progression

I wrote a greasemonkey script earlier today to automatically log into the virginia tech wireless network.  I’m so sick of doing this, and this will automate the job.

To install, first get greasemonkey for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

Once, you have that installed, restart your browser and load this script: http://www.jessewilkinson.com/dev/greasemonkey/vt_login.user.js

Now you just have to add some login credentials so you can access the network.  Right click the greasemonkey icon in the bottom right corner and select “Manage User Scripts.” Make sure “VT Login” is selected and then click “Edit” on the bottom of the window.

Type your login information into that file and save, then you’re good to go!

//pid
pid = “wilkinj”
//password
pass = “arl43uvmr*”

Being a web-developer, there is nothing more annoying than having to test on multiple browsers.   Getting your CSS & Javascript (and sometimes HTML in IE) to work is a real pain, and frankly I’m sick of having to do this after I finish each project.  It often takes longer to write it so it’s compatible for each browser than it does to actually write the page in the first place.

As much as you might think of how pissed off I was at Google releasing it’s own browser, i’m actually not too upset.  Chrome runs on webkit, which means that whatever I had hacked to make work on Safari works just as well on Chrome.  And I appreciate Google’s wisdom at deciding to use webkit instead of using some layout engine that i’ve never heard of.

Because I highly doubt that the battle of the “Standards” will ever end on a good note, I point my finger at Opera.  Opera needs to die.  Opera has less than 1% of the browser market, and I don’t even bother coding CSS so that it works on Opera anymore.  Sure, I agree that the presto layout engine is fantastic and does everything to the highest standards, but no one uses Opera.

Please die Opera, I’m sick of having to code for you.  I will do my part and continue to not support Opera, and I hope you do the same.

First of all I’ve only tested this with the new apple aluminum keyboard, but I assume it works just as well with all the other keyboards.  I was sick of digging around on the internet to find an easy way to do this so I’m posting a guide.

1. Boot into windows and plug in your beautiful apple keyboard.
2. Download this driver package:  http://www.filedropper.com/bc14-keyboard (select download this file)
3. Unzip and run BootCamp.msi - DO NOT RUN AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe!!!
4. Restart your computer when prompted to do so
5. On restart your computer will LAG for ~10 seconds.  This is because the BootCamp manager is searching for OSX partitions to no avail.  After it times out you will be able to use your computer normally.

Known Issues:

• 10 second lag on login, this occurs regularly. As of right now there are no patches for this available.
• You can’t open the boot camp manager.  This means that you can’t turn off the setting that allows for F1, F2, and F7 - F12 to act like their default Windows settings without pressing the “fn” key.
• Sometimes the boot camp manager doesn’t start.  This happens occasionally, you can find the boot camp manager’s executable here: C:\Program Files\Boot Camp, the program is called: KbdMgr.exe

Took me like 5 minutes to write a css script that nukes all the ads on the new facebook, i’ll update it as needed to make sure it functions without messing up the layout too much.

To install go to my development page

Some of Windows Vista’s “Enhancements” have made the operating system rely heavily on valuable hard disk space.  Recently I’ve been trying to comprehend how I could have possibly filled up a 750 gb hard drive with 680 gb of information after only owning the computer for 6 months.  The fact of the matter is that a few of these “enhancements” use way more than they need in order to “enhance” your user experience.

There are two Windows Vista Specific features that hinder disk space:

1. Windows “Temp” folder (Used for IE7 and applications that use the Windows Installer API for installation)
2. Windows “Shadow Copy” service (Used to create periodic system restore points to prevent data loss due to malicious software or hardware failure)

You can save yourself upwards of 5 GB of space if you periodically empty your “TEMP” folder, however the real disk space hog lies in the latter “enhancement.”

The Windows Shadow Copy service can use up to 15% of your hard disk space just by keeping ancient versions of your files.  The problem lies in that the Windows Shadow Copy service creates copies of your files DAILY by default.  From what i’ve seen this “vault” of backups purges backups that are a month old or older.

By deleting the Windows Shadow Copy backups (not including the most recent one) I was able to free up 120 gb of space on my 750 GB hard drive (16%). Read more…

This is really just something for all you new jQuery learners, if you want to keep the cursor inside of a text box, even if you click elsewhere on the page, you can do this:

//Initial focus on #inputfieldid
$(”#inputfieldid”).focus();

//When you click anywhere it focuses back on #inputfieldid
$(this).click(function(){
$(”#inputfieldid”).focus();
});

So the summer is in full swing and I’m cranking out 45 hour work weeks. 9 - 7 with an hour lunch break has been the general theme. I’m now working the afternoons with a new company called JAT Digital Solutions which I have been doing extensive PHP/MySQL + HTML/CSS/jQuery for. I’m learning quite a lot in the development world and this in particular has further accelerated my quest for javascript mastery.

Some development stuff i’d like to post soon:

- How to fix bootcamp 2.0 in leopard
- Barcode generator with caching support
- FWDK updates
- FileCal updates
- G2P Lite updates
- How to clean up a windows xp/vista computer so it actually runs faster
- How to build a web based security system for under $100
- jQuery tutorials
- Debt management system
- IMS dev

I just added plenty of information to my portfolio, and it has been reorganized to be more coherent.  There are now links to some of the pages i’ve done coding for, as well as descriptions of the Webkits + Webapps i’ve been developing myself and along with Eric Wimberley (http://www.blank89.net).

He needs to fix his site!

In other news, I took down my old server and set up a new one.  This one is built tougher and has been locked down for security.  I’ve got the thing running all my development script as well as my nightly builds.  Hopefully I will be able to fix my music server, but Windows to Linux networking is pretty miserable sometimes.

FWDK (Foski Web Development Kit) has been an ongoing project for the last couple months and I hope to release a demo online as soon as possible.  I’m not really sure if I will release the source code of this project yet.. But only time will tell.

PS. I love jQuery..

I got my home server up and running! I’m going to start posting nightly builds in the nightly folder on it, hopefully this will make collaboration with my graphic designer + administrator easier.

But basically every site i’ve ever programmed will be on this server sooner or later…

Seriously loving my LAMP setup right now, and i’m getting to learn a lot about apache and server administration in general.

More to come!

No UI updates here.. Just everything under the hood. PDF’s are now much more supported as events, they will pop into a new window when you open them as well.

Head over to the FileCal page to download.