http://johnvh.com Online home of Dallas, TX based web developer John Van Horn Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:42:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en While it would be nice have my own fancy server, a private server, or a private vm, I really don't need it. I've always opted for shared hosting, because anything else seems like overkill. I currently have a shared plan with Dreamhost and they have served me quite well and ... http://johnvh.com/2009/11/12/note-to-self-minimum-requirements-for-hosting/ I love E4X in AS3. It's powerful and fairly simple. If you haven't worked with it yet, check out Roger Braunstein's excellent tutorial. But I was recently annoyed by this gotcha when doing some xml combining. Let's say you have this: [xml] John David [/xml] Let's parse with E4X: [as] // #1 trace( xml.people.person.length() ); // 2 // #2 // no ... http://johnvh.com/2009/06/26/e4x-and-as3-gotcha/ [caption id="attachment_218" align="alignleft" width="570" caption="Yahoo! invasion"][/caption] Is that a Yahoo! ad in a Youtube player? No. It's a Yahoo! logo in a Youtube player. How did it get there? Via Flash's secret javascript api! Ok, so it's not really secret. More like old, surely deprecated, and forgotten. I've been working with flash ... http://johnvh.com/2009/04/27/flashs-secret-javascript-api/ It's almost done. I just have to cut the trim and do some caulking and touch up painting. A couple more photos are in the full set. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="My new vanity."][/caption] http://johnvh.com/2009/04/22/master-bathroom-progress-4/ I don't like seeing .svn or CVS files in my Flex Builder/Eclipse workspace. I'll never need to edit those files directly, and if I do, I won't use Flex Builder to do it. But if they're in your project, they'll show up in the Navigator panel. Everywhere. [caption id="attachment_188" align="alignleft" width="400" ... http://johnvh.com/2009/03/30/ignoring-files-in-flex-builder-navigator/ I got a lot done this weekend: the shower was grouted, and I got the vanity, medicine cabinet, and lighting installed! Next up, counter top. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="Grouted! All the shower needs is some finished plumbing and little bit of caulk."][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="Vanity, medicine cabinet and lighting."][/caption] More ... http://johnvh.com/2009/03/23/master-bathroom-progress-3/ Finally finished tiling the shower last weekend. I don't know why it took so long, but it did. I should be able to grout and call the shower area officially done hopefully this weekened. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="The shower, finally tiled."][/caption] http://johnvh.com/2009/03/18/master-bathroom-progress-2/ Event handlers can be bad. They're not intrinsically bad - that's how shit gets done in AS3. It's the way they often get written that can be bad. Consider the following example: [as] package { import fl.motion.Color; import flash.display.DisplayObject; import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; import flash.events.MouseEvent; public class Nothing extends Sprite { private var square:Sprite; public function Nothing() { square = new Sprite(); square.graphics.beginFill( 0xFFFFFF, ... http://johnvh.com/2009/03/16/are-your-event-handlers-bad/ So I recently blogged about using digest authentication instead of basic for securing your wp-admin directory. When implementing this myself, I had it all set up and working on a subdomain. But, I had the authentication directive in the root .htaccess file as well as the wp-admin/.htaccess file. This made ... http://johnvh.com/2009/02/17/wordpress-mod-rewrite-and-htaccess-nightmare/ Just finished up a long day of working on the bathroom. The shower stall is now officially ready to tile. Here are a few pics. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="Vapor barrier over sheetrock before backer board is hung"][/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Backer board done"][/caption] http://johnvh.com/2009/02/16/master-bathroom-progress/ I've seen several articles that discuss Wordpress security - just search for it - say that you should password protect the wp-admin directory. You can do this easily with Apache by using authentication directives, which allow you, per directory, to require a valid user name and password from a client ... http://johnvh.com/2009/02/11/use-digest-authentication/