For the past 6 or 7 months, I’ve attempted to provide video to all types of platforms by encoding videos in both H.264 and WebM. WebM is the encoder of choice for Firefox, Chrome etc in other words “not-Apple” (though Microsoft has thrown in with Apple on H.264). I haven’t had much success. Most of the time, I was not able to play WebM encoded video in Firefox nor Chrome and it was an additional step in my workstream. ...
Using Kaleidoscope to sync iTunes
Like many of you, I have multiple iTunes Libraries. One for the laptop, one for the house and another for my media center. Keeping these in-synch with almost 6,000 songs and over 1100 TV shows as become more than laborious. I have tried to use Supersync in the past and while attempting to use it yesterday, I ran into a “must download Java 6 SE” issue that I really didn’t want to solve. (Hint: google “Java zero day”) ...
Plug for a plug-in
Why can’t everything work as well as Akismet? Admittedly, my blog is not the most well-read hence well-traveled site but I do get spam. Not a lot but enough that I thank my lucky stars for Akismet. It quietly traps all spam, doesn’t make any mistakes and then advises me “Excuse Mr. Koepsel, you seem to have some spam to throw out.” I do. We both sigh and go back to our day jobs. ...
I LIKKKKKKKEEEEEEE it!
Wordpress 3.2 is lovely! I like the look of the new Dashboard, very clean and easy on the eyes! I had a brief delay in upgrading as I was on a older server and needed to upgrade to new one at my hosting facility. (note to self, 12 comes after 5) I’m not as wowed by the Twenty Eleven theme. I like the idea of a new theme a year but I’ll wait til Twenty Twelve, thank you very, very much.
Well, that's unfortunate (Updated)
As I’ve said before, I’ve tried to keep a local version of my site mirrored to my online version. This isn’t unusual for a lot of developers; it helps to stage your site, it allows you to make mistakes with little impact on the outside world and it allows you to be productive away from an Internet connection. I’ve been fairly successful at doing this with Wordpress 2.x. The new version seems to be a somewhat different story. My typical method of duplication is to: ...
Hype - a new approach
Thanks to Jon Gruber, I learned about Hype. Hype is a OS X application that makes it easy to create dynamic websites using HTML5 or more accurately, HTML5, Javascript and CSS3. Hype works. It is also version 1.0 so it is basic but it works, doesn’t crash and holds great promise. I’ve been attempting to change my WELLINGTON ROAD Pictures site from a database-driven, somewhat static site to a bit more dynamic, HTML5-based site for sometime. See here, here, here, here and here. Sigh, note the last time I attempted to make changes was almost 9 months ago. ...
Step 4: Updated to be dynamic
No significant changes here. Added the required code for the site to be served by a database instead of hand-coding. A couple of small formatting changes but I’m ready to go from my old but lovely way of serving videos, Shadowbox to spanking, new HTML5. Step 4 One update and one non-update: Update; looks like H.264 is getting to be the standard for video. Â Based on the MPEG LAÂ announcement, H.264 will be forever free if the video being served is free. Due to this announcement, I’m going to focus on serving H.264 only and forget about… ...
Step 3: Layout site
With Jillion off in the distance, I decided to work on the site layout as compared to determining my video playback scheme. The site looks very similar to the original site. I made some changes such as the WELLINGTON ROAD Pictures graphic, font colors and spacing. What was interesting was I have yet to use an ID or Class. Everything works semantically, when I need to reference an element, I use the a descendent selector i.e. “nav li” as compared to a “div class=nav and li class=navli”. It is a much simpler way to develop CSS. ...
Step 2b: Video (continued)
First, I need to make a comment as to how I manage the site content. I use a database and PHP to manage the content. This allows me to keep the number of pages to a minimum and adding content is absurdly easy. That said, I’m building this HTML5 site using static content. Once I determine how to create my desired HTML5 site, its somewhat child’s play to convert it into a dynamic site. ...
Step 2: Figure out video
HTML5 holds great promise for video playback. Gone will be the days of embedded objects, plugins and (hopefully) Flash. The issue we still face are browser codec compatibilities; such as Firefox wants to see Ogg Theora and Safari wants h.264. My next step is to explore video playback within one of the articles. I’ll start with Safari using only the video tag then explore other fallback alternatives for other browsers. I believe this will require multiple sub-steps hence Step 2a, 2b, 2c and so on. ...