Jglaysher's blog

bike - 21 April 2009, 14 miles

Graze

14.3 mile bike last night. Bookham, Norbury Park, Westhumble, Box Hill, Ballbearing, Babbage, Mickleham Downs, Alsatian (graze) and home.

Nice :-)

An easy low-carb diet for 30 days

Say NO to milk, bread, fruit, rice, cereals, potatoes, pasta, fruit juice and soft drinks.

Say YES to meat, fish, vegetables, beans, pulses, peas, lentils, nuts, asparagus and spinach.

Some (a little) oranges, half-fat cheese, white wine, salsa and guacamole.

Have one bad day a week where you can eat anything you like.

Obey all these instructions for 30 days and feel the benefits!

Pubs around Canterbury

A message from my friend:

I could go on and on here but I’ve recommended some pubs to visit whilst en route to Whitstable or back to Canterbury – they are just outside Herne  Bay and will take approx 10 mins by car from Whitstable and you can carry on to Canterbury afterwards...

The Neppy will be on your doorstep in Whitstable.

The Canterbury pubs recommended are about the best choices with beer gardens in the city and places I used to go to.

The Duck Inn is right on your doorstep down the road from Petham and although the pubs in Bridge look lovely as you drive through, this is one not too miss!

http://www.shepherd-neame.co.uk/pubs/pubs.php/gateinn_chislet  (A fantastic pub, cask ales – Chris doesn’t like serving lager but will if thats what you want! Famous for the Gate Burger, outstanding Nacho’s – all home cooked food in a country location – beautiful pub)

www.micropub.co.uk  - The Butchers Arms (A couple of miles from the Gate Inn – this is the smallest free house in the country and brews all of its own beer. It is my old local butcher at the bottom of the road I grew up in. No beer garden but if you can squeeze a pint in, it’s well worth the experience)

http://www.neppy.co.uk/  - (Old Neptune on Whitstable beach – gets busy, naturally but is in the best location and the kids can play on the beach or paddle in the sea whilst you sit with a cold one.)

http://www.restaurantspy.com/directorypages/uk/england/kent/theduckinn.htm (this is the nearest pub to where you are staying in Petham. Head for Bridge and then you should see it signposted. In the middle of the countryside – stunning location, peaceful & cracking food)

http://kent.lovesguide.com/upstreet_groveferryinn.htm

http://www.pubutopia.com/pubs/C/Canterbury/Fordwich/The%20Fordwich%20Arms/index.html (These two are just outside Canterbury and you can sit by the river – lovely locations,)

If you are in Canterbury city ctr – ask for St Radigunds Car Park – actually quite a good place to park your van and there are three pubs all within falling distance – The Millers Arms – you can buy your pint and walk back outside and sit by the Weir, Simple Simon’s – has a beer garden and is an ancient pub – say hello to Mike if he still owns it – wacky beard and bellowing voice; then opposite is the Dolphin Inn – apparently LOVELY now and has a garden which most Canterbury pubs don’t.

All worth going to, every single one and whatever you do don’t be tempted to stop somewhere else – these are about the nicest you will find in the area you are staying.

Utah Saints

http://www.vimeo.com/714438

WebTrends tagging for tracking downloads

WebTrends tracking works by placing tags (a few lines of script) into the HTML of a web page. From that page there may be a link to a downloadable file such as a PDF, but because that file is not a web page it cannot be tracked.

The workaround to ensure that download activity is recorded is to track clicks on the links that lead to the download of the files.

If you wanted to track a link that leads to a PDF download you need to incorporate the following WebTrends code into the page’s HTML:

onclick="dcsMultiTrack('DCS.dcsuri', '/pdfdownloads/pdfname.pdf', 'WT.ti','PDFName');"

Example

In standard HTML we can assume a link, to the PDF of an application form, looks like this in the source code:

<a href='/common/pdf/appform.pdf'>Click here to download</a>

To include the WebTrends code above into the HTML of the download it needs to be edited to look like this:

<a href='/common/pdf/appform.pdf' onclick="dcsMultiTrack('DCS.dcsuri','/common/pdf/appform.pdf','WT.ti',
'Application Form');">Click here to download</a>

NB:
1.    The WT.ti parameter allows you to give a title to the download so that the report in WebTrends does not just show the URL. In the example above, we used the title Application Form.
2.    WebTrends will not capture downloads if they are referred by a JavaScript function. Eg: openPDFWindow("appform.pdf");

Alex and Delilah, Holmbury St. Mary, May 2007

Alex and Delilah, Holmbury St. Mary, May 2007, originally uploaded by jglaysher.

It's prolly blocked from the corp. access.

Usability: link states

From a usability POV a hypertext link can have four different states. Webcredible describes these as follows:

Top tip: Use styles for all link states

Depending on various user actions, a link can be in a number of different states. All too many website designers seem to forget this, only styling links for their default view. Ideally the default link colour should be in a high contrast colour that stands out from non-link text so users can easily spot links on the page. Declaring alternate colours and/or background colours for their other states is also very beneficial:

1. Visited state
   When links become visited their colour should ideally change to a more saturated colour. This way users know exactly where they have and haven't been. As such, they won't inadvertently go back to where they've already been and can easily return to pages of interest they previously visited.
2. Hover state
   Users often screen-mine with the mouse when browsing through a web page, that is, point the mouse at where they're looking on the screen. Changing the appearance of links when the mouse hovers over links provides users with immediate feedback as to what is and what isn't a link when they do this.
3. Active state
   An active state for links is also useful as it provides users with feedback that a link has indeed been clicked. This is particularly true when users have to wait a while for a new page to load (e.g. if they're on a dial-up connection or it's a very heavy page). Active states are particularly effective when the background colour is changed.
4. Focus state
   Most websites fail to provide a focus state for links yet doing so is so important for keyboard-only users. By changing the background colour on focused links users tabbing through web pages can easily see where they are on the page.

New graduate site from Mercer...

New graduate site from Mercer in the UK.

Win two 20″ LG USB...

Win two 20″ LG USB monitors from DisplayLink in the Birthday Bash Giveaway at ProBlogger.

Olympic Triathlon - done

20070812tri005_2.jpg

This will be a really short post. I have nothing to tell you of injuries, difficulties and pain; the whole thing was really enjoyable and fun. If you asked me to do it next weekend; I would.

The swim (1.5k) was in clear, mill pond water. The bike (40k) was through some really pretty countryside and the run (10k) was fiendish but bearable.

My training regime made me fit enough to complete the course (that's all) and although 3hrs 10mins isn't fab (slow bike), I wasn't a casualty or near-death.

I am about to embark upon a two week holiday consisting of steak, wine and rest ... and it will feel strange.

Some thanks go to:

Lance - for hauling me around on a mountain bike and Ian for being my tri-buddy and fellow Swanage Triathlon competitior.
To Orca and dhb for some decent kit
and to my scales for telling me I'd lost about 14 lbs over 18 weeks.

Off season training is my next hurdle, one swim, bike and run a week should do it.