At an interview for a software development position before Christmas I was asked to describe the difference between the Quicksort and Bubblesort sorting algorithms.

http://www.sorting-algorithms.com/ is a fast and fun way to recap.

I’ve tried this a several version of jQuery including jquery-1.3.2.

Include the plugin http://plugins.jquery.com/project/color and .animate works properly on the background color.

Bye

In light of the fact that unemployment has reached 11% what can the government do? Here is my 10 step plan to save Ireland.
1. Number one priority is to keep people in work. The government must do more to prevent companies on the brink for going under. We need to keep people in work rather than unemployment.
Look at the German aproach.

2. Reduce taxes(for the time being). Yes you read the right. Right now Cowen and his cohorts intend on rising taxes. Yet in a recession when people are not spending money and consumption falls the last thing you would want to do is exacerbate this by reducing the amount of money people have to spend.

3. Remove tax exemptions. Plough money into infrastructural projects. Aiming to create/retain jobs.

4. Massive increase in spending(borrow it) for the key sectors that are our future: bio-technology ,telecommunications, R and  D etc.  Focus on the industries that will see Ireland grow into the future

5. Cull senior bankers. Heads must roll. Send a message to the international community that crony Ireland is a thing of the past and an honest place to do business. Show the international community that we are disgusted with this corruption and this period of cronyism is coming to an end. Pay reductions across the board for banks funded by the taxpayer. Bring back regulation, the bankers cannot to trusted to police themselves.

6. Cull financial regulator, they have failed us.

7. Set up asset management company I.E bad bank to free up credit for business.

8. Reduce the public sector wage bill. Pension levy is a step in the right direction. Now address the pay unbalance between the private and public sectors.

9. Mortgage payment holiday period to see the newly unemployed through a tough period.

10. Replace the inept government. Obvious this one. Our government squandered the riches of the Celtic tiger. When we should have been developing indigenous enterprise, the government inflated the property industry causing the bubble. This type of short term thinking is typical of this government however along the way the government managed to increase they own wages and become among the most highly paid public servants in Europe. Remember the current Taoiseach who is attempting to save the economy was the minster of finance during the years the government squandered it all.
The real winners of the Celtic tiger along with the government were:

• The civil servants who through the social partnership enjoyed 10 to 30 higher wages than private sector equivalent positions plus incredible benefits.

• The lawyers who enjoyed fantastical pay due to the endless tribunals to investigate our government.

That’s should do it for the moment.

In IE7 scrollbars appear in the browser even when there is no content to scroll.

Try:

This removes the scollbar.
I think!

BTW not a problem in FF etc as you would expect.

Good luck.

Adobe have released a free PDF book on creating Adobe Air applications for JavaScript developers.

Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide

For those of you who have not heard, Adobe Air represents a fantastic advance in web development technologies. By using the HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the standard bread and butter for web developers, you can leverage those existing skills to create fully fledged desktop applications. Complete with standard OS install, uninstall procedures, custom taskbar(XP)/dock(Mac) icons, the works!

No messing around with C and MFC ( the horror!! ) when developing WinXP apps any more. Plus an Adobe Air app is platform independent. You can build an Adobe Air app and it will run on any OS that has the Adobe Air runtime installed. And what’s more, the Runtime Install procedure is the thing to behold too for it will install painlessly the first time you decide to download an Air app.

Adobe Air will change the way we understand the web, and continue to blur the line between the OS and the browser. It’s my guess for web technology of the year.

I came across this problem today. I was attempting to create a new binary file using Ruby and tried the following:

While this worked on the *nix os, it resulted in a corrupt binary file when run in WINXP.

Solution

To create a binary file in ruby you will need to include the “wb” option. See below.

Bye!

I’m a list junkie and Remember the Milk is where I get the hit…

If you ‘re the same you can download a simple Adobe Air application I put together with the Remember The Milk website inserted in an iframe. Plus a little extra.

Why bother

Doing web development work my browsers and WinXP taskbar can get messy. In a typical setup, I’ll have Firefox running(with several tabs), Internet Explorer 7, possibly 6 too, an IDE EG Aptana Studio or Editplus, probably a few explorer folders and 4 console windows too.

Yes messy I know.

Now you can imagine what that taskbar looks like, and in the midst of this boiling cauldron, in a Firefox tab will lurk http://www.rememberthemilk.com/. It can be a pain to find it.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could keep the http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ seperate from the rest of the Firefox tabs? Perhaps with a distinctive easy to locate icon too.

Ideally I would have http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ running in system tray, not visible in the taskbar and it would disappear back to the system tray when I minimise it, waiting ready to be restored again at short notice…. if only…..

Da Ding!!

Here it is….

BTW the systemtray feature is WinXP only. Perhaps a dock version will appear shortly

Shiftthis have written a Wordpress pluginto help you with re-ordering your Wordpress pages.

It’s called the wordpress-order-pages-plugin.

I’ve found this plugin useful when to allow me to control the order of my Wordpress pages when using my wp_jquery_dropdownmenu plugin .

It provides a visual layout of your pages and you can change the menu order easily. Very nice.

Guide to install and use Subversion client for Win XP.

1. Download Subversion for WINXP
2. Instruction on installing and using Subversion

If you are starting out with Ruby on Rails you’ll probably find yourself working on the depot application from the current edition of the book “Agile Web development with Rails”. However if you have Rails 2 installed you’ll quickly run into problems. The current edition of “Agile Web Development with Rails” supports rails 1.X. However with the release of Rails 2 key changes in the framework render the instructions for creating the depot application obsolete.

To get up to speed you should find the following tutorials useful, the first 2 deal with the rails 2 method of creating a basic depot application while along the way showcasing the new features of Rails2.

http://www.akitaonrails.com/2007/12/12/rolling-with-rails-2-0-the-first-full-tutorial

http://www.akitaonrails.com/2007/12/12/rolling-with-rails-2-0-the-first-full-tutorial-part-2

I’ve also found this next PDF informative. It costs 9 dollars but for that you get 140 odd pages of Rails2 goodness that should fill the void until they get around to updating “”Agile Web Development with Rails”