Ruby Text in CSS3

Wed, September 12, 2007 — Category: UI Design

No…not that “ruby” (aka ruby on rails). “Ruby text”, as it pertains to CSS3, allows for aligning fragments of text without a complex table structure to achieve the same thing.

“Ruby text” is a new paradigm added to the CSS 3 specification (currently in draft). It allows an author to associate and align blocks or fragments of text with each other.

“Ruby” is the term used for a run of text that is associated with another run of text, referred to as the base text. Ruby text is used to provide a short annotation of the associated base text. — CSS 3.0


<ruby>
  <rb>WWW</rb>
  <rt>World Wide Web</rt>
</ruby>

This would allow the design to place the ruby and the ruby text in the desired order, as shown here:

Ruby text markup

Common use cases will be for content written in Japanese or Chinese…although there are many examples of it in English as well.

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Mounting a Samba Share and Amarok

Sat, September 8, 2007 — Category: Linux

Getting Amarok to play streaming MP3 over fish:// or smb:// protocols can be done by simply mounting the remote filesystem to the local drive.

I had some difficulties with streaming mp3 over fish:// protocol and the smb:// protocal from Ubuntu. I knew there was a way to mount the remote samba share locally on my Ubuntu filesystem.

First, you’ll have to download the necessary applications: smbfs and smbclient. For the purposes below, I have changed my remote host (the samba server) to “foo”.


root@localhost:~# apt-get install smbclient

Then you’ll have to create a “mount point” that will be on the local filesystem to access the remote filesystem. It is similar to mounting a dvd or cd-rom drive on ubuntu (typically under /mnt/dvd or /mnt/cdrom).


root@localhost:~# mkdir -p /x/foo

Now that we have a mount point and the smbclient software installed, try getting a listing of all available shares on the server named “foo”.


root@localhost:/x/foo# smbclient -L foo -U%
Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.24]

        Sharename       Type      Comment
        ---------       ----      -------
        print$          Disk      Printer Drivers
        HPDeskJet6122   Printer   HP DeskJet 6122 Network Printer
        share           Disk      Public Share
        IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (spring)
        HPOfficeJet4110 Printer   WinXP
        hpoffice-4110   Printer   HP OfficeJet 4110 hpijs
        hp_deskjet_6122_USB_1 Printer   hp deskjet 6122
Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.24]

        Server               Comment
        ---------            -------
        FOO               foo

        Workgroup            Master
        ---------            -------
        WORKGROUP            FOO

The following command will actually mount the remote share dubbed “share” from remote server “foo” to the local path “/x/foo”. You should be prompted for your samba password on the host “foo”.


root@localhost:/x/foo# smbmount //foo/share /x/foo/ -o username=foouser,uid=1000,mask=000

You can now browse all the shared files on your local host by looking in /x/foo/.

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Review of Domain Registrars

Fri, September 7, 2007 — Category: Development

Having trouble deciding which domain registrar to use? Here are a few comments about the few I have used.

Picking a domain registrar can be a difficult task. I look for ease of use, affordability, and privacy options.

NetFirms
My current favorite, but is very limited. Privacy on .net and .com is free.
MyDomains
A good domain selection tool written in AJAX that will suggest other extensions if the one you want is taken. Also has a suggestion tool that will mix-up the words and find similar words.
GoDaddy
my current registrar, privacy doubles the cost.
Yahoo
was $1.99, but required a renewal for another year. Privacy is extra, and must have valid whois information. Also after transferring my domain, they continued to bill me 2 years in a row.