shorepound.net

Extract Alt Text from a web page using PHP

nathan — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:44:56 +0000

I’ve been writing a custom web spider for Surflab the past week or two, and so far things have been very easy, thanks to PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser. I couldn’t figure out how to extract the alt text from an image until this afternoon. It was another one of those ‘It ended up being so simple it was hard’ kind of scenarios. Anyways, let’s get to it.

find('img[alt]');

if(empty($alt_text)){
                echo "

Alt Text:
No Data


";
              }
              else{
                echo "

Alt Text:
";
                $numOfItems = count($alt_text);
                $counter = 0;
                foreach($alt_text as $item){
                  $counter += 1;
                      if ($counter <> $numOfItems){
                          echo $item->alt.", ";
                     } else {
                          echo $item->alt;
                     }
                }
                echo "


";
?>

Easy enough.

The Latest and Greatest

nathan — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:04:57 +0000

We have finally launched our lastest and greatest product: Surf Lab recently and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Surf Lab is our latest venture into the internet, where we will use our skills to help businesses make more money by promoting their businesses on line the right way. You can get all of that information on the Surf Lab site, but here are the particulars about the build:

Designer: Clay Kromberg
Developer: That’s me!

The site was built using HTML5, CSS, CSS3, jQuery, Javascript, and some PHP here and there. It was one of the funnest builds I’ve had yet, and I can’t wait for another one.

IE7 not respecting image size with Facebox

nathan — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:38:18 +0000

If you are trying to show an image in a facebox and it appears that the image is breaking outside of the facebox in IE7, well, technically it is. Edit the facebook.css that came with your version of facebox to relieve this issue. Specifically the .content class definition as follows:

#facebox .content { display:table; width: 370px; padding: 10px; background: #fff; -webkit-border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; border-radius:4px; }

Remove the width declaration and you’re all set.

Debug VS 2003 .NET Apps in Windows 7

nathan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:23:52 +0000

First off, follow the instructions on this outstanding blog post by Brian Booth. From here you should be able to at least start your project in VS 2003 without debugging. You will, however, get an error if you try to debug the project in VS 2003. That is, unless you right click the VS 2003 icon in Windows 7, and select ‘Run as Administrator’. You must, of course, be an administrator of your machine for this to work.

It only took me two days to get this up and running. Hopefully this post will help you to get up and running in a much shorter time.

Upgraded

nathan — Tue, 24 May 2011 20:04:31 +0000

We’re now running WordPress 3.1.2.

Yay for keeping up with technology.

A Surfing Family

nathan — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:09:59 +0000

Saturday morning, Julia, Donovan and I loaded up our surfboards and headed to our beloved Hannah Park to catch a few waves before lunch. This was our first time that we all paddled out together, the three of us, and caught waves. It was an extremely proud moment for all of us. We’re all looking forward to surfing together for the rest of our lives. We are lucky to have surfing, and to have each other.

reCaptcha not displaying in IE8 in your Rails app?

nathan — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:51:58 +0000

Recently we noticed that the reCaptcha on our sign up form for CityCliq.com was missing when viewing the site in IE8. After a bit of research, it became apparent that IE8 won’t display the reCaptcha if the page is being served up via SSL, and the reCaptcha being called is stored on a non secure resource.

We easily fixed the issue by changing this line:

get_captcha(:options => {:theme => 'red', :tabindex => 5})

to read:

get_captcha(:options => {:theme => 'red', :tabindex => 5}, :ssl => true)

Done.

Spring Rolls

nathan — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 01:38:57 +0000

Back in the saddle again.. OK here goes…

Spring has finally returned to North Florida and our annual hibernation has officially ended. Fruits and herbs are thriving, dozens of bags of oak leaves have been raked, the wildlife is going bonkers, and we could not be happier.

Big stuff on the way in 2011… Much Love – The Arnolds

Notes From Lonely Man Ranch

nathan — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:32:23 +0000

A friend of ours got his first book published recently. As soon as the book was available, we purchased a copy for ourselves (which we can’t wait to have the author sign). Though my name is not mentioned in the book directly, there is a passage in the book that is undoubtedly speaking of yours truly. I won’t divulge what was said in the book (you’ll have to buy a copy and find out for yourself), but I will say that It is a great feeling to be immortalized in such a discreet way. It is humble and modest, while still delivering a strong sense of pride in one’s self. Enough rambling. Here’s an image of the new book:

You can purchase a copy (and I strongly urge you to do so) of the book here.

Thanks, Hal. Keep up the excellent work.

Important: ASP.NET Security Vulnerability

nathan — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:21:58 +0000

Scott Guthrie posted a blog a few days ago detailing a very important security vulnerability for ASP.NET applications (all versions). Read it here.

Lucky for us, I had implemented the workaround mentioned in his blog post long before this vulnerability became public.