Spelling Fire with Fire

Filed Under Fire, Video | 2007-02-28, 14:52

Forget all the new-fangled flat screen, LCD, HDMI, and super high-end displays out there. You know what you really want is a good old fashioned, back to the basics, fire display. NAO Designs has one ready for you if you’re ready to shell out the dough. Unfortunately the resolution is only 12×7, but come on, it’s on fire! The Infernoptix is 84 pixels of flame-licking goodness. There are several different modes that it can run in:

Text Mode – Think scrolling marquee without the lame LED lights.
Tracker Mode – “Draw” with the mouse or keyboard in real-time
Percussion Mode – Use the sounds of fire to create your own tunes.
Animation Mode – Low resolution animated patterns
Audio Mode – Winamp visualization in real fire!

I don’t know why we’re wasting time with all this writing, just watch:

PHP to quickly rename files based on a CSV

Filed Under PHP/MySQL | 2007-02-27, 23:35

I love php/mysql. Almost all of my sites are written with this pair. I decided earlier this week that I needed to launch a new site. Basically splitting off part of an existing site into its own site. The code was already written and luckily I had kept it in my head to keep it portable, so that took approximately 20-30 minutes to move over, change some settings, test, etc. But the problem was the database, as it referenced folder names that would no longer be applicable since they were based on an auto incrementing number in the database. 228 folders to be exact. My first thought was, “No big deal, some manual renaming, it’ll take an hour or two.” I did 5 of them and said forget this. I exported the folder name and an identifying filename from the old database, then exported the same info from the new database, matched them up in Excel, killed the filename columns, and then exported a csv that contained the new foldername and the old foldername. A little php scripting and in seconds 200+ folders were renamed. Granted I had a few that had to be done manually, but only about 5 or 6. For anyone that cares, here’s the quick and dirty php code to rename based off of a csv list of newname,oldname.

<?php
$handle = fopen(“file.csv”, “r”);
while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, “,”)) !== FALSE) {
 if (rename(“$data[1]”, “$data[0]”)) {
 print “Rename: Success \n”;
 } else {
 print “Rename: FAILED! \n”;
 }
}
fclose($handle);
?>

2 Comments

Add to your Google Calendar (and more) with IM

Filed Under Tools | 2007-02-06, 16:33

The other night I was talking with a friend about how great it would be to be able to access my Google Calendar from my Sidekick in order to add and view events. We lamented about the lack of a solution even though it seems like it should be possible. Then I heard about IMified this morning. IMified describes their service as such:

Imified is an instant messenger buddy that works across all major IM networks and offers access to a growing number of web applications, as well as productivity tools like notes, reminders, and todo’s. Imified helps you get things done faster.

In short, you can send an IM to their bot and Edit or View information on your different web-based applications such as Google Calendar, WordPress, Blogger, Backpack, etc. It just launched, so it’s totally beta at this point and bugs are expected as they work out the real-world usage. But so far it looks very promising! It’s also perfect for the Sidekick user as Instant Messaging is built into the device and always available. There are even shortcuts to save you the hassle of multiple IMs. Here are some more details on IMified:

Supported IM Clients:
– AIM
– Yahoo
– MSN
– Googletalk/Jabber

Supported Services:
– 30 Boxes
– Backpack
– Basecamp
– Blogger
– Google Calendar
– MoveableType
– Remember the Milk
– TypePad
– WordPress
– IMified Notes (for when you go over 50 notes on the Sidekick)
– IMified Reminders
– IMified Todos

We recommend checking it out now if you’re willing to put up with the bugs, or else just give them a few weeks and check them out when they’ve ironed out the initial issues.

1 Comment

Need to order a flux capacitor for a Delorean?

Filed Under Geek | 2007-02-06, 13:33

Anyone that’s rebuilding a Delorean knows that the flux capacitor is an integral part that no stainless steel vehicle could go without. While they are incredibly difficult to find, we’re happy to let you know that Delorean.com now has them in stock and is giving them away for free! Just go to their parts search page and search for part number “18851985”