Effect.Flip = Class.create();
Object.extend(Object.extend(Effect.Flip.prototype,
  Effect.Base.prototype), {
 
    initialize: function(element, flip_graphic, original_graphic) {
      var options = arguments[3] || {};
 
      this.element = $(element);
      this.flip_graphic = flip_graphic;
      this.original_graphic = original_graphic;
 
      if (this.element.getAttribute('src') == this.flip_graphic) {
        this.flip_graphic = this.original_graphic;
        this.original_graphic = this.element.getAttribute('src');
      }
 
      this.width = options.width || this.element.getWidth();
      this.delta = this.width * 2;
      this.flip = 1;
 
      this.start(options);
    },
 
    update: function(position) {    
 
      var change = this.flip * (0.5 - position) * this.delta;
      var padding = this.width / 2 - change / 2;
 
      this.element.setStyle({
        width: change + 'px',
        padding: '0 0 0 ' + padding + 'px'
      });
 
      if (change < 0)
      {
        this.element.writeAttribute({ src: this.flip_graphic });
        this.flip = -1;
      }
    },
  });

You can use it like that:

new Effect.Flip(element, 'graphics/original.jpg', 'graphics/flip.png', { width: 120 });

I will post a demo tomorrow - I promise, it looks cool!

Hpricot::XChar::PREDEFINED_U.merge!({" " => 32})

Ahm, okay. I didn’t see any changes made to the overall layout of Hpricot so I suspect that line should work. Any ideas?

(If anyone is interested in the meaning of the above line, check this ticket).

I stumbled over Rory McCann’s python-osm lib over at Github. His version was missing the relation feature of the osm data structure but it was a one minute walk to implement it.

You can access the forked project @Github.

Yesterday I stumbled over some glitch with Lightbox (or Script.aculo.us, I’m not really sure) which results in a mal-sized picture. For the sample, go here. The fix is quite simple, you have to explicitly set the width of the image (that should be around line #260):

imgPreloader.onload = (function(){
    this.lightboxImage.src = this.imageArray[this.activeImage][0];
    // The following line will fix the glitch:
    this.lightboxImage.width = imgPreloader.width;
    this.resizeImageContainer(imgPreloader.width, imgPreloader.height);
}).bind(this);
imgPreloader.src = this.imageArray[this.activeImage][0];

[Warning: tech stuff follows] Anyway, I’m doing quite fine. My bachelor project is slowly taking shape. Currently I am modifying SharpMap for our needs (adding a dynamic layer for our data, adding some events to know what’s going on inside of SharpMap,…).

I’ve also touched the clipping function, which really sucked. I replaced it with Sutherland-Hodgman’s polygon-clipping algorithm which works like a charm. This move was necessary because GDI+ has some problems rendering invalid data (meaning data which is far outside of the viewport). The process doing the drawing will block all others and your system will come to a halt - no moving cursors, no task manager, no nothing.

Because SharpMap is released under the LGPL, I will post the .diff patches as soon as the major work is finished.

It’s based on Ruby and JavaScript (Prototype and script.aculo.us). It’s the first time that I’ve done some real word application with erb and script.aculo.us (whose effects and support is just awesome).

Check it out (and leave comments).

// This won't work:
Process proc = new Process();
string path = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase);
 
proc.StartInfo.Filename = System.IO.Path.Combine(path, "myApp.exe");
proc.Start();
proc.WaitForExit(); // <-- Will crash here
 
// This does work:
Process proc = new Process();
 
proc.StartInfo.Filename = "myApp.exe";
proc.Start();
proc.WaitForExit();

Both samples will start myApp.exe just fine, but the first one seems to have some problems with Windows. Cost me four precious hours of my life.

btw, can anyone tell me why “new” in the code snippet above links to a google search for new and msdn.microsoft.com? No? That figures.

It was actually pretty simple thanks to Mark Pilgrim’s Universal Feed Parser. I simply stuffed all my personal feeds into a dict, including the source description for different styles, text,…; did the feed parsing, collected all entries, sorted them and wrote them to an html file (I was a bit shy about an online solution due to some speed, performance and privacy concerns - at least not everybody can see my virtual-personal actions for every second of my life).

All in all the hardest part was getting that damn thing running on Dreamhost via a cronjob (mainly because I’m using my own version of Python, own modules,…).