February 2012
1 post
Hacking Users Brains →
Asking questions is a good start but it’s not enough. Human recall about behavior is not great. We often forget or over report behaviors that make us look good –even in anonymous surveys.
What people say they do and what they do are two different things. Questions can gather information about opinions but not behaviours.
To learn about actual behaviors, you have to go where your customers are...
January 2012
1 post
Thermostat
There are no good thermostats available out there. At least by
my standards. Nest looks cool (nest.com) but it’s expensive, scarce, and overkill.
The perfect thermostat for me (I live in Eastern Canada) would have 3 settings: Off, 15°C, and 20°C. Not sure if it’s a single dial with those 3 options, or a dial with the 2 temperatures and a discrete on/off switch on the side. My...
December 2011
1 post
devthenet/voyeur - GitHub →
November 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Prevent Chrome from closing tabs with Command-W
I’m experimenting with running Google Chrome as my default browser, full screen in Mac OS X Lion. I use a couple of different windows to separate tasks, like mail, project management and general web surfing. Getting annoyed with accidental tab and window closing (closing the last tab closes the window) I searched for an extension to prevent it, with no luck.
My hackish solution was to remap...
flexxCOACH Learning Center →
Hockey coaching info.
“You escape the madness by seeing it as a thing you do, not a thing you make....”
– The one shot world – a case for career entrepreneurship and casual experimentation | blog.thestartuptoolkit.com | Readability
October 2011
7 posts
Idea: Projected Scoreboard
Problem:
Your rink/arena/court has a small budget and an aging scoreboard. It’s going to cost upwards of $10,000 to replace it.
Solution:
A projector connected to a small-form PC running a custom Linux setup – it recovers from power failures and other issues automatically. Maybe a small UPS for short power failures.
The PC connects to your arena’s wifi (or runs it’s own...
Sinatra Recipes →
Sinatra example code.
Textmate, Rails, Bundler and vendor/bundle
I use Textmate for working on Rails projects and recently started vendoring the app’s gems into vendor/bundle. As a result Textmate got slower when searching and the Go To File command (Command-T) brought up dozens of extra files from the vendored gems.
To exclude those gems Textmate allows you to add a pattern to Folder References (Preferences > Advanced > Folder References) like...
http://ryanbigg.com/ →
5 tags
Pow web server and static templates
I run the Pow web server (http://pow.cx/) for local development of Ruby web apps. But I also like to prototype sites as static html templates early on in development. Fortunately Pow can handle this as it will serve up html (etc.) from a site’s /public directory.
So create your Pow site as usual but be sure to put the static html in a /public subdirectory, e.g.:
mkdir -p...
Generate a 'share with facebook' link that embed... →
Rails helper to create Share on Facebook link.
ryanb/letter_opener - GitHub →
Intercept sent mail in Rails development. Opens messages in new browser window with Launchy.
September 2011
5 posts
Flat, simple icons for interface design -... →
Collection of flat style icon libraries.
GBH/letmein - GitHub →
Minimalistic authentication plugin for Rails 3 apps
“You can learn much more from closely studying actual failures than from...”
– The Architecture of Open Source Applications: Graphite
Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - IE... →
Windows Virtual PC VHDs for testing websites with different Internet Explorer versions
“The easiest way to gain happiness is to want the things you already have.”
– A Guide to the Good Life, by William Irvine
August 2011
6 posts
Writing Software not Code with Cucumber →
Presentation walking through DBB with Rspec and Cucumber.
spin.js →
JS loading spinners. No images or external CSS required. Small footprint.
3 tags
Sinatra redirect www to non-www
Here’s a quick and dirty way to redirect requests for www.domain.com to domain.com in a Sinatra app:
before do
redirect request.url.sub(/www\./, ''), 301 if request.host =~ /^www/
end
Easy Rails Admin Login with Google Apps and... →
Simple use of Google Apps account to provide access credentials to a Rails 3 app with the OmniAuth gem.
3 tags
Amazon S3 content type problems with Transmit
When I recently used Transmit (4.1.7) to upload Rails assets to Amazon S3 I ran into an issue where the CSS files were being loaded, but the styles weren’t being applied. Attempting to access the CSS directly would download the file instead of displaying it in the browser.
A quick check on Google led me to the answer – S3 was returning the wrong content-type headers.
Transmit actually has...
Tumblr Theme "Decadence" from WooThemes ($49) →
Very nice Tumble theme, used on garrettdimon.com
July 2011
7 posts
Slim - A Fast, Lightweight Template Engine for... →
Simple, fast, lightweight template parsing to replace erb (and haml).
Professional Hockey Transactions Archive →
Complete history of NHL transactions.
jlong/serve - GitHub →
Serve is a small Rack-based web server and rapid prototyping framework for Web applications (specifically Rails apps).
strfti.me: strftime reference and sandbox for... →
strftime reference and sandbox.
deployment - Rails App Maintenence Without... →
Take your app down automatically with a friendly maintenance message before deploying.
3 Tactics for Improving Wireframe Presentations |... →
3 Tactics for Improving Wireframe Presentations
A List Apart: Articles: A Modest Proposal →
A compelling proposal requires structure, organization, and joie de vivre. Fortunately, you can provide that structure, no matter how complicated the final proposal needs to be. Learn the key…
June 2011
10 posts
Active Admin | The administration framework for... →
Active Admin is a Ruby on Rails plugin for generating administration style interfaces. It abstracts common business application patterns to make it simple for developers to implement beautiful and…
Content management
I’ve spent a great deal of time this week researching hosted and installed content management systems in an effort to amalgamate a number of long term clients on a single platform.
I’m still on the fence about a number of options, but I think I’ve narrowed it down to using an installed app rather than a hosted one, and something off the shelf rather than building my own.
Right now I’ve got...
“Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience...”
– Matt Mullenweg
1.0 is the Loneliest Number
gem-development.md at master from radar/guides -... →
Tutorial on building and releasing a Ruby gem using Bundler.
2 tags
Time and tide...
I’ve finally found a reason to publish my own Ruby Gem. It’s called Tide and it simply fetches and returns Canadian tide prediction data from waterlevels.gc.ca.
http://rubygems.org/gems/tide
My plan is to turn it into a more ActiveRecord-like interface to the tide stations and their data as it evolves for use in a demo app:
http://waterlevel.heroku.com/
2 tags
Marketing myself
I started freelancing full-time at the end of 2007, and for the past ~3 years I’ve managed to make a living without doing any marketing, relying strictly on repeat business and word of mouth referrals.
Now that I’ve reached a point where I know I need to attract clients more specifically to match up with my adapting skill set, I’ve found myself rethinking just about every part...
Just launched: http://t.co/yXd5fp6
jQuery Backstretch by Scott Robbin →
jQuery plugin to allow for stretching full screen background images on multiple browsers.
RT @NHLFlyers: #Flyers have acquired the rights to (G) Ilya Bryzgalov from PHX in exchange for Matt Clackson, 2012 3rd round pick & cond …
Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. And more rain. http://twitpic.com/56a930
May 2011
3 posts
Finally got around to filling out the census. #tardy
I think I just saw the Sun. Looking it up on wikipedia to be sure.
☑ Voted.
April 2011
15 posts
schabuc/jquery-visualize - GitHub →
Entry Layout - ExpressionEngine Add-Ons - Duktee →
Give individual entries custom publish layouts. Great for static pages.
RT @superfro432: INSTALLING SPRING… ███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE. Installation failed. 404 error: Season not found. Sprin …
Crumbum | Devot:ee | Devoted to ExpressionEngine →
“Well done is better than well said.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“My inner-child just wet the bed!”
– Ratfist - Page 72