Pipes Output http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:34:53 -0800 http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6168173246 adactio: Wondering if "Feeding back on time" is a chapter in a science-fiction novel somewhere. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6168173246 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:55:02 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6168163049 adactio: Feeding back on time. http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=8397 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6168163049 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:54:19 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6168113526 adactio: I just generated my #TweetCloud out of my ass. Top three words: sheeple, sheeple, sheeple - http://bit.ly/4BlIGf http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6168113526 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:50:51 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6150916973 adactio: @Preoccupations 'Twas an excellent series, was is not? http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6150916973 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:08:57 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/This+Mortal+Coil/_/Song+to+the+Siren http://www.last.fm/music/This+Mortal+Coil http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259414032 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:13:52 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/Song+To+The+Siren http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259413562 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:06:02 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/Strange http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259413314 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:01:54 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/I+Fall+To+Pieces http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259413124 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:58:44 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/I%27m+Sorry http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259413003 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:56:43 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/You+Don%27t+Know+What+Love+Is http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259412637 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:50:37 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/Leavin%27+On+Your+Mind http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259412427 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:47:07 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/For+Emily http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259412183 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:43:03 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/My+Funny+Valentine http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259411644 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:34:04 -0800 http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars/_/Where+The+Boys+Are http://www.last.fm/music/The+Czars http://www.last.fm/user/adactio#1259411373 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:29:33 -0800 http://adactio.com/journal/1629/ <blockquote><p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.infinitefutures.com/essays/cat/space.shtml">The first person to set foot on Mars has already been born: the rest of us must simply commit to sending her.</a></p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.longbets.org/11">At least one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150.</a></p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://politicsoftheplate.com/?p=111">There is a strong likelihood that someone in this generation will be the last human to eat a bluefin tuna.</a></p> </blockquote> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/future">future</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/prediction">prediction</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1629/ Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:26:27 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6122782972 adactio: @vickyjo That's what I said! http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6122782972 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:15:14 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6122438249 adactio: Back home after a good @saltercane practice followed by drinks at The Earth and Stars with fellow Clearlefties. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6122438249 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:59:48 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6113500999 adactio: A nice Krakauer and a conversation in German at the bratwurst stand, a cup op tea (thanks to @binarytales) and a donut (thanks to @clagnut). http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6113500999 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:50:45 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6110863073 adactio: Having a minor moral conundrum. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6110863073 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:45:00 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6109471049 adactio: @mattb Ah, how things have changed since my time. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6109471049 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:23:40 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6109405627 adactio: @mattb Got your Aufenthaltserlaubnis? http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6109405627 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:19:29 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6108523191 adactio: @nataliedowne Could you please take over the stereo? (it's not often I say that but the Beach Boys would be preferable to this shit). http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6108523191 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:21:30 -0800 http://www.audioatrocities.com/index.html "This site is intended to be a constantly growing and changing museum for the study and enjoyment of truly terrible video game voice acting in video games from the very first CD system, the Turbografx until the present day." hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_2c156a84a5f540ea9ec89a2bc872bed9 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:03:04 -0800 http://remysharp.com/2009/11/26/full-frontal-javascript-2009/ Remy recounts the Jedi mind trick I used to get him to move Full Frontal to the Duke of Yorks cinema. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_a856af044cddf992987e273236144945 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:32:58 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6096804432 adactio: Back from the last ever Gilded Palace Of Sin show. Bittersweet. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6096804432 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:09:06 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6096781710 adactio: @iamdanw Attribution is usually in the description field (the bookmarklet pre-fills it) so it's up to the person huffduffing to provide it. