Youseph Tanha Dot Com

You can save Google news, as well as any Google news search as an RSS feed. This is hands down a very useful feature for people who visit their local newspaper website everyday because they don’t offer an RSS feed.

Living in Alaska, I have found myself wanting to read more about the local happenings and goings on. I am not a fan of visiting the Juneau Empire news papers’ website. The website has a horrible design that is hindered by the fact that I actually have to go visit the site and not just subscribe to an RSS feed like so many other websites these days allow.

I was just playing around with Google news the other day and saw the RSS icon show up in the URL bar of my Firefox browser. So I thought “Wouldn’t be cool if you can rss your searches?”. So I searched for Alaska in the google news search bar and sure enough, after the page loaded I saw the RSS icon. I click on the Icon, selected the RSS feed, and added to my Google Reader. It worked!

I run or administer several WordPress based websites including this one. For the the last week I slowly began upgrading these sites from WordPress 2.5 to 2.6. The upgrade for me and these sites have been very easy. None the less, you should always do a backup before doing an upgrade.

I am writing this post because I noticed a change in how WordPress handles floating your images from version 2.5 to 2.6. If your using a custom WordPress theme and floating your image to the left, right, or center, you may notice that your text dose not wrap around your image like it used to. This is due to new class elements that are required in your CSS. You wont notice any of these image floating issues if your using the default WordPress theme. But many people are using custom themes. After plenty of troubleshooting and reading online about this I finally discovered the solution and thought I would share it. Just add the following code below anywhere to your CSS file for your WordPress Theme.

img.alignleft, div.alignleft {
float:left;
margin:0 0.5em 0.5em 0;
}
img.alignright, div.alignright {
float:right;
margin:0 0 0.5em 0.5em;
}
img.aligncentered, div.aligncentered {
text-align:center;
margin:0 auto;
}

Presto, that should resolve all your image flowing issues with the new wordpress 2.6.

Shortly after drafting this post up I discored I had been beaten to the buch by HackWordpress.com and Wordpressrocks.com.

UPDATE: How to display the CAPTIONS for the image properly

.wp-caption {
border: 1px solid #ddd;
text-align: center;
background-color: #f3f3f3;
padding-top: 4px;
margin: 10px;
/* optional rounded corners for browsers that support it */
-moz-border-radius: 3px;
-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
border-radius: 3px;
}
.wp-caption img {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0 none;
}
.wp-caption p.wp-caption-text {
font-size: 11px;
line-height: 17px;
padding: 0 4px 5px;
margin: 0;
}

Add this to the end of your themes CSS.

I truly hate cable television. There are so many shows that are on T.V. that do little more then act as a tool to keep the masses parked at home on their asses. Cable T.V. is such a waist of time and a mental mind suck. This newly found hatred for the shows that I have no interest in seeing has been brewing for a while now and I’m slowly learning how to deal all the wasted time that goes with turning on the television. (see my post on Cognitive Surplus)

Yes, there is the occasional show that is worth watching. Shows like Heroes, How I Met Your Mother, The Dean Martin Show, Family Guy, and South Park, are all great shows. But are they worth planning your week around just to see them with commercials for products you really don’t care about jammed in-between the show every 15 minutes?

I think not.

To avoid this, I just wait till these shows come out on DVD. I am a big fan of buying shows on DVD. You can then watch them anywhere you want as time allows without having to interrupt your life or planning your day around when it airs. You also don’t have to deal with commercials when you by the DVD which to me is a HUGE plus to me.

Since my hatred for television program has been gowning, so too has my liking for podcasts. Podcasts consist of audio or video programs that you can download onto your computer or iPod and be played back whenever you like. There are programs on just about every thing imaginable and in my experience not just mind numbing tripe that seems to occupy 90% television today. It makes me wish I had an Apple TV to watch them on.

I am a big fan of tech news podcasts like This Week In Tech, Webb Alert, Tehzilla, and g4tv’s ‘The Feed’. I also enjoy a podcast on cigars call “The cigar Nation” and X-play’s gaming podcast. I want to encourage everyone to check out some of these podcasts. Especially those you who have a long commute to work. Podcasts; even audio books are a great thing to listen to.

Occasionally I get ask to do some website work. It does not happen all that often, but I am happy to do it when it comes in. Recently I finished the redesign for North Sound Safety’s offical website.

