April 2013
3 posts
Julio's Blog: Hiring front-end developers →
julio-ody:
I’ve been getting a handful of emails offering me front-end jobs recently. Probably about time I admit that I like spending most of my time doing that, even though I ♥ my Rubies and I still believe developers who specialise end up worse off.
So I’ve decided to put down in words some thoughts…
5 tags
Reorganization →
Rethinking team organization for responsive design.
This article from Trent Walton ties in well to the podcast I’ll be linking to tomorrow, where in we celebrate the first birthday of our podcast by discussing the ins and outs of managing responsive design projects with Ethan Marcotte.
March 2013
3 posts
5 tags
Random Test Files Generator →
(or how to kill an EC2 micro instance with 8 lines of Bash)
The Game Cabinet: Seasons →
gamecabinet:
This is a newest addition to my game collection; one I’ve only had for a couple of weeks. I have to say, I like it a lot. Some of that is probably new game excitement, but Seasons has a lot of good things going for it.
The theme of the game is simple: You’re a wizard competing in a…
9 tags
Say hello to CSS Simple
Last night, I started building CSS Simple - a lightweight CSS library for building clean interfaces.
To be quite blunt, I was getting tired of all of the bloat around other CSS frameworks.
Grid systems feel cumbersome and aren’t always necessary (and often aren’t mobile-first). Heavy ties to jQuery adds a bulk and complexity that isn’t always needed. Reliance on a few COMPASS...
February 2013
4 posts
2 tags
Browser Scratch Pad One-Liner
I saw a few of these floating around a while back. The idea is to create a data URL one-liner to turn a browser tab into an editable scratch pad for taking notes, or writing whatever. It’s kind of handy.
Here’s my take (Tumblr mangles the URL if I try and link to it):
data:text/html;charset=utf-8,<title>Text Editor</title><link rel=”shortcut icon”...
3 tags
RESTify Your API →
This bugs me, too. Hint: If your API has the words ‘new’, ‘edit’, ‘view’, ‘delete’ or similar in the URL structure, your API is not RESTful.
2 tags
3 tags
January 2013
5 posts
Jack's: Let's reconsider our "users" →
jacks:
us·er /ˈyo͞ozər/
Noun 1. A person who uses or operates something, esp. a computer or other machine. 2. A person who takes illegal drugs; a drug user.
Synonyms consumer
During a Square Board meeting, our newest Director Howard Schultz, pulled me aside and asked a simple question.
“Why…
7 tags
CORS headers with Devise
Yesterday I set about to add a small JSON API to an already-built Rails application that uses Devise for its authentication system. This was simple enough to do by enabling token-based authentication and rendering a few rabl templates via respond_to blocks (well, I say “was” but I’m actually not finished yet - that’s the gist of it, though, I just have more of them to do).
...
After Aaron Swartz: The Tech World Must Talk About... →
I have some thoughts on this, myself. I’m just too busy to write them all down. It’s something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while.
4 tags
API First →
Design and development for a multi-platform world.
2 tags
December 2012
8 posts
16 tags
10 Things I Learned in 2012
2012 has been a busy year for me. Looking back on it, I realized I’ve learned quite a few things over the past 12 months, so I thought I’d take a moment and compile a list. Some of the things listed below are technologies I had dabbled in prior to this year, but never took the time to learn properly or use on a real project until now.
Bash Scripting - Writing Bash scripts always felt...
9 tags
3 tags
Low contrast in Mountain Lion after reboot
Since upgrading to Mountain Lion I’ve noticed that occasionally, after rebooting, the display will appear very washed out and light greys are virtually impossible to detect.
At first, I chalked this up to my bad eyesight, but it turns out it’s actually a legitimate issue.
Sometimes the contrast sensitivity in the Accessibility preferences pane has a mind of its own and changes itself...
1 tag
Startup Idea
I want to be able to subscribe to breakfast. Who’s awake enough in the morning to make breakfast? Why would I want to wake up and cook food when I could sleep longer by not waking up and cooking food? And if I’m not awake enough to even cook it, why would I ever want to put forth the extra effort to travel somewhere to get it? I hate mornings. I want a subscription to Amazon...
3 tags
No More PHP
I’ve decided to stop taking new PHP projects. I still have a few that I will maintain and some friends with PHP projects that I work on from time to time. That won’t change. When it comes to new projects, though, I’m moving on.
I don’t think PHP is the horrible language many people make it out to be. I think it certainly has its flaws, yes, but I also think it’s...
2 tags
Geeklist Circle Icon
I couldn’t find a good Geeklist circle icon anywhere, so I made one. Here it is for anyone else who may be searching.
You can download the SVG file here.
5 tags
Another Redesign
Oops. I did it again. I redesigned my site.
I liked the last version, but it didn’t feel quite as refined as I would have liked, and there were some things about it that I wanted to change. So I simplified what was there, rewrote some of the content, and cleaned things up a fair bit. In the end, the new version doesn’t resemble the old that much at all, but there are some hints of the...
3 tags
Writing Maintainable Code
I have a large, long-term project, an API written in PHP, that I’ve been working on for the past 22 months. The initial build took six months of that time and the remaining sixteen months have included ongoing maintenance, bug fixes, enhancements and new features to the production code. It handles a few gigs of data and a couple hundred thousand requests per month. It’s not the biggest...
November 2012
7 posts
6 tags
Playing with Phonegap
OK, so I’m slow… I’ve never actually done this before.
I’ve done a lot of development for the mobile web, but it’s always either been A) purely web-based, or 2) handed off to someone else who’s done the building, packaging, and distributing.
So tonight I built a little app - It’s a FUDGE dice roller, with +/- modifiers (good for use with the Dresden...
