Archive for December, 2008

Multiple Uploads with JQuery and Code Igniter

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

This one goes out to all the code writers, web developers, and open source script fans.

This is a short script I built for a project, ended up opting to use individual AJAX uploads rather than multiple uploads at once. Yet a script this useful deserves to see the rest of the world so I give you.

Multiple File Uploads with JQuery and Code Igniter

To get it running extract into the root directory of a Code Igniter installation, included are:

The upload library is based upon the CI upload library, it will check for attacks, and check whether the files uploaded are images or something else. You can restrict the files to any extension(s), if you need more security than that then I’ll assume you know enough to add in the function you need.

The beauty of this script is the simplicity, with a few lines of code you can allow for multiple uploads from a single page, then let this script handle the uploads and pass on information about everything that happened.

If you are not familiar with Code Igniter it is a rather lightweight PHP MVC framework. Which is a geeky way of saying that it is a programming framework that can save you time without eating your server. Of course the same goes for JQuery, which is for Javascript framework that will save you time.

If you have any questions please leave a comment or ask me through the contact form.

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Posted in Open Source | 37 Comments »

Ever wonder about the stuff you put in and on your (kids) body?

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

What’s in this stuff anyways? Ever find yourself asking that about the cleaners under your sink? or your (baby) shampoo? What about who is making it? Not just the company that owns the brand, how about the ethics that company employs? Wonder how you are voting with your dollar each time you go shopping? You can now find all this information along with a simple scorecard at a new website GoodGuide. The group behind this idea is nothing short of awesome, to hear them tell it:

One summer a few years ago, Dara O’Rourke was doing what he’d done dozens of times before: putting sunscreen on his five-year old daughter Minju before she went outside to play in the summer sun. The thought occurred to Dara, “I wonder what’s really in this stuff?” So being a Professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Dara researched the sunscreen. What he found was surprising and disturbing: the sunscreen he’d been putting on Minju for years had a toxic ingredient.

At that moment, Dara realized how little we know about the products we bring into our homes every day, and that other parents should have the same access to product information that he and his fellow researchers had. He also wanted to solve the problem of increasingly confusing marketing claims regarding whether products were actually healthy, safe or green.

That idea evolved into a research project, that research project evolved into a “for-benefit” company which has joined forces with a wide range of scientific research and non-profit organizations for compiling data from specific ingredients and their effects upon you, the environment, their surrounding community, and on and on.

If you are still reading this post then hop on over and take a look, while the site is still in Beta I see it becomming a rather large success, especially being able to send in UPC codes via text message with your phone and get a rating back. Thinking it through this idea seems so obvious it’s amazing that no-one has done it yet, so my hats off to the guys at GoodGuide.com

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Green Hosting 30% Carbon Negative Thanks to Texas Wind

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

A little bit ago I announce that this web site is green. So what the heck does that mean?

The server powering this web site and all web sites that we offer hosting to is now certified to be powered by Texas wind farms, and it gets even better, this server is powered 130% by texas wind, so it’s not just carbon neutral, it’s carbon negative. This was done with the help of 3 Degrees a supplier of Renewable Energy Credits, which is a fancy way to say they work with renewable energy producers (Mostly Wind Farms) to offset the initial price of creating clean energy as opposed to using… coal or other fossil fuels.

Great… So that means what exactly? In this day in age you’ve probably heard of climate change, if not feeel free to visit google, wikipedia, the World Bank, or to quote the International Monetary Fund

Most scientists agree that the global temperature is rising as a result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that the earth’s climate is changing.

While this small step is just that, powering an average server takes the equivilient of a 15mpg SUV in terms of carbon emmissions. Not too shabby, and merely a beginning. While I have made a conscious effort to leave as small a footprint as I can for several years, I also seek to make a big impact. As time goes on I will be publishing more resources to help you reduce your own footprint, for now I offer this quick list;

This is a beginning, though I must admit that sharing my views feels better each time I write. All to often we get in the mix of holding back our beliefs to avoid creating controversy. Taking a stand will get you snubbed out of a nubmer of invitations, trust me you probably didn’t want them anyway. So go make a stand for yourself and share your belifs, those that listen will be far more in your favor for it, and you will feel better for aligning yourself with your truth.

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Posted in Good | No Comments »