Hide and show contents of a div

One of the websites that I am maintaining during my dayjob was getting quiet cluttered on the right side. So I decided that all the logo's of possible banks should be hidden untill clicked on. I know this is possible, I just didn't know the right code from the top of my head.

However, Dustin Diaz's blog gave me the solution after a quick Google.

This resulted in the following code:

<script type="text/javascript">
    function switchDiv(obj) 
    {
        var el = document.getElementById(obj);
        if ( el.style.display != 'none' ) {
            el.style.display = 'none';
        }
        else 
        {
            el.style.display = '';
        }
    }
</script>
<div id="whatever" style="margin-bottom:2px;"><a onclick="switchDiv('nameofdivtoshowandhide');"><img src="imageonwebsite" </a></div>
<div id="nameofdivtoshowandhide" style="margin-bottom:2px; display: none;"><img src="imagewithalllogos.jpg" </div>

This is definitely repeatable code, which I should save for future use.

Ajax: first experience

I haven't written in a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Actually I have been improving my knowledge of both PHP and MySQL, picking up additional JavaScript knowledge on the way.

Everybody has heard of Ajax, or Web 2.0, nowadays. So naturally I tried to pick this technology up as well.

Coding everything manually proved to be quiet difficult, especially since my knowledge of JavaScript is so limited. Then I came across Xajax, which is a PHP based framework to create ajax-like webapplications.

I am working on a project right now where I will be using this framework, and hopefully the first version can be released soon.

Good PHP book

I think I should look into buying a good PHP book, since the Java book I bought helped me learn so much quicker then reading tutorials on websites. One book I came across, and am really considering, is: PHP voor het World Wide Web; ISBN10: 9043005452; by Larry Ullman.

Browser MMOG; Ikariam!

Last week I stubled on a online game, Ikariam. It is a complete webbased game, and therefor can be played on every computer with a recent browser. I would summarize it as a slower running version of Settlers. And with slower running, I mean the game time. For instance, upgrading a building takes from twenty minutes to a few hours. Of course for a webbased game this isn't a bad thing, since most people will play this when doing their work etc. So quickly login and start some things, and the go back to work....

Update: Airforce

As posted before, I have applied to join our airforce. Before they let you start the training, the run you through multiple selection rounds. Right now I made it to the last two. They run sort of independant of eachother. This march 6th I will have to go to the Central Military Hospital to get some (X-ray)scans of my skeleton, brains and heart. I will also get an invitation soon to fly a few flights in a real plane. It will be sort of like the flight simulator which I had to do earlier, except that in the flight simulator you'd fly solely on instruments, and in the plane you will fly without instruments.
This will be done during 1 week in Portugal. I am looking forward to go there, and make my first hours in the pilotseat. And to see some nice parts of the town Evora offcourse...

The plane I will be flying is a Slingsby Firefly T67-M200. Looks like quite a nimble plane!

New videocard, but which one?

Recently I finally made the upgrade to the dual-core era, but I decided to use the onboard graphics of the Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard. Based on the AMD 690G, with Radeon X1250 graphics, it basically supports everything up to DirectX 9.0c. And I didn't expect to do a lot of gaming.
However, recently I wanted to play a few games again, mostly try Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. And doing that on a 690G/X1250 is really not advisable. So I started looking at what videocard might be a viable option for me.

It should not be to expensive (so <= €100,-), preferably passively cooled, and be the fasted possible within those requirements. Now I have been very interested in the new Radeon HD 3400 / 3600 series. But until now I could not find decent benchmarks with both series included. Today I found those at Legitreviews.com.

I will definatelly skip the HD 3400 series, but I think the HD 3650 is really a viable option.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Alpha

Yesterday I upgrade my Ubuntu Gutsy install to the latest 8.04 Alpha (#4 I believe). First I was planning to do a clean install from a freshly downloaded ISO, but then I decided to see if an upgrade would work.

This turned out te be pretty easy. I haven't worked long on 8.04 yet, but have yet to encounter problems. I guess the upgrade went pretty smooth.

First edit your sourcelist:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
replace gedit with your favorite text editor. I used gedit because I have no idea wether nano has an easy replace function. In the sources.list file, replace every gutsy with hardy. This will make sure that when you do the next apt-get update, it will connect to the hardy repos.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Now it will install everything which is needed to upgrade your current 7.10 install to the 8.04 alpha. After apt-get is finished, reboot et voila! You can now try the latest Ubuntu.