GTA IV was released yesterday, and I managed to put in several hours last night. I played the single player for about 30 minutes and then went straight into the multi player free mode. I haven’t played it long enough to write up a review, but at first glance does it live up to the hype? Definitely, definitely definitely! That means yes.
The polish on this game is stunning. The AI is great, the graphics are fantastic, the fun level is through the roof, what more could you ask for. The attention to detail is what blows me away the most. Things they didn’t need to add, but did anyway, like dripping water when you come out of a lake, or mud tracks on the beach. Hilarious politically charged commentators on the TV and radios. The sound track should have something for everyone too. Let’s not forget the helicopters, bikes, mopeds, buses, trucks, boats, and who knows what else awaits.
If you are still on the fence about this game, GameTrailers has a fairly in depth review.
Anyone creating email newsletters on a daily basis will tell you how hard it is to get them to render properly in all email clients, but getting them to work in Outlook 2007 can be maddening as any quick Google search will show.
Today I came across a bug that left me fuming. I could not figure out why every single cell in my table heavy layout had a 1px padding around it and in some cases I was even missing my table borders. For those of you working in the sane world of web design, tables are a thing of the past, but in the world of email, tables are back with a vengeance.
As I became more and more disillusioned I started trying anything and stumbled across the fix. I knew I had to share this, so if you are experiencing any of the above, here is the fix and it’s a simple one.
Here’s an example of what a two cell table with an image and text would look like before the fix. Notice the 1px white border/padding around the table.
And here is how it’s supposed to look after the fix. No white border / padding.
And the fix?
table td {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
I don’t think I’ve ever even used this css before, but once I started grasping at straws I began to fiddle around with the CSS border attributes and tried it. I’ve never seen any browser or mail client except Outlook 2007 do this to table cells.
Here’s the full HTML from the example, and thank you Microsoft, for delivering the worst email rendering experience yet, we all thought Hotmail was bad, but you really stepped up to the plate!
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Outlook 2007 Test</title>
<style media="all" type="text/css">
table td {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table width="200" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="border:solid 1px #48463b;">
<tr>
<td width="80"><img src="http://yourserver/graphic.gif" width="80" height="40" alt="graphic"></td>
<td width="120" style="background-color:#c1beb1; color:#ffffff; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:center; font-size:11px;">Another column<br>
plain text.</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
You may also want to check out my other entries on this topic.
So it was finally officially announced today that the iPhone will be coming to Canada later this year. Rogers will be providing it as rumoured ever since it was released.
“We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.”
Let’s hope Apple was able to convince them to have some reasonable pricing. Now the question is do I get a Blackberry, iPhone or XPERIA X1.
I talked about Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA X1 a few months back, and the iPhone last year.
Wordpress 2.5 has brought a lot of fantastic improvements to the popular blogging software, but with this new release came a lot of problems with the Add media window. After looking around the web I found a lot of solutions, so I don’t take credit for this, but I’d like to help spread the word.
A lot of servers run ModSecurity a popular web application security module for the Apache Web server. I’m not an expert in this area, so I’m assuming that ModSecurity is doing something to the media uploader.
That said there is a way to exclude ModSecurity from the Wordpress file being affected. In the root of your Wordpress install edit your .htaccess file to include these lines.
<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>
This should exempt async-upload.php from ModSecurity rules.
About a month ago someone sent me this really freaky YouTube video of a robot called BigDog created by Boston Dynamics. The military implications are obvious, along with funding from DARPA. That said, the BigDog video is pretty cool although abit unsettling.
Now for a second take there is the BigDog Beta. Don’t watch this until you have watched the original BigDog video as it won’t make much sense. Without giving too much away, the BigDog Beta video had me in stitches.
With my previous post on jQuery, I thought I would share a simple add on method for the jQuery Validation plugin. If you are from Canada or writing a Canadian validation form with a postal code field you can use this. Just add the code below in your rules script.
// Addon method for validating postal codes. Valid
// formats are (X1X 1X1) or (X1X1X1) or (X1X-1X1).
$.validator.addMethod("postalCode", function(value) {
return value.match(/^[a-zA-Z][0-9][a-zA-Z](-| )?[0-9][a-zA-Z][0-9]$/);
}, 'Please enter a valid postal code');
Then you can use the rules required:true and postalCode:true in your rule set.
I recently started playing around with two JavaScript libraries, MooTools, and jQuery. After playing with MooTools for a long time and getting frustrated, I switched to jQuery. This does not mean MooTools is bad, I am no JavaScript expert and there are a lot of very nice MooTools examples on their site.
At work I write a lot of JavaScript validation in forms, and it can get very tedious. I like writing my own code, but I’ve never really liked JavaScript as much as other languages and in today’s world of ever changing technologies and browsers I finally thought why re-invent the wheel; someone has probably done this better than me already. Combine that with the fact that the form I was working on and my JavaScript was becoming particularly unwieldy, so I decided try out one of these highly praised JavaScript Libraries.
