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Playing with Fractals in HTML5 Canvas

Details: Category: Articles; Published on Tuesday, 17 April 2012 12:13

Back in October 2009 I started looking at the new <canvas> element in HTML5 and wanted to test it out. Graphics are not usually the kind of thing I do, so what can an aesthetically-challenged nerd do with a canvas? Well, for one thing, fractals!!! :)

So, to test out canvas, I created a small example for rendering the Mandelbrot Set using pixel manipulation of a canvas element using javascript (sorry, ECMA Script). I've always had a keen interest in the behaviour of non-linear systems (chaos theory), of which fractals are (quite literally) the poster child. So I knew roughly how they worked, but had never until then bothered to draw one myself. A quick sample of the result is shown below:

Hosting PHP Applications in Virtuoso on Ubuntu

Details: Category: Technology; Published on Tuesday, 17 April 2012 08:13

For some time I have considered the possibility of getting my favourite CMS running within OpenLink's Virtuoso Universal Server. But I always managed to put myself off the project because there seemed too many pieces of the jigsaw to put into place first

Finally, last month I decided to get it done. And now it mostly is. This page is served to you by Joomla! 2.5 running entirely within Virtuoso Open Source Edition v6.1.5, with only a handful of minor SQL hacks going on in the "driver" (all of which should soon be dealt with and merged upstream in Joomla! CMS). But what was the point? I'll tell you...but later.

Serving XHTML Content from Joomla!

Details: Category: Technology; Published on Monday, 16 April 2012 18:03

XHTML has been around long enough now that most people have heard of it, and most web developers know what to do to ensure their code produces valid XHTML. You will often see little notes in page footers claiming "Valid XHTML" or similar, and often enough, it even is valid XHTML, in some flavour or another.

Unfortunately, however, the overwhelming majority of valid XHTML web pages might as well not be, because the browser (and other agents) has no idea that they are, and treats them as though they are the bog-standard "tag soup" anyway.

Under Construction

I am in the process of rebuilding this website. Please excuse the mess.

If you came here for something I used to publish, check back in a few days.

Anything from the old website that might still be useful will probably reappear, but I want to take the opportunity to check and update everything before migrating it.

About

Will Daniels is an Independent IT Consultant in Birmingham, UK.

I specialise in Knowledge and Data Management using Semantic Web technologies as well as conventional RDBMS systems.

I work primarily with Linux platforms and am also a fair Linux System Administrator.

willdaniels.co.uk