blake » Coding

Sweet web development roundup

Runeshai — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:41:09 +0000

Cool stuff, from PHP to jQuery to HTML, CSS and WordPress-related articles, Themeforest rounds up a whole bunch of useful. helpful articles, video series, tutorials and links to all sorts of web-dev stuff around the net. Check ‘em out here.

Weird WordPress Error

Runeshai — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:15:15 +0000

During my redesign (which has actually been tweaked again since the last announcement, I discovered a funky glitch in either my own code – though I’ve never, ever seen this before – or the WordPress functionality itself – which would also be strange, but I can’t really think of what else it could be.

Thanks to kapiljain.in from the WordPress forums, the solution turned out being that my spacer div had to clear everything else, and it didn’t. So where it was this:

It should have been like this:

I still don’t know for sure why this happened, it was an odd glitch and something I couldn’t have thought up as an error if I tried, but I was happy when it got fixed, and was happy to have the help from a fellow WP developer :). If any of you are having a similar issue, try this route. Otherwise, check out the forums, they were a kind solution for me within 1-2 days.

Blog Design Update

Runeshai — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:47:39 +0000

Well, as you no doubt noticed by now, the blog has been redesigned. Again. Well…sort of. There were a bunch of things that were bugging me about the other design: it was getting too small for the kinds of content I was posting (images and videos didn’t fit that well in the roughly 375 pixel wide content area); it was really dark, really contrasty; the image was bulky and took up a lot of space; the sidebar didn’t exist anywhere but the main page (which is weird in itself, but I just messed up the original coding and couldn’t figure it out so I gave up and made it my design’s ‘style’ at the time, heh, yea I know, cheap, but what’re you gonna do); lots of little design things, plus a bunch of stuff about the way I’d coded it to begin with was weird.

It was my first WordPress theme, after which I went on to follow Drew Douglass’s tutorial series on Themeforest.net which is a much more in-depth series getting into the nuts and bolts of making a theme, and learned a bunch more about the way themes work, which gave me the confidence to tackle something a bit more aggresively (thus, the AnimiVirtus redesign was brought to life). Not to discredit the original tutorial I’d followed, that’s great as well, just a different approach.

But all that aside, it’s a new look, an upgraded feel, and hopefully I can start implementing some more exciting widgets and whatnot in the sidebar, give a more social and dynamic feel to the place. I’m hopin’ a Twitter feed, maybe iLike and GoodReads feeds too…who knows, maybe I’ll get curious and learn how to add another sidebar on the right someday…

No…no I can’t do that…I’m a busy guy…I’ve got other responsibilities…

But it calls to me….[Sidebar: Blaaake...Blaaaaaaaake...BLAAAAAAKEE!!]. Oh…that’d be my roommate telling me to get back to work. See ya’ll later, enjoy the new look and keep comin’ back, I’ll keep up with content as it’s been coming recently, and when I get the time I’ll work on adding some more cool stuff to the site. See you next post :P.

Firefox Extensions

Runeshai — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:39:00 +0000

Google FX is a pretty sweet-ass extension that offers all kinds of cool customization options and features to Google Search users. One bug I did discover though – which is not so much a bug as a sort of conflict – for those of you using the Google Redesigned extension to make your Gmail, GCal, etc. look and feel cooler, more usable, go into ‘Manage User Scripts…’ under ‘Greasemonkey’ in the ‘Tools’ menu, and change the ‘https://*.google.*’ rule. [Note: You should be using secure connections for your Google apps anyway, and if you're not, change that in your 'Settings' section of your Google account.]

userscripts via Lifehacker.

Web Developer by Chris Pederick (who has a pretty awesome website, by the way) is a sweet-ass looking tool for web designers, one of the coolest aspects of which allows them to essentially code with real time updating of the results of said code, and then a simple copy-paste-save ensures a faster, accurate workflow [no more Ctrl+S-Alt+Tab-Ctrl+R to check your code]. Also, you can validate CSS and HTML, and even local versions of those languages while you’re working on them. Tons of other features abound in this extension, check it out online and fiddle with it a bit. I promise you’ll be happy :P.

