Happy Magic Fun Time

Velo, how are you?

2009-11-11T08:13:09+00:00

It’s not every week you get to launch two sites. This week it’s a damn pleasure. It’s ridiculous that I’ve worked with the craftsman that I have. The equivalent of Rain Man, but minus the savant part and the sexy sunglasses. Around the beginning of the year Kevin Tamura approached me about a site he was working on for one of his favorite hobbies. You see, Kevin likes to get dressed up in tights and go places quickly. Kevin is a cyclist, cyclist-enthusiast, and suffers from the rare disease called cyclo-enthusiasmo.

Poor Kevin, suffering from this terrible disease, approached me to help him rebuild his local/favorite bike shop’s website. When Mr. Tamura approaches you with a site he designed, a site he built from IA all the way up… you never say no. Not only is Kevin one of the best working designers around, but he approaches problems with such pragmatism, patience and enthusiasm… such fine-tuned professionalism, that he encompasses all the ideals and professional checklists that you all have been talking about.

Yet the bastard, despite his ability to deliver quickly and beautifully, doesn’t have a blog. He can’t write about all the nice things he provides for you assholes, and there is no mechanism to talk about the cool work he does.

Well I tip my hat to him

Kevin provided an infinite amount of patience. The project was gratis, because I love working with Kevin, and Kevin loves bikes (and apparently, sadomasochism: an effect of working with me) and we would finish it in spare time. Unfortunately, this also meant that sometimes Velo would get pushed aside, but we would always meet-up, discuss it and he would be understanding where necessary, and scolding where appropriate… but always patient and willing to help. We approached it as a team, and Kevin can be the leader or the workhorse: switching roles like that weird formation meant to keep the peloton’s pace that some teams do… or something.

Kevin had a vision, and Velo is 1300% better than any bike shop’s out there. It’s usable, its interesting and it’s beautiful.

What I did

Here’s what I did:

Javascript, including a custom little lightbox slideshow
Implementation in ExpressionEngine
Copious amounts of drinking (editor’s note: may be unrelated to site)

Here’s what Kevin did:

Everything else, from IA to design to CSS, to some EE coding and probably some cycling in-between

If that doesn’t convince you that you need to hire Blue Flavor if only for the $%()#@)( privelage to work with Kevin then I don’t know what will.

I don’t know crap about bikes…

...but I’m very, very, very proud to finally launch Velo.

Obligatory Why I Haven’t Blogged Post Blog Thing

2009-11-10T07:03:23+00:00

I knew that when I wrote this article, I would be sealing my own hypocritical coffin, filled with a lot of foot in my mouth (it was an awkward death, but the memorial was nice). You can’t write a stupid article like that without having to contradict it immediately. It’s a part of being human. It also, however, leads me to one of the great blog traditions: the “apologetic why I haven’t blogged” post.

Yes! I know! It’s exciting. All 13 of you left subscribing are probably robots or deeply disturbed by my lack of superfluous euphemisms and overly-extended (beaten, crippled) metaphors.

So let’s see if I were to follow form I would do one of the following:

Explain that I was busy or overwhelmed with something work-like
Explain that I was busy with something tragic
Explain my federal offense
Not acknowledging I haven’t blogged

So, for your pleasure (and general love of posts like these) allow me to do all of them!

Man I was overwhelmed…by wolves

Yep. To my fellow wolf-survivors out there, let me extend my deepest thanks to you for your attendance at meetings. Sure, we joke that our cadre of victims is a “pack”, and that the first step to recovery is abandoning that mentality, but I love each and every one of you. 30 days wolf-attack-free, brothers & sisters… 30 days. We really worked hard to get here.

Golly, I was sad, cause I lost my long-time love interest in a warehouse fire^*

I’ve been so sad lately. You see, I was doing my normal thing, trying to help people and I was given a choice. In one place was a good friend of mine, also a do-gooder, whose life was threatened. In another place, my dearest of long-time friends, who I’ve known since childhood. I only had so much time and I had to make a choice. You’ve been there, I’m sure! Since I have no legal authority, I chose the one closest to me. The choice was a trick, and as I arrived at what I believed to be my long-time love interest’s abandoned warehouse, I found my friend. Great as he is, it wasn’t him I was trying to save. Then I hear the other explosion and well… could you blog after that? I know now I’m not the blogger you want, but the blogger this internet needs.

I don’t know if driving drunk while smoking peyote, shooting a desert eagle at plants flying by, while crying to REO Speedwagon and harvesting organs for a grand is a federal offense…

...but the officer seemed to think so, so here I am: 30 days later.

I’ve blogged.

I’ve blogged this whole time.

Awesome!

Thanks to those of you still on board. There won’t be 2 posts a week, but I promise good stuff and projects and bubble-gum in the future. It will all be schlock though! Mmm… delicious schlock. Did you see my new project which I probably invalidated with this post?

Talk to you soon.

xoxo,
Kenny

^* With apologies to blythe, my long-time real-life love interest, who is still alive and tragically for her, has stuck with me.

Move The Web Forward

2009-11-10T07:01:37+00:00

Our industry, seemingly, has been at a stand-still for some time. While we’ve waited for Internet Explorer to adopt CSS 2.1 (which they’ve done so no complaining), there hasn’t been a lot of movement. At least, visibly.

