07 Sep, 2009Master Class in Berlin

I will be presenting a master class at the Design Modelling Symposium in Berlin on the 5th-8th of October, 2009 at the Universität der Künste. This will cover the use of BIM data for a range of different types of performance analysis and the best ways to convert and transfer what you need.


02 Sep, 2009Stung by Drupal's Filter Caching, Again

When will I ever learn? I just lost another few hours of my life because - again - I didn't properly understand Drupal's filter cache system.


28 Aug, 2009Hacking Drupal's 'Read more' Link

When displaying a list of node teasers, Drupal includes a 'Read more' item within a list of links at the bottom of each node. Other items in this list include links for adding comments, the number of page reads and other node-specific actions. For users not familiar with Drupal, this link can be easily missed as it is given the same significance as all the others, making it not particularly obvious that there is more information available.


05 Aug, 2009Graph - Annual Temperatures (Google)

The graph is one of my experiments with Google's Visualisation API as a possible means of interactive web-based data presentation. It's an implementation of an annotated time line graph that Google originally developed for showing stock exchange data - used here to show annual hourly air temperature values. It has to process a whole year's worth of hourly temperature data for San Francisco, so it can take a little while for the graph to first appear.


27 Jul, 2009Graph - Annual Temperatures (Java)

This is an experiment with the use of Java applets to provide highly interactive charts and graphs embedded within a web page. It is just an example so the data it shows is not hugely meaningful - in this case a set of annual hourly air temperature values. However, it is an opportunity to play with my primitive attempt at an interactive and intuitive date range control. This control sits at the bottom of the chart and provides a means for selecting a date range for the values shown.


29 Jun, 2009Embedding Java Applets

Embedding Java applets in a web page should be pretty trivial, there is even an 'applet' HTML tag specifically for that purpose. However, it turns out this is now deprecated in favour of the new 'object' tag. As usual, this new tag is implemented differently by different browsers so it ends up being anything but trivial.


28 Jun, 2009Browser Detection Methods

Whilst there may be many reasons for wanting to know which browser your web page is being viewed within, the main one I find is needing to tweak some CSS or embedded applet code to accommodate certain rendering inconsistencies. At first glance, this seems pretty easy with dynamically-generated pages as most server-side programming or scripting languages provide a way of doing this as the page is being assembled for delivery. However, for both static web pages and content that is likely to be cached by a content management system (CMS) it isn't so easy. This article therefore considers a range of available browser detection methods.


18 Jun, 2009BS2009 Workshop

I will be presenting a 1-day workshop at the Building Simulation 2009 conference in Glasgow on Friday the 31st of July, 2009. This will cover the use of BIM data for a range of different types of performance analysis and the best ways to convert and transfer what you need.


12 Jun, 2009My First Post

Now that Ecotect is part of Autodesk and squ1.com is to be shut down in favour of ecotect.com, I need a place to post information on presentations and a home for some personal projects and musings. Thus, I created this website and blog.