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6096781710 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:08:07 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6093122083 adactio: This one's For The Horde! http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6093122083 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:33:34 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6092754352 adactio: Watching @jimpurbrick control his guitar with his iPhone at the @100robots gig at The Hope with @wordridden, @binarytales and @aral. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6092754352 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:17:48 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6086404359 adactio: @aegirthor Here's some more fuel for your fire of outrage: http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/hero-of-the-day/ http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6086404359 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:00:13 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6085870178 adactio: Wondering what time @100robots will be on at The Hope tonight. I want to escape before the hip hop starts. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6085870178 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:40:40 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6078940937 adactio: Writing from home in an attempt to Get Shit Done. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6078940937 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:24:57 -0800 http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/ This web page is half a mile wide. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_7f39f6b0e1a3f0c4fbe58aebca8e132c Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:13:45 -0800 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabdc0.html Finally, some debunking of the "paradox of choice" oversimplification. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_519976075e90565acd788704c838a417 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:48:53 -0800 http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html This is just wonderful. "Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free." hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_d4f3c9d2803d134799176a9684e89c51 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:15:22 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6066549548 adactio: Sheltering from the storm. http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6066549548 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:39:08 -0800 http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6059467656 adactio: Looking at this attendee list and wondering if there are no women in Belfast: http://refreshbelfast.eventbrite.com/ http://twitter.com/adactio/statuses/6059467656 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:02:07 -0800 http://www.iconeye.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3864:rca-student-radically-improves-the-uk-plug Superb product design. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_115142e81fad4b7036276983dfad056a Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:39:02 -0800 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/123 <p>Last Friday, the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://2009.full-frontal.org/">Full Frontal conference</a> took place here in Brighton. It was like having the circus come to town &#8230;but with fewer acrobatics and more closures.</p> <p>In short, it was superb. I&#8217;ve been to quite a few conferences in my time so I can get pretty jaded but this was a textbook lesson in how to put on a great event.</p> <p>The content was top-notch. The fact that the whole day was focused on a single technology gave it a very cohesive feel. That said, there was still a wide variety of topics covered: mobile, accessibility, performance, and even server-side JavaScript. The intensity and complexity increased as the day went on, finishing with Simon <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://simonwillison.net/2009/Nov/23/node/">blowing everyone&#8217;s minds</a>.</p> <p>All the speakers were great but special mention must go to <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.jakearchibald.com/" class="fn url">Jake Archibald</a></span> from the BBC. His talk on JavaScript performance was thoroughly entertaining <em>and</em> informative &#8212;a very tricky combination to do successfully. He made the presentation look effortless but there must have been months of preparation involved. That kind of spontaneity takes years of practice.</p> <p>If you weren&#8217;t lucky enough to make it to Full Frontal, you can check out the speakers&#8217; slides <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://2009.full-frontal.org/">on the website</a> but really, you should have been there.</p> <p>Congratulations and kudos to <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://remysharp.com/" class="fn url">Remy</a></span> for putting together such a world-class event. I sincerely hope there&#8217;ll be a Full Frontal 2010, but it&#8217;ll be hard to match the standard set by this year&#8217;s conference.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/123 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:22:15 -0800 http://www.ixd101.com/ A set of short, easily-digested lessons from the world of interaction design, inspired by "101 Things I Learned In Architecture School." hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_7dbf0b4956cc4d5f65d25ad93485fef3 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:53:13 -0800 http://adactio.com/journal/1628/ <p>On November 14th, Cork City was the location of a <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob">flash mob</a> wherein <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://video.ireland.com/video/iLyROoafIXLN.html">a crowd of people sang <cite>Mister Blue Sky</cite></a> on the city&#8217;s main thoroughfare.</p> <p>One week later, the city suffered <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/places/Ireland/Cork/Cork#flood">its worst flooding in 800 years</a>.</p> <p>Coincidence?</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/flashmob">flashmob</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/cork">cork</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/ireland">ireland</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1628/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:49:36 -0800 http://adactio.com/journal/1627/ <p>In <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8377922.stm">the latest ruckus around search results</a>, a spokesman for Google proudly declaims that the company is sticking to its principles:</p> <blockquote> <p>Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority.</p> <p>Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it.</p> </blockquote> <p>Oh, really?</p> <p>If you change the word &#8220;complaint&#8221; to &#8220; DMCA takedown notice&#8221; then <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1624/">it&#8217;s a different story</a>.</p> <p>So the lesson is: complaining about the offensive nature of a search result will get you nowhere but sending a spurious legal claim will result in immediate action.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/google">google</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1627/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:35:29 -0800 google http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectacle_at_we.html A vivid first-person description of danah boyd&#039;s talk at the Web 2.0 Expo. I have to say, I&#039;m not entirely surprised that she had a such a humiliating experience at such a douchebaggy conference. