Rick's Tech Talk

All Tech Talk, Most of the Time

  • — Getting PHP Debugging with XDebug Working (on Windows)

    I've been learning about Drupal Module Development the past few weeks. I'm using the venerable "Definitive Guide to Drupal 7" and a few times in the module development chapters (18, 19, 20), author Ben Melançon mentions…

  • — Hiding HTML Using Data URIs and base64

    I've been spending the past few evenings noodling with the HTML5 element. I often bring up the HTML Canvas 2D Context Working Draft specification. The spec shows what functions are available to the canvas'…

  • — Diving into HTML5

    Like a lot of programmers, I've begun to wonder what all the fuss is about regarding HTML5. Casting about, I found Mark Pilgrim's fantastic tutorial on HTML5, appropriately titled "Dive into HTML5" . I've been mucking…

  • — Finishing Tetris

    I finished my version of Tetris, and it's now available for you to try on your PC. I set a goal of finishing the game before Super Bowl XLV, and there turned out to be a lot to.

  • — Almost Finished with Tetris

    My implementation of Tetris is nearly finished! It plays pretty decently, which is the measure of any game. There's no sound right now, but there's a help screen and a modest splash screen. My goal is to release it…

  • — Fixing Blank Previews on My Website

    My vanity website reads various RSS feeds, displaying a preview of their content. I use HTML::TokeParser to break apart the HTML inside the RSS feed. One RSS feed is from my sports BLOG , but a recent change (the BLOG…

  • — Solving Invisible Geometry with Correct Winding

    While teaching myself Microsoft DirectX , I fell into an issue that is best described as "invisible geometry". This is the unfortunate situation when lines aren't appearing when and where you expect them to. You've told…

  • — Debugging Tagadelic Tags in Drupal

    I added a tag cloud to this BLOG. It looks quite nice, and I was happy with the tags except when I saw that that they didn't accurately reflect my content.

  • — Tetris Update

    I've been on a roll with my Tetris development the past few days. Of late, I've implemented "pause" and "fast fall" (or "fast drop"). I've also added the ability to build a "mound". While working on the code to make the…

  • — Filtering the Problems View in Eclipse

    In the world of Java development, you're bound to throw some projects into Eclipse that fill up the Problems View with so many issues that this view becomes unusable. That happened to me, and it quickly reduced my…