The truth of course, is a far more complex shadier thing which you wouldn’t bring home to Mom. The truth is that there are tons of cool, crazy things being developed or thought of by people all the time. A lot of these see the light of day. They become jQuery or Google Wave or Skylab. Things that grab you by the balls (or respective genetic equivalent) and act like a hallucinogen, sending your brain down a visionary path.

With so much information out there, it’s hard to keep tabs on whom is building what, or what could move us forward or change how we do things. Some of these attempts will fail (except mine, of course), but that doesn’t mean they’re not founded on good ideas. Like the Velvet Underground inspired 1,000 bands, a piece of well-written ideas or tools can move mountains.

But where do the ideas go

On the internet, I’m fairly certain you can figure out how best to give your Gerbil a proper funeral, or how to kill a swarm of bees (the true army of darkness in my opinion). But what about things that are being moved on, thought of or developed actively. As much as I appreciate Zeldman and his cadre of internet darlings, there’s not much practicality in a big form letter. Having Zeldman says he supports HTML5 is great, but you don’t learn from it, you don’t dream. Move the web forward is a site about visions and tools.

I wanted to chronicle the ideas that light asses on fire, a timeline of the great things that are already here or being envisioned. Practical ideas that aren’t far off in the future.

Mark Pilgrim’s Dive into HTML5 is probably the best example. It’s a technology that is coming to fruition but there are still parts of it hangin’ with Tumnus in Narnia. On the other hand, Anil Dash’s The Pushbutton Web is on the opposite of the spectrum. It’s a pipe dream in many cases, with some of the features plausible now: but well though-out. When something is this well thought-out it can inspire those to actually make it. It may fail, it may be a horrible prediction, but its enough to make me think its trying to move us somewhere.

It’s not about who is who right now.

Some of these are just projects, and there are only four links. It’s not about specific people, it’s about ideas and tools. If you have something well-written that you feel will inspire others, please self-promote the crap out of yourself. I don’t mind if you tell me how great you are and why your idea is ingenious: I just want to see if it moves us to somewhere.

Initially, Move the Web Forward was going to be a manifesto written by me to the internet. It was the brainchild of a ridiculous ego that could crush Godzilla (and Godzooky) and a penchant for late night dreaming/drinking. I contacted Matt Brown, a very talented designer, whom I call a friend (and I pay him good money for that privilege). I wanted to capture my text, my manifesto, my poorly-written diatribe. This was about a year ago. The text was not a good idea. The text was a complaint. He carried it with gusto like a champ with a beautiful design. Then, a year later, my idea had changed. I realized I’m not there yet mentally. I needed, though, to catalog those who were there and were changing things.

On the subject of Matt Brown: hire him or send him money. His client care and talent is like a massage, and your back muscles will be more relaxed. He is not a sexual euphemism though, so don’t read too into that.

I’m trying to find our Martin Luthers: King or German.

When Jesse James Garett wrote about Ajax he noticed what was happening, and wrapped it in a beautiful package. He was like a digital Martin Luther nailing his shit to the wall and saying “this is how we do it”. I’m looking for this. I’m looking for you bastards creating or write something that says “No… this way”. So yes, it won’t be updated frequently and no, I don’t care.

I’m looking for Martin Luthers. I’m looking for the dreamers, visionaries, young-upstarts, assholes and motherfuckers who want to shift the norm.

So please, subscribe, submit and enjoy Move the Web Forward. Help me catalog this. I hope I’ll get better and smarter from it. I hope you do too.

Unrelated: send money.

Well, this was productive.

2009-09-29T07:01:57+00:00

Then, in that moment, unsure of what to do next I asked the panel.

David Allen tells me that the next action is an explicitly well-written single-line of text instructing me what I need to do in order to complete a project given the context, energy and time. I need to think of everything I’ve ever thought of needing to do and write it down. All of it. Now.

Stephen Covey interjects and says that the focus must be on what the big projects is. What will you be accomplishing next to move forward with your goals in life? What is the big rock that you need to move in order to see the path clearer to the end of the tunnel? What are you here to be?

Merlin Mann tells me to stop considering what David Allen and Stephen Covey say and just focus on doing. Creating. He then eats the last donut without asking anyone if they wanted it. Dick.

Twyla Tharp boldly exclaims to her progeny, “Merlin, first he must create a routine.” What that routine is is up to me, she mentions. However, routine is one of the first battles you must undertake.

Steven Pressfield smiles in agreement and mentions to me, on the side, coyly and briefly: “Resistance is the enemy, and you must fight it.” He pulls out a knife, looks in my eyes and then looks at David Allen grinning.

Neil Fiore laughs at Steven’s crazy antics. It’s all in the science… why don’t you schedule your free time and work around it? Keep track of everything you do for a week. For example, what have you done today? “I forget,” I respond. He grunts and takes a sip of his tea.

Leo Babuta, who has been waiting peacefully in silence, suggests combining many of those ideas, but simplify, simplify.

Thoreau, if he were here, would probably be a little peeved at Leo but he’s back in the nature he so loved and is certainly, chemically… less complex.

Gina Trapani slips in through the backyard door and says I should hack-a-way at it. She gives me 42 ways I can take care of the little things faster, cheaper and more efficient. She then asks me what I do to be more efficient.

Steve Pavlina was floating above us, and could not be reached for questioning.

After listening to their remarks I felt a calm se…oh shit! It’s midnight!

52 Hot Tips for Making the Internet Better

2009-09-16T07:11:37+00:00

To kick off Happy Magic Fun Time: San Francisco Omega Juggernaut Series, I’d like to write a note to the internet. Please, imbibe my fellow internet, and let the glow of this post and your bright shining LCD fill you with warmth of kindness and sparkles.

Consequence.

I’ve been dealing with the consequences of doing and saying things on the internet. More of a thoughtful Thoreau-ian cabin-puzzle than a situation. What is, for a moment, a fleeting thought or emotion is distributed to hundreds of people (and for the more popular kids thousands to hundreds of thousands). Empty promises, for example, ones that among friends could be rectified with an apology, become a character mark in the masses. Two demerits.

This blog post, as an example, will remain available for some time. The site may change its stripes, even the Google link will take some time to update, but it will find its way into the great internet cache that is slowly building and building. Is this the march of progress or the timeline of poor decision-making?

Collective Memory

As a programmer, the benefits of collective memory, of a giant inbox, are unbelievably helpful. If I forget how to do something, or need a particular function to work a specific way, chances are that it’s readily available via a well thought-out google search term. Collective memory, however, can be really quite painful.

Take for example the Star Wars kid. You may remember him as he’s been parodied and trotted about, even satirized in Arrested Development. When that video was released, he was still a kid. He was damaged by it. It was as if millions of people had ganged up to bully him. Can you imagine millions of people bullying you? I had enough trouble with man-boobs (moobs or ‘mad moobage’) in grade school and that was just 5 minutes, once. He is now a cultural icon, something that may or may not be forgotten in time. How do you apply for a job Star Wars Kid?

Perception

Perception affects collective memory even more. It’s the problem of having a piece of text sitting on a page. In many cases, if you’ve met an internet person who is speaking, you have a certain perception of them. This may be completely different if you just read them online. Let’s say, for example, the writer had a rough day at a conference and you tried to approach them. The interaction did not go as desired and you are left sitting there with a writer’s urine on your pants. You are permanently viewing the author through this lens and there is no means for the writer to shift or tilt it.

Since social networks, the blogosphere, the tilt-a-whirl, the socio-mecha-tron-5000 and the internet 3.0 all rely on a very personal interaction, perception becomes one of the big problems. Once someone has a lens through which to view you, it becomes difficult due to lack of personal interaction to remove that lens.

I tend to run into a lot of issues with communication and sarcasm. From a very young age, sarcasm became my primary form of communication (I know, you think… a sarcastic developer? Whaaa?). As a general rule the more sarcastic I am with you, the more I like you. This is extremely difficult to translate online and its helped me hit it off with people and has pissed off others. This creates a big problem as I genuinely like and appreciate someone’s thoughts and attention, and they have no idea. They just think I’m an ass-clown with moobs.

I got caught.

Yesterday, I made a little tweet about 37 Signals. Not only was it unfair to the company, but it was completely unfounded (and ironically, the blog post I was mocking was about poor communication). I didn’t really read the article too in-depth, but instead I read it through the lens I’ve perceived the Signal vs. Noise blog with. I was rightly called out on it by Tom Carmony and when I get called out and it’s a good response, I listen. He was right, I was just stirring up shit for no reason. It was fruitless, and ultimately, served no purpose.

Sometimes you forget that the world, the internet, is made out of people. I don’t think everyone is inherently good, nor do I think that the glass is always half-empty. I do believe strongly that given a large mass of people, the people wanting to fill their glass to half-full will outnumber the people satisfied with half empty. With the internet they’re now going to remember every time someone contradicts their previous opinion on the glass. That’s deadly.

When people speak boldly and declaratively, it hits people. It’s rare, refreshing and interesting but it’s not always awesome.

Cooler Memory

I think there are great personal ways we can utilize collective memory, which include:

Contributing to an open source project.
Solving someone’s problem on a forum.
Writing a blog post demonstrating a technique.
Finding, linking to and tweeting other’s great work.
Apologize.
Never tape anything… ever.
Learn to just shut up.

Post.

Does this mean we shouldn’t call each other out on their bullshit? Absolutely not. I try to call everyone out on their bullshit everyday, and it’s all bullshit. Have you read your tweets? None of them are even as remotely humorous, entertaining or informative as mine.

I’m 99% certain that I’m not spewing fire to light the asses of the internet revolutionary. I believe people can, with words, create events such as the Magna Carta, the Constitution, the rise of Lenin and Family Guys return. Unless you’re sure or at least gambling that there will be a positive result or something really worth fighting for, you’re just being a giant cunt-bag/cock-master/douche-poll/cracker-ass-cracker/(really-offensive-word)-(noun)/Jon Gruber¹. Always be cautious and aware of the stakes before you jump in.

Ultimately, there’s only one rule that is quite literally ‘something my mother taught me’.

Always take the high road. Always.

It’s been a while kiddies. Back to our regularly scheduled program at our new offices in the land of the golden bridge.

1. See, even there: totally unsubstantiated. I <3 THE GRUBE!

How do you say goodbye to a city you have sexual tension with?

2009-08-13T09:08:32+00:00

If you were to leave a city you’ve lived in for 8 years, how would say goodbye? 8 years isn’t 30 years, so it’s not like your leaving an imprint. 8 years isn’t 1 year either, so it’s not like your a dirty transient who thinks he knows his way around but can only name drop the cool kids area.

A better question is, why do you say goodbye on the internet?

