Idiot Banter

Getting to Smuggler’s Notch

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

March 16th, 2008

Posted In:

Snowboarding

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I made the worst video ever on the way to snowboard for a week in Smuggler’s Notch, Vermont. Check it out, it’s kind of like video twitters all mashed together. It sucks!

New Website: Love You To Death

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

March 10th, 2008

Posted In:

CSS & XHTML, Design

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I’ve been working evenings and weekends for the past couple of months making some websites as favours to friends. The first of those websites to officially go live is a website for the power pop band Love You To Death. Love You To Death needed a new site because they changed their name from The Pettit Project and I know them because I used to play drums in The Pettit Project.

The new Love You To Death website is a custom Wordpress theme (made by me) with 2 plugins, Gigpress for tour dates and the Flickr Photo Album plugin for photos. I did all of the HTML and CSS and I did a little bit of design (background images) based on the logo, I did not do the logo.

I’m pretty proud of how it has turned out so far. Looks like they need a new store now since they’re still using a static one I built years ago but that will have to wait until after we snowboard in Vermont next week.

Go see the new Love You To Death website!

New Discovery Channel & TSN Video Players

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

February 26th, 2008

Posted In:

CSS & XHTML

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The roll out of the new broadband video players we’ve been working on continues… The beta version of the Discovery Channel Broadband Video Player has been live for a couple of weeks now and the beta version of the TSN Broadband Video Player launched last Thursday. TSN has the usual sports clips if you’re into that kind of stuff (Dad, check it out!). Discovery Channel has a few shows that I really like including Jetstream, Doctor*ology, and How It’s Made.

Wondering what I had to do with it? Check out my post about the Comedy Network Broadband Video Player. Use these players! Watch TV on demand for free. All of the players are still beta so leave some feedback on the CTV Developer Blog.

Facebook Is Fed Up With IE6

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

February 25th, 2008

Posted In:

CSS & XHTML

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My friend Dave and I always joke about creating a style sheet that we’d only serve to people browsing with IE6 that just has * {display: none;}. For all you non-geeks this means that everything would be hidden, you’d see a blank page. I have seen a few personal blogs with messages that show up saying something along the lines of “your browser is old, get a new one” but until now I have never seen a “corporation” with a similar message.

When you visit Facebook using IE6 you get a message above your news feed (see above). The message reads:

Please Read This!

You may want to upgrade your browser.

You’re using Internet Explorer 6 to browse Facebook right now. Facebook will work better if you upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 or switch to another browser.

The message then lists links to upgrade to IE7, switch to Firefox, Safari or Flock.

I wonder what it took for the Facebook developers to convince their higher ups that this was something they should do. As far as I can see the site works fine in IE6. Lucky guys, no more IE6 for them….

The New Comedy Network Video Player

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 27th, 2008

Posted In:

CSS & XHTML

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For the last few months the CTV Digital Media Group (where I work) has been working really hard on a new video player. It went beta last Thursday on The Comedy Network, check it out.

What I Had To Do With It

I am responsible for all of the HTML and CSS in the new video player. I cut the Photoshop mocks into a working static model and advised on best practices when it came time to make the player work by dynamically adding/changing HTML and CSS using JavaScript. I wrote all of the CSS which is pixel-perfect in every major browser. The video player had to be 100% skinnable for easy use on any CTV property so if you look behind the curtains you’ll find colour.css, by switching this style sheet we can change the entire look and feel of the player instantly. If time is tight we can launch a new video player with a default skin and the appropriate logo in 30 minutes. If we have more time, I can fully customize every aspect of the player in as little as 4 hours (you’ll see as more are launched). This is by far the biggest project I have ever worked on and I think I did alright. I even used surprisingly few CSS hacks (in my opinion).

What You Can Do

Go watch some videos! They have every episode of South Park ever, for free, whenever you like. The new Tom Green show is hilarious and Reno 911 is always good for a laugh.

Submit some feedback, let us know what you think of the player.

Read what Jonathan has to say about it, he’s the boss.

2007 Album Of The Year

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 20th, 2008

Posted In:

Music

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Because of the Times by Kings of Leon is my favourite album of 2007. This was the first I had heard of King of Leon and it blew me away. The musicianship, the songwriting, everything. It honestly gives me new hope for music. This is a real rock band. Listen to the song "Fans " on their MySpace page, listen to it as loud as you can, I do every morning on my way to work, it’s amazing.

Runner Up: Boys Night Out - Self Titled

Everyone Should Have Sick Days

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 10th, 2008

Posted In:

Nonsense

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I think it’s safe to say that most full time, salaried employees in Canada are allowed to take a few days off with pay when they are sick. This is a good thing, if people come to work when they are sick they are not productive and they get everyone else sick, that can cost a company a lot of money. I currently work on contract which means I don’t have sick days, if I have to take a day off I don’t get paid.

