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I wonder where I'll end up 12 years ago

I don't blog much, but when I do I like to write up neato stuff and have a spot where I won't have to fear the material being removed.

Currently, there are just too many places to throw that crap up on and I have no clue which to choose.

I'll have to do some blog soul searching this weekend and finalize the decision. Blogspot seems pretty cool and can be fairly minimalistic, but I've recently fallen back in love with an old blog that I built from scratch from php..

Maybe I'll fix it up in some key spots and get back to using it..

Yepnope + yepnope 12 years ago

So I learned something today:

Do not use two separate files that utilize the Yepnope.js asset launcher to prevent double loading. It won't work as you would think.

It's been so, so long! 12 years ago

Howdy folks!

Let's just jump right into my latest project: http://thegreatesthousemate.com/

It's a barrel of fun and not at all that complicated. Essentially one index.html file and a slew of Bootstrap plugins, some styles and one PHP class. Hope you enjoy the page... and if you're looking for a housemate, you know what to do!

Hello Node! 12 years ago

I had done some simple stupid tutorial months ago to get myself into node.js.

However, now with me doing considerably more JavaScript work, including some casper.js fun, it was time to re-acquaint myself with node.js. Given my relatively minuscule experience with it, I knew it wouldn't take long.

And it sure didn't. I came across this nice tutorial: Hello Node and it helped get me going right away.

Casper.js fundamentals 12 years ago

I've gotten myself dabbling in Casper.js over the last couple weeks and it's been a pretty entertaining experience. Of course it has had its share of annoying as hell moments, but much of it came to a close after I finally understood the significance of casper.evaluate().

Read about it and understand why your various jQuery or DOM accessing JavaScript wasn't working correctly.

Jumping on the bandwagon 13 years ago

Just a couple months late, but who cares - I'm the proud purchaser of a new Nexus 7!

I still have to wait to get it, and I'm really hoping I get it this Friday, but it could very easily slip and get to the office on Monday. I don't really care all that much - I'm just stupid excited to get a new tablet. My first generation iPad has been officially deemed 'out-of-touch' and unable to get the iOS6 update, although the frustrations and lagginess had be piling up over the last 10-12 months.

I love my first gen iPad, but it's sad how quickly it was rendered obsolete: probably about a month before the iPad 2 was released (5 or so months after the original was released).

Since my WordPress theming isn't blazing any new trails, maybe I'll enter some experience from my usage of the Nexus 7.

Either that or perhaps my trials in trying to immerse myself in Mozilla's multi-platform Firefox experience.

Ghost Town 13 years ago

I ain't gonna stop posting, but I just wanted to mention that authpad.com appears to be somewhat of a ghost town. I'm trying to find some fellow writers (haha) on here, but haven't had any fortune.

If you're out there, please leave a comment! I'd love to support the fellow users as well as scope out any potential css forks they employ. I like the minimalist feel of this place and will continue to post more here, I've gotten bogged down at work and while I couldn't be happier, it is nice to check in and post something now and again.

So no fear, I'm not leaving forever - my child theme isn't completed yet - so be in touch soon.

WordPress Theming: Injecting some JavaScript 13 years ago

The third part in my adventures in theming

  1. Multiple WordPress Development Environments
  2. Building a Custom WordPress Theme

Get Inside That Header

The first thing that needs to get done is getting at the segment of code that builds the <head>. I went inside my thematic/library/extensions/header-extensions.php file and located the thematic_head_scripts() section. I copy that code and head over into my child theme's functions.php file.

I then declare the function childtheme_override_head_scripts() inside and paste in the code. Now, this next step is really up to you, I personally wiped out most of the code except for the enqueue for jquery when not an admin. For reference, it looks a little like this:

 // inject custom scripts into header
 function childtheme_override_head_scripts() {     
   // load jquery when is not admin
   if ( !is_admin() ) {
     wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
   }
 }
 add_filter('childtheme_override_head_scripts','childtheme_head_scripts');

Now boom, you are inside the <head> fiddling with <scripts>.

Inject some JavaScript

So that gets us far, but not to the very end. I next wanted to add some custom code between a <head> block. All one has to do is echo whatever one desires. So furthering the example I have going on above, let's now add a file main.js to the queue that will contain any custom code that we may want to work with whenever the user is at the home or landing page.

First one will want to create the file main.js in the themes/yourtheme/library/scripts/ directory. Then all you need to do is add some code to your override function:

 // inject custom scripts into header
 function childtheme_override_head_scripts() {     
   // load jquery when is not admin
   if ( !is_admin() ) {
      wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
   }

   if (is_home() || is_front_page()) {
      // handy trick because get_template_directory_uri() 
      // returns thematic path         
      $childscriptdir = get_stylesheet_directory_uri();  
      $childscriptdir .= '/library/scripts/';
      wp_enqueue_script('main',$childscriptdir.'main.js');
    }
 }
 add_filter('childtheme_override_head_scripts','childtheme_head_scripts');

The conditional statement will make sure that the viewer is only at the landing page or front page. Next comes a trick to get your child theme's directory. If you were building a theme from scratch and not as a child off of a parent, use get_template_directory_uri() instead.

After setting up your path you can then use wp_enqueue_script() (WordPress function reference) to enqueue the file for the header.

Done!

You got your custom scripts into your <head>. Hope you also get to enjoy some of the other little tricks thrown in there. Good luck!

Patent Trolls Strike Again 13 years ago

And this time, at something that I hold dear:

Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
(via Hacker News)

Here is the press release.

Decent summation of the action so far from the above thread discussion:

krrose27 2 hours ago | link

Rackspace isn't the only one being sued by the troll today.
Rackspace[1] Nexsan[2] Yahoo[3]
It also appears that this is the second round. (From 2011)
Caringo[4] NEC Corportation[5] Google[6] EMC/Vmware[7]
[1]http://www.scribd.com/doc/106190890/PersonalWeb-Technologies... [2]http://www.scribd.com/doc/106190872/PersonalWeb-Technologies... [3]http://www.scribd.com/doc/106190829/PersonalWeb-Technologies... [4]http://www.scribd.com/doc/75152879/PersonalWeb-Technologies-... [5]http://www.scribd.com/doc/75137853/PersonalWeb-Technologies-... [6]http://www.scribd.com/doc/75142772/PersonalWeb-Technologies-... [7]http://www.scribd.com/doc/75152912/PersonalWeb-Technologies-...

The Power of Fantasy Football 13 years ago

The other night I became a true believe of Fantasy Football.

After watching so intently to the final moments of last night's Sunday Night Football game (9ers vs. Lions), and jumping for joy as Pettrigrew caught that TD, I knew that I had turned a corner. When else have I so intently cared about a drive in a game where the outcome was all but decided?

My whole week was saved from garbage time: I had Jay Cutler going against the Packers. For all the people who watched that game, I won't go over the atrocity of offensive blocking that game demonstrated. Poor Cuttie had negative points midway through the fourth quarter, and I believed my week was lost before it really had a chance to begin.

Thank goodness for that garbage time score. Gave me a fighting chance that I capitalized on.

Building a Custom WordPress Theme 13 years ago

After getting over the challenge of setting up multiple Environments (refer to Multiple WordPress Development Environments), it was time to start on my theme.

Research

Once I was done with some due diligence, I came to learn that it was most best to start off with a pre-existing theme and build a child theme of it (modifying the parent theme's files prevented any chance of future updates). I decided on the Thematic Theme that a good friend had mentioned at a last job I was at. It's a great theme that's very bare-bones and even has a few little protips hidden inside the code to help first-timers (like me).

WordPress Thematic Theme

Gettin into it

The documentation for the theme is outstanding, and since it has been around for quite a long time receiving proper updates, the community has come up big and contributed quite a bit of good material to supplement.

A warning is to be careful when searching for more, it would appear that the theme underwent a major update sometime in its past and there are quite a few pages out there that contain outdated information. For example, this one explicitly mentions it is old and outdated.

Pro-Gress

With some tips on how to get the damn child theme working (and falling victim to a teeny-tiny typo that actually caught me again two more times), I was up and ready to go.

From above, the Thematic Page Structure and Right Way to Override Theme Functions were the two most viewed bits of info as I started to actually add and remove html via functions.php functions. I won't get into specific details because I'm still rough around the edges. Maybe after I make some decent progress and learn a couple little tips and tricks.

Get 'er done

If you're someone who's wanted to have a custom WordPress theme and understand how to handle yourself around PHP, HTML and CSS - do it. Go get your hands dirty with the resources above. There's plenty of info there to get started and get comfortable making your changes.

EDIT: I got a new entry in the series: WordPress Theming: Injecting Some JavaScript

Fantasy Football 13 years ago

Wow, I am so happy to have fantasy football back.

After discussions with friends about draft types (classic, auction) as well as scoring differences (heavily weighted toward defensive scoring, removing kickers) I am quite super duper fascinated about the strategies various people take. Especially if they are in multiple leagues with heavily varied scoring.

I personally tend to heavily favor a quality Running Back.

Of course, why I kept Chris Johnson and went MJD with the first pick I'm not quite sure. Frank Gore is looking pretty good so far. With there only being one week of games behind us, I probably am overstating and jumping to conclusions. I should probably just slow my role.

Speaking of slow

Greg Jennings is just not looking good after this groin injury he got week one. He was out after a short week, so I'm hoping that two full weeks will be good for me to get on his band wagon. After all, he can put the whole team on his back.

My other top receivers are Stevie Johnson, and who the hell knows how that offense is going to turn out, Sidney Rice and Heyward-Bey (50 Shades of Bey's namesake). Not impressed from week one, Sidney was ok but he didn't foster any major confidence.

Ohgodwhy.jpeg

Of course I will probably end up being haunted by my decision to start Cutler over Romo thinking that the Packers vs. Bears game was going to be a 60 point affair. Thank god for that garbage TD, Cuttie would have had negative points otherwise. Damn I kind of hope that Romo lays an egg right now.

This sports related entry was sponsored by the Jump to Conclusions Mat.

Image Text

Facebook's HTML5 Performance Feedback 13 years ago

An interesting explanation of various issues that the Facebook Mobile Dev team ran into while building their mobile app, here.

Some of the main issues that they ran into were:

Lack of Developer Tools

This is an issue that quite a few developers and and UX people probably share. I know I have run into issues when reaching the point in building a website where compatibility checks are performed across a variety of browsers. If something doesn't line up, I need to access some inspector to check out what may be wrong. Can't do that with mobile, yet. Of course I'm fairly sure they have the desire for more tools.

Memory Issues

Following the initial theme, they wish there were more dev tools for memory. Pretty useful for the infinite scroll technique, that will blow up your buffer like what.

FPS

They want a tool for measuring on frames per second, pretty cool idea actually. Would be nice to have one system wide.

Scrolling

They go into a lot more detail on this one. There are a few problems that they have with the quality and put forth some questions for the current API. Mentioning of events during scroll, performance via GPU, standard momentum to just mention a few.

GPU

Would like a better API for hardware acceleration via the GPU.

I would highly recommend checking out the actual writeup, it goes into significantly more detail. It's a cool little summation of their attempt to push an app powered via HTML5 and JavaScript. While it may have not really worked out as planned, it is a great test of the capabilities of the young standard. Hope that the things learned from this foray help make for some great progress forward.

Multiple Wordpress Development Environments 13 years ago

So my recent task had me re-setting up the company's http://wordpress.org/ based blog. While it's been several years since I've last done anything with Wordpress (and several++ years since I've done any personal blogging), I welcomed the opportunity to get back into something I had once enjoyed. I was excited at the upgrades and features that had been introduced in that time.

Anyway, in the time since I've last used Wordpress I've come a long way in regards to my personal/business development workflow. I now use versioning, multiple environments and various other tools/techniques that have otherwise slipped my mind at the moment.

A straight out of the box Wordpress installation isn't going to allow me to use multiple environments which is essential to our company workflow. Fortunately I somehow came upon a great writeup on how to deal with this problem: the $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] php variable. Follow the jump for the writeup (very well written and easy to follow for even the noobliest greenhorn):

WordPress Configuration for Multiple Environments

All the magic essentially takes place in wp-config.php, and although the writeup provides some extra functions for functions.php they aren't essential, mostly helpers in keeping things organized across the environments.

EDIT: Feel free to check out further progress with customizing WordPress's Thematic theme:

Building a Custom WordPress Theme

EDIT the second: I got a new entry in the series: WordPress Theming: Injecting Some JavaScript

I can't stay mad at you, GitHub 13 years ago

If companies released information like GitHub just did today detailing issues that resulted in downtime and/or customers unable to access services, I believe everyone's overall satisfaction would be higher.

GitHub availability this week

Obligatory Hacker News discussion (while it lasts)

My quick gist is that during a migration, databases failed and a temporary solution proved to be just that: temporary. Upon returning to normal, the they disabled maintenance mode and a segfault just led the way toward collapse. It's a good read. I suggest you go check it out.

I give GitHub's response: 5 thumbs up.

One crank too many 13 years ago

For whatever reason, it's something that I've had to battle with in the web design world quite a bit: Just one more tweak.

I'm not the world's greatest web designer, nor am I really a great designer. I'm adequate. I understand current standards and now how to update sites to meet them. I follow any upcoming or recently updated standards and enjoy implementing them moving forward.

However, once the design is more or less complete I just can't roll over the progress from 99% to 100%.

"Oh! There's too much whitespace on IE7 and outright eliminating it affects all the other browsers, so I'll spend an extra handful of hours making it look exactly the same on every browser." I'm sure that IE7 users would appreciate the effort, but I'm also pretty sure that most people using IE7 experience the web through broken glasses anyway.

"Oh! That font isn't sharp enough, let's go to Google's webfont directory and spend a couple hours picking the perfect sans-serif." Just no. I don't know fonts and just learned what serif and sans-serif meant like a year ago.

Things have gotten better, a combination of me consciously trying to achieve this and dealing with the business world. Timelines exist, you gotta know when to say 'enough' and if you don't, well, people will say it for you. So in order to have complete control over my projects, it was prudent to define what 100% complete was. Sure, it wasn't literally 100% complete, but it was in my eyes.

...That said, thank god for Twitter Bootstrap.

Mobile and on the go 13 years ago

Looks like this isn't all that bad to work on via phone (Verizon stock GNexus to be specific). Very impressive, and now I'm at the end of the screen and everything just scrolls naturally. I could absolutely get used to this service.

Check me out from my brand new pad 13 years ago

This is the first entry utilizing authpad that I'm doing at the moment. I guess immediately I'd like to alter the font type and I can't quite figure out how to do it. Oh well, minor inconvenience. I like the interface, I like the experience (so far).

I'd love to get back into blogging and maybe this is my opportunity with this incredibly minimalist web app.

Will I go all political? Will I attempt tech? Will I end up just quitting and lying to myself that my G+ page would be suitable enough for my blatherings?

Only time will tell.