I’ve been watching this American Life, on an Xbox, streaming it from Netflix, fulfilling the circle of a fat white American watching TV about a country he could experience. Watching This American Life (or listening) has a profound effect on you. You initially think only one thing.

These people are fucking boring.

That’s probably what I would say if I met most of them. I’d talk to them, dismiss them and think “man what a normal person”.

It also has another, almost opposite effect when you reach the end of the show.

These people are amazing.

Ira Glass has a way of illuminating the everyday, mundane and possibly local-newspaper-worthy elements of everyone’s lives; expanding upon their dim luminescence. This glow then slowly creeps its way into your skull lighting up the dying, pathetic neurons you’ve destroyed already with too much exposure to the LCD light reflected in your glasses currently.

It makes you want to do what everyone does when they feel a small, but significant turning point in their life. It makes you want to blog.

As when a small child vomits, any rather insignificant move you make becomes an attention-getting cry and near apocalypse-level attention with the magic of the blog. I am no better man than this.

So, here I am, Ira and blog. To tell you how to say goodbye. Hear my cry.

First, you must start with a story of how you got here.

I arrived in Seattle to attend the University of Washington. This took me around the bend from being a complete asshole and humiliating myself while drunkly stumbling around Haggett Halls to idly playing Halo on Xbox while drinking a Natty Ice.

I came to get a degree in computer science. I took my first introductory computer science course and hated it. Not only was it pedantic, but insulting and my apathy towards higher learning began sprouting.

There were the girls, the cigarettes, the cheap booze we could score from some 21 year old kid going into 7-11 to get himself a Slurpee: they all factored in. Then slowly, after I had arrived here I knew this was home. Never before had I experienced such freedom with a city or a place and they became closely tied together to this giant sparkle of god-damn silver in the Northwest.

Second, you must explain some tragedy in your life.

It was only when I had dropped out of school, destroyed by lack of motivation, that I began to feel the weight, both literal and figurative, of my decisions. There was no money management, there was no cooking, very little cleaning. I descended into a pit that only an idiot at 20 could delve into with questions that, as they always do, seem so minute.

I became something unlike what I am or what I was and it was unlikable.

Third, you must explain your rise from the ashes and why you’re moving.

But you, you emerald colony of kings, you came to my rescue after humbling me to a very bitter corner and opened my eyes to the greatness that was your city. I soon returned to you re-energized, finishing my degree, finding the girl of my dreams and finally claimed happiness. Now I’m a complete asshole, humiliating myself while drunkenly stumbling around my own halls, then playing Halo 3 on Xbox and drinking Dogfish Head.

I’m leaving because I can.

Finally, finish it off.

Seattle. You are mocked by many for your weather: most of whom are laughed at by the locals for not realizing the gem that you are.

You brought me great friends, many problems, better solutions and the love and support of great people.

You taught me to be self-aware… then after that awareness had crushed a bit o’ me, you taught me how to deal with it.

Seattle, you’re just a collection of steel and lakes. I could care less about your buildings, but I fell in love with the things you carried.

Seattle, I love you. Goodbye.

...I’m going to live with your gay cousin down south.

Better III: Reading and Educating Yo’self

2009-08-11T17:21:43+00:00

I want to write about reading.

I’m writing this series called better as a memo to myself, a sort of compilation of reminders. Right now, I have 44 RSS subscribers. 44 isn’t a large number compared to the big boys. I know I don’t have 44 close friends and I certainly don’t work with 44 people. I may have 44 enemies, but clearly, they’re still plotting against me as I’m very much alive (or for the existentialists, am I really living?)

You are 44 people whose tastes, skills and mindsets are completely anonymous to me. A venerable black hole of guessing what you do. So, to the 44 of you who receive this update, I thank you. The fact that you are not just a subscriber of one, or my mother, is astonishing and awesome. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of you was my mother.

My priorities have as a result, shifted, to make sure we all get something: crappy writing in tow.

The inquiry

I’m obsessed with reading. Reading is almost a crutch for me when I don’t understand something. Many people now turn to Google to find their information but I always find my fingers typing a-m-a-z-o… and so forth.

I studied literature in college. Your first thought should be: really? followed closely by: why? If these are not your thoughts, then you clearly aren’t reading the fucking manual. They were certainly in the literature major pamphlet that was bandied about our faces.

There’s really one skill I picked up from it: speed reading. I’m able to digest or read things at a highly accelerated rate with a good absorption to word ratio… and then hyperbole. I do change my style a bit for the web, as I don’t abuse the metaphors to personally spite Nathaniel Hawthorne.

When I read, I try to satiate curiosity. To solve a problem my mind has made more complex. I read to educate and to become better. I started this web-stuff by reading: blogs, books, etc. and I was curious how people I admire and respect, in their respective fields, learned to create such excellent material.

The Task At Hand

So like any good blogger, I relied on other people to do my work for me. I sent out an email to people I respect in various positions and asked them a simple question: What books or blogs have you read, in your current speciality, that have made you better at what you do?

Many people gave me great lists. Their responses, still drizzling in, are fantastic and wonderful. Some of which are quite surprising.

The categories of job are in no specific order. Granted, I am funneling people who have numerous skillsets into what they are most-known for. These are all Amazon referral links, following directly inline with “my give me your money for other people’s work policy”... patent pending.