After downloading jQuery I quickly realized I would need a plugin. A quick search revealed many, many plugins, including a validation plugin called “Validation” of all things. The learning curve for jQuery and the plugin was several hours, but after setting it up I quickly began to see the power using a JavaScript library. I am now a jQuery convert.
Want to see who else is using jQuery? The list is quiet impressive. As another blogger said, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.
It’s time for another quick Photoshop tip. The other day I was working on an HTML mockup in Photoshop and said, “Hey wouldn’t it be great if there were bullets”. My co-worker turns around and says you can make them, and it’s super easy. It’s not really like ordered or unordered lists in HTML; you still have to type in the numbers or bullets manually, but it’s as close as you’ll get.
Once you have your list created in a text box, go to the Paragraph window. Go to the Indent first line field and type in a negative value. For this example I have 11 pixel Verdana text with a -15px first indent.
From the screenshot above you can see we now have perfect bullets in our mockup.
I finally finished reading World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. I haven’t had as much time to read lately, but I sat down earlier this morning and decided to finish it.
The book title may sound silly, and if you have read The Zombie Survival Guide by Brooks you may even be expecting some humour, but you will find very little in this book. This is a much more serious and tragic novel about a writer who is chronicling a factual book about the Zombie outbreak 10 years after it has occurred. This writer also put together the official UN reports and felt that he needed to write a more human account of the tale.
Without giving too much away, the entire book is made up of short chapters sometimes only a few pages long chronicling the lives of individuals and their experiences throughout the Zombie War. The book is fantastic, and there are plans to turn it into a motion picture. Every story is well thought out and most of them are very believable and convincing.
If you have ever watched a Zombie movie or even read Zombie books, usually they are fairly hokey or they deal with one small isolated situation like a mall or even a city. World War Z covers the entire spectrum of the planet and many different scenarios. The book delves right into the politics and how badly many governments screwed up, but it also covers many other situations. Ever wondered what would happen to the oceans during a worldwide Zombie outbreak, or the mad rush to flee cities? What about the internet addicted shut in who follows the entire outbreak from the illusional safety of his room in Tokyo right up until the Zombies knock on his door? What about someone who is blind with no one to help them during the chaos. The book covers many personal stories like these.
This is every Zombie fans must read book and most have probably already read it by now, but because it’s so different from the run of the mill Zombie genre, I think many non-Zombie fans will really enjoy this book too. I guess it’s classified as horror, but it’s really not that scary and actually far more emotionally tragic.
So I finally got sick of the mass transit in Toronto which recently was threatening to go on strike. The TTC, our transit system is pretty annoying lately. My ride to work ranges from 40 minutes on a good day to the extreme of 2+ hours. With horrible service, zero reliability and constant fee hikes, I’d had enough.
I live outside the downtown core right on Lake Ontario, so I am lucky in that I have a beautiful paved bike path all the way downtown for about 95% of my ride. So I headed to the Urbane Cyclist a bike co-op downtown and after two days of talking to the most helpful staff I think I’ve ever have the pleasure of dealing with and testing bikes out I decided to go with a Dahon 7 speed folding bike. Before I entered the shop a fold up bike had not entered my mind.
Why did I decide on the fold up bike? Well a few reasons, the first one being I live in a condo and they want everyone to leave their bikes in the garage downstairs in bike cages. Unfortunately they had no bike cages available for me and bike theft is extremely high in Toronto. You aren’t allowed to bring bikes through the front entrance, but what if you are carrying it in one hand? Well, so far no complaints.
Another reason was I often work late, so if I do I can go downstairs and fold the thing up and put it under my desk at work. Bike theft usually happens at night. I can also keep it in my front hall and stick it in a closet, it is that small. Check out the pictures below.
The bike also comes with mudguards. These things are a must on a commuter bike. I have already road to work on a rainy day and gone through puddles and mud. The wheels are splattered, but I am totally clean on arrival. It also has a great rack on the back with three bungee cords. I have fastened my lock down, a fleece, and my dinner picked up on the way home. I plan to get a bag eventually for it too.
So far I am extremely happy with this bike and my biking experience; it’s been years since I owned a bike. It takes me no more than 30 seconds to fold it up, and the workmanship is fantastic. Everything feels and looks solid. All the hinges work perfect, and I think it looks pretty damn cool. My ride into work right now is about 35 minutes and I’m pretty out of shape, so I’m hoping I can get it down to 30 or even 25 minutes on a good day. This also saves me on the costs of a month transit pass and saves my sanity.
This bike is a great little gadget. You’ll also notice people looking at you when you fold it up because it’s pretty cool. I can’t recommend a fold up like this enough, and the bike only cost me $475 Canadian. If you live in Toronto and do plan on getting yourself a bike, any bike, do yourself a favour and go to Urban Cyclist, these guys are phenomenally helpful.
