Well, there’s good news. It’s not as slick as Hulu, but YouTube does provide some options on their embedded player. Most importantly there’s an option to specify a custom starting point for any embedded video. Here’s the parameter:

start

You can use this parameter by adding it to the source URLs in the provided embed code. For example, if I wanted to start my embedded video at the 1:12 mark, the YouTube embed code would look like this:


<object width="656" height="517"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tqXJzZ_T8kg?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0&amp;start=72"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tqXJzZ_T8kg?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0&amp;start=72" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="656" height="517"></embed></object>

And the result will be the following:

You’re welcome!

Sound Recording (Phonogram) Copyright Symbol

A friend was looking for the circle-P character to include on the jacket design for a musical recording. I was surprised to discover a glyph/character that I wasn’t aware of. We weren’t even sure what this symbol meant in relation to the copyright symbol. Turns out this symbol, the Phonogram Copyright Symbol or Sound Recording Copyright Symbol, protects the copyright of the sound recording itself as something separate from the written music and lyrics. Good things to know!

Regardless, this character can now be found in my ever-growing HTML Character Code tool. Enjoy!

Needless to say, my character chart now includes decimal and hexadecimal/Unicode references for the characters in the Polish alphabet.

HTML CHARACTER CODES

So far, I feel like this isn’t a bad night’s work in adapting an existing style from a ground-up site to a WordPress template. I hope the site remains to be usable during this transition period.

I got involved with the developer group after struggling to make my genealogy site look great. The markup techniques were outdated or wrong and nothing had an ‘id’ or ‘class’. After recommending the change to the devs, they let me know that it wasn’t a top priority and recommended that if I wanted to improve the output, I would have to do it myself. This would involve working with Python and also looking stupid asking dumb questions about version control and compiling GRAMPS myself to check my work. With a little time and patience (as well as being unemployed for three months in Nashville with just my wife for company) I put myself to the task.

I have been updating the ‘Narrative Web’ plugin, written in Python, that exports your genealogical data into a web site. Mostly I just corrected and updated the XHTML markup that was present amidst the Python. I did hack up the code a little so that the navigation could be styled to indicate the active page or section.

My primary focus was to make the sites more accessible to CSS. In the process I created a few style themes to be distributed with the application. I am quite proud of them and excited to hear feedback from the user community once GRAMPS 3.0 is released. Following is a few screen shots of the site output as it was and the four primary styles that I developed so far.

GRAMPS 2.2 Narrative Web Plugin Output

‘Modern’

‘Tranquil’

GRAMPS 3.0 Narrative Web Plugin Output

‘Basic – Ash’

Basic comes in a variety of color schemes and is based on the original ‘Modern’ style. I hate using the word ‘modern’ outside of discussions of philosophy or fine art. The general public in the U.S. is convinced that it means ‘contemporary’. No doubt this is thanks to decades of marketing professionals trying to make their products sound impressive.

‘Nebraska’

I named this after my home state. It was my original stylesheet for the new markup. For that reason a lot of id and class solutions in the markup came out of challenges created by this design. I wanted this design to look fresh and inviting while being very easy to read.

‘Mainz’

Named so for Gutenberg’s birthplace, this design was created to show off the potential of the new markup. It’s a bit repetitious of me, but for some reason the vision of the website as a sheet of paper is very appealing. I started this one based on the name of one of the original GRAMPS styles: Certificate. The original style didn’t really look like a certificate, but this one does.

Default Print Style

This is probably the style that will be the most overlooked. With XHTML + CSS there is the potential for the browser to automatically switch stylesheets based on the media of representation. You can define one stylesheet as ‘screen’ and another as ‘print’ (there’s actually quite few different defined mediums according to the W3C, including ‘mobile’ and ‘projection’). GRAMPS is the first project where I could form a strong argument for using this feature to its full potential. Now anytime someone prints a page from a Narrative Web site, the output will be well designed for print with an emphasis on efficiency and legibility.

There’s still more work to do, but I wanted to get the word out on this great update to GRAMPS that’s just around the corner. Along with my relatively minor contributions, the other developers have been working very hard to make 3.0 an impressive and powerful update. If you are interested in trying it out, do keep in mind that in the open source world ‘.0′ means ‘submit final work to users and fix a lot of reported bugs’. So, if you are looking for a perfect application, I recommend waiting for GRAMPS 3.1.

HTML CHARACTER CODES

Let me know if there is a friendlier open source solution out there. This seems to work well enough.

• different character sets in separate views
• complete decimal and hexadecimal references
• entity references for some characters.
• New Complete Table Section displays all references
• New Favorites Section displays only your favorites

This new version is built with XML and XSLT, making the process of updating information or creating new layouts very simple. I am learning the basics of both right now and it’s amazing how powerful and elegant these simple text files can be.

The Favorites section works with comma-separated URL values. You will have to edit your URL “manually” by adding the decimal, hexadecimal or alphabetical values to the end of the page’s URL. There is an example favorites set to help you get started.

BohemianAlps HTML Character Codes »

How does it work? Looks good to me. For troubleshooting anyway. The fonts are weird but that’s expected. IE 6 gives me lots of bold type and the IE 5s don’t have that problem. They’re just not anti-aliased. These IEs also run as fast as they would on Windows as far as I can tell. Actually, on my Pentium II 266MHz laptop, they load faster than Firefox.

How do you get it? Well, no need to comprehend Wine, thank god. (Has anybody else noticed that there is no explanation on their site to even attempt installing a Windows app on Linux?) Just go to IEs4Linux and follow the instructions on that page. You will have to install Wine and Cabextract and then finally run their IEs4Linux file. You will be in IE heaven soon! Now, if only they had a set up package for OSX.

1. It’s free.
2. It seems to set up very easily.

I will know more as I work through creating my own theme and have to manage more posts.