RSVP PHP Application

Was going through a very old drive, and came across a little application I did way back in the day when I was learning PHP.  I then remember, I refined the app a little bit and actually made a usable version.

Twice a week, we all rent a local school gym and play volleyball.  We usually have enough players, but at times we didn’t know if we’d have enough to play.  Those days were painful because you’d get ready, make the drive, and then drive right back home due to lack of players.  I then made this little web app that allowed each of us to logon and just press a button, indicating if we were going to come or not.  I packaged it up and here it is for download.  If any of you have a similar recurring event that you want people to notify ahead of time if they are coming or not, this is pretty useful.

You will need some hosting space and a domain to use this.  If you don’t have that or know what it is, get in touch with me.

How it works….

Each of your members go to the site, which also works on most cell phones now, and enters their name.  They are then displayed with the question, “Are you coming or not?”  They can click on, yes or no, and that’s it!  After they answer, they will be presented with a list of all the other members and if they are coming or not.

You will have to manually add all your members in the database first.

I don’t know if anyone will find any use out of this, but if you need help, post your questions in the comments or contact me.

Download the application.

Twitter Practices That Drive Me Crazy – Auto Tweets

We all know what Twitter (should we be capitalizing it?) is and what it does.  Some people I follow test my patience with them.  Even those that I don’t follow, find ways to annoy me.  Here is a quick rundown of things people should never do on Twitter.

*Keep in mind, I am writing this out of rage.

Automated Tweets

Yes, I’m following you.  Yes, twitter is meant for the mundane, “What are you doing right now?” question.  However, you don’t need to sign up for a service that tells me everything you do.  Mainly because I don’t care that much about you.

If you use a service that automatically tweets…

• When you sign on to Xbox LIVE, or change the game you are playing
• When you have sex using pressure sensors on your bed
• When you weigh yourself in the bathroom
• When you go to Starbucks, and then again when you walk to the park minutes later (foursquare)
• When you are on a plane that tweets your location every 30 minutes

Or anything similar where you yourself don’t actually interface with twitter in anyway (foursquare being the exception), that’s not you tweeting.  That is just you using other services to tweet incredibly boring events in your life because you have nothing better to say on your own.  I immediately unfollow people that use services like Raptr.

Foursquare is a bit of the exception to my reasoning, but it still doesn’t belong on twitter.  You do intentionally have to check-in for it to make a tweet, but Foursqure status updates do not belong on a twitter timeline.  Why?  There is nothing anyone could possibly say as a response to, “Checked-in at Starbucks.”  You are a waste of those 100 some pixels on my timeline.

As far as automated tweets go, I’m perfectly fine with things that populate the tweet for you.  Such as sharing a video on Youtube, or sharing a bookmark from delicious.  Things like that don’t require you to do anything on twitter, but those tweets are you, not a service.

HTML Tutorial: Part 1

It’s 2010, I strongly believe everyone should know how the internet works and HTML needs to become common knowledge.  I had a pretty well received series on the old site, but all that has been lost.  I got a few email every now and then from people looking for it, so I figured I’d start another one.

This first part is completely unscripted.  I just needed to get something going, or else I would’ve never started.  I’ve already started scripting the next ones, and this should be a five part series, just like last time.  Maybe I’ll do a PHP series after that.

Anyway, I hope between my stuttering and trying to get me thoughts together you find some HTML knowledge.  As with any first part, this is just a primer.  You won’t walk away anything special from this, but the rest of the series will definitely build more and more.

I highly recommend you view this full screen.

HTML Tutorial Part 1

What You Should Get Instead of an iPad

UPDATE:  It has been confirmed that the iPad will not ship with Flash.  How can you claim it to be the most “rich web experience” ever without flash? {via Engadget}

It may seems as though I hate Apple, but this isn’t true.  I just have a stronger resistance to their powerful hype-machine, and visually appealing products.  This has caused me to turn toward my Blackberry, rather than an iPhone.  Stay with Windows 7, rather than going to Snow Leopard.  Being able to ignore the hype has now caused me to look the other way when the iPad comes out.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is an engineering marvel.  Not to mention to amazingly tightly integrated services they will provide through the iTunes network.  When you get past all the Apple sexiness and hype though, what you have is a really big iPod Touch.  The iTouch is also a great product, and a big one does sound really nice.  It’s all about the operating system and software though. [Click to continue reading...]

“Must Have” Blackberry Apps

I made the switch to Blackberry in 2007 with the 8820, and while the third party development is thin, I still love the device.  A couple weeks ago, I upgraded to the new Bold 9700.  The new Bold is really catching people’s eyes and has become a good conversation starter.  All of which leading to the “app” store, with people trying to convince me the iPhone is better simply because of the amount of apps they have.  My argument has always been along the lines of looking at the apps you want, rather than the volume of the entire community.  Here is a quick rundown of all the little tools I’ve installed on my new device over the past couple weeks.  Frankly, I don’t know if I’d need anything more than this.

[Click to continue reading...]

Why You Should Ignore Most DNS Talk

After Google released their public DNS servers, there has been quite a bit of talk around the internet.  Many not-so-tech savvy people have been pulled into this artificial DNS server war, and they simply don’t understand it.  Frankly, 99.9% of all the DNS talk is garbage, and you really don’t need to worry about having “the best DNS servers” or anything like that.  In order to wrap your head around this, you’ll need to know what DNS is.

[Click to continue reading...]

Achieve Email Zen w/Gmail Part 2 – Blackberry

In the previous post, we looked at ditching your current client for GMail and all the benefits it provides.  Including, unlimited storage, web based, desktop based (w/ gears), among all of the other great features GMail provies.  Now we’re going to take a quick look at extending this to a Blackberry.

[Click to continue reading...]

Achieve Email Zen w/GMail Part 1 – Ditching Your Client

More and more people are running their own email servers (@yourdomain.com). I myself have active email addresses from 6 different domain names, and never feel intimidated as I’ve achieved email zen thanks to GMail. GMail has POP3/IMAP and “Send As…” capabilities making it an extremely usable hub for all email. More importantly, it has the absolute best spam filter on the planet, which is important if you push your email to a hand held device.
[Click to continue reading...]