an impressive collection of artists performing there.

IE DOM BUGS : innerHTML='' clears child elements.

I was using ELEMENT.innerHTML ='' to clear the children of a node, so i could layout the same elements after sorting an array - to my suprise when i tried to re-add the children in the correct sort order, they were all empty. Doing the same thing in firefox was ok. It turns out that this is a known bug in IE. So the moral of the story is, if you want to clear the children of a node but want to keep the children for use elsewhere then DON'T use ELEMENT.innerHTML=''. Instead do something like:-

while (ELEMENT.children.length>0) {
ELEMENT.removeChild(ELEMENT.children[0]);
}

Here is more info about this little shocker
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/tests/dom_innerhtml.html

Dojo based style editor.

This is a fairly simple style editor I have built in DOJO for debugging style probs in IE. It works fairly well and uses the dojo.getComputedStyle method which retrieves the computed style for an HTML element, then it makes a property list of all the style attributes.

It just embeds with a single HTML tag, I usually position it past the right of the page so that it doesn't obscure anything else.

It runs with DOJO 1.1.0 but should be ok with 1.0 as well, as it uses fairly basic functions. You will also need to load the basic dojo library in the standard way(1) - I won't repeat it here. I have just been including the code with a JSP include - but really I should use the dojo packaging framework. Here is the component code(2)

So you need 3 things in this order:-
1. Dojo include
2. Component code include (just paste in or use [AS|JS|PH]P include)
3. The embed example below.

This is the embed example(3):-

<div id="styler" dojotype="robmunro.StyleEditor" style="position:absolute;left:1000px;top:0px;display:block">

Here is an explanation of the controls:-

textbox = input the id of an element(e.g."idElement") or some JS to select it (e.g. dojo.byId("idElement"))
undo = Undo last change (1 only) - may not work :(
get = Click on get and then the next click on any part of the page loads the clicked HTML element in the style editor.
show = Highlight the current element in the page.
parent = Highlights the parent element in the page - clicking loads it in the editor.
children = show a menu of the children of this element, clicking loads it and hovering highlights it in the page.
siblings = as for children.

The rest of the column shows the computed style for the page, the attributes are editable and if the edit was OK the text turns green, otherwise the attribute turns red, and the error is in the tool tip.

This has saved me loads of time debugging IE styles - which, as we all know, are quite buggy. So i hope it helps someone else out there as well.

I guess I should make it realizable and draggable as well. Maybe I will update it soon.

Here is a screenshot of it in action.

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Gtk::IconThemeError'

I have been using my ubuntu setup at work lately and running vmware for windows apps - but after uninstalling kiba-dock (svn version) i got the above error and VMware wouldn't start, which gave me a bit of a heart attack as i really can't work without vmware.

I found the solution over here (translated) - when kiba dock was uninstalled it wiped out some of the icons inthe ./local/share/icons directory. So i was able to manually copy the icons from the vmware install directory to my local icons directory.
i.e. copy
/vmware-distrib/lib/share/icons/hicolor/
over
./.local/share/icons/hicolor/

this updated the missing icons and VMWare then started fine. I would say there are probably better solutions to the problem, but this got me put of trouble anyway. obviously, it's always a good idea to back up the target directory as well.

I seem to be missing icons left right and centre though, so i would not recommend uninstalling kiba-dock via 'make uninstall', and my desktop applets dont seem to take configuration any more. Will get to the bottom of it though ;)

Facebook the biggest thing in tech?

After seeing that the top tech story on the BBC today is "Fans fight for Scrabulous future" i was a bit perplexed.

Is the main use of technology these days those time-wasting facebook apps. Surely there are much more relevant tech stories than the fact that some users can't waste 8 hours a day on Facebook. It is becoming the default easy news story, but really, how about something a bit more relevant. There was no 'Sun buys MySQL' or 'Oracle buys BEA' stories at all, both developments of that day being a lot more significant than whether some people can't play scrabble or not.

london bikeathon

I am doing the london bikeathon on sunday - anyone who wants to sponsor the great cause (lukemia research) can donate here:-
http://www.justgiving.com/robmunro

At least someone admits it

Just saw this on BBC, the Ozzie gov has admitted (somewhat stupidly) that they are in iraq for "energy security".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6272168.stm

If only the American government would come clean and do the same then we might actually get somewhere. It is so sad that all this destruction has taken place int the name of "energy security" if only that money could have been spent on doing R&D into new production then there would have been a greater return. I have no idea how much has actually been spent but it has to be huge, the US has t east had three lots ob US$80B so there must have been at least US$500B spent by everyone involved.

And how short sighted is the term "energy security" anyway? surely if we could get free energy form the sun then that be be a more more secure. There term energy security more related to income security for large oil companys. Who are still only spending a fraction of their profits on new tech.

As it stands at the moment everyone in Iraq knows that the west is in there for energy security and so they'll never give in and we'll just keep on sinking money into it. Luckily there is only a year and a half of more Bush left, maybe someone will have the sense to pull out and give thing a chance to settle, cos they aren't going to while the west in there.

Fave 2006

Fave 2006 is happening at Limehoue Town Hall on the 25th Nov. Should be good fun. There are a load of acts there and lot pf openlab people as well, Chun & Oli , Dave Griffiths, Daniel & Monica
(Jamka) are Andy Farnell all doing some stuff there. Should be cool fun ...
more info @: http://www.fave.org.uk

more upcoming events

A couple of other thing i'll be playing at in the next couple of weeks:-
21st oct: le placard : headphone festival at state 51, brick lane (8-10 rhoda street, london, e2 7ef). map

4th nov: openlab 3 opening : The third openlab is gonna be bigger and better - it goes for a week!! Should be doing some performance at the opening and i'm also also putting in a piece. It's at the midnight blue collective in peckham.

11th nov: openlab 3 closing: we all are going to be doing a and the PD wife swap which is gonna be sweet, it is nice to be doing some collaborative stuff with the openlab guys. A good application of the collective.

piksel

Piksel is on in the next few days (12 - 15 oct) so i'm off, its my first time and im expectiung it to be B.I.G. .. can't wait for whitehouse on sunday night.

Me - i'll be playing/hacking the japanese commercials on sat night so if ure there it'll be good to see you.

we are going to be posting pics and stuff created the on varoius blog of the people invloved (Which includes me!). and i will be (most likely) participating in the cinema soluble as well - 23hrs to make a movie , play it once - then destroy.

futuresonic warmup

Been doing quite a bit of work on my futursonic gig for seoud netwrok over the past few days. Just adding more OSC enablement to my PD componenets. Sould be on 20-23 July but no date yet. SOuld be oin at the museum on science and industry in manchester central somwhere me thinks.

openlab feed test

for those who dont know yet - openlab 2 is locked in for 2nd April at the vibe bar, brick lane, london. This is a great find for us as we can now break out and show the full glory of opensource music making to a wider audience. for thos who wernt there for openlab 1 last year here is a my set.. Soon we in openlab will do a podcast of our own.

Off to turin ....

Today we head off to turin for a weekend break in chamonix and see some winter olympics, sat 11th is the womens moguls, 13th we have womens snowboard quals and finals and the luge in the evening then we head back monday night. souhould be grrreeeat.