Nathan Firth

Orebro Slott (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:14:18 -0700

Orebro Slott (Taken with instagram)

First time my grandparents meet the great grand kids (Taken...

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:55:33 -0700

First time my grandparents meet the great grand kids (Taken with instagram)

Just landed in Chicago, 4 more hours and we’ll be on our...

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:36:26 -0700

Just landed in Chicago, 4 more hours and we’ll be on our way to Sweden (Taken with instagram)

Tonight I am taking my family for a month long adventure across...

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:47:53 -0700

Tonight I am taking my family for a month long adventure across Europe. We are flying in to Stockholm, Sweden, where we will spend some time visiting friends and family. Then we will travel to Aix en Provence, France, for a few days to enjoy good food and company. Then on to Italy for some good Italian food. Then we will fly to Crete to meet up with my parents. Then finally back to Sweden for a few last days before heading back home.

I’m so excited. It’s going to be a ton of fun and this will be the first time that as a family we can pull away and go on vacation outside the country.

First ever 1080 on skateboard landed by 12 year old Tom Schaar

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:07:26 -0700

First ever 1080 on skateboard landed by 12 year old Tom Schaar

PHP Crop Image Function using GD2

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:14:17 -0700

The other day I was working on a project where I needed to crop and resize images, so I wrote this quick PHP function that uses the GD2 library. Enjoy.

function cropImage($image,$image_w=120,$image_h=120) {
	if ($image['size'] == 0) {
		return(false);
	}
	if ($image['error'] > 0) {
		return(false);
	}
	if ($image['type'] == "image/gif") {
		$source_img = @imagecreatefromgif($image['tmp_name']);
	}
	else if (($image['type'] == "image/jpeg") || ($image['type'] == "image/pjpeg")) {
		$source_img = @imagecreatefromjpeg($image['tmp_name']);
	}
	else if (($image['type'] == "image/png") || ($image['type'] == "image/x-png")) {
		$source_img = @imagecreatefrompng($image['tmp_name']);
	}
	else {
		return(false);
	}	
	if (!$source_img) {
		return(false);
	}
	$orig_w = imagesx($source_img);
	$orig_h = imagesy($source_img);

	$w_ratio = ($image_w / $orig_w);
	$h_ratio = ($image_h / $orig_h);

	if ($orig_w > $orig_h ) { // wider
		$crop_w = round($orig_w * $h_ratio);
		$crop_h = $image_h;
		$src_x = ceil( ( $orig_w - $orig_h ) / 2 );
		$src_y = 0;
	} elseif ($orig_w < $orig_h ) { // taller
		$crop_h = round($orig_h * $w_ratio);
		$crop_w = $image_w;
		$src_x = 0;
		$src_y = ceil( ( $orig_h - $orig_w ) / 2 );
	} else { // square
		$crop_w = $image_w;
		$crop_h = $image_h;
		$src_x = 0;
		$src_y = 0;
	}
	$dest_img = imagecreatetruecolor($image_w,$image_h);
	imagecopyresampled($dest_img, $source_img, 0 , 0 , $src_x, $src_y, $crop_w, $crop_h, $orig_w, $orig_h);
	return($dest_img);
}

First day and orientation at ServiceNow complete and now on to...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:15:24 -0700

My desk with my new handy monitor stand

my work area with my fellow developers

First day and orientation at ServiceNow complete and now on to day two. I work with a wonderful group of talented developers and I am really excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. The photos above is my desk and work area. On my way home last night I went by Lowes and picked up some white laminated wood, and made that monitor stand. It hurts my neck to always be looking down at the monitor so I think this will work out nicely.

It is now official. I will be joining the ServiceNow family...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:39:22 -0800

It is now official. I will be joining the ServiceNow family starting on March 19th 2012. It has been a wonderful experience working at MIR3. I have grown both as a developer and as a person, and I am so thankful for the time I’ve had working with the wonderful people at MIR3. But I feel I have come to a fork in the road and it is time to move on.

I will be working at ServiceNow as a Developer, where I will be designing and developing business applications on top of the ServiceNow platform.

For those not familiar with ServiceNow, here is the official description from their website:

Born in the cloud, ServiceNow makes IT more accessible, intuitive and social. ServiceNow creates a single system of record for all IT processes within a company. This system brings together IT strategy, design, transition and operation on a powerfully simple cloud platform that just works.

ServiceNow is built to be a productivity tool for all types of business users including the CIO, service desk staff, application developers, IT finance, IT operations and business people. ServiceNow applications are built on a single platform as a service. The platform offers a consistent and intuitive user experience through the entire IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service lifecycle.

Holy macaroni, Kevin Court does a side slip polejam backflip...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:37:08 -0800

Holy macaroni, Kevin Court does a side slip polejam backflip front lip?

Some different ways of reversing a string in PHP & JavaScript

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:25:00 -0800

I was looking at some of the different ways of reversing a string in PHP and in JavaScript. There are so many ways of accomplishing such a simple task but I wanted to compare some of the different ways.

