What is the idea? Well, it’s a weather widget. Yes, there are lots of weather widgets already out there on the web, but there’s no rule anywhere saying I can’t add one more to the mix.

My previous stab at this idea was just for my own personal use on my own websites. It displayed the current conditions only for Fargo. This time I want to create something that others can download and add to their own websites. I also want it to allow for customization of the location of the conditions by the person who is viewing the website that the widget is on, and I want it to remember that customization.

I intend to use the NWS XML feeds for the data source. That’s what I was using for my first version of this widget. I trust the data from the NWS. I see them as an official source. I know that there are other sources out there that might have more data points, but I prefer the NWS, so that’s what I’m gonna use.

I’ve already created a brief outline of what I want to accomplish. I even started sketching out the database schema over the weekend. Now I just need to force myself to sit at the computer and work on it. I definitely could use the distraction while I’m waiting. Once I have things finished up, I’ll most likely add it to this site for download (with instructions of course). I don’t know if anyone else will want to use it, but it will be good for me to put this together. And it will be something nice to add to my portfolio.

I wanted to share something that I thought was pretty cool. If nothing else, I wanted to save it for later reference for myself. And if someone else finds it useful, that's even better.

Let's say that you add classes to the links you have on your website (whether it's a blog or just a normal website) to indicate external links, such as the following:

Let's also say that you want to add either text or an image to the external links to indicate to your readers that they are links that will take them away from your website. Since they are external links, you probably also want to open the links in a new browser window.

Of course, you can always manually add the text or image after the external links, and you can add target="_blank" or target="windowname". But that just adds more work for you to do. And what if you're lazy?

Well, with jQuery, you can leave your links coded as above and add some code to do the rest of the work for you.

The first think you need to do is include the jquery.js file. If you're looking into jQuery, you probably are familar with how to set up an html page and include that file, so I'm not going to include that code (even though it is only one line).

You then have 2 options ... include the following code between some <script> tags directly on your page or create a separate javascript file and include that. I tend to do that latter to keep my pages clean. Now for the code ...

Now let's go through the pieces.

This piece of code is a pretty basic part of jQuery (from what I understand). It is a wrapper (of sorts) that you put around the rest of your code. It's sort of like window.onload() only better. It makes your code available as soon as the DOM has finished loading. This means that your code can be executed before any images you have on the page while window.onload() doesn't (at least I think that's the case ... I'm no javascript expert).

This does what the comment says it does. It finds all of the links that have a class of "external" and adds the text (or image code) to the end of it.

This code binds the custom "click" function to the links that have a class of "external". The custom function just opens the url that is in the href attribute in a new window. The return false just keeps the current browser window from following the link.

That's it. It's that simple. I really hope I didn't confuse you completely with my explanation. I also hope that I did the jQuery justice by explaining it the way I did (hopefully correctly). I'm going to try working this into this site some time soon ... at least the image indicators.

I may be doing more posts like this in the future as I find other tidbits that I find useful. They might be simple like this one is, and they may be more complex. It just depends on what I find useful. So consider yourself warned.

Side note: Wow. This is my third post (here) today. And I even posted an entry on my other blog. That makes this my fourth post in one day. I think this is some sort of record. LOL

At work, they use jQuery. In my spare time this week (which there has been too much of for my taste), I've been reading up on the subject. I'm liking what I've learned this far.

I thought I'd write up some posts with some tips and tricks ... both for me to look back on and hopefully to help others too. They'll be pretty basic to start with but might get more in-depth later on.

That's enough for now. It's frickin' hard to type on this little keyboard (on my iPod Touch). I'll try to write up my first post on this subject tonite, so consider yourself warned.

All that I know that I wanna do as of now is redesign the layout. I also want to add more to it to make it more of an asset for getting a job. One thing I was thinking of adding was a page/section with some code samples. But other than that, I'm not sure what else to add. I want it to be a showcase of what I can do. After all, my current chosen career path IS web development/programming. And I want to stay in this career path for as long as I can.

So this is where you, faithful readers, come in. What do you think I should add to the site? Do you have a professional site of your own? What do you have on it? I'm looking for ideas as to how to improve mine. That and I miss working in php (since I don't get to at work).

So, while I'm waiting to find my next job, I need something to occupy my time during the day ... a new project. I've had a couple ideas, but nothing has lit a fire under my ass yet. One idea I had was for a weather script that I could turn into a WordPress plugin. I had a weather script for quite some time, but I took it offline when I cleaned up my other domain. Another idea I had was to put together a racing website. I've had a few in the past, each devoted to a single driver. This time around, I was going to make a generic racing site that had info on all drivers in the series. I also thought about adding a page where visiters could create an account and select up to 3 drivers to view info for each time they came to the site, if they were logged in.

What I need from you, faithful readers ... or what I'm hoping you'll provide ... are some ideas for things for me to work on. Perhaps an idea for a WordPress plugin that hasn't yet been done (or that could be improved upon), or some other functionality for any website. Or should I dive into either the weather script or racing website? Help me find a reason to get up in the mornings until I find my next job.

