May 2012
1 post
3 tags
The Problem with Most REST Debates
“Have you actually read the specs?”
“Well, no, but that’s not the point!”
Actually, it is. A weekend’s worth of reading cures a lifetime of misconceptions:
Representational State Transfer
Principled Design of the Modern Web Architecture
RFC 2616 (Hypertext Transfer Protocol — HTTP/1.1)
The Architecture of the World Wide Web
October 2011
1 post
1 tag
Set a default Emacs font the easy way on Mac OS X
First, enabled menu bar mode if you haven’t already (M-x menu-bar-open). Under Options, select Set default font… and choose your font face and size. Now, use M-x describe-font to see the font description string. Copy and paste this string into your .emacs configuration. Here’s mine:
(set-default-font "-apple-Menlo-medium-normal-normal-*-18-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-")
September 2010
2 posts
1 tag
More on Comment Form Usability
Sharpie has reinvented the pencil. This one uses a “liquid graphite” technology that erases like a normal graphite pencil, only it cures after three days – becoming permanent. I submit that website comments ought to follow a similar pattern, substituting minutes for hours.
1 tag
UX Thought of the Day
No one wants to click a comment form Preview button. And if you let me choose between Submit and Preview, I’ll choose Submit everytime – only to notice my spelling error or blacklisted HTML tag after my comment’s been posted. Then, I’ll likely submit another comment right on its heels lamenting your shitty comment form’s lack of usability. It seems to me that inline...
August 2010
1 post
In only a few hours, I was able to write a small, easily customizable proxy server that caches responses to help me develop while disconnected from our backend system. Node.js and MongoDB are definitely a force to be reckoned with.
July 2010
3 posts
1 tag
The Great Whitespace Giveaway
Today only, I’d like to offer the first 10,000,000 programmers unlimited FREE whitespace! Take advantage of this limited-time offer to update your code with all the newlines, tabs, and especially spaces it so richly deserves. Now you’ll finally be able to turn this:
if(true){
foo();
}else{
bar();
}
into this:
if (true) {
foo();
}
else {
bar();
}
So, go ahead, and let your...
When adding unit test targets and classes in XCode, it’s easy to accidentally choose the wrong SDK / project type. I could have saved myself a lot of head-scratching building my iPad app if I had bothered to pay attention.
Even running Windows in a VM when I need to test a site in IE is painful. The user experience is absolutely terrible.
June 2010
3 posts
“Xcode UI Improvements”
– Great suggestions. He should make an Xcode plugin to do just that. Oh wait, you can’t f’ing extend Xcode. That’s one of my biggest gripes with Xcode. Otherwise, I’d have hacked up Git support by now…
Xcode UI Improvements | Brandon Walkin
A Real Class Act →
Umpire Jim Joyce admits his mistake like a man. I hope he’s remembered as much for his integrity as for this call. I also hope the league overturns this unfortunate mistake. (via Gruber)
I work with the terminal a lot. In fact, the first thing I do when I log in to my machine at work is to open up several shell tabs in Terminal and change directory. The specific directories I change to vary from project to project. With a little help from common shell commands and utilities, it’s easy to find out which directories you CD into most often. If you find yourself visiting a...
May 2010
6 posts
Daily Kos: State of the Nation →
Americans don’t realize how serious the oil catastrophe in the Gulf really is. The ecological and economic ramifications of this spill will be staggering.
Io seems like a wonderfully gentle introduction to Lisp.
Disillusionment
Sometimes I think I know how Cicero or Cato must have felt as they watched the death of their Republic, powerless to prevent it. Last month, the New York Times reported that the President approved the “targeted killing” of an American citizen. The penalty for treason in the United States is death (or a minimum of 5 years and $10,000). But the Constitution is unwavering in its...
I love the Ruby language. And I’m a huge fan of the Rails framework. But I’m so over the project names.
Future of Flash | Adobe →
Adobe’s response to Steve’s Flash-bashing. There’s one argument they can’t rebut: View Source.