April 2012
1 post
2 tags
March 2012
1 post
“I’ve known horrible programmers who were prolific. I’ve known great programmers...”
– Chris Wanstrath - In an interview with forbes
September 2011
1 post
NodeConf presentation video
They released the videos from nodeconf a couple weeks ago. They’re all on JSConf’s Blip.tv page.
Here’s mine: Building Realtime Single Page Apps [VIDEO]
June 2011
1 post
2 tags
JavaScript Web Applications
I’m honored to have be a technical reviewer for Alex MacCaw’s (@maccman) book “JavaScript Web Applications”. It’s available as an early release e-book from O’Reilly.
If you’re into single-page app development, it’s probably one of the most complete and up-to-date resources available on the topic. I definitely recommend it.
May 2011
1 post
6 tags
Slides from my nodeconf presentation
Node conf - building realtime webapps View more presentations from Henrik Joreteg
January 2011
1 post
http://keepingitrealtime.com/ →
We’ve just started doing a video podcast about realtime web stuff at &yet. Check it out, much more stuff to come.
December 2010
1 post
JavaScript — as a game of telephone pictionary
Telephone pictionary is where you start with word and taking turns in a circle alternately draw or describe the picture or phrase received from the previous person.
Here’s what happens when you start with “JavaScript” and pass it off to a bunch of nerds at the &yet Christmas party.
Interestingly enough. The last few cards all seem to fit rather well with many...
August 2010
1 post
4 tags
How to magically run stuff when you're near your...
What you need
A Mac
Some type of bluetooth device you always have with you (let’s get real, if you’ve got a mac you’re using an iPhone)
Step 1.
Download and install Proximity:
Step 2.
Open AppleScript editor and create a script to run when you’re near your computer. Mine is super simple. It just turns off the screen saver and sets my chat status in...
June 2010
1 post
4 tags
Twitter is useless! Unless you want to land your...
I used to think twitter was useless. My take was something like: “unless you’re going to share it with me I don’t care what you’re having for lunch.” Turns out that was a very limited perspective. When I took my first real developer job at ESRI I met Josh Highland (@joshhighland). Josh is a special kind of crazy, and I mean that in a good way. He’s a straight...
April 2010
1 post
3 tags
On Happiness. My reactions to reading "Flow."
I’ve read a lot of books about improving yourself and improving your life. These books tend to focus on how to change your circumstances to be more in-line with how you want your life to be. This book was quite different. It’s not about becoming healthier and wealthier. It focuses on learning how to control your attention and your attitude in such a way as to more thoroughly enjoy...
March 2010
2 posts
2 tags
“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all...”
– Unknown, but definitely someone very wise.
1 tag
February 2010
3 posts
2 tags
My Buzz Feedback
I just submitted feedback to Google regarding Buzz. Here’s what I said, if you agree, please do the same:
I’m a fan of Buzz so far. One request though:
If I follow a user with a lot of followers such as Seesmic founder Loic Lemur, they will inevitably get tons of comments on their posts. I don’t want them at the top of my list just because anybody has commented on their...
2 tags
Google chart API simple and sweet
So, in my humble opinion Google’s chart api is genius. I know some of this has been around for a while. But I’ve never really looked at it till now.
You just pass in paramaters and Google draws and serves up your charts super fast. In it’s most basic form, all you gotta do is put the paramaters in your image tag.
Here’s a couple of simple examples:
<img...
3 tags
“We web developers are doing an amazingly lousy job right now. We have to start...”
– This is from an article on QuirksMode about how we developers are treating the iPhone web browser much like IE6 when it first came out. We can’t treat it like it’s the only compatibility check necessary. It’s something I’m personally a bit guilty of. Let’s not go down...
January 2010
3 posts
3 tags
Dear Google, please add the web-app meta tag to...
Google just built a sweet mobile version of Google voice for iPhone.
I have but one complaint about all the awesome HTML5 mobile webapps that Google has been releasing lately.
They open in Safari on my iPhone
That means that each time I want to access it even if I save a shortcut to my homescreen on the iPhone it opens in a new window in Safari. This gets annoying in a hurry and actually...
