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Training and Development

I wish to keep training in new areas long into the future, and here I will keep a log of all the training I have done.

Current Training

Currently I am a student at Canterbury College where I am studying the course 'IT Practitioners' at National Diploma Level. The couse will last for two years and covers areas of web design and scripting, programming, computer hardware, computer software, networking and various other areas. I am learning Pascal as part of the course.

I am also learning Visual Basic and C# .NET in my free time and want to progress onto other Visual languages. I am also interested in Linux development, however currently I do not have the time to learn C, C++ or Python.

I am good at PHP and MySQL development, as I have been doing these for a few years now, and have more recently started using more javascript in sites, including an animation library which I wrote.

I have looked into Symbian development using Carbide.C++, Flash Lite and JavaME. Although it is an area that interests me, I do not have enough time to persue it currently.

Training Resources

Here are a few resources I use or used to use.

1. CSS
• CSS Hacks - From time to time a CSS hack may be needed to keep compatibility. This site outlines many popular ones
• Quirks Mode - this excellent site has a good table showing compatibility of different features in new and old browsers.
2. JavaScript
• JQuery - JQuery is a useful javascript library that provides many features. It's free too, so take a look.
3. HTML
• HTML Goodies - A pretty decent site with lots of resources and tutorials. Teaches from the ground up various languages, such as HTML
• Tizag - A good site for HTML basics, and for reminding yourself of tags and their meanings.
4. PHP
• PHP Lookup - Very useful site for looking up PHP functions, as it gives the function, parameters and example useage.
5. VB.NET & C#
• Free VB Code - A huge site which contains many vb and vb.net resources. Good place to get code samples.
• MSDN Library - The MSDN Library is the place to get explanations for mysterious functions. It's not always the best to see an application of the code, but is good none the less.

Useful Code Snippets

1. Random Password
• This function can be included to generate a random password string containing alphanumeric characters.
  Author: Me
  //Luke Clements 2010 //Feel free to use in any way function rand_pw($l) //l is length of password { $pw = ""; $i = 0; while ($i <= $l) { $sw = mt_rand(1,3); switch ($sw) { case 1: $pw .= chr(mt_rand(65,90));//Capital letters break; case 2: $pw .= chr(mt_rand(48,57));//Numbers 0-9 break; case 3: $pw .= chr(mt_rand(97,122));//Lowercase letters break; default: $pw .= "0"; break; } $i++; } return $pw; }
2. Compact Show/Hide link
• Here is a nice 1 line javascript for when you want to show and hide an element from a text link. Just replace ##DIV_ID## with your element's ID.
  Author: Me
  <a onclick="var s=document.getElementById('##DIV_ID##').style;if(s.display=='block'){s.display='none';this.innerHTML='Show';}else{s.display='block';this.innerHTML='Hide';}">Show</a>
3. Single Horizontal Graph Bar
• This is an easy way of making a single bar graph, using CSS (and PHP for data handling). Useful for displaying stats or other data. Just give it data with the variables $value and $total in your PHP script, and there you are!
  Author: Me
  <pre><div style="background-color: #CCC;width:100px;border:1px solid #000;"><div style="background-color: #FFAAAA;height: 4px;font-size:1pt;width:<?=($value/$total)*100; ?>px;"> </div></div></pre>
4. Realtime JavaScript Clock
• A basic real time updating 12 hour javascript clock, that uses am and pm, and corrects javascripts hours such as 0 (12 am).
  Author: Me
  The Javascipt: //Show Current time script, Luke Clements 2010 //Feel free to use and modify your script function ShowTime() { var currentT = new Date(); var hour = currentT.getHours(); var minutes1 = currentT.getMinutes(); var secs = currentT.getSeconds(); var postfix = ''; var tobj = document.getElementById("time"); if (minutes1 < 10){minutes1 = "0" + minutes1} if (secs < 10){secs = "0" + secs} if (hour > 12) {hour = hour - 12; postfix = ' pm'} else {hour = hour; postfix = " am";} if (hour == 12) {postfix = " pm";}if (hour == 00) {hour = "12"; postfix = ' am';} tobj.innerHTML = (hour + ":" + minutes1 + ":" + secs + postfix); setTimeout("ShowTime()",1000); }
  The HTML: <body onload="ShowTime()">
  and where you want the time to appear: It is now <span id="time"></span>
5. Nice List Menu's
• One way to use the simple anim library that I released recently. It works for menus with ul or ol lists within. Not only does it smooth expand the menu, but it also smooth fades it in and out.
  To use this, you will need to use the anim.js library which you can find in the software section of this site!
  Author: Me
  function ShowNav(id) { var obj = parseInt(document.getElementById(id).style.height); var ol = document.getElementById(id); var liNodes = []; for (var i = 0; i < ol.childNodes.length; i++) { if (ol.childNodes[i].nodeName == "LI") { liNodes.push(ol.childNodes[i]); } } var nh = liNodes.length * 20; //Change 20 to the total height of each list item if(obj < nh){ sAnim(id,'gh',nh,'8'); sAnim(id,'fi','100','2'); } else { sAnim(id,'sh',nh,'8'); sAnim(id,'fo','0','2'); } }
  On the menu itself... <li onclick="ShowNav('navSub1')">Main Category</li> <ol id="navSub1" style="height: 0px; overflow: hidden; opacity: 0;"> <li>Sub</li> <li>Sub</li> <li>Sub</li> </ol> </li>

© 2009-2010 Luke Clements