North Sound Safety is a motorcycle training company located in Washington state. They are professional at teaching riders young and old, beginner or seasoned, the importance of Motorcycle safety.

Their old website was very consistent with it’s navigation. However, the pages (the homepage particularly) had a lot of stuff going on and could make it hard for the user to focus on what he or she was looking for.

My first redesign design attempt was to just clean things up and tighten the over all look and feel of the website. I do most of my design work exclusively in PhotoShop.

My client really liked the new look and feel of North Sound Safety’s new design. He had a few changes he wanted made before I could go forward with writing out the HTML for the site. The finished product looks like this image below.

The final product incorperates Google Maps, as well as Flash. The whole top banner graphic is a Flash animation. I need to thank Jason for givng me some lessions in flash so i could create that rotating banner. The completed website can be viewed at www.NorthSoundSafety.com. Take a look around. Let me know what you think.

Back from my vacation and working in the new company office. Things are really starting to fall into place and my work space is starting to feel like my own.  One of my friends and co-workers Henrik, configured my office phone to know me as Optimus Prime the leader of the Autobots, a faction of sentient robots from the planet Cybertron.

This is a great Friday.

In 2005 our investment club manager e-mailed us asking for our opinions on how to invest the money the group had been collecting. I wrote what I felt was the best suggestion I could have made at the time. Below is a copy of the e-mail I wrote our investment club along with Chris’s wrong and inaccurate response.

Now, Back in November 2005 when this e-mail was written Apple’s stock price reach a high of $69.34. Today, Apple’s stock price is valued over $180. Now for thoughts keeping score, this means that Apple’s market value of $158 billion is now four times that of rival PC Macker Dell’s $38 billion.

Whats that Chris? I can’t here you. Cat got your tongue?

 

Yup, thats right. I don’t own a printer. It cost so much to own a printer in my opinion.

Actually, a printer itself is not that expensive. You can get a really nice printers these days for cheep. It’s just the outrageous cost of printer ink that keeps me from owning one.

I don’t have things I need printed everyday. From time to time I do have documents I need to printed. Sometimes I even want to print photos off for myself or friends and family. It’s not all that often. Maybe once, maybe twice a month I have something I want to print.

When I have something I need printed I will take it to a local print shop. I can print documents and photos for pennies compared tot he cost of buying a printer and ink, and hopping I use it often enough that the ink does not dry up before it’s empty. It’s just not worth the hassle or cost.

The other day at work, I was preparing to meet with a new client here in Juneau. The client is located in downtown Juneau, but I did not know exactly where they where. So I loaded up Google Maps to help me figure out where their office was.

Now, Google Maps does a really great job of helping you find where your going and giving you directions to where you need to go. After I put in the companies address, Google Maps showed me where they where located. I still was not 100% sure of their location or how to get their.

Now normally when this happens I just have Google Maps generate directions for me from my office. But this time was different because I noticed for the first time a new button at the top of Google Maps,”Street View”.

With Street View, you are able to see a 360 degree view of any street in Juneau. I was so blown away by this. I mean, I knew Google has a small fleet of cars setup to take photos of cities like this but i did not think Juneau was going to be on the list anytime soon. With street view I was able to see the actual office of where my meeting was to take place and as a result of seeing the street view picture I realized that I knew where the office was located and I knew out to get there with out any directions.

After my meeting was over and I was done with work for the day I got back on Google Maps to see if I could find my house. I did!

That’s my truck in the drive way!

You can also see the Glacier

Our Little AirPort.

Governors Mansion

In using Street View and looking all around Juneau I can tell that all these pictures where taken just over a year a go. This is a pretty cool new feature they have added and I know I will be using it quite a bit. Not every city in the world has street view just yet, but I am sure they are working on it.

Recently Google’s development team released a web widget for their Google Talk Chat Network called “Chatback“. This widget allows anyone visiting my website to be able to chat with me without having to sign up for any kind of account. I think think it’s pretty cool and I am giving it a test drive. I have currently placed it on my side bar. So feel free to chat with me!

Henrik: be in in about 20
me: ok, lazy ass
Henrik: while you’re spooning Hannah i’m writing code…so shush [smile]
me: ColdFusion is not code. It’s creative writing for people who don’t know how to code.
Henrik: okay..reading PHP code and translating it into creative writing..how’s that?
me: A fucking Travesty