Simplest Explanation

Determine Goal Width and Height in Image Resizing

MorganEngel — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:33:18 +0000

I find myself doing image manipulation on a regular basis. One of the common things I have to do is to fit an image into a max width or height. I’ve distilled this as best I can, and I think this is as simple as it gets. It’s in PHP, but the logic should be applicable to any language.

$max_size=200;
$ratio = $image_width/$image_height;
if($ratio>1)
{
	$goal_width = $max_size;
	$goal_height = $max_size/$ratio;
}
else
{
	$goal_width = $max_size*$ratio;
	$goal_height = $max_size;
}

Linux Frustrations

MorganEngel — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:23:05 +0000

Ahhhh Linux, those who use you, claim to love you, but I propose they’re all just trying to sound superior.

I use Linux. I can’t stand it. I often joke that OSX takes one extra step compared to Windows. Want to move the window to the right side on Win 7? Drag it all the way to the right and it sticks 50% right. Want to do this in OSX? drag it till it’s about 50%, then resize it. Sure, can do it, but it’s one extra step. Comparatively, doing anything in Linux requires that you try it, fail, read a manual, take 5 extra steps AND pray. And even then, you don’t get the same result as everyone else. Linux flavors are as varied as grains of sand on the beach, and so, anything I post here will probably fall on blind ears unless you happen to be in the same place I was when I started. My apologies, I wish I had time to spin up a VM for every flavor of Linux to perform my explanations, but alas, I’d rather be coding. =D

Add PWD to Bash Default

MorganEngel — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:32:43 +0000

I grew up with DOS, so call me a throwback user, but when I open Bash on my Mac, I’d really like to know where the heck I am. By default, the prompt shows your computer’s name, then the name of the directory you’re in. This works fine if you never have duplicate directory names, but when I’m doing dev work, I often have multiple windows open for staging/prod/dev work, and they all have the same name as they’re supposed to. This script goes into your ~/.profile file and will change bash to show something like

~/Documents/Workspace/
>

Here’s the code you put into your ~/.profile file (create one if you need to):

PS1="\[\033[0;32m\]\w/\n\[\033[0;0m\]>"

Dynamically Add Collapsible Elements in Jquery Mobile

MorganEngel — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:47:17 +0000

I spent a long time trying to get this to work and finally success.
This code produces a div with content and then reminds the JQuery Mobile framework to actually wire it up with classes, functionality, etc.

$('Title
Content
').appendTo('[data-role="content"]');
$('div[data-role=collapsible]').collapsible({theme:'c',refresh:true});

MySQL Insert Only If Missing

MorganEngel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:13:36 +0000

I was building a queue of projects with statuses into a mysql table. In my situation, I was expecting to have a project number, and a status. There’s a possibility that there would be many non-unique entries, wherein the same project was published over and over successfully. I wanted to add a new line to the table only if there wasn’t already an existing request for the current project to be built. Most of the examples out there assume you can use unique identifiers, or use two calls to solve this, but I wanted a single mysql call to solve the whole thing.
I found some good stuff on this, but only one answer actually gave me what I was looking for:
If you have a situation where you can’t use unique data:

NOTE: Your database table must not be empty for this to work.

INSERT INTO `table` (`value1`, `value2`) 
SELECT 'stuff for value1', 'stuff for value2' FROM `table` 
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM `table` 
                  WHERE `value1`='stuff for value1' AND `value2`='stuff for value2') 
LIMIT 1

If you CAN use unique identifiers on your table, then this should work for you.

INSERT IGNORE INTO `table`
SET `value1` = 'stuff for value1',
`value2` = 'stuff for value2';

thanks to: this page

ActionScript 3 Math.round < Number().toFixed()

MorganEngel — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:44:58 +0000

I just found out some of the fancy features that Numbers have in AS3 and how they’re going to make my life so much nicer.

Typically if I wanted to round a number, I’d write it the following way:

trace(Math.round(5.4321));

But this way is much easier:

trace(5.4321.toFixed());

the toFixed method of numbers rounds to a specified decimal place. It assumes you mean 0 places, so toFixed() rounds to 0 decimal places. This means you don’t need to mess with any of the Math things for rounding.

