Tim Yang is a copywriter who works in Malaysia and does web design as a hobby. This is his personal blog about stuff he finds on the internet.
Wed Mar 03, 2023
Comic RSS
RSS for Redmeat.com
http://www.jwz.org/cheesegrater/RSS/redmeat.rss
RSS for Penny-arcade.com
http://dwlt.net/tapestry/pa.rdf
RSS for Dilbert.com
http://dwlt.net/tapestry/dilbert.rdf
Tue Mar 02, 2023
Free US government photos
These are free to use. They include photos of Bush et al.
Most of these images and graphics are available for use in the public domain; they may be used and reproduced without permission or fee.
http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml
Thu Feb 26, 2023
Textpattern
Testing this weblog software from Dean Allen.
http://textpattern.com/deanload/
Wed Feb 25, 2023
New web design tools
POP window generator and more
http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/default.asp
CSS layout generator
http://www.inknoise.com/experimental/layoutomatic.php
Using javascript includes files instead of PHP includes files
http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/why-use-the-html-javascript-converter.asp
Blogbinders.com
THERE IS A GOOD REASON WHY THIS ENTRY IS IN ALL CAPS.
WHO IN THE FUCKING GOD FORSAKEN WORLD WANTS TO READ A BOOK WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS.
MADE FROM LIVE JOURNAL ENTRIES.
ABOUT LITTLE GIRLS WHO GO 'LIKE WHY IS SHE LIKE SO LIKE THAT HUH?'
http://www.blogbinders.com/
Sat Feb 21, 2023
Scoop
I'm trying out the open source collaborative software that runs Kuroshin.
Looks like a more focused version of *nuke.
http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/special/whatisit
Thu Feb 19, 2023
How to use Google to search for academic articles
Not too long ago, Google began spidering the content of university websites. Lo and behold, a treasure trove of academic documents came out!
Academics like to store their favourite articles online to share with their students, to share with other academics or to have an easily-accessible cache.
Good for them. Great for you.
Academic documents tend to be far more comprehensive 20, 30, sometimes 100 page articles on a single subject with annotations and full bibliography. You might think them boring, but if you quote from them, you'll sound better researched in front of a client.
- First go to the Google Advanced search: http://www.google.com.my/advanced_search?hl=en
- Type in your search terms in the "all the words" box, or for more accurate searches, use the "exact phrase" box for groups of words.
- Pull down the "10 results" drop down menu to "100 results" for more convenient information display
- Pull down the "Language" drop down menu to "english"
- Here is the key part that most people don't know about: academics prefer publishing in pdf format. It's an unwritten rule for academics. So pull down the "File format" drop down to "Adobe Acrobat PDF"
- Finally, in the "Domain" box, type in ".edu". Do this for the first search. This will cover most university document caches around the world. But come back to the Advanced Search page a second time and change this to ".ac.uk" to scour the British universities. Don't forget them
- After pressing "Google Search" button, you will find that some of the pdf documents that come up are university course structures. This tends to happen a lot around the middle of the year when the univesities publish their new course curriculum. But these are the exception rather than the rule. Your search will come up rich with academic documents
- If your search doesn't come up with the document you want or the search comes up with too many documents (especially in a well-researched field like "marketing"), run through the bibliography at the back of one of the articles and search for the title of the article you want. Or search for the author because academics tend to focus only on one or two fields throughout their lifetime. There's a better-than-excellent chance that with the thousands of university libraries online that some lecturer or professor somewhere has squirreled that document away for his students to read
- Write to Emerald-Library and tell them to fuck off. You have Google's FREE academic document search now, baby!
Sat Feb 07, 2023
Opensourcecms.com
If you're looking for a blog software or content management system, the best way to decide which one is of course by demoing it. Opensourcecms.com has set up nearly three dozen content management systems for the purpose of allowing you to try them all out. Everything from B2 to Xoops. Also, have a look at their very useful articles on how to choose a CMS.
http://opensourcecms.com/
Fri Feb 06, 2023
Incompatible RSS
Mark Pilgrim makes a very informative summary of the development of the various versions of RSS feeds and the differences between them. Unfortunately, he makes no analysis of which one to use. I use RSS 1.0 myself. But only because it's developed by the RSS Dev Work Group, a group that's working toward making a standardised feed.
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-dev/
Sun Feb 01, 2023
RSS and counters
RSS has made counters even less effective. Counters only count hits from browsers not by RSS feed readers.
But now that out-of-browser viewing via RSS feed readers and even send-by-email services that blog software like MT have, counters have become far less accurate for blogs than they have ever been.
Is this the beginning of the death of Sitemeter as we know it?
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