Posts filed under the 'Blog' category


Dumb CSS: cursor pointer or hand?

So I had an occasion to peruse someone else’s CSS today, when I came across this peculiar construct: […]

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CSS3 line height is important for drop caps

Recently I was playing around and added drop caps to the blog posts on boyet.com/. I decided to go for a pure CSS3 version (so, you’ll have to view this site in a reasonably fresh browser to see the effect) rather than a hacky <span> version that mixes presentation “hints” in the content. (For a brief discussion on the two possible methods, see Chris Coyier’s blog post here.) I certainly didn’t want to change all my posts to include spans on the first letter of the first paragraph. […]

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Weird XML bug on iPad when displaying this site

The call came though the batphone from Mehul Harry: he was seeing an issue displaying blog posts from this site on an iPad. It was a new one on me and I quickly checked on my iPad using Safari: no problem. […]

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Buying a sleeve for the Dell XPS 12

My new XPS 12Speck Trim Sleeve for MacBook Air is a pretty nice machine. Small (0.8” × 12.5” × 8.5”) and light (3.35 lbs), despite the intricacies of the flip screen and the touch capability. The top and bottom are covered in some kind of black matt surface that’s easy to grip and doesn’t seem to mark that easily. Yet, I’d prefer having something to protect it. Unfortunately it’s not such a bestseller like, say, the 13” MacBook Air that a whole accessories industry has grown around it. […]

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Upgrading hardware: Dell XPS 15z and XPS 12

We’re getting close to the conference season at work: in June I’m going to both TechEd US in New Orleans and //build/ in San Francisco. Rather than cart around my very unloved Surface RT (haven’t used it in possibly two months), I’ve been dithering about buying an Intel Windows 8 machine, a touch device, say a convertible.I’ve had my eye on two possibilities, the Surface Pro and the Dell XPS 12. Since none of the touch machines available right now just aren’t powerful or expansive enough to be my main PC, I’ve been thinking of upgrading that too. […]

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Scientists in Paris

We were vacationing in Paris last week in a hotel in the 16eme arrondissement, just outside the boundary of the 8eme. We’d stayed there before, but I noticed this time that several streets in the vicinity has names commemorating scientists and mathematicians. I thought it would be fun to take pictures of the ones I could find that were close and put them in a collage: […]

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Inline scripts: sometimes the web is just screwed up

I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite commands in the browser is “View Page Source”, especially on a site that’s modern, visually attractive, or shows off some clever interactions. After all, I’m a developer: I like to find out how things work so I can, if I want to, replicate on my own web sites. […]

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Upgrading to jQuery 1.9.x

Today it snowed. It started before we awoke and pretty much kept at it all day. Hence it was a day to do some work inside, and what better task than to clean up my blog? First port of call, and a major one at that, was to upgrade to jQuery 1.9. […]

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More script kiddie douchebaggery

A little while ago I mentioned some work I’d been doing with regard to 404 error processing with this blog’s engine. As part of that post, I disclosed some examples of remarkably stupid attempts to discover the whereabouts of standard PHP pages on this site. Except that this site does not use PHP, it’s not using WordPress of some ancient vintage, but instead uses an ASP.NET blogging engine. […]

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Potpourri for February 2013

Another entry in my series of “fragrant dried leaves in a pot” (English version), or “rotten stuff in a pot” (French literal translation): in other words, stuff I found interesting in the past month and tweeted or Facebooked. […]

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