4 tags
A somewhat random general update
Aside from reblogging a few things, I haven’t posted much lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle-more the opposite, really.
I’ve been dealing with a minor eyelid infection - nothing serious and it cleared up quickly but it did make things blurry for a few days.
I’ve been head-down in some code on a fairly large project, learning a few new things along the way...
1 tag
Early sketches from the web's finest
layervault:
Pen and paper
Most designers are accustomed to starting their work on paper. If you’re a designer, you’ve probably got a notebook or two sitting around with random brilliant sketches. Often the initial sketches themselves are something to be proud of — and it’s a shame that no one ever sees them.
Have you ever wondered what others’ sketches look like? We did. When designers put...
1 tag
Code Poet
In Hexadecimal:
Good coffee, less a tall latte…
2 tags
What Programmers Want →
2 tags
A jQuery Plug-in for multiple file uploads
Today I wrote a small jQuery plug-in for uploading multiple files. This is not an AJAX file upload script. What it does is simply, from the end user perspective, give you one file upload box that you can “re-use” to select multiple files, which it then lists, like so:
In reality, what’s happening behind the scenes is that once the file upload field is populated, the script...
October 2012
8 posts
8 tags
Getting personal with my hardware and perhaps...
I’ve put my finger on the big difference for me between my Nexus 7 and the iPad. You see, I thought I would be excited about the iPad mini, since it’s all the awesome of an iPad, in the smaller size that I’ve come to love. I thought the big attraction for me was the 7in form factor. But it’s not and I just can’t get excited about the iPad mini.
I have a Nexus 7 and I...
2 tags
5 tags
4 tags
Character Set: Responsive Design Development Setup →
character-set:
My workstation: iPhone, Macbook Pro, Thunderbolt Display, iPad. All of the devices / browsers update whenever I save a file within the project. My hands never have to leave the keyboard.
Everything I design for the web is responsive. And most of the design I do, outside of sketching in a…
4 tags
Tips for Getting Started with Vagrant →
1 tag
Don't worry about your productivity; worry about... →
Food for thought - I need to do this for a couple of weeks, at least.
6 tags
Moodly - It's kind of like Twitter for your...
This past weekend, I participated in the 2012 Rails Rumble 48hr programming competition to deliver a fully functioning web app to the masses.
Behold, Moodly!
Moodly is an app that lets you post quick, short updates about how you’re feeling, good or bad. The idea is to get in, update, get out, and update often. Over time, Moodly will (theoretically) gather enough statistical data...
3 tags
September 2012
2 posts
5 tags
Simple URL Shortener With Sinatra and Redis
Building a URL shortener is a pretty basic, beginner project for a lot of people, and if you’re new to Sinatra or Redis, it’s a great way to get your feet wet with both of them.
Let’s create a very simple one. I’ll walk you step-by-step through your application file.
First, we start by requiring the gems we’ll need (you’ll need to install these via bundler or...
7 tags
Wrist and Hand Pain when Programming
For the past couple of months, I’ve been dealing with some pretty significant wrist and hand pain while working, primarily on the right side. I’ve exhibited some classic symptoms of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, including numbness and pain in my hand after two much typing, weakness in my wrist, waking up at nigh with numb hands, etc. I’ve put together some random thoughts on the...
August 2012
14 posts
2 tags
Principles of User Interface Design →
3 tags
4 tags
Family Python - Day 1
We did our first session today. It was review for the adults adjusting to python’s syntax and new stuff for the kid (which is how it will be for quite a while, I think).
We had a lot of fun.
Rich really got into teaching her. He got out the book and the whiteboard and walked her through some basics, then had her run through a few exercises and figure it out. She made errors and then she...
7 tags
The Family that Codes Together
This should be a lot of fun, assuming we don’t kill each other in the process.
I’ve wanted to get into Python for a while now, but haven’t had the time/a good excuse to do so. Richard is getting back into programming and has decided that Python is where he’s going to start getting re-acquainted. So we thought, “let’s do it together.”
Then we figured,...
7 tags
Fixing slow performance after Mountain Lion...
I upgraded to Mountain Lion a couple of weeks ago and things have been running slow ever since. My Macbook Air is fine, but my iMac was just dragging. For a while, I thought it was a hard drive problem, because reading files would randomly take forever. However, the hardware kept testing OK. It really felt like a file read problem, though.
I think I’ve found the answer.
Download the new ML...
3 tags
Eye surgery No. 7 is in the books
Well, today’s laser capsulotomy went quite well. The procedure itself took about five minutes and my vision returned to normal after only a few hours. My eye felt irritated for a while, but that has gone away now. It does feel tired, though, and after using the computer for a bit this evening, it definitely feels like I need a break.
Laser eye surgery feels really weird. I don’t know...
2 tags
4 tags
Musings on open source software development.
I maintain (or assist in maintaining) a few open source projects. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed some common trends from people submitting code, so I’d like to take a moment to talk about it; what goes on behind the scenes on an open source project, why a project is open to begin with, and how to contribute effectively.
Why is this code open?
The first thing you have to look...
3 tags
Thoughts on being a programmer
Tonight I came across this great list of thoughts on being a programmer. I thought I’d add a few of my own.
Respect the fact that most code has a life cycle that will extend beyond your personal involvement in the project.
Always leave the code cleaner than you found it.
The occasional all-nighter is good for the soul
Too many all-nighters is bad for your health.
This ratio changes when...
4 tags
Sublime Text 2 for the Visually Impaired
I thought I’d take a moment and write about my Sublime Text 2 setup. I’ve customized it a bit to make it easier to see, so I just want to quickly run through the (no doubt highly subjective) steps below. Most of my changes involve improving contrast and readability.
Install the Soda theme and use Soda Dark - Sublime’s default look is great, but personally, I prefer Soda Dark. I...