Javascript

Karl Swedberg

Karl Swedberg who wrote the highly regarded book Learning jQuery 1.3, runs the fantastic site, learningjquery.com and works on the great (surprise!) jQuery team shares his list. Karl was kind enough to give commentary on specific books.

Books:

DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model by Jeremy Keith—Great for beginners. I read this when I just started learning JavaScirpt, and it helped a great deal.
JavaScript: The Good Parts—Mercifully brief and relentlessly opinionated. This book made me feel better about not using (and, admittedly, not quite grasping) some of the more arcane JavaScript patterns.
Object-Oriented JavaScript: Create scalable, reusable high-quality JavaScript applications and libraries by Stoyan Stefanov—One of the best tech books I’ve read. The clear explanations of complex topics really improved my understanding of the language.
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan—I tried to read this one cover to cover, but failed miserably. Still, it has been very handy as a reference. It’s the kitchen sink of JavaScript books (in a good way).
Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl—While there is nothing in this book (that I can remember, at least) about JavaScript in particular, it has helped me immensely with regular expressions in any language.

Blogs and Websites:

Quirksmode—I hit this site quite a bit. It has lots of excellent info, especially on cross-browser inconsistencies.
Ajaxian—This blog helps me keep up on what’s happening in the wonderful world of JavaScript
NCZOnline—I haven’t read Nicholas Zakas’s book, but his blog posts always have great info.
Mozilla Developer Center (MDC)—nice quick reference, often with useful examples
Core JavaScript 1.5 Reference
Gecko DOM Reference
MSDN HTML and DHTML Reference—helpful when things mysteriously break in IE.

Jonathan Snook

Jonathan Snook is one of the best technical bloggers out there. He veers on his mighty Canadian jet plane from front-end to back-end, philosophy to implementation, like Scott Summers in the Blackbird. He has been a staple of all my various RSS configurations, and continues to be one of the finest producers of information for modern web development. Here’s what he had to say:

Hrm, over the years, it’s been a little bit here and a little bit there. I can’t think of many resources that have been consistent or where I always make a point to check back. The exceptions to that would be PPK, Douglas Crockford and then references like the MSDN reference and the Mozilla DOM reference. One more I’ll add to that is Steve Levithan which is mostly regexp specific.

A Brief Interlude

Both Karl and Snook show a great dichotomy that appears again and again throughout this article. It’s a difference between learning techniques. Two very talented people of very different backgrounds learn by doing, or by reading. I’ve heard this called the “Why” and “How” people. The “Why” people need to read and wish to comprehend the system before they enter it. The “How” people just dig in and learn from the ground-up.

Neither approach seems particularly better but propose a rather subjective question you must ask yourself: Are you a “Why” person? or are you a “How” person?

...or are you a CYLON!?!

The madness continues.

Design

Ryan Sims, who I work with at Virb and who is a clever and beautiful designer shares that he didn’t really read many books to learn about design or become better at it.

Here are the blogs that Ryan subscribed to where he “learned the most about design in my early days”:

linkdup

Kevin Tamura, who I worked with at Blue Flavor, has always had an aesthetic that I find pleasing and functional. He is the most professional of designers, subtracting himself from the equation and solving a problem. His thoughts on design, while not vocalized on the Internet, but to me personally have influenced how I look at the final product.

For blogs Kevin writes:

As blogs go I find they are more transitory, they come and go over time many that I read over the years have gone dark with little new being written.

This is one of my favorite contrasts. Both Ryan and Kevin show this amazing attention to detail. I know this as I’ve had the pleasure and have the pleasure of working with them both. Kevin has formal collegiate training, Ryan does not.

They both have an attention to detail which is not only pleasing, but really hard to discover at first. I’ve milled through both their PSDs and discovered little lines that require a 300% zoom but add so much depth. Yet, here they are with completely different lists. Fascinating.

UX and UI

Who better to ask for UX and IA information then my illustrious ex-boss Mr. Nick Finck. Nick wrote an entry on his phenomenal, frequently update blog in regards to his top books, here is a sampling of those:

To see the remaining list please visit Nick’s post. These are Nick’s Amazon Affiliate links by the way, because he hordes his large piles of money in his ivory tower.

Programming

Mark Huot, the godfather of the EE extension, has the distinction of being a great developer and probably one of the nicest people you could ever meet. While he’s not as public facing as a lot of the Happy Cog crew, he’s certainly had an impact on the quality of their output. When I asked him about building and programming, he gave me a great response:

Unfortunately, I’ve never really been one for (technical) books or blogs, always preferring to dig into the source code and figure it out on my own. I guess the one resource I keep returning to would be the EE Forums. Outside of those, when I first got into EE, the community wasn’t as broad and the blogs/books just didn’t exist.

That said, I do subscribe to the NetTuts+ feed and occasionally find a good article about something I either didn’t know or wasn’t thinkingabout.

I then pressed Mark on:

Me: You’ve never read a single book or blog to learn PHP? Javascript? or Python?

To be honest, no. When I was into flash I read a lot of the forums at actionscript.org and EE I read the EE forums, but beyond that, I’ve always been a learn by doing kind of guy.

Kevin Thompson

Kevin is a stellar dev, who has helped me through some rough CodeIgniter situations (like the time I got really drunk and started hitting on CodeIgniter).

I’ve never been much of a book kind of guy. That’s changing now, but the majority of my programming knowledge over the past few years has come from blogs such as http://ajaxian.com, http://smashingmagazine.com, http://css-tricks.com, http://24ways.org, and http://alistapart.com.