3 tags
Awesome stop-motion video
I was really blown away by the creativity of this video. Very cool.
New Years Resolutions
Definitely a bit late, but nonetheless, here’s a few resolutions for 2010
Get 100 churches signed up for my new BulletinApp.com service.
Make 50% of my household income from passive (or at least semi-passive) sources.
Do 100 pushups in a row.
Learn how to hold a hand-stand for more than 1 minute.
Take my home office as close to paperless as possible. (Evernote rocks!)
Buy a house.
...
December 2009
2 posts
5 tags
A Webapp for Building iPhone Apps
Normally having a custom iPhone or Android app is something that is out of reach for smaller organizations. Also, as you may have heard the Apple’s app approval process is quite a headache. Several of my friends and co-workers have written iPhone apps and the truth is, that it’s a very real possibility that your app won’t be accepted and all your work will have been wasted.
...
2 tags
“We have results when we have them…we don’t set a date and then say...”
– Guido van Rossum, inventor of Python
November 2009
7 posts
2 tags
Must have changes for when forced to work in XP
This post is different than most of my posts in that there’s nothing cool or sexy about it. It’s about comfort while dealing with having to work with an old windows system.
I have been living in Mac land for so long, that I didn’t even realize that some of these changes were possible. I just chalked it up to Microsoft’s way of punishing the people that use their...
4 tags
Impressed with MacRabbit's Espresso editor
I’m going to purchase a license for either Espresso or TextMate and so I’m going to use each for their full trial period, then decide. Right now I’m using Espresso, I’ve been pretty happy with it so far.
It’s always the little things that impress me. Case in point:
Notice the last two open files, they’re both named “urls.py”. This follows...
4 tags
How to Run Google Chrome OS in Virtual Box on Mac
If any of you fellow mac users want to try running Chrome OS in a VirtualBox you can follow the really straightforward instructions here:
http://gsiegman.com/2009/nov/20/google-chrome-os-running-virtualbox/
I had it up and running in minutes. Not much to look at yet, but fun if you’re into general nerdery.
Thanks @gsiegman you rock!
3 tags
Clock built out of scroll bars with JavaScript, so... →
They built this with MooTools… I’ve gotta say I’ve gotten so into jQuery that I really haven’t given MooTools a chance. I probably should, I’ve heard it’s a bit more advanced and very powerful.
2 tags
The Djangonauts thought of everything: {% for %}...
I can’t tell you how often I’ve hit a snag while building something in Django, only to find out that a solution to my problem is already part of the framework. Here’s one such example:
I’m passing a list of “Program” objects to the template and need to loop through them in the template. In a single request I’m outputting a fairly complex html file that...
3 tags
Using Fixtures and SQLite for easy dev in Django
When I’m building out a new app I don’t want to deal with setting up databases or repeatedly entering dummy data if I make changes to my models. Django fixtures and SQLite to the rescue!
Here’s how I do it:
In my settings.py here are my relevant db settings:
# create site root variable
import os
SITE_ROOT = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
DATABASE_ENGINE =...
3 tags
RecipeBin, my new iPhone/WebApp
My wife was looking for a good way to organize her recipes, naturally I thought it would be cool to have it on the web, or her iPhone or something. I couldn’t find anything that I liked.
All the apps I saw were over-engineered and even simple tasks like adding a new recipe were unnecessarily complicated. So I figured I’d build one in my spare time. I was looking for an excuse to...
October 2009
2 posts
1 tag
“There are two great rules of life: never tell everything at once.”
– Ken Venturi
3 tags
September 2009
5 posts
4 tags
Forcing HTML5 support in IE8!
** UPDATE: this plugin works for IE6, IE7 and IE8, not just IE8 as this article suggests **
Every web-developer knows how hard IE sux. IE8 is at least somewhat standards compliant, but I’d be willing to bet that they’re going to drag their feet in implementing all the HTML5 awesomeness that makes the web even more promising than it already is.
It’s not a perfect solution, but...
“Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are...”
– Jeff Ello, read the whole awesome article here: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137708/Opinion_The_unspoken_truth_about_managing_geeks
5 tags
How to run Pandora as a menubar item and play...
I recently had a discussion with @johnderosa on Twitter about a good Pandora setup that doesn’t require keeping a browser tab open all the time. So I thought I’d whip up a quick explanation of my setup.
The key to all this is a free mac app called Fluid:
Fluid let’s you create “Site Specific Browsers”. Which creates a “desktop” application out of...
3 tags
“So many managers and businesses spend so much time completing tasks that they...”
– Smashing Magazine: Professional Team Management Tips For Creative Folks
2 tags
Luke Wroblewski on Inline Validation →
When it comes to web form design and usability testing Luke Wroblewski is the guru. This is his latest study, showing how to best do inline validation (and showing that it’s well worth the effort).
When done right it showed:
22% increase in success rates
22% decrease in errors made
31% increase in satisfaction rating
42% decrease in completion times
47% decrease in the number of eye...
August 2009
8 posts
3 tags
2 tags
Google Chrome Dev Channel Enables Bookmark Sync →
I’ve been waiting for this. Now you can sync your bookmarks from one Chrome instance to another using your Google Account. You can even view your bookmarks in a new folder that gets added to Google Docs… pretty sweet.
punypng: crushing your images even more →
If you’re hardcore about reducing image file sizes… this is sweet!
1 tag
10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites →
Great roundup by Smashing Magazine (from a few months back) summarizing many of the web design traps that corporations can fall into if they’re not careful.
4 tags
Google, On2 and open video
Google is buying On2 technologies. Why does this matter?
Open video. Period.
What do I mean? In 2004 the On2 VP6 codec was selected for use as the Flash 8 video codec. So many of the FLV files playing on the web today are compressed using On2’s technology. Since then they’ve also released another generation of codec called VP7 (they need better names). What you have to understand...
1 tag
“In tech, three days in personal effort often translates to three months of...”
– Anil Dash
2 tags
Playing around with CSS animations in WebKit
NOTE: This will only work on webkit based browsers like Safari or Chrome.
If you mouse over the blue “RSS” button below (which conveniently happens to be a link to my blog feed). You should see something cool.
a#rss_demo_button {
width: 43px;
height: 23px;
margin: 30px 200px;
font-size: 18px;
background: #6498CC;
color: white;
padding: 5px 3px;
...
2 tags
YouTube in HTML5
This has actually been online since the Google I/O conference a couple months ago, but it’s a cool demo using the <video> tag for a YouTube video. The <video> tag is an awesome part of the up-and-coming HTML5 spec.
You’ll need either Chrome, FireFox 3.5, or Safari for it to work. It won’t look much different than what you’re used to, but the cool thing is that...
July 2009
11 posts
1 tag
“Organize to win. To do anything else is a waste of your time, your talent and...”
– Seth Godin (via davidkaneda)
1 tag
“When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at...”
– Thomas Szasz
2 tags
3 tags
Your XHTML efforts are (probably) wasted
So, last night I read this blog post about starting to use the HTML 5 doctype. That got me curious, because according to them it’s perfectly fine to use the HTML 5 doctype which is gloriously simplified compared to other doctypes:
HTML 5 looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
(X)HTML 1.0 Strict looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0...
4 tags
Building a Polar Clock imitation using the canvas...
I’ve recently started playing around with some of the stuff that is available in HTML 5. It’s pretty sweet, I can’t wait until more web developers start building stuff with these new technologies. We desperately need a killer app like facebook to start using HTML 5 elements and asking users to upgrade. That would either force IE to join the ranks of modern browsers and actually...
2 tags
Find the hidden Ninja in Google Reader
There is a little easter egg in Google Reader. If you use your keyboard to enter the “Konami” code (that’s right, think Super Contra on NES) a ninja will appear. Completely useless, completely badass!
Open Google Reader
Hit the following sequence of keys on your keyboard: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A.
Revel in your coolness, however, you’ll want...