The company I work for is looking to recruit again. As we have a very basic form of peer interviews as part of the recruitment process, a number of CVs end up in my Inbox.

One of the applicants listed the following under a list of duties with his current employer: “HTML validation to at least 3.2 Cougar”

Not having heard of “Cougar”, I copy-pasted the entire line into Google (I am lazy like that). Up pops this page: http://www.wdvl.com/Internet/Web/Jobs/Webmaster.html, neatly listing “Typical tasks would involve some of the following”

The list was copied word-for-word from the website (OK: he did remove the line listing Perl as a skill)! This link will also pop up at about number 5 in a Google search for: webmaster definition

This guy should be “named-and-shamed” on the internet as a warning to prospective employers! And I certainly won’t recommend the recruitment agency that forwarded this candidate to us – what kind of screening do they do?

I started fiddling with the login page of my WordPress blog the other day…

Rather than delve into the code and try and completely customize the page, I did what any smart WordPress user would do: went in search of a Plugin!

I found the BM Custom Login plugin. Install it like any other plugin. Then all you need to do is edit the supplied template .psd, and upload your customised image file as instructed.

Below is the one I came up with for my www.cape-hike.co.za blog…

Get it here…

I have been a huge fan of Firefox for a few years now.

My chief motivation for the switch was Firebug, and the adherence to standards.

As of yesterday I switched to Internet Explorer 8. Firefox was simply freezing up my machine – hogging memory and processor power like no-ones business. I have found it almost impossible to work in the WordPress Admin panel for example.

Today I updated Firefox to 3.5.5.

Firefox version 3.5.5

I have a “phantom” Event showing up on my Profile! When I click on it – nothing appears. The notification has been on my page for a week now, and I can’t seem to find a way to get rid of it.

FaceBook Event error

I always try and keep my spelling tidy. When using any IM application, I usually retype misspelt words prefixed by ** to indicate a correction.

So if you are a Skype user, and hate watching your spelling errors travel slowly up the IM window hanging their serifs in shame, help is at hand!

Skype message editing

Simply right-click the message that you wan to correct in the message window, and select “Edit Message” from the menu. This copies the message into the composing box, where you can edit it.

Thanks B for showing me this one!

As we wait for Google Wave to gain traction…

Google Wave is down. Will be interesting to see what the problem is – or if it will maybe just come back better…

Google Wave

I recently did some work for a friend who wanted to display a PDF on a website. Rather than display a link to download the PDF, or open it in a separate browser window (or tab), I used the <embed> tag.

Simply use the embed tag to embed the pdf as an object in the page. The pdf will then be rendered in the page by the Adobe plug-in.

<embed src="your.pdf" width="800" height="600">

Unfortunately, it is browser dependent, and to get it to work consistently is all but impossible.

Google Wave is supposedly the next big thing on the Internet – get an invite and start playing!

Facebook seems very hesitant to announce new features! Just today I noticed a small, new enhancement…

When you update your Status, if you type in an @ followed by a friends name (1), it will give you a drop-down list (2) and offer a tag feature. The name is then converted into a link to that person’s Profile (3 & 4).

New Facebook "Tagging" feature

So far this functionality does not exist elsewhere – I have tried it when commenting on Photos and News Feed items. It will be interesting to see if it pops up in other places.