My job...

Yes, I will now try to explain exactly what I do for a living ;) but first, a little prologue about myself.

I first started doing paid work with computers when I volunteered for a community-job at a local youth-club where I lived at the time I'm referring to. Where I did everything from administrating websites, doing webdesign, handling the networking, webserver tweaking, email server maintenance, etc. I had this job for a full year until I got sick of it. Being an operator isn't as glamourus as it may/may not seem.

Then I worked 6 months for a major Scandinavian ISP company as a service desk consultant; answering troubleshooting questions, logging faults, reading for the CCNA exam (which I never finished, due to lack of interest), and a lot of other cool stuff that heightened my professional skill levels.

Now, I do what I set out to be doing, when I was still in Junior High, I make: web designs, web templates, web applications (php & asp), administer Microsoft Servers (not my kind of bag, but I gotta make a livin').

What this means in 'g33k':
I work with programs that provide interoperability in support of the move to coherent distributed architectures.

What this means in somewhat plain (computer-)English:
I work with programs that make business-trading more efficient by supporting enterprise application integration, which simplifies the exchange of information between enterprise software for the buyer, and the supplier. This is achieved by relying on non-architecture specific languages and tools (webservers, databases, AJAX,ASP) for cross-interoperability.

I never imagined I would end up doing programming and scripting for a living, in fact, it was the last choice I would have taken a few years ago... It's even the reason I dropped out of uni'. But here I am, and that's what I'm doing...and I'm loving it! ;D

Cross-browser compatibility!

Yes! I have finally achieved my goal... ;^) The blog is now cross-browser compatible (it displays correctly no matter what architecture/webbrowser is used to view the page).

This whole ordeal, is basically caused by the fact that Microsoft's Internet Explorer does not conform to the open web standards of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), meaning; it does not display webpages developed on open standards correctly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Standards_support. The features not fully supported at the time of writing, include: CSS rendering issues + partial PNG (Portable Network Graphics) alpha support (opacity / transparency).

So, we as web-developers (who rely heavily on open standards to deliver a consistent experience to users no matter what hardware or software they are using), are forced to implement so-called "CSS-hacks" (Style Sheet Hacking), to enforce a proper user-end rendering of the website.

But I can now confirm compatibility with the following browsers (on Windows XP SP2 / Vista and Linux 2.6.x):

• Internet Explorer 7.x (WinXPSP2/Vista)
  
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.x (WinXPSP2/Vista/Linux 2.6.x)
  
• Opera 9.2x (WinXPSP2/Linux 2.6.x)
  
• Opera Mini 3.x (Sony Ericsson K810i)
  
• Sony Ericsson's K810i integrated phonebrowser (Sony Ericsson K810i)
  

new_job: xhtml+css+gfx+asp?

Looks like I may be working a lot with webpages / backend scripting / design after my current work contract expires (out May'08 I've been told).

I was asked by a friend of my mother, if I were interested in working with webpage development / design some 3 months ago. As this is what I've always wanted to do, this is basically a dream come true. I went by their offices last thursday (April 17th), to see the server room, check out their systems and to see if I felt comfortably settled in at my own desk(!).

My work tasks will in the early stages be:

• HTML/XHTML and CSS scripting.
• Eventually, create/modify ASP scripts.
• Adapt functionality per customer request.

So far, I've gotten 2 starter projects to work with, and I enjoy it quite much :)

Improved blog layout & design

I have now fixed a lot of my earlier bugs in the CSS script for the blog.
I also added some javascript code to import my del.icio.us links.

My blog now nearly conforms to valid CSS-3.0 and XHTML-1.0-STRICT, but not quite yet. Basically, it's because of some untraditional hacks in CSS for IE-bugs on float alignment, and also, the XHTML because of some bad syntax variables, but they are all contained in the widgets used in the sidebar, and I won't hastle to inform all the developers about it, simply because there are a few of them, and it doesn't bug me...

My revisions of the CSS and XHTML style template-files are valid, so, I'm happy ^_^

Bluefish

Tekst redigering for programmering og markup (webdesign). Åpen kildekode prosjekt, basert på GTK2+ (utvikler-pakke for brukergrensesnitt), altså, fungerer både på Linux, Windows og OS X. Støtter mange forskjellige markup-språk (understrekede elementer er web-relaterte språk):

• Python
• HTML
• PHP
• C
• Java
• JavaScript
• JSP
• SQL
• XML
• Perl
• CSS
• ColdFusion
• Pascal
• R
• Octave/MATLAB

Fler-koding av tekst-formater (UTF-8, osv.), basert på GNOME/KDE brukergrensesnitt-prinsipper for et gjennomført og gjenkjennelig utseende. Fokus på lettkjørt programvare er også prioritert, der mer kjente web-applikasjoner bruker mye minne, altså i oppstart, bruker Bluefish fra 40-45% mindre minne, og ved full sesjonsavslutning, mindre enn 33% i forhold til programmer som Quanta Plus og Screem.