jQuery Ajax Progress Indicator

From: http://neilbowers.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/pink-box-testing/

Pink box testing

Some years ago I was in a job where I needed to bring in a lot of software contractors in a short space of time. As a result I ended up dealing with a good number of IT contracting agencies. To help the process I wrote very specific job / task descriptions, and sent these to all agencies.

Generally I would receive agency-specific CVs, where they had reformatted the candidate’s CV, and in places tweaked the content. Over time it became clear that some agencies certainly did a lot more than reformatting, adding things they thought I wanted to see. This was really annoying, as the fabrication would reveal itself at some point in the process, sometimes after wasting time on a candidate.

We needed a software tester, and while writing the task description I decided to see how far the agencies would go. The descriptions all had a section listing required skills and experience, and another listing desirables. In the required section I listed “Pink box testing experience”. There’s no such thing as Pink box testing – I made it up to see if I received any CVs with pink box testing listed.

Sure enough, a week or so after putting out the description, I received a CV for a software tester. He clearly had a lot of relevant experience, but the agency had added pink box testing as one of his strengths. It was fun ringing up the agent and explaining that he’d been caught in my trap, and listening to him trying to weasel his way out.

If you missed the show at the beginning of the year on ITV here is the first episode from YouTube, in my opinion it was the funniest!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

When was the last time you saw one of these?!

read more | digg story

Ever had a good look at the FedEx Logo?? I guarantee you won’t see it the same again after mousing over the logo below.

Put your mouse over the logo below.

See the Arrow?? Now enjoy haveing your eyes always trying to focus on it in the future.

Sorry

Jamie.

Hilarious video of the IT Guys Worst Day Ever!!

IT Guy Vs Dumb Employees – Watch more free videos

As many of you know, i am working on 2Big2Send and we are at a stage where we want to let our readers know what has been happening and what is to come

What’s New/Changed

Uploading & Downloading

• Upload speeds have been greatly increased, some people are seeing upload speeds of 2MB/second.
• We opened storage locations in the USA and Europe, you can now choose where to upload to, the closer the faster.
• Upload and Download speeds have been increased by using Flash to send the data straight to the storage location.

File Organisation

• The Dashboard was implemented to better organise your files by using folders, by default files are uploaded to ‘My Uploads’ (this folder cannot be deleted).
• We aggregated the files into sections based on their type (ie: the pictures include .jpg .png .gif) this makes it much easier to find your files.
• Expired and deleted files are no longer displayed.
• The ability to move multiple files between folders was added.
• Persistant storage was implements as a percentage of your account, ie: files will not expire.
• The file details page was changed to include large buttons for downloading and sending which makes them a lot easier to find

You may or may not have heard of shorthand if/else statements, but they do exist, and trust me they make things SO much more ordered in your code when used in the right way.

This is the Shorthand version – below this, if you cannot work it out for yourself is a nice description.

    // Will print out 'i am male' if $myGender is 'male' and vice-versa.
    echo ($myGender == 'male' ? 'i am male' : 'I am female');

Description of how this actually works
We all (i would hope) know the normal way of writing if/else statements (here is a recap just incase)

$myVar = true;
if($myVar) {
    echo 'My Var is TRUE!';
} else {
    echo 'My Var is FALSE';
}

That sort of statement is great for in the body of your code, but when want a dynamic selector within your HTML code, it gets very messy.

EG:

if($myGender == 'male') {
    // Gender is MALE.
    $maleOpt = 'selected';
    $femaleOpt = '';
} else {
    // Gender is FEMALE.
    $maleOpt = '';
    $femaleOpt = 'selected';
}

<select name="gender"><
option value="female" <?= $femaleOpt; ?>>Female</option>
<option value="male" <?= $maleOpt; ?>>Male</option>
</select>

Now – that is alot to write and will make your HTML form look a total mess, this is where the shorthand comes in. It allows us to write the same thing inline

Look:

<select name="gender"> 
<option value="female" <?= ($myGender == 'female' ? 'selected' : ''); ?>>Female</option>
<option value="male" <?= ($myGender == 'male' ? 'selected' : ''); ?>>Male</option>
</select>

As you can see – there is a huge difference in the amount of code – and if WordPress formatted it nicely – it would look loads better!

And the all important Explanation!

// This will echo selected to the screen if $myGender is male.
echo ($myGender = 'male' ? ' selected' : '');

So – $myGender is the variable we are checking, in this case we are checking to see if $myGender == ‘male’

The questionmark (?) seperates the ‘answers’.

The first ‘answer’ is what is set/displayed when the query is true, the second is if the query is false.

This is the equilivent to :

if($myGender == 'male') {
    echo 'selected';
} else {
    echo '';
}

Hope that helps some of you out!

The Halo 2 (High ALtitude Object) Project is an amazing read: http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for coming along to Nodstrum, I am taking this opportunity to invite you all to signup to my new Web App 2Big2Send.

Our service allows you to send large files to anybody with an email address without clogging up their inbox or risking waiting for the file to send then have it bounce back, never a nice thing!

The system allows you to see the upload progress and will notify you when you file has been collected.

During this Beta period we are offering you the following:

• 100MB 250Mb Storage
• 10 Downloads per file
• Unlimited sends per month
• File expire after 5 days
• File delivery/collection notification
• Desktop Client (Coming very soon)
• Preview most uploaded images

We will most likely up the storage so you are able to send and store much larger files during this period, this depends on the number of users who signup – the more users, the more space you will get.

So! if you are interested, head over to http://2Big2Send.com and signup!

Thanks!

Today i finally finished University at Oxford Brookes!

Somehow i came out with a 2:1 (Upper Second Class Honours) in Computer Science! I cannot convey how much of a cloud it is off my head!!

It also proves that you can do a dissertation in 2 months get a B+ in it and come out on top