He continues: “The blogs of various individuals have also been an amazing resource”:

One more resource I find extremely valuable that’s neither book nor blog is .Net magazine (or Practical Web Design if you’re buying it off the shelf in the states).

Writing

Tiffani Jones

When it comes to writing, there is one person I turn to. Please don’t take this as her endorsing my writing: she’s not affiliated with these terrible strings of abused commas, depressed apostrophes and misused pluralizationsss. In a land where content is King, she ransacks the castle and establishes a stronger, better Queen-based monarchy…perhaps even with Freddie Mercury in tow.

The gifted, talented, pseudo-hippy I call Tiffani Jones

Books in general

George Saunders. Seriously can’t say enough about his writing.
Fiction. Always gives me good ideas for word usage, tone, etc.
Philosophy. Stimulates my brain, reminds me how NOT to write

Specific books

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse, by Ben Yagoda
On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, William Zinnser
The Elements of Style: 50th Anniversary Edition, Strunk and White
The Copywriter’s Handbook, Third Edition: A Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Copy That Sells, Robert Bly

Blogs

The moral of the story

After reading and going over everyone’s lists (and adding Amazon links… cha-ching!) I made a miscalculation. I assumed that everyone I thought was excellent in their field, read.

Not only was I wrong, but I found myself getting one email with great book recommendations and another with great blog recommendations. What does this mean then? Do you not get better by reading?

Clearly, if you spend all of your time reading and not producing, it was all for naught. It’s like a cheap parlor trick or 10PM nudity on NBC: just for show, but not a good one.

If you spend your time doing, and since I have no context for learning this way, I question the results. How are you assured that the material your learning with is going to be a good way to do it? What if you learn by downloading a horrible framework or Wordpress? I am baffled, befuddled, bemused, bastards.

Answer this for me, ye mighty commenters and 44, and let’s make each other better. *Cue Reading Rainbow Theme*

The force be with you… always.

Good Blog! Now stay!

2009-08-05T10:21:38+00:00

This blog rated B for Brown!

Yesterday, I wrote about the tragic losses our community has suffered. Like an Oscar’s death montage, displaying all our recently not-blogging bloggers on display, we must move forward to the awards (and discuss who got the most applause… I didn’t know they were gone etc.). Now, I’d like to dissect one of the good ones, one who’s fighting for the right team.

His name is Matt Brown of Things That are Brown. He is a friend of mine. That’s full disclosure assholes. But just because he’s a friend of mine doesn’t mean I have to like his blog, let alone his writing style. If T.S. Eliot rejected Animal Farm then I think I can tell a friend he should stop writing and stick to designing. The stakes are much lower, and the repercussions much smaller. Granted, I think April is a rather kind month.

So, as all good friends must, I’m going to dissect his writing style publicly and explain why this type of writing is still necessary and why we’re at a loss for the people who have stopped. I’m going to use this post.

Style.

While I abuse hyperbole as if it were my mistress in Brazil, Matt has a very short concise style. Most of his posts aren’t long, but it’s not a tumblelog. In his scriblings, Matt usually offers the following.

An engaging personal insight
A practical analysis
A strong, well-founded opinion.

An engagement, like none other.

The everyman approach is what blogging is all about. Providing an enriching personal experience that we all can learn from or relate to is important. After all, it’s your blog and it’s important that you’re on it.

Matt pulls these kinds of personal insights or revelations like petals from a flower: “I don’t have a formal background in type, but I do know a good typeface when I see one.”, I’ve been itching to really experiment and push myself by ‘going big’ with type and using it as a graphic callout.”

It’s enjoyable to see people write like this because it’s so personal. Now Matt doesn’t disclose a lot of really personal information, like his addiction to huffing African elephant ivory grounded into a powder, but he does give us enough to understand him.

Bruce Springsteen does it. Yeah, he wrote “Born to Run”, but he also wrote this crap. So why the hell can’t you do it?

Practical, by any other name, wouldn’t be practical

One of the many insights Matt offers is practical advice. Practical advice can range from a code snippet to an idea that has application and contextual understanding behind it. It can range from a CSS Technique to a philosophical approach for handling a type of client or firm. Keith Robinson was awesome at this. May his blog RIP.

Matt’s posts usually offer this in spades, and here are a couple of his gems: “This draws a lot of focus to the copy, which is exactly what I wanted to do with Tiff’s wonderful callouts and headings.”, “Many of the conventions and patterns we use on a ‘standard’ website don’t apply to a single page site. Navigation, plopped into the site header? Well, you really don’t need much navigation on a single page site”

A strong, well-founded opinion.

Blogs, or the craft of web development and design blogging, are primarily about weighted opinions. They help clarify the subjectivity in the subject matter or point us in our own direction. There are very technical blogs, which use code to express a point, or very design-y type blogs, which use a jpg to explain design.

The opinion of a blogger, especially in our industry, is weighted by the work he has done, the material he has written. In Matt’s case, he has a very strong portfolio, so you sense that he has authority on what he speaks. They’re weighted opinions, but they’re not the truth, for many of these topics, code, design and the like, are subjective. If you don’t think code is subjective, by the way, you’re an idiot and your code looks like crap.

That being said, there is an authoritative voice which great bloggers have, where you want to be able to create like they do.

Take for example, these gems from Matt, which are founded in experience and personal belief but are sound reasoning: “You may find that imposing a little constraint makes you a more disciplined designer.”, “When you get your hands on a good font, you can let it do the talking.”, and “One thing that great web app companies do well is humanize their interface copy.”

Magic.

This.

This is what I’m looking for. Where are my Matt Browns?

Friends, Romans, Countrymen: Show me your links. Shamelessly self-promote. This is the forum. This, our darkest hour.

WTF.

2009-08-04T07:01:10+00:00

This entry is rated C for complaints… file here.

Where have you gone bloggers? It was 2003 when I first found you, when I suckled from your teet of knowledge and learned so much. I feel fairly solid now. I feel like I’ve come a long way. But now, I look to you and find nothing. In fact I find something much worse: apathy.

I bought your books. I saw you at conferences. Hell, I even follow you on your Twitter account and hope one day you’ll follow me so that we may direct message and share many a laugh. Oh, how we’ll laugh.

But you stopped writing. I looked at my feed and saw that you haven’t updated. I shot you an email to ask what’s up, but no response. “Well,” I thought, “he must be busy with all his internet money.” Several months later I notice your feed has gone grey in NetNewsWire. I shoot you an @reply on Twitter. “Sorry, been busy,” you say. Months pass, and my RSS reader runs bare. You’re fed, and my hand hurts.

Tweet.

I’ve seen you on Twitter a lot. More than most people, more-so then any hyper-busy person would be. You send jokes to your friends, talk about sitting on your porch drinking lemonade. I know not the lemonade-stained porch, for I have not the knowledge to attain such a position. 140 x 15 is 2100 characters, at least enough to post a blog and say “Hi!”

“Tweet,” I laugh, “tweet tweet tweet”. I stare at an open Textmate window, not knowing what to do next, what to type. I type the following:


<p style="font-face: Comic Sans">begin.</p>

I’m not even sure what to put before the html element. I’m not even sure how to embed flash movies on my site correctly anymore. I can read about Typography and @font-face, but still, find only conjecture. There’s a crazy new world of version 5s, 6 browsers and 300 JavaScript libraries and you are nowhere to be found.

I turn to A List Apart, hoping to find some solid tips on good modern practice for 3 freshly released browsers. Instead I find an article on XML and the Screenplay format. I turn to Digital Web. Gone…gone. I end up at Nettuts. Nettuts!

I look to bloggers I’ve always read and enjoyed for advice: Jeff Croft, Keith Robinson, Dan Cederholm, Dave Shea, Dan Rubin, Eric Meyer, Molly, Airbag, Aaron Gustafson, The Big Noob, Peter-Paul Koch, Mark Bixby, Merlin Mann and find one horse towns at best or grave sites at worst. They aren’t near half the sites they used to be. They are just pits to dump lifestreams into.

The Guru

I find comfort in the arms of Zeldman, the guru, still blogging after all these years, but it is mildly instructive at its best, mostly enjoyable as another form of writing.

I see a lot of links on the blogger’s sites to other people’s works. The comments written about these external links are fulfilling, a taste of what you used to write. I follow the links. There is hope, a glimmer, of those who blog and blog well. Who teach now online for free, instead of speak at a $900-per-ticket conference. They are new, fresh-faced, and in many ways much better than their predecessors. There are lots of them. They look hungry. Hungry enough to make you irrelevant. Hungry enough to make you have to pay to see them in 10 years. Hungry enough to make you think “Where’d everyone go?”

Then, blogger, you question my sad sense of entitlement. “I do what I want, it’s my site”. That’s fair. “It is your site. But at a certain time, I learned so much from it. You gave it up and I’m holding out hope. But I didn’t buy your book because of your Flickr stream… and this, web design or development blogger… I miss this.”

Drat.

They say that people don’t read anymore.

Well I read.

So, WTF?

Better: Better with Textmate Bundles & Snippets

2009-07-24T07:15:13+00:00

This entry rated T for TRON! TRON IS COMING BACK!

Many, and most of this information is gleamed from the wondrisplenderous book TextMate which you should all buy immediately if Textmate is your editor. If you’re illiterate, then we’ve found ourselves at a supposition, because you are a liar and a crook. There’s nothing you can do about it you ugly bastard because you can’t read this.

Begin Bundle

Building your own Textmate bundle is quite easy to do. Here are the steps for creating one.

Open Textmate
Type “CTRL + ALT + CMD + B”
Click on the plus arrow in the bottom right corner and select “New Bundle”
Name your bundle whatever you like (I do suggest not using available bundles). For example, I named mine Lightning

To make sure that your bundle is flexible in its development, might I suggest the following:

Open Terminal
Type “cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/TextMate/Bundles/(YourBundleName.tmbundle)/”
Type “git init”
-OR- import that stuff into Subversion
-OR- make a repo in Mercurial

If you don’t know how to do the last 3 steps, or even what they mean, I’ve provided this handy link and a guided tour by my best friend mister sarcasm: here.

For my mad, mad purposes we will focus on one are today…

Snippets

Snippets are simply code snippets that take care of repetitive typing such as function names, HTML head tags, etc. They can either be keyboard shortcut based or “tab-activated”: if I type something like:


function

and hit tab, Textmate will kindly, graciously even, add my function snippet to the current document.

Snippets can be scope or context sensitive: if you’re typing in Python for example and you type “function” you won’t see a PHP function show up. When you add your first snippet, there is a text input at the bottom which asks for a scope selector. It’s good to set a scope for your own personal bundle, because you can have certain keywords like func + tab build a function in various languages to your preference: multiple snippets under one tab-activated word of magical-ness. To view your current scope in any language, type “CTRL + SHIFT + P”. The main scope you’re looking for is source.php or source.python, source.ruby, plain.text etc.

Mommy, Mommy! I made a snippet!

To create your first snippet, do the following:

Make sure your freshly minted bundle is selected
Click on the plus arrow in the lower left corner and select “New Snippet”.
Name your snippet something understandable, for example “PHP Function Comment.” That’s pretty damn clear.
You should see a window with a lot of helpful information in it. For our purposes, DESTROY that information
Where it says scope selector type “source.php” since we’re writing for php (source.python if you’re in Python, source.ruby in Ruby, etc.).

Here is how our first snippet will look:

/**======================================
 * ${1:undocumented function}
 *
 * @param $2
 * @return ${3:void}
 *======================================*/ 

It’s a PHP function comment! Keep your pants on, please.

The “$ + number” combination (e.g. $1) are called tab-triggers. This means that based on the order of the numbers, hitting tab will jump you to that area. You can then quickly fill out text, hit tab, and jump to the next area. How mind-blowing is that you assholes! This snippet will start the cursor in the top level function description with a default text of “undocumented function”.

The ${1:undocumented function} is a default placeholder. When you use the snippet it will appear as “undocumented function” without the brackets, and be selected. You can then type your funky function description and hit tab which will move you the @param area. If you just hit tab it will remain an “undocumented function”. This would make myself, and the small, hungry impoverished starving children of the world, very sad.

So the notation for making a default value appear is ${number: default value}, while the notation for a blank tab space is $number (e.g. $2).

But wait, there’s more…

You can have duplicate numbers, and when you type into one area (the first time the number appears in the list) it will duplicate itself.

For example:

/*
@class  ${1:Class Name}
*/

public function $1 {

} 

Try creating a new snippet, add a tab trigger word (I used “test”), don’t set a scope. Go into your editing window and activate your snippet (again by typing test and hitting tab) then begin typing. Watch as terrorists begin to take over your computers input duplicating the text. If that’s un-American then you can ship me to the caribbean.

But wait, there’s more…

Want to interchange between a string or a variable for a parameter snippet? Try this:


private ${3:"${4:value}"}

Activate your tab trigger and find everything in the quotes AND the quotes selected. Now you can just type a variable name. What if it’s just a string? Hit tab again and you’re automatically between quotes.

But wait, there’s more…¹

Regular Expressions. Of which I need to spend time learning. Damn it. Essentially though you can run entered snippet data through a regex and reformat it. It all looks very cool on paper. The book talks about it and it looks really cool. I’m serious! If you look in the book you’re all like… “Woah” ...and… “Dude!”.

But wait, there’s more…


`date +%m.%d.%Y`

and your snippet just ran a shell command. Sweetness.

But wait, there’s probably more…

If you don’t get the point now, then you shouldn’t move forward. You should just quit, or consider reading some Plath and doing some cookin’.

See that wasn’t hard, you just didn’t try.

You can build complex snippet quite easily. To learn more about snippets, go here: http://manual.macromates.com/en/snippets

In our next Better series, sometimes in the ambiguous future deadline, we’ll talk about commands… just as soon as I master Ruby (Ruby, Ruby Ruby soho).

May you be flabbergasted.

1. I just finished Monkey Island: Special Edition. I love that game.

Happy Magic Fun Time

Velo, how are you?

Well I tip my hat to him

What I did

I don’t know crap about bikes…

Obligatory Why I Haven’t Blogged Post Blog Thing

Man I was overwhelmed…by wolves

Golly, I was sad, cause I lost my long-time love interest in a warehouse fire*

I don’t know if driving drunk while smoking peyote, shooting a desert eagle at plants flying by, while crying to REO Speedwagon and harvesting organs for a grand is a federal offense…

I’ve blogged.

Awesome!

Move The Web Forward

But where do the ideas go

It’s not about who is who right now.

I’m trying to find our Martin Luthers: King or German.

Well, this was productive.

52 Hot Tips for Making the Internet Better

Consequence.

Collective Memory

Perception

I got caught.

Cooler Memory

Post.

How do you say goodbye to a city you have sexual tension with?

First, you must start with a story of how you got here.

Second, you must explain some tragedy in your life.

Third, you must explain your rise from the ashes and why you’re moving.

Finally, finish it off.

Better III: Reading and Educating Yo’self

The inquiry

The Task At Hand

Javascript

A Brief Interlude

Design

UX and UI

Programming

Writing

The moral of the story

Good Blog! Now stay!

Style.

An engagement, like none other.

Practical, by any other name, wouldn’t be practical

A strong, well-founded opinion.

This.

WTF.

Tweet.

The Guru

Drat.

Better: Better with Textmate Bundles & Snippets

Begin Bundle

Mommy, Mommy! I made a snippet!

But wait, there’s more…

But wait, there’s more…

But wait, there’s more…1

But wait, there’s more…

But wait, there’s probably more…

See that wasn’t hard, you just didn’t try.

Golly, I was sad, cause I lost my long-time love interest in a warehouse fire^*

But wait, there’s more…¹