Determining if your browser has a vertical scrollbar showing

MorganEngel — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:52:57 +0000

In javascript, I needed to know if a browser was currently showing a scrollbar. This was fairly simple, but just thought I’d write it down.

window.innerHeight < document.documentElement.scrollHeight

Why a Single Point of Failure Can Be a Good Thing

MorganEngel — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:50:49 +0000

I’ve been working in the corporate world for a while now, and I finally have figured out my personal difficulties with the transition from a small company to a large one. I’ve been there for the growth of two companies from a relatively small number of people to a larger one. The first company grew like wildfire and is now doing massive layoffs. The second company seems to be doing quite a bit better, but there’s significantly more tension than there used to be.

Working for a startup is a lot like having a child. The company is uncertain, it’s unprotected, and it’s completely dependent on other people to make sure that it grows up and succeeds. Like a parent, each member of a startup contributes something huge and important to the company. Without any of the various pieces, the company would fail quickly, and everyone in the company knows it. But, also like a parent, each member of a startup is almost religious in their devotion to the company. Every member is a spof (single point of failure), but the whole thing often ends up feeling a lot more like family than work.

Now that the company I work for is more of a corporation than a startup, there’s been a lot of talk about spof and how I need to fix that–we need to hire more people, train them to overlap my job, and ensure that if I’m out, my projects won’t fall to the wayside. I understand the need to feel secure in our company’s capability, but the sense of devotion and radical fanaticism to the company I work for has nothing to do with its well-being. It all hinges on the feeling that I, as an individual contributor am needed–and badly. The more I’m needed, the more I’ll throw myself into the mix, the more I’ll work late nights, the more I’ll innovate, create, and expand what I do because I have the opportunity to help make the whole thing better.

This is not better for my social life, my side projects, or my blog, but it’s significantly better than the alternative. My company no longer needs me. They want me around (I hope) but the only thing standing between me and layoffs is money, and the ability for the company to make money is no longer directly influenced by me. I’m a cog in a machine, and it’s by design that I’ve lost the ability to be more.

I wonder if there’s an alternative to the malaise I feel. Do people show up to Microsoft every day and say “god I’m happy to be a programmer here?” If so, where do they find their satisfaction? I suppose if I had kids myself, I’d be feeling the priority shift, but if it’s done right, startups don’t have to completely take all your time either, they just need a little extra love.

Making a ComboBox only show ToolTips for Long Items

MorganEngel — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:21:13 +0000

I had a Flex Combobox that had contents too big to fit, but when I made it shorter to fit, the items would be cut off. There’s a brilliant solution on the FlexExamples site that handles it so:

 id="projectComboBox"
             dataProvider="{projectList}"
             maxWidth="400"
             itemRenderer="mx.controls.Label"/>

All this does is specify the use of a label control as the TextField in the ComboBox. Since Labels are made to truncate then produce tooltips automatically, this is amazingly simple.

Installing the Sun JDK in Ubuntu Linux

MorganEngel — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 19:06:42 +0000

All I wanted was the Sun JDK on the new, shiny Ubuntu I spun up in VMWare. Eclipse (among other things) recommends you do this for performance reasons. So, I tried. I looked through the apt-get system, nothing. I looked at sun’s website and was greeted with a plethora of errors when I got the rpm, installed rpm using apt-get and then tried to rpm -ivh the package.
this is what my error partially looked like:

Failed dependencies:
	/bin/basename is needed by jdk-2000:1.7.0-fcs.i586
	/bin/cat is needed by jdk-2000:1.7.0-fcs.i586
	/bin/cp is needed by jdk-2000:1.7.0-fcs.i586
	/bin/gawk is needed by jdk-2000:1.7.0-fcs.i586
	/bin/grep is needed by jdk-2000:1.7.0-fcs.i586

the final solution was on happy-coding.com and went as so (I would have linked, but it was tough to notice that you had to do 3 steps and not just two–keepin it simple):

apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk