Great Baron Unleashed!

A Reminiscence

Filed under: Php — GreatBaron February 9, 2008 @ 9:10 pm

I used google to search up an old science fiction story I posted at SFFWorld. I wrote that story when I was in the last year of my secondary school in 2000. (i.e when I was 17 years of age). You can view it here:

Ambush

There seems to be 5 errors that I’m receiving on this page. It appears that plugins that used to work are now not working. I’ll remove them when time permits.

I think I’m ready to unveil my web application that I developed for my technical report. It uses GoogleMaps, AJAX, Javascript (I know that Google Maps uses Ajax but I’m talking about using Ajax and Javascript in other portions of the site). I hope to improve it even more before the final deadline (look and feel). I’m learning a lot of web based technologies from this TR. I just hope that my profs will like what I did in the Geomatics part (i.e. visualizing the location of soundings and displaying of processed data online). I still have a bit more to do, i.e. allowing users to download the raw datasets. I’m also thinking of allowing online modification of the database. But all that will be done in due course. I believe I’ve finished what my supervisor from the Ocean Mapping Group wanted me to do. So now, all I have to do is just improve the look and feel.

Please head here

Just use the sample data sets that has been inputted in the text boxes. And click query (just below the large Map of Eastern Canada). You will be confronted with 2 baloons displaying the location of soundings. I’ll upload more data sets if I have the time.

Why I did this application? Currently the ocean mapping group has tons of data lying about. This application serves to demonstrate the usage of a database as a central repository of those datasets. This application also enables online viewing of these datasets and semi-’offline’ viewing (using Google Earth). The web application had to have the ability to query different facets of data (date/depth/cordinates). All this have been implemented and are working well.


I used MySQL as the database backend. As for scripting, I used PHP and Javascript.

I also used GoogleMaps.

Other relevant technologies:

CSS (I hope to extend my CSS knowledge by making the layout even better than what it is now. To be honest, yes you don’t have to tell me, the layout is too simple. But perhaps this has its own advantages).

Ajax – I managed to display the images in the same page by making calls to a php file on the server! Wahoo!

There’s a lot for me to learn, but I’m glad I have started the process of self discovery. Before, I was totally clueless on web based scripting and server (& client) side scripting. I was a computer science student (and also a Geomatics Engineering student) who had only theoretical knowledge of programming and no industrial experience. This project has given me the ability to harmonize not only what I’ve learned in Geomatics Engineering but also in computer Science. And it has also allowed me to develop an application that will solve an existing real life problem.

So, I’m accepting suggestions and constructive criticisms. Please send them to me at
c244s[Add the Alias Symbol]unb[The DOT or Period symbol]ca

PHP + Amazon Web Service

Filed under: Mashup, Php — GreatBaron October 22, 2007 @ 7:20 pm

I’m currently working on PHP and Amazon webservices. It is a very interesting project. I’m learning a lot of things. It is also useful for me since I’m also going to use PHP (possibly JSP) for my technical report as well.

I’ve created a simple test page to test Amazon’s E-Commerce Service. It is a very simple page meant to test out the service. Enter the UPC/ISBN/EAN numbers and you will get information about the book or tracks.

See it in action here: http://jsuresh.net/test/

Free PHP/JavaScript/(X)HTML Editor

Filed under: Php — GreatBaron September 3, 2007 @ 2:58 am

I just found out this free editor, called tsWebEditor. It has syntax high-lighting, Code completion, support PHP, Java Script, HTML,XHTML and CSS, just to name a few. You can go to the main site here. For syntax highlighting, it supports more than 20 languages!

Snapshot of the Image: courtesy TsWebEditor

TsWebEditor Image SnapShot

Ofcourse, you can also download Eclipse IDE, also another freely available tool. You can also configure it to compile your program. It has debugging support for PHP scripts. So you have to download the debugging extension from Xdebug. It looks good, I tested a super simple php program, and all the syntax highlighting appears to work as advertised. And the code completion, much like Eclipse’s, works too. Try it, I’m sure you’ll like it.It’s free afterall…as in FREE!!!