Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Seventies Addition

16th August

2010

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Red-hot, vintage calculator pornography.

3D Game Character Designer

29th April

2010

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We’ve just launched a cool Flash application that uses Papervision3D to create a simple yet fun 3D modelling environment.

Developed for games publisher SouthPeak Interactive’s upcoming launch of 3D Dot Game Heroes™ on PlayStation®3, the tool has been spectacularly well received by the games’ fans and has led to over 2,000 designs being created and saved in the first 24 hours alone!

So why not plumb the depths of your imagination and create your very own original 3D gaming sprite. Or, if you’re old enough to look back in fondness at the old Atari and NES games of yesteryear, try recreating your favourite 8-bit game character in 3D instead. Go on, try it!

Proper Anneka

6th August

2009

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HTML 5 – bloody hell, it’s got more Capes than a Geoffrey, as this link demonstrates.

Smarty SEO plugin: meta_tag

3rd April

2009

Carolv

Presenting the meta_tag plugin for the Smarty templating engine!

Click here to download block.meta_tag.txt

Click here to download outputfilter.meta_tag.txt

This plugin allows you to change the page title and meta tags from any template used to generate page output.

Purpose

Typical web page display scenario:

Web page “Home” consists of Smarty templates:

  • header.tpl – generic page header, HTML declaration, <HEAD> & <BODY> tags etc.
  • navigation.tpl - site navigation.
  • home.tpl – the main content for a given page, in this example “home”.
  • footer.tpl – the page footer – closing </HEAD> & </BODY> tags, javascript tracking etc.

In this example, the page title and meta data would be in header.tpl, whether as Smarty variables:

<title>{$page_title}</title>

…or hard-coded values:

<title>Hello world!</title>

Using the meta_tag plugin, title and meta tag values can be updated from any other template used to generate the page.

The following example contained in footer.tpl would add “Product description” to the page title:

{meta_tag type=’title’ method=’add’}Product description{/meta_tag}

The following example contained in home.tpl would replace the page title with the text “Important business report”:

{meta_tag type=’title’ method=’replace’}Important business report{/meta_tag}

The following example contained in footer.tpl would add the text “jacket,blue,leather” to the meta keywords:

{meta_tag type=’keywords’ method=’add’}jacket,blue,leather{/meta_tag}

So… what’s the point?

Often when you’re displaying dynamic data across several templates it isn’t practical to customise the page title and meta information using Smarty assign(). Also,the logic used in templates processed after the page header might contain information which would be useful to reference in the header.

Caveat

It’s preferable to call load_filter just once per output, BEFORE the instruction to display() or fetch():

$smarty->load_filter(’output’, ‘meta_tag’);
$smarty->display(”template.tpl”);

In a scenario where multiple templates are used, they should all be contained within one container template, to ensure the output filter isn’t called repeatedly. In the above example, template.tpl might be:

{include file=’generic/header.tpl}
{include file=’generic/navigation.tpl}

{* load main page body – filename is contained within var $template*}
{include file=’`$template`}
{include file=’generic/footer.tpl}

Installation:

Click here to download block.meta_tag.txt

Click here to download outputfilter.meta_tag.txt

Change the file extension on both files to .php, then copy them to your Smarty plugins directory (smarty/plugins). Detailed usage instructions can be found in the comment block of each file.

Behold the giant handset

23rd February

2009

Motorola-Dynatac

Old things. They’re like new things, only better.

Impress your friends with a fully operational, brick-like mobile phone from RetroBrick.com. Their value may well have depreciated a little over the years (from $3,955 in 1983 to just £59 today), and they’re far from pocket-sized, but hey, they’re cooler than an albino in a snow storm.

Well, if they’re good enough for my cousin...

Include refreshes Jonathan Ansell website

21st August

2008

We’ve given Jonathan’s website a digital lick of paint in preparation for his second solo album release. The ex-G4 star’s “Forever” is due to hit the shops on 8th October 2008.

Check out the fruits of our endeavours at www.jonathanansell.com

Change of Weather is beautiful

14th July

2008

Carl Weathers is without doubt the most underrated action hero of the 20th century. Everyone loved him as Apollo Creed in the Rocky films, but his performances in Predator and the criminally overlooked Action Jackson, whilst equally compelling, failed to deliver the volume of action roles he deserved. For a man so muscly and mustachioed to be overlooked in this way is a crime of epic proportions.

Fortunately, Carl isn’t short of work thanks to the Credit Unions of Washington, who’ve commissioned a series short videos featuring inspirational musings from the great man.

Google Lively

10th July

2008

Lively, currently in beta, is Google’s answer to Second Life. The downloadable application allows you to create rooms, decorate them to your liking, then make and invite friends over. Of course, you’re far better off actually doing these things in real life, but if you have poor personal hygiene and/or no friends you’re sure to find it very rewarding.

Googlelively

Honeycomb housing

25th June

2008

Some beautiful, honeycomb-inspired architecture from those funky Slovenian cats.

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The ZX Spectrum Orchestra

23rd June

2008

Clive Sinclair’s Spectrum graced many a home in the 80s. It’s Herculean 48k of RAM (128k, if you were lucky) just doesn’t cut it these days, but the pioneering ZX Spectrum Orchestra is helping to keep the legend alive.

Zxspectrum