I’m getting sick!

If I had sick days I’d go home now, sleep for 20 hours, drink lots of fluids and come to work tomorrow refreshed and hopefully not sick. Instead I am going to wait until it’s really bad. I’m gonna unintentionally pass it around to my co-workers (I hope not) and hope that I’m sick on the weekend so I don’t have to take any time off. If I had sick days I could beat this cold before it gets bad and not pass it to my co-workers. Giving one person a half day off with pay (even if they’re on contract) is a lot cheaper than giving 4 people half days off with pay, right? I’m delusional due to this cold, what do I know?

Overflow-y CSS Property And Safari 2 For Mac

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 7th, 2008

Posted In:

CSS & XHTML

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At work we are making a web application. We have a "Library" set up that allows users to easily navigate through a huge amount of content. This library consists of 4 vertically scrolling divs side by side, think columns. At first I was using the overflow: auto; property and value so that a vertical scroll bar would show up only when necessary, otherwise there would be no scroll bar. As we started testing with real content it became obvious that not only did it look funny when some columns had vertical scroll bars and other’s didn’t, it was also slightly harder to use due to the inconsistency of the columns.

My solution was to use overflow-y: scroll;. overflow-y: scroll; tells the browser that the divs should always have a scroll bar on the y axis (vertical) even if the content doesn’t need to scroll. This allowed for a better looking, easier to use "Library".

Here’s the catch, I didn’t properly test this in all browsers and it doesn’t work in Safari for Mac. overflow-y is an Internet Explorer proprietary property and it just happened to work in Firefox. The W3C has recommended that overflow-y and overflow-x be added to the spec for CSS3 but for now, no luck. Safari just treats the divs as though they have overflow: hidden; declared so anything that doesn’t fit in the div gets cut off and you have no way to access it.

I suppose the convention of only having scroll bars when necessary is a Mac thing but I would still like the option to control the scroll bars in cases like this. I guess I’ll have to "hack" my style sheet and pass overflow: auto; to Safari while passing overflow-y: scroll; to IE and Firefox and just live with the fact that the scroll bars won’t be consistent in Safari.

***UPDATE: This post only applies to Safari 2 for Mac but I’m gonna post it anyway.

What Do You Think Of This New Design?

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 4th, 2008

Posted In:

Design

Comments:

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I’ve been thinking of re-designing this blog for a while. The design you see now is a draft I did for a client that never saw the light of day, I liked it so I used it. Deep down I’ve always wanted something more awesome. Let me know what you think of this potential new design for Idiot Banter.

My Top Five Albums

Posted By:

Matt

Posted On:

January 1st, 2008

Posted In:

Music

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There are many albums that come and go but these are the ones that remain constants in my life. When I listen to these albums I am transported back to a place and time, a feeling. When I listen to these albums I am blown away by the level of musicianship or the quality of songwriting. These are the albums that I will listen to over and over from the moment I first heard them until the day I die. These are my top five albums.

The Get Up Kids - Something To Write Home About

The Get Up Kids are the band that changed it all for me. They demonstrated that music can be extremely emotional and personal while still being well written and super catchy. Truthfully, you could replace this album with Guilt Show, Four Minute Mile or The Woodson EP, they are all equal in my mind. But Something To Write Home About is the album I remember listening to with Justin Lee as we drove around Caledon and Brampton all through high school, it’s the album my old Grind Core band used to blast in the van on long drives through Quebec while other Metal bands made fun of us for listening to “Emo”, it’s the album I made my parents listen to in the car on my birthday one year as we drove to Toronto to buy new hi-hats at Steve’s Music. Something To Write Home About is the one album that (almost) every member of every band I’ve ever been in knows every word of.

Refused - The Shape Of Punk To Come

It has never made sense to me, can Refused see the future and knew that this album would actually become the shape of punk to come or did it become the shape of punk to come because that’s what the album was called? I had never heard hardcore like this before and these guys are insane musicians. This is the most influential hardcore album of all time.

Megadeth - Rust in Peace

Rust In Peace contains some of the best musicianship I have ever heard. The songs are fast and amazingly tight and Megadeth pulls it off live, no studio magic involved. The lyrics are the perfect amount of political without it getting in the way and becoming preachy. In grade 7 I analyzed the lyrics of Dawn Patrol for a school project. The drums at the beginning of the last song, Rust In Peace…Polaris, are amazing.

Sloan - Twice Removed

The songwriting is amazing and the fact that all of the guys in the band can (and do) play every instrument makes this band incredibly tight because everyone is totally aware of what everyone else is doing. This album introduced me to Canadian indie rock. I remember hiding under the covers when I was a kid, listening to Twice Removed on my yellow Sony sport Walkman when I was supposed to be in bed.

Led Zeppelin - II

This was my first Led Zeppelin cassette, I wore it out. No one else plays drums like John Bonham played drums.