Now that I have the laptop, I'm not using the desktop any more (or at least not as much). I plan on leaving my music and pictures. That's working great. I even have my work laptop in the same network as the desktop and the laptop so I can listen to the music on my laptop while I'm on work and not have to disturb the desktop.

I'm thinking of leaving my website files there as well. I was able to map the folder on my desktop that has the files as a network drive on my laptop (really easy ... woohoo). I downloaded Eclipse the other day and EasyPHP tonite as well as php 5.2.2 (so I have the same version to develop with as where my websites live). I'm hoping I can set up everything like I had it on my desktop so I can get back to working on my websites.

I want to fix the layout here. The script I found to make the sidebars the same length as the main don't always work the way I'd like (I think due to js pieces loading slowly). And it needs some freshening up. And I had plans to create a new racing site too. I'd better get my ass in gear on that one since the season is starting soon. They're already testing at Daytona.

So ... off to try to get stuff set up. Hopefully I don't end up tossing my laptop across the room. I'd better not. Not after waiting as long as I did to finally get one.

I've been working on setting up my development environment tonite the way that I want it (and can you believe I even turned the tv off ... but it will be turned back on in about 20 min so I can watch GH on SoapNet ... I love having that channel ... but I digress ... ). I wanted to set everything up once right and not have to do it again.

Since I'm running locally, I needed to use http://localhost to access my stuff. But what about subdomains? And what about different main domains? For example, I wanted to set up the Avalanche site so I could work on that and a dev version of this site and a dev version of a new site I'm planning. But I didn't want to have to do http://localhost/avalanchecountry or whatever. I wanted to be able to do http://avalanchecountry and get to my local copy.

I did a little searching online and found out how to set up a Virtual Host for my local dev environment. And I already new how to add entries to my HOSTS file. The following is what I needed to do to be able to use http://avalanchecountry to access my local dev version ...

Add the following to the HOSTS file:

Add the following to the httpd.conf file:

And to set up a subdomain, just a little tweak ...

Add the following to the HOSTS file:

Add the following to the httpd.conf file:

Then stop and restart Apache. And all is happy happy. Woohoo! Now I can spend the weekend working on my own websites for a change. I haven't done that in WAY too long. It's time to think about ME for a change. :G-razz3:

Well ... I changed that tonite. I upgraded to php5 in my development environment. I only hit one little snag ... MySQL wasn't working. It turned out that I needed to add something to the php.ini file to configure php to have MySQL support. Apparently MySQL support isn't turned on by default in php5. Thank goodness I found the answer on how to get things working in the support forums for EasyPHP.

In the past, when I did changes to my websites, I'd do the changes and then upload the changes to my webhost to see if things worked. That really was a pain in my ass, but it was the only way I could do it.

I have an old computer tower that I wanted to turn into a web server for testing purposes. But I would basically have to build it from scratch and just use the tower to put it in since the tower is so frickin' old. But that takes money ... and I didn't have it to spare for something like that.

I managed to run across a program allowing me to run php/apache/MySQL on my computer ... EasyPHP. I don't remember where/how I found it ... probably in a web search. But I downloaded it and tried it. It worked great. I can FINALLY develop locally and THEN upload my changes after I know that they work. Awesome!!!

As I said earlier ... since I upgraded to php5 on my live server, I wanted to do the same on my local server so I could code in it (especially since I'm used to working with php5 at work). It's all done and working. No more excuses.

Since I'm sitting here right now, I'm going to start. Where to start? I'm going to start on redoing my database connection class. I know that I can find a lot of classes online for this, but I want to write my own. It's a good experience, and that way it'll do what I want it to do. I think I'll post it here and make it available for download after I'm finished. Now, I'm not saying that my version will be any better than any of the others out there, but maybe there's someone out there who will find it useful ... other than me that it. So stay tuned.

But lately I've started getting the itch to work on things again. I haven't updated my racing websites since April. But with Jr's sponsor and number announcement, I've gotten the itch to work on my racing sites again (I even fiddled around with a header image last nite) ... consolidate them into a single site for all my favorite drivers.

At work, we have php5. I've gotten so used to working with it, I thought I'd finally bite the bullet and switch to php5 for my own sites. I checked out the forums for my host, and it turns out that all I needed to do to switch over to php5 was put the following in my .htaccess file:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php

Talk about easy. So I am now running my websites on php5. I looked things over, and everything looks like it's working. This blog is working ... my photo gallery is working ... and even the crappy guestbook script I wrote several years ago still works. Woohoo! But if you happen to run across any issues while visiting, please let me know so I can fix things.

I have several things that I want to do:

• write a database connection class (I already wrote a basic one, but I want to expand on it)
• write a recordset class
• update and improve on my guestbook script (who knows ... maybe I could even make some money on it)
• update and improve my weather script ... expand it to get the forecast as well as the current conditions

When I do dive back into my sites, I'm going to have to transition working with MySQL again. At work, we use mySQL. I have gotten so used to it, it's going to be interesting working my MySQL again.

Now that I've actually put my plans in writing, hopefully it'll be motivation to stick with it. And I'll hopefully have techie stuff to post about (since I am a High Tech Redneck Woman ... LOL). So stay tuned ...