As most of you must know by now, yesterday was the much anticipated release of the iphone 3g. The inner geek in has rarely been excited that much for a new device. I was ready to give allllll my money to Rogers to get one on the release date, but they said no…NO!

I have been a client for more than 4 years, but last year I upgraded to a new contract. When yesterday night I finally had the iPhone in my hand, ready to sign the contract, the clerk told me “Sorry sir, you need to wait until october 11th before you can upgrade your plan”. WHY!, the guy told me it was some policy where you have to wait 1 year since your last upgrade or plan activation to be able to upgrade again.

This simply don’t make any sense for me, the only reason why I think it’s good for them (because they don’t care about the customers) is that their 6 gig data plan for 30$/month won’t be effective then, therefore forcing bunch of people who wants their iPhone but can’t get them to get the crazy plans.

The past two week has been nothing but bullshit from Rogers, every time they make a somewhat good move, there’s something somewhere that reminds me how bad they are.

What pisses me the most is that Rogers is the only DSM carrier in Canada, so if I want to have a somehwat good phone, I’m forced to go with them.

So what will I do? I just don’t know, I don’t want to go with Rogers, but I want the iPhone so bad.

Let me say first off, that I’m am more than happy with the response I had for my pretty comments jQuery plugin. More than 1500 people visited my blog last month and more are coming just for that bit of code. Really, I am impressed, never tought I’d get such response.

I have been on vacation for 2 weeks, I’ll be back at work and in fully working shape next week. That means I should get more active. I’m currently working on another jQuery plugin that takes the standard browser drop downs (we all know they can’t really be styled with css) and give you the ability to customize them. The script is started, pretty advanced, I only have some issues with accessibility and needs to test it some more to make sure it doesn’t break anything in the forms when you use it. The name? Pretty dropdown You can see I am very inspired
Thanks again for all the positive feedback!

Blogged with Flock

UPDATE: Please refer to this post for support/updates on prettyComments

Here’s a small jQuery plugin that allow textareas to strech as content is put in. If the content goes over the defined height of the textarea, the textarea will stretch.

So no need to more scroll up in that cramped space to take a look at what you wrote 10 lines before.

It’s really easy to use, just download the file pretty-comments.js and include it in the html page where you want to allow the comment box stretching. Then put that bit of code in that same page to include the script:

<script src=“the-path/js/pretty-comments.js” type=“text/javascript” charset=“utf-8″></script>

You can then play a bit with the options which are located at the top of the javascript file, you can define if you want to have it animated or not and the speed of the animation.

Then put that bit of code in the same page you have your comment box, you need to pass the comment box id as a parameter for it to work.

<script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″>
$(document).ready(function(){
prettyComments.init(’comment’);
});
</script>

That’s really all there’s to it, if you want a demo, just leave a comment, you’ll see the box stretch

Files: Un-compressed (3kb,options)
Packed (1kb, animated, no options)

Demo: Right in that page, just enter a lot of content in the comment box.

If you notice any bug, need any support, just leave a comment, I’ll do my best to help you!

Note: You also need the jQuery library in order to use this plugin

Update: Version: 1.1 relased! Now the textarea can shrink back to it’s original size when you delete content from it!

That’s right, the World Wide Web War 1 has started.

For those of you who are not aware, last week, a leaked Scientology indoctrination video has been leaked on You Tube, the cult of Scientology contacted You Tube to ask them to remove the video from the website, claiming it was a copyright infringement. Also, several news stories related to that video has been removed from digg. If you want to see the video, Gawker still has a version live.

This incident fired rage from a bunch of hackers, well hacker is quite big word, let’s just say script kiddies. A group who call themselves “anonymous” (FEAR THEM) posted this video on You Tube. The group threatens to bring Scientology’s online presence down for their years of lies.

Over the past weak, several Scientology websites has been victim of DDoS attacks, which brought them down.

What’s interesting in that story, the enormous proportion this story is taking, the story made the news, several websites reported the attacks. It’s big!

Brings me to think talk about the power users have online. This fired the rage of a bunch of users and the reacted! Companies/Individuals have to be very about how they act online, because it is still relatively easy for users to show their dissatisfaction.

It is so hard today for people to raise speach and talk about those events on traditional medias, that’s why the internet is so fun! The space is not yet sold to big corporation, it is not yet moderated and let’s just hope it stays that way!

Blogged with Flock

I’m back! I mean fully back, I officially came back to work last week, but it’s the kind of week where you only get back up to date and set things back so you can be ready for full steam work the week after.

And god did I have to get up to date, it was the first time in ages I hadn’t open my computer for over a week. I really wanted not to be on a computer during my holidays, for the sole reason that I spend over 90 hours a week on one, everyone needs a break I even nearly had to re-learn how to use a mouse, I found my mouse so fast at first!

It got me to think how important internet has become, I mean, when I got back online I felt left behind, like this worlds hasn’t stopped moving and at the speed it’s moving, a week is a lot of time.

But anyway, I’m happy I took that time offline, only helped me come back stronger and better.

You ever did it?

Blogged with Flock

I know I haven’t been in the business for a long time. But over my short career I noticed one “small” thing. Years of experience don’t mean as much as we might think.

One general thing I noticed is that junior people tends to be more aware of what’s coming and what are the best practice to use. They usually produce incredibly clean code with tidy CSS associated to it. As of more experienced people seems to be affected by divitis.

Here’s my little theory, the web is not what it used to be, it changed so fast, not only what we see, but the back end is now so much different than it used to be that what you learned 10 years ago is not gonna help you much today. My point is that you need to be constantly evolving, you can’t just stop at what you know, you need to keep aware of the new stuff and that’s what seems to be the weak point of more experienced people.

I worked with that girl once, she got hired for a web developer position, had 10+ year of experience. I was excited (it was actually my first encounter with an experienced developper), not only cause it was a cute little girl, but because of all the knowledge she carried. Well it turned out she had to learn everything all over again. I actually knew more than her on the actual web and I was the one doing the teaching. Eventually she got up to par and produced clean code. But in the end, what did those 10 years of experience meant? Nothing.

I know I generalize, some people with lots of experience are incredibly good, for one reason, they followed the trends (or pushed them).

Keep updated, don’t sit on what you know!