Just bought a new laptop and it should be here by the end of next week when I get back from NYC. I'm headed down to see my girlfriend again...yes, yet again. This is my gift to myself for graduating from college. 7 days and 6 nights with my girl...can't wait!

Here's the specs of my brand new Dell XPS M1530:

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.4GHz/800MHz FSB, 3M L2 Cache)
• Tuxedo Black Casing
• 4GB of DDR2 RAM at 667MHz (2 Dimms)
• 15.4 inch Wide Screen WXGA+ TrueLife LED LCD with 2.0 MP Camera
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
• 320GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• Microsoft Windows Vista with SP1 Home Premium Edition 64-bit Edition
• 8X DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive
• Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini-card
• 6-cell (56 WHr) Lithium Ion Battery
• Finger Print Reader
• Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module (2.0+EDR)

Needless to say I'm extremely excited!   I'll post some type of review with screen shots once I get a chance to get it all set up and fine tuned.

1. Use Firefox (it's not required but we all know that when you use IE god will kill kittens).
2. Go to Favtape.com (duh) and find a song that you want.
   

3. Click the name of the song to begin playing it.
4. When you hover over the name of the song you should see something like this in the status bar: http://favtape.com/play/**Artist**/**Song**.mp3  (**Artist** and **Song* obviously replaced with the appropriate information). Click on the image to the right if you don't understand what I just said.
5. Now you can't simply right click and "Save link as". You actually can't right click at all. So how do you get the MP3 file?
6. Method 1 - no tweaking involved:
   1. Open a new tab in Firefox (control + t).
   2. Click + hold the Artist - Song Name and drag this onto the new tab you just created.
   3. That's it! The song should not start to download, but you'll need to rename it because it'll save as "fetch.mp3".
7. Method 2 - tweaking the Firefox settings:
   
   

   1. In Firefox goes to Tools --> Options
   2. Go to the "Content" tab
   3. Find "Enable Javascript". To the right of this you will see "Advanced" click on this.
   4. Find "Disable or replace context menus". Uncheck this box.
   5. Click "OK" and then "OK" again.
   6. Now you can right click on the Artist - Song Name and select "Save link as".
   7. That's it! You can now just save the MP3 file we saw in the status bar earlier.
   8. Important Note: You may want to re-enable the "Disable or replace context menus" option because many web applications use this functionality.

• picasa2flickr - A simple "plugin" that allows Picasa users to upload their photos to Flickr.
• Pimp my Outlook Today - I'm a big fan of TiddlyWiki so it seemed an ideal candidate for integration with the Outlook Today screen.
• CSS Attribute Selectors: Built-In Classes - Classes and IDs aren’t the only ways you can describe the elements in your website in order to style them. You can also make use of attribute selectors.
• Introduction to CSS3 - Part 1: What is it? - This first tutorial will give you a very basic introduction to the new possibilities created by the standard.
• Introduction to CSS3 - Part 2: Borders - CSS3 takes borders to a new level with the ability to use gradients, rounded corners, shadows and border images.
• Introduction to CSS3 - Part 3: Text Effects - CSS is already reasonably versatile in the way in which text can be displayed, but still constricts design in quite a few areas. CSS3 goes some way towards removing those limitations.
• 15 Great Examples of Web Typography - It may be that not all the sites listed here are to your taste, but it’s hoped that something will inspire you.
• Web Based Workflow: Tale of the $0 Studio - In the past few years we’ve seen an explosion of free, web and open source alternatives to popular, often expensive, design programs. With this workflow it’s all pure profit!
• 10 Things I Learned from Mental Detox Week - Getting rid of technology (or most of it) for one week.
• 5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed - A number of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions about the subjects.
• Ad*Access - The Ad*Access Project presents images and information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.

So here's the 1st part of it:

   1:  #GET INPUT

   2:  puts "Please enter a number"  

   3:  STDOUT.flush  

   4:  num1 = gets.chomp.to_i

   5:   

   6:  puts "Please enter another number"  

   7:  STDOUT.flush  

   8:  num2 = gets.chomp.to_i

   9:   

  10:  puts "Please pick the type of operation:

  11:  (A)dd

  12:  (S)ubtract

  13:  (M)ultiply

  14:  (D)ivide)"  

  15:  STDOUT.flush  

  16:  oper = gets.chomp

So here we're asking the user for 2 numbers, cleaning up the input, and then storing it into 2 variables (num1 and num2). We then ask the user to select which type of mathematical operation they'd like to perform (addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division).

The 2nd part:

   1:  #SELECT THE OPERATION

   2:  if oper == ("a" or "A")  

   3:          add(num1, num2)

   4:      elsif oper == ("s" or "S")

   5:          subtract(num1, num2)

   6:      elsif oper == ("m" or "M")

   7:          multiply(num1, num2)

   8:      elsif oper ==  ("d" or "D")

   9:          divide(num1, num2)

  10:  end

So here we're deciding what we're going to do with our 2 variables (num1 and num2) based on the users selection. If they enter "a" or "A" (for example) we will then execute the method called "add" on line 3. Speaking of these methods...

