Idle Hamster

Open Graph Video Share

2011-12-30T21:41:00+00:00

I figure I would get one last post in before the end of the year. I’ve been working with Facebook’s Open Graph again trying to share custom videos and just like every other Facebook technology there are a few caveats. The first being if you don’t have an image to go along with your video you won’t see the video player in your news feed. Second you have to make all of the OG links use https otherwise those users won’t see the player. Instead they will be taken to the page with all the OG data. Thirdly, you should set a video width and height meta tag that doesn't cause scrollbars. I've been using the same dimensions as YouTube, 398x224.

jQuery Animation and Overflows

2011-09-07T17:05:56+00:00

Thought I would share a little tip about animating with jQuery that I wasted a good hour on. If you're animating the height of an object, jQuery will automatically set the item's overflow property to hidden. Of course if you have items hanging of the edges like navigation buttons or anything with negative margins this is an undesirable effect. That is unless you add overflow: visible !important to your stylesheet. Problem solved, go back to your lives citizens.

Custom Directory Listings with Htaccess

2011-08-25T15:51:00+00:00

It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly powerful and misunderstood the .htaccess file is to web developers. Most of us never need to crack open that file, but if we do, a quick Google search will give you all the code you need.

Great Resource for Arduino

2011-07-13T17:38:13+00:00

I've been playing around with Arduino for about two weeks now and just a few minutes ago I found a great resource on the web, bildr. There are a ton of blog posts on Arduino and examples on how to connect some of the more popular sensors and components. Check it out if you get a chance.

ShortCircuit is a pretty good resource too.

Playing with Arduino

2011-07-08T13:44:45+00:00

I’ve heard about Arduino for years now, but never invested any time into using it until recently. It’s pretty addicting and it isn’t all that difficult to get started with. There are a ton of examples on the Arduino website (basic circuits and code) and the programming language is C.

If you’re looking for a good book on the subject, I would recommend the Arduino Cookbook published by O’Reilly. I bought a couple books, but this is the one you really need.