This is one of the (very, very) few geek ideas I might be able to convince the missus about: bathroom/kitchen tile in the shape of Tetris blocks. Personally, I think the first example – without the individual squares – is a lot more recognizable, even if it would be harder to implement. (Via Anthony.) (#)
Sep. 13, 2008
12:16 am
If the work that really matters to you involves understanding a relationship between a handful of seemingly unrelated things and then figuring out the best way to portray, magnify, or resolve those relationships, then you’re already doing creative work. Any time you make a connection between two or more axes that hadn’t occurred to you 10 minutes ago, yes, you’ve done something creative.
Merlin Mann, a dude who's web famous for his writing on 43 folders but creates brilliant material all over the place, writing about his renewed focus on creativity and quality in a world full of cruft. (#)
Sep. 11, 2008
10:37 am
Just as everyone in development is enamored with scaling, it seems that far too many designers ask the question, “how much content can we dump in here, and still have things make sense?” rather than “how can we nix this nonsense, and just say what we mean?”. In many projects, it’s taken a priori that all the content that exists going into a project must remain intact. Of course, this leads to the new site simply shuffling a rotten core, putting a new face on old problems. Really, what’s diluting the web are piles of meaningless words, not a lack of style.
Matt Brown, suggesting some ways designers could help simplify the web. (#)
Sep. 10, 2008
Man, the WordPress Codex is deep. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit plumbing its depths, and I still get the sense I haven’t seen more than a tenth of what it has to offer. Here’s a function straight from the codex that’ll be a big help to theme and plugin developers: the wp_enqueue_script() function. If you find your self building WordPress themes and plugins that’re heavy on the JavaScript, this guy’s gonna be your new best friend.
It's admittedly a pretty old post – the announcement that ExpressionEngine 2.0 is now officially delayed would be a much more timely link – but this is terrific news for anyone who develops sites on ExpressionEngine for a living. One of the best parts about WordPress is its (relatively) dead simple themeing system. From the looks of it, Ellis Labs is creating an even more intuitive and flexible system for the next version of EE. That's good, because the current methodology has been proven to cause vertigo and severe nausea in laboratory test subjects. (#)
Sep. 9, 2008
Now that Agregado is launched, I’m starting to review what I learned during the build process. In short: tons. But how about an example? Let’s take a look at one of the handy SimplePie tricks I learned from working on this project.
Last time I searched for it, back when YouTube was still a little baby startup, this clip was nowhere to be found. George sings his rendition of The Greatest American Hero theme song. Probably my favorite Seinfeld moment. Just brililant. (#)
Sep. 8, 2008
This is a pretty exciting post for me. A few months back, the folks over at Smashing Magazine approached esteemed WordPress theme designer Darren Hoyt (who, in the interest of full disclosure, is also my office-mate) about creating a free, high quality WordPress theme to be released as part of that site’s free theme collection. Darren asked that I handle the backend features while he rolled out the design. Today, we’re proud to introduce Agregado.
The concept of a toolkit that uses code syntactically similar to Objective-C but works in all of today's major browsers is … well it's certainly different. Cappucino promises that when you're building a web application "you don't need to concern yourself with the complexities of traditional web technologies like HTML, CSS, or even the DOM." Keep in mind we're talking about web apps here, not sites. But still, this is set to change the game in some unexpected ways. (#)
Sep. 6, 2008
The junk that talented developers are doing with jQuery is starting to blow my fraking mind. Ref: Parallax, a plugin that turns a set of container elements into a parallax-ed viewport. But wait – this brilliant chunk of code was created by whom now? Stephband, if you're listening, I hope you'll make yourself known! (#)
Not so long ago, I wrote about a method for running complex queries on an ExpressionEngine database using two built-in functions: exp:weblog:entries and exp:query. It’s a neat and useful trick, but the example I suggested was a somewhat limited, specific use case. There are tons of ways to relate one bit of data to another in ExpressionEngine and equally as many ways to get at that data. Let’s take a look at another one of those methods.
11:39 am
When we think of events in the distant past or distant future we tend to think abstractly about why they happened or will happen, but when we think of events in the near past or near future we tend to think concretely about how they happened or will happen.
Seeing in time is like seeing in space. But there is one important difference between spatial and temporal horizons. When we perceive a distant buffalo, our brains are aware of the fact that the buffalo looks smooth, vague, and lacking in detail because it is far away, and they do not mistakenly conclude that the buffalo itself is smooth and vague. But when we remember or imagine a temporally distant event, our brains seem to overlook the fact that details vanish with temporal distance, and they conclude instead that the distant events actually are as smooth and vague as we are imagining and remembering them.