Chris Pederick via Themeforest.

Oh, and if anyone figures out how to use Chris Pederick’s other extension, ‘User Agent Switcher’, let me know. I was excited at the prospect of checking IE rendering results on my Mac, but was slightly confused and disappointed when it seemed that wasn’t what the extension was for.

Enjoy the goodies!

…yummy Photoshop

Runeshai — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:24:18 +0000

Yup, you got it, more o’ the good stuff. Found some more useful tutorials today. This one’s basically a crash course in the application, but I figured it’s a good addition to my growing list of resources. Can’t hurt to revisit your basics every once in a while. I’m exhausted at the moment, had a tuna burrito, then a lamb burger, then pizza and apparently it’s taking more energy to metabolize than I’d anticipated. But that’s fine by me. Sleep never hurt anybody :P.

Anyway…here’s the link, and here’s another random resource in case you were interested in that last building-custom-themes-for-Wordpress video series I posted about. Enjoy :P.

Holy Photoshop!

Runeshai — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:13:47 +0000

I’ve been watching Adobe’s screencasts the past few days (one on web-based DVDs and one this morning on the Lightroom 2/Photoshop CS4 combo) and have found through them a bunch of new resources for this type of work. Coolness! So from this morning, Julieanne Kost was the host and her website is chock-full of Photoshop and Lightroom tips, with links to her videos on Adobe TV as well and a separate Photoshop Tip of the Day blog, as well as an additional resources page with links to other useful sites on the net.

Also, I’ve gotten hooked on the TutsPlus network of site (PSDTuts, NetTuts, AudioTuts, VectorTuts, AETuts) with their wealth of knowledge and tips and whatnot from all kinds of people. Lastly, I’ve been watching ThemeForest‘s tutorial series on making custom themes for WordPress (no promises, but possibly in the future of blog of blake).

Lifehacker Code

Runeshai — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:29:11 +0000

A cool little list of Lifehacker’s homegrown Firefox addons and standalone apps. Some cool little useful stuff. There are some other things I remember them making that aren’t on this list, but this is a vote on the best 5 I think, so maybe that’s why they didn’t include them all.

Some of the unmentioned ones:

Learn to Hack

Runeshai — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:47:01 +0000

…kinda. I found this article today and thought “this is cool.” So I figured I’d share. A professor in California teaches students about programming viruses, worms, etc., focusing on getting into the mindset of harmful virus writers with the hopes of creating a more open and intellectual field of anti-malware instead of the corporate-driven (and highly-priced) one we’re often forced into today. Cool idea, cool dude. I agree with the writer at The Cyberpunk Review, where do I sign up?

Delicious

Runeshai — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:04:16 +0000

Well, the service formerly known as del.icio.us has changed itself into simply Delicious and apparently updated their site with a whole bunch of cooler, more sophisticated-looking design and interaction aspects. I haven’t tried it out yet, having only just found out myself, but the promo video does look… inspiring. I’d love to hear your experience with the upgrade in the comments.

Delicious.com via Lifehacker

Handbrake and Open Source

Runeshai — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:50:43 +0000

Handbrake rocks, for PC and Mac, and you should definitely use it if you’re in a video-based business. Download it here.

That said, Open Source rocks even harder. Way harder. And it kicks the pants off commercial software half the time while doing it. Oh, and it rocks harder. Or maybe I already implied that… anyway, I was reading the installments of a newly-added RSS feed for Handbrake and one linked to a post that not only defined the programmer’s definition of open source, but really what it means in the most part for the general developing community. That I thought was cool. According to the developer:

Open source software is exactly what it sounds like: It’s software written by a (usually small) group of highly-dedicated people that solved particular problems they themselves had and thought others might find useful as well.

That sounds pretty good to me. And without even saying it, they named one of the key features that differentiates open source from commercialized development strategies: it’s exactly what it sounds like. You get what you’re told you get, and that’s about it. No hidden tricks, no extra gadgets to distract you from what you came for in the first place, and no obnoxious fee to pay up front, only to be disappointed and find out it’s not what you thought it was in the first place.

Link: http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=501