The 3rd and final part:

   1:  #DEFINE THE METHODS

   2:  def add(num1, num2)  

   3:    sum = num1 + num2

   4:    puts "#{num1} + #{num2} = #{sum}"

   5:  end  

   6:   

   7:  def subtract(num1, num2)

   8:      if num1 > num2  

   9:        diff = num1 - num2

  10:        puts "#{num1} - #{num2} = #{diff}"

  11:      else

  12:        diff = num2 - num1

  13:        puts "#{num2} - #{num1} = #{diff}"

  14:      end

  15:  end  

  16:   

  17:  def multiply(num1, num2)  

  18:    prod = num1 * num2

  19:    puts "#{num1} X #{num2} = #{prod}"

  20:  end  

  21:   

  22:  def divide(num1, num2)  

  23:      if num1 > num2  

  24:          div = num1 / num2

  25:          puts "#{num1} /  #{num2} = #{div}"

  26:      else

  27:          div = num2/num1

  28:          puts "#{num2} /  #{num1} = #{div}"

  29:      end

  30:  end 

Each one of these methods (starting on lines 2, 7, 17, and 22) perform a particular set of functions based on the variables that are being passed in (num1 and num2). These methods are called based on the earlier code (part 2) that selected which method applied based on which of the mathematical operations the user selected. The 2 numbers that the user entered are passed into that method, some type of calculation is carried out, and then the result is displayed to the user. In the case of subtraction and division, I elected to add an additional step that would determine which of the 2 entered numbers was larger, and then it would order the calculation accordingly so as to not return a negative number (but this is purely optional).

To recap, and provide a plain English flow of how this happen in this simple little application: the user enters 2 numbers, and then they select a mathematical operation. Based on that operation we go through a series of checks to match which operation was selected, the 2 numbers entered by the users are passed to the method, and then we enter the applicable method. The method then performs the necessary calculations and displays the output to the user.

Pretty simple, not exactly rocket science, but it's a start at least. I wanted to play with conditional statements a bit, as well as creating and calling my own methods. Next up will be to continue to experiment with arrays and hashes.

Posts in this series:

1. Things to do when this semester is finally over.
2. Redux: Things to do when this semester is finally over
3. A New Chapter: Things to do this Summer

I thought I'd briefly update what I plan to accomplish this summer. The semester is finally finally done and over with (see my recent post regarding the ridiculous amount of things I needed to finish in the past 3 weeks).

• Reinstall Windows Home Server (WHS). Never mind, not going to reinstall.
• Read “Head First SQL”.
• Read “A History of God”. Never mind, this looks to be quite boring.
• Read “The Hobbit or There and Back Again”. DONE
• Have some type of relaxing vacation.
• Decide if I will keep my web hosting.
• Reinstall XP on my desktop because Vista sucks (even with SP1).
• Rewrite my current blog theme from scratch (it’s using tables right now…ick!). Never mind, not applicable any more.
• Update my laptop to Vista SP1 (why not reinstall XP? don’t ask). DONE
• Work related: apparently I'm going to be learning Visual Basic this summer. We'll see.
• Work related: I also may be learning Ruby on Rails (jRails specifically). We'll see.

An interesting collections of links, primarily aimed at CSS this time. I can't wait for this semester to be over with so I can get back to some web design. I am so behind in terms of things I want/need to read at this point.

I apologize, but I am far too lazy to write a blurb about each one of those links. I'll just leave it at this: IE8 Beta 1 is a step in the right direction, TeamViewer kicks ass for remote computer support, and the 6 animals that can destroy you is hilarious to read.

Posts in this series:

1. Things to do when this semester is finally over.
2. Redux: Things to do when this semester is finally over
3. A New Chapter: Things to do this Summer

My list of "things to do once the semester is over" keeps growing in length so I thought I'd just I'd add them on:

• Reinstall XP on my desktop because Vista sucks (even with SP1).
• Rewrite my current blog theme from scratch (it's using tables right now...ick!).
• Update my laptop to Vista SP1 (why not reinstall XP? don't ask).

Perhaps you figured out the pattern for these links (except for the PDF hammer link)? The HTML 5 draft was finally released on the 22nd of January. The web has been a twitter with this and the fact that Microsoft has said that Internet Explorer 8 will include a "super standards" mode. The key is that this standards mode will require a particular META tag to enable this type of rendering. This has also sent the web into a frenzy because people are claiming that this will destroy progressive enhancement. The truth of the matter, as Eric Meyer points out, is that this will not be a detrimental change. The key moving forward will be that your websites will theoretically continue to work exactly how you coded them for the foreseeable future. In theory, even if we're all using IE10 your website that was designed for IE6 will still render just fine. The other point that Eric makes is that browser vendors will be able to implement new web standards much more quickly now that they'd no longer need to fear breaking millions of websites. Essentially current websites would remain untouched by new changes to IE's rendering engine. Unless the developer specifically codes the website to use the new render engine, which we can assume means that the developer has tested the page for issues, it would default to the legacy rendering engine that has proven to work. This is really a good thing for web designers, web standards supporters, and browser vendors.