Daniel Gilbert, on the difficulty of predicting future happiness. (#)
Sep. 5, 2008
I can't imagine how cool it'd be to work on a project like Google Chrome, so amid all the ho-hum acquisition gobbledygook, this is still a fascinating read. The article includes nice, brief bios on the members of the Google Chrome team whose names have been released so far. (Via Simon Willison.) (#)
Sep. 4, 2008
I worked in DC at a Political Action Committee for three years, so aside from my personal interest in politics, I've heard my fair share of infuriating, obtuse, speeches filled with falsities and half-truths. But I have never been as infuriated by any political event as I have been by this year's Republican National Convention. Luckily, the AP did me a great favor by fact checking some of the worst lies to come out of this hellish suckfest. (Via dooce.) (#)
Sep. 2, 2008
8:43 pm
Start poking around the names in the Google Chrome comic book and the names are there. Scott McCloud’s drawings aren’t just a useful pictorial explanation of what to expect in Chrome; it’s practically a declaration of independence from the yesteryear traditions of browser design of the past 10 years, going all the way back to Netscape’s heyday when the notion of the web was a vast collection of interlinked documents. With Chrome, the web starts to look more like a nodal grid of documents, with cloud applications running on momentary instances, being run directly and indirectly by people and their agents. This is the browser caught up.
Chris Messina, on the historic significance of Google's announcement – and beta release – of the Chrome browser. (#)
In the way-back-when, I spent way, way too much time on the dpreview.com forums. Some helpful folks, yes. But also some of the saddest schmucks you'll find, on the internet or elsewheres. Now, Dean Allen has brilliantly, in one semi-brief blog post, summed up the whole history of discussion on those forums. "What must the flash be? Diffuse." (#)
Sep. 1, 2008
5:28 pm
Yes, we need to have a rational conversation in this country about striking the balance between providing students with age-appropriate sex education and a rational discussion about moral values and their role in making sexual choices. I am a full and complete supporter of comprehensive sex ed – which includes information like “there is no such thing as blue balls” and “no means no” and “saying no to sex can be a sign of respect for both of you.” But clapping our hands in joyous rubbernecking over Bristol Palin’s being in the family way is not going to be the start of any discussion. It makes us look as judge-y as we accuse Them of being, it makes us look like abortion-promoters instead of choice-respecters (it does mean both choices, after all) and it makes us look like we think a 17-year-old target is easier to hit than a 44-year-old target. Sex education will be a great topic for discussion and reform in an Obama Administration, and it wouldn’t – and shouldn’t – involve the now rather-public embarrassment or shaming of a 17-year-old girl.
Megan Carpentier of Jezebel, urging all the lefties to back the eff off the whole Bristol Palin pregnancy annoncement. Since when did Jezebel become the voice of reason? (#)
A comic book drawn by Scott McCloud probably isn't the best way to stealth-announce a software project. So I'm taking that to mean Google gets how much of a ripple their new web browser might cause. It's named Chrome, it's built on Apple's open source Webkit engine, and it boasts some truly groundbreaking features. For all the interesting goodies presented here, the feature most discussed among the geeks will likely to be its memory management. In brief, each tab/web app will have its own discreet set of processes, (hopefully) making massive memory leaks a thing of the past. We'll see if Google can deliver, but color me excited. (Via ReadWriteWeb.) (#)
Aug. 29, 2008
11:39 pm
Is he kidding? How can John McCain make the argument that Barack Obama isn’t ready to be president when he picks a running mate with even less experience than Obama to be his vice president? Is he actually retarded? When you are seventy two years old and attempting to undertake one of the most strenuous jobs in the world for at least four years, don’t you want to at least consider the notion that you might drop dead?
Memo to John McCain: you might drop dead.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been a governor for two years, and before that a mayor for ten, the mayor of Wasilia (population 5,000). My brother-in-law was the Republican mayor of Waseca, Minnesota, which has about the same size population, and I can tell you with absolute certainty after playing foosball with him in his basement that my brother-in-law is not ready to be president of the United States of America. I’m not even sure that he’s ready to be president of his rotisserie football league.
Michael Ian Black, on John McCain's misguided VP pick. (#)
I think I need to make a trip to Brazil. They're just putting out the best work right now. Case in point: Mopa. I've spent the last 30 minutes burrowing through their site, and there's not a weak piece in the collection. Vibrant, glowing colors, wonderfully varied textures and lines, beautiful, beautiful. (Via Kitsune Noir.) (#)
