Archive

Archive for the ‘General Interest’ Category

Charity: Angel

May 24th, 2007 ^Lestat 2 comments

I’ve recently found a story that has touched me.

In a nutshell it’s a story of a little girl in Russia who had an accident that maimed her face. The Russian hospitals are either corrupt, or rediculously expensive. I’ve spoken personally with Mert and Katya who are undertaking the task of getting her assistance.

They have already brought the girl to the states once for plastic surgery donated by a local doctor here in my home state of WI. She needs to have more. I set up a page on this site dedicated to helping her. If you are interested, Angel’s page is here.

I haven’t done any donation or charity campaigns except for when I went to help Katrina victims a few years ago. I’m actually a bit curious how much I can help through this. It’s worth a try because I believe it’s a worthwhile cause!

Categories: General Interest, Personal Tags:

Finding an item by UPC

March 23rd, 2007 ^Lestat 2 comments

In the past I’ve purchased several types of DVD-R’s. Some have worked, and for some strange reason other DVD-R’s haven’t performed the same. Some wouldn’t get read by my recorder at all. In a hurry to keep the part number for future reference, I accidently grabbed just the UPC code and nothing else.

Upon searching for this part I came across Internet UPC Database. The site is actually a hobby of it’s creator. It allows users to register, logon, and add UPC’s all the time to it’s database. The site claims to have begun it’s work in 1999 so it’s database is pretty full. As of this entry the total items entered were at 839,904. You can view the rest of the stats at their site.

Sure enough I found the product’s information I was looking for right away. What I wonder is how the information is validated. Since there is only a guideline on the data entry.

upc

Categories: Computing, General Interest, Internet Tags:

Disabling the Return Key in Forms

February 15th, 2007 ^Lestat No comments

I had a few forms that included a delete button, and also a submit button together. Having filled out forms myself I have a habit of hitting the return key. I dug up an old form I made a few years ago and found this bit of javascript to disable the key. It doesn’t disable it 100%, but only when it doesn’t have focus. So it can still be tabbed to and then the return key will work. A mouse click will do at any time…

<html>

   <head>

   <!-- disable return key -->

   <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">

	   function checkCR(evt) {
		   var evt  = (evt) ? evt : ((event) ? event : null);
		   var node = (evt.target) ? evt.target : ((evt.srcElement) ? evt.srcElement : null);
		   if ((evt.keyCode == 13) && (node.type=="text")) {return false;}
	     }

	    document.onkeypress = checkCR;

   </script>

   </head>

<body>...

</body>

</html>

javascript, forms, return key

Categories: General Interest, Programming Tags:

My Free copy of Vista has arrived

January 30th, 2007 ^Lestat 4 comments

Back in November I spent a little time watching videos to get a free copy of Windows Vista. (Thanks to Things That Make you Go Hmm! ) I did watch all the required video, but maybe MS is only giving out one or the other? I’m sure there were limited copies.

I had since forgot I did so. Last Thursday when I arrived home from work a discreet brown envelope arrived from Microsoft with my name on it! Heres the goods!

I’m always leary of upgrading anything, especially an OS. I hardly have enough time to upgrade, let alone troubleshoot or “un-upgrade”. But I was curious and also a bit excited. So, I decided to upgrade my laptop. Shortly after throwing in the disk I was presented with the agreement screen, along with the new looking backdrop.

Next I was presented with an option to use the upgrade advisor (optional) to see if my system had what it took. Of course it required the .NET framework to be installed in order to use it. This I really disliked. It forced me to the web to install it. This makes me wonder if I wasn’t yet connected, if it would offer to install it from the disk? After some blinking and flashing the advisor gave me the go-ahead.

Shortly after accepting this and proceeding with the upgrade Vista ran a compatability check on my hardware to see if there would be any confilcts. Most of my hardware seemed to check out. The items that didn’t were dell specific. At this point I wondered if Dell is aware of this. I also wondered “Why isnt the OS just backward compatable?”.

I had a loading screen for about an hour and a half with a note on the bottom stating “It can take a few hours to upgrade your computer”. Good thing I had other things to do!

If finally loaded. I knew right off the bat my Dell programs weren’t working right because the volume keys worked, but the visual display of it on my screen did not. It was getting late and didn’t have too much time to look it over really. I looked quickly at the nifty 3D screen chooser, and the new look of the explorer. It also came with a few gadgets running by default. It seemed to have more of a Mac look and feel. Especially explorer. It also seemed to have a larger memory footprint.

I did have a moment while trying out an MMORPG where the system suddenly shut off. When I turned it back on, there was some text on the screen complaining of temperatures, and something possibly blocking the fan. Never have seen this before. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the dell BIOS, or software talking with Vista properly…

Vista, Windows

Categories: Computing, General Interest, Windows Tags:

“Why Blog” Survey

January 23rd, 2007 ^Lestat No comments

Darren Barefoot has put out a survey of 16 blogging questions entitled “Why Do You Blog”. He’s collecting data for a speech he is giving in Vancouver Canada in Feb. He wants to hear from anyone who has created a blog. Take the survey and random submissions will win a prize. Some of the prizes include; an iPod Shuffle, 2 books, or a $50 Canadian gift certificate. All you need to do is link to his survey!

I think it’s worth the entry just to hear his findings.

Why did I start beginnercode.com? It first started out of curiosity. What was the point? To me it first seemed almost like a personal diary. But as time moved on I realized I could use it to share any of my programming or tech experiences with people who were maybe looking for the same information. It’s been a while since I’ve written any programming related posts lately. My family life has taken more precedence. However, I haven’t lost interest!

There is much to write about. So much web, so little time…

Contests, iPod Shuffle, Survey, Free Stuff

Categories: Blog Adventures, General Interest Tags: