geek-o-pedia

phy3blog shows a fantastic way to create a tag cloud {as seen in this blog sidebar} of the blog categories (tags). You have to have a blog on New Blogger, and you MUST be using the layouts templates – no old blogger or classic templates here.

Essentially, the method uses the del.icio.us tag cloud code with slight modification. The entire process can be summarized as :

1. The first part to put in is the stylesheet section added between the <b:skin> tags. This stylesheet should not be modified unless you are a certified CSS guru.
2. This next section is the configuration section for the Cloud. It also goes in the head
   of the template, but outside of the stylesheet part. Easiest thing to do again is to find
   the closing stylesheet tag ]]></b:skin>
   But this time place the code right AFTER that line, but BEFORE the </head> tag. Here, you can modify the look of the cloud by modifying any of the following style sheet : var maxFontSize = 20; /* Change to a different size */
   var maxColor = [0,0,255]; /* Change to a different value */
   var minFontSize = 10; /* Change to a different size */
   var minColor = [0,0,0]; /* Change to a different value */
3. Now is the time to add the code that renders the cloud, find out the following tag in the template : <b:widget id=’Label1′ locked=’false’ title=’Labels’ type=’Label’/> and replace with the code to build the tag cloud. You can get the code from the original article.
4. Also the CSS modification is explained in great detail in this article.

Technorati tags: Blogger, CSS

The Awful Movie Database (AMDB) now spanning over sixteen cubic miles of internet, was founded in 1992 by film expert Dr. David Thorpe. In their own words…”The AMDB is committed to providing thorough and accurate information about thousands of hard-to-find, lost, forgotten or supressed motion pictures. Within our vast archive of totally unfiltered information you will find an inestimable volume of fascinating trivia, probing biographies, and comprehensive cast and crew listings…” Definitely worth a look.

Technorati tags: Movies, Fun

Arstechnica takes a sneak peek into the features of FF3. The fifth public alpha build of Firefox 3 has been officially released. The new alpha build, which is codenamed Gran Paradiso, features early components of the revamped Places system, a cohesive storage framework that will unify bookmark and history storage.

The current implementation of the Places system is still a work in progress, but the final version will support features like bookmark tagging, full-text indexing, extended metadata search, built-in syncing functionality, and support for exporting bookmarks in a broader number of formats. The Places user interface hasn’t been developed yet, so there really aren’t any aspects of the Places system that are visually apparent in the alpha 5 build. This alpha release primarily incorporates infrastructure elements of the Places system. In particular, alpha 5 migrates bookmark storage from the current XML data format to the SQLite-based MozStorage system. Bookmarks can now be found in the places.sqlite file in Firefox profile directories. Firefox 3 alpha 5 also features a new password manager. One of the most significant features in Firefox 3 is Gecko 1.9, a vastly improved Cairo-based HTML rendering engine. With support for Gecko 1.9 and the long-anticipated Places system, Firefox 3 promises to be a powerful and impressive release.

Technorati tags: Firefox