PHP

$string = “This is a test”;

strrev()
```
$string = strrev($string);
```
This is almost cheating because PHP has a built in function… but this is the easiest way for sure

Array Reverse

$string = implode('',array_reverse(str_split($string)));

For Loop

$string = str_split($string);
for ($i=count($string)-1; $i>=0; $i--) {
    $newstring .= $string[$i];
}
$string = $newstring;

JavaScript

var string = “This is a test”;

String Split Reverse Join

string = string.split('').reverse().join('');

For Loop

var newString = [];
for (i=(string.length)-1; i>=0; i--) {
    newString.push(string[i]);
}
string=newString.join('');

Pulled out the old Streeboard out of the closet and pulled a 540...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:56:50 -0800

Pulled out the old Streeboard out of the closet and pulled a 540 at the skatepark down the street. That’s pretty good for me considering I haven’t stood on a Streetboard in years.

JavaScript Weirdness

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:51:00 -0800

I was just listening to the lightning talk by Gary Bernhardt from CodeMash 2012 and he brought up some really interesting (and funny) points about JavaScript.

For example:

[] + [];

””

{} + {};

NaN

[] + {};

[object Object]

{} + [];

So why is it that if you add two empty Arrays you get an empty string, but if you add two objects you get “not a number”. Array + Object is an Object but Object plus Array is 0???

JavaScript: Clock Angle Problem

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:36:00 -0800

Earlier today I was presented with the problem of calculating the degrees between the hour hand and the minute hand of an analog clock. At first this seemed like a fairly complicated task, however after playing with it for a bit the solution became apparent. But now after looking up the answer on Google I feel really embarrassed on how easy the solution really is.

It’s amazing how complicated you can make a solution, when most of the time it can be solved so easily once you have the basic logic worked out.

Solution:

// h = 1..12, m = 0..59
function angle(h,m) {
hAngle = 0.5 * (h * 60 + m);
mAngle = 6 * m;
angle = Math.abs(hAngle - mAngle);
angle = Math.min(angle, 360 - angle);
return angle;
}

Socialite.js

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:23:56 -0800

Socialite.js:

JavaScript for implementing social sharing buttons asynchronously. Support for Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn

The wooden spoon trick is even funnier in Icelandic. Friggin...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:58:03 -0800

The wooden spoon trick is even funnier in Icelandic. Friggin hilarious!!!

Wow just wow! This video makes me wanna go snowboarding soo bad...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:40:42 -0800

Wow just wow! This video makes me wanna go snowboarding soo bad right now. But seriously when did snowboarding get this crazy???? Riders: Nick Dirks and Jed Anderson

Selectable Table Rows with Keyboard Navigation

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:53:00 -0800

Recently I was working on a project where we needed to display a multi-select input. Very quickly it became apparent that the traditional select box would not work since the information we were presenting would need to be displayed in multiple columns and support pagination. The common sense answer was to display the information in a table however after some searching I realized there were no good plugins for selecting multiple table rows. The other requirement was to duplicate the functionality of a drop down and add in keyboard controls (shift click, ctrl click, etc.) so I set out to write my own.

So far I’m pretty happy with it, there are still some issues I need to work out but for the most part it’s a solid plugin. The plugin itself adds just the ability to select table rows with keyboard controls… however how that data gets there, or what you do with that information is up to you. I’ve added support for three callbacks:

on select (single click)
double click (or “Enter” key)
on change

And it supports the following keyboard controls:

Ctrl + Click
Shift + Click
Shift + Ctrl + Click
Shift + Up|Down Keys
Up|Down Keys
Enter (to select)

It is now available on GitHub: https://github.com/nathanfirth/jQuery-Selectable-Table-Rows. ~~I’ll be uploading it to GitHub in the next day or so.~~ I would love to get some feedback. Please check out the demo here: http://dev.nathanfirth.com/jquery-tableselect/

Alright, the video I shot and edited for @robcarona has finally...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:51:09 -0800

Alright, the video I shot and edited for @robcarona has finally been released.

This past weekend was a lot of fun, I had the opportunity to...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:33:00 -0800

This past weekend was a lot of fun, I had the opportunity to film and edit the music Video titled “Beautiful” for Rob Carona. It’s the first time I’ve had the opportunity to create a music video, and as a web developer the opportunities to explore other forms of creative expression are not as frequent as I would like. The shoot itself could have been better coordinated, as we did not have a story board and most of the shots where rather spontaneous. However, I don’t think you will be able to tell from looking at the video. I think it turned out excellent for a video that was shot, edited and produced in less than two days. I’m still recovering from the lack of sleep, but it was a very rewarding experience and look forward to doing it again sometime.

I will post the link to the YouTube video shortly.

"Character is not made in a crisis, only exhibited"

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:49:19 -0800

“Character is not made in a crisis, only exhibited”