This was getting pretty close to a year without updates and I’ve sofar made zero progress.

I’ll admit, this years been pretty busy.  For the folks who’re following for the PocketFlock updates, I’ll still deliver from time to time (don’t forget the updater still works) but its a bit more time consuming a project than I can commit to right now.  Since I don’t really use Windows itself anymore (well, except for CNC but that’s a given) the windows version gets most of its testing in WINE.  Hopefully that’ll suffice.

I’ve got some other projects which may see the light of day, and definately at this location.  If you’re a stalker (or are interested in my personal drinking habits) feel free to look me up on Twitter (@ferrite).

Sorry, this means you can’t see my work.

For those of you who’ve been clamoring over PocketFlock running the 2.0 final builds.

Chill.

Auto-Update works just fine.

I’ve made my parents proud at the cost of my soul.

It seems that nobody on the internet is fully aware of the awesome and mind-numbing stupidity that is lurking in the shadows of the net.  From the arrogant script-kiddies to people that don’t know what a mail client is and still manages to run a company’s IT division.

I’ve had to deal with one such customer for about 2 days now.  She canceled her account believing that she’s supposed to be using a Windows server if she runs Windows at home.  Apparently she’s also responsible for managing 85% of all academic websites on the internet (her words, not mine) Whatever.

-anyways-

She’s been calling just to yell at us for about 20 minutes straight each day because the refund we issued her hasn’t yet reached her account.  (Keep in mind, we sent the money, her bank is still processing it)

-sigh-

I’m always polite and talk to the customer in a professional tone, but there’s only so much you can say before you put the phone on mute and start spewing explitives you didn’t know existed before.

So let me say this in a nice enough way.

If you ever call tech support, by the time they’ve answered the phone, they already hate you.

This weeks project involves playing around with some different PHP and javascript functions that normally are useful.

I’m assuming you’re already have a passing knowledge with HTML, Javascript, or PHP, though if you’re not, keep reading as I’ll gradually explain everything.

Let’s just go over the internal functions and variables we’ll be using first and what they do

PHP
explode(separator, source-string)
    explode is one of those really useful functions for dealing with very long strings.  It allows you to take a very long string (our source-string, if you will) and break it apart into an array using a separator string.
    i.e. $ourarray=explode(” “, “This is a fantastic function”) would break the string by spaces into an array $ourarray[] where $ourarray[0]=”This”, $ourarray[1]=”is”, $ourarray[2]=”a”, etc…

sizeof(ourarray)
    sizeof is another useful array function, basically doing exactly what it sounds like.  Your result is the size of the array in question.  Using our previous array as an example, sizeof($ourarray) would equal 5.

str_replace(replacethis, withthis, inthis)
    str_replace replaces a given substring (replacethis) with another substring (withthis) in a larger string (inthis).
    i.e. str_replace(“Flock”, “Firefox”, “Firefox is my favorite Gecko browser!”) would output “Flock is my favorite Gecko browser!”
    ps, like most functions that return a result, str_replace can be nested or even used as arguments.
    What do you think str_replace(“What should I do?”, “Where am I?”, str_replace(“I’m drunk”, “I’m lost”, “I’m lost.  Where am I?”))

implode(joint, ourarray)
    implode is the opposite of explode.  With this function you can collapse an array (ourarray) into a string using another string (joint) to join it.
    Using our earlier array, and applying this implode(“-”, $ourarray) would give you “This-is-a-fantastic-function”

We could use all these functions to perform something useful on a complicated string.
If you were to create a new php file on your server with the following lines:

$firststring="*I've added some sparkly stars*They could get really annoying*but I'll use them as linebreaks";
echo $firststring
$firststring=str_replace("but I'll", "if I didn't");
$ournewarray=explode("*", $firststring);
echo implode("\n", $ournewarray);

The “\n” inserts a newline character on most *nix systems and would give you a plain text document with the following output.

*I’ve added some sparkly stars*They could get really annoying*but I’ll use them as linebreaks
I’ve added some sparkly stars
They could get really annoying
if I didn’t use them as linebreaks

-END OF USEFUL INFO-

Now let’s make that useful stuff infinitely more useless and complicated.
Chapter 1 Useless Project

Tags: useless, php, javascript, html, css

Ouch.

Oh well.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

That’s the most commonly asked question on Outraged-Artists (or at least it was until spammers made it unmanageable).

I can break this down into two categories, what’s in my power to change, and what’s outside my power to change.

Here’s the answer (both long and short)

Time, Time, T I M E

This was pretty much a one-man-show and while I used to have plenty of time to devote to this project,  I’m now working a full-time job as well as school (on top of a recent move across the state).

Flock 0.9 sucked for portability

Seriously, Flock 0.9 would write files to parts of the drive other than the profile folder. Terrible no-no that might have left some of your personal data (especially posts) on other people’s drives, and since I don’t have the manpower (or machinepower) to tweak/fix/and recompile Flock (as well as licensing issues if I used home-brewed binaries) that’s mostly out of my hands.

On the upside Flock 1.0 fixes most, if not all of the previous portability problems, and Flock 1.1 (really gonna be worth the upgrade) has built-in email capabilities (something people like me have been crying for since 0.4!) and will only make PocketFlock the perfect Mobile Browser for people who’re connected.

There are two ways to help further PocketFlock, like any other OpenSource Project… donate.
Time or money, I could always use a hand managing such a product, or a beer to properly motivate my fried neurons.
Ok, there’s a third way… Promote PocketFlock, let everyone know that just because you have to take it with you, doesn’t mean that you can’t take it with you.

Tags: flock, pocketflock, opensource, beer, sotired

Windows only… Still ugly on Vista… No Extensions… etc…

PocketFlock 1.0 ~12.5MB

–Much Love,

Dave Ferrite