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_204061bbb65f30654d41944538756f86 Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:45:05 -0800 http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/identity-in-the-browser-firefox/ Aza Raskin share&#039;s some mockups of ideas for incorporating identity management into the browser. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_9af7dc2d9fb70f70d7a85d358943f05b Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:23:06 -0800 http://berglondon.com/blog/2009/11/23/chernoff-schools/ Matt gets an opportunity to use the Chernoff effect for visualising school data. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_0eec3e1c28525fc6138d77a7fc3b5f3f Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:28:54 -0800 http://www.mrspeaker.net/2009/11/16/1up-notification/ A jQuery plug-in inspired by the interaction feedback on Huffduffer, which was in turn inspired by retro games. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_e17e7ee9d05d7c4440a0400f665e9b97 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:02:05 -0800 http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/11/apple_is_not_ev.html PPK offers a rebuttal to Paul Graham&#039;s attack on Apple&#039;s App Store policies by placing the blame firmly at the feet of developers who refuse to embrace web technologies. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_e5299a46fff739d5f80fc5e3f939a845 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:23:27 -0800 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickd/cadence-and-slang-is-a-book-about-interaction-design If you want to see this book published (and you should), why not pledge a little something to the cause? hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_3073077947dcce00f43253cd71107211 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:21:36 -0800 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0282325.html Microsoft are trying to patent sparklines. Twunts. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_c1d437a7a6c90c5e6fff5b97402ff32a Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:06:09 -0800 http://html5doctor.com/glossary/ A very handy glossary of HTML5 from the medical professionals at HTML5 Doctor. hrR73hbH2xGMJW9zFG_cUw_2fa07141214026a9f2bee28901b199d2 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:19:38 -0800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104216128/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104216128/" title="Mapping lights"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2770/4104216128_4c88fe878b_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Mapping lights"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4104216128 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:03:39 -0800 Mapping lights light office lightswitch clearleft adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103454391/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103454391/" title="Lightswitch primer"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2546/4103454391_9185f1971e_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Lightswitch primer"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4103454391 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:03:19 -0800 Lightswitch primer light office lightswitch clearleft adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104214748/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104214748/" title="Grinding coffee"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2680/4104214748_9927bc4dd2_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Grinding coffee"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4104214748 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:03:02 -0800 Grinding coffee coffee brighton travelbag taylorstbaristas adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103453089/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103453089/" title="Kelly and Aaron"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2742/4103453089_2f3f52afa2_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Kelly and Aaron"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4103453089 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:02:44 -0800 Kelly and Aaron brighton bills aarongustafson kellymccarthy adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103452377/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103452377/" title="Muffins"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2678/4103452377_a12ab7af7f_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Muffins"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4103452377 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:02:25 -0800 Muffins food muffins brighton bills adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104212912/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104212912/" title="Coffee porn"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2464/4104212912_992ebbd6ea_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Coffee porn"/></a></p> <p>It's supposed to be a cock.</p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4104212912 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:02:07 -0800 Coffee porn &lt;p&gt;It's supposed to be a cock.&lt;/p&gt; coffee brighton travelbag flatwhite coffeeporn lattéart taylorstbaristas adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104212390/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104212390/" title="Jon in a box"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2712/4104212390_590c834aaa_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Jon in a box"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4104212390 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:01:53 -0800 Jon in a box office box nataliedowne clearleft paullloyd jonlinklaterjohnson adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103450567/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4103450567/" title="Jon in a box"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2441/4103450567_ecbe4d2f78_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Jon in a box"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4103450567 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:01:35 -0800 Jon in a box office box clearleft jonlinklaterjohnson adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104210974/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4104210974/" title="Playful Existentialist Chalkboard"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2700/4104210974_f52937822b_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Playful Existentialist Chalkboard"/></a></p> <p>Life's so boring for a chalkboard. Anyone up for a game of tic tac toe?</p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4104210974 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:01:15 -0800 Playful Existentialist Chalkboard &lt;p&gt;Life's so boring for a chalkboard. Anyone up for a game of tic tac toe?&lt;/p&gt; sign pub brighton signage chalkboard earthandstars adactio http://adactio.com/journal/1626/ <p>When I <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1625/">added collectives to Huffduffer</a>, I wanted to keep the new feature fairly discrete. I knew I would have to add an add/remove device to profiles but I also wanted that device to be unobtrusive. That&#8217;s why I settled on using a small <code>+</code>/<code>-</code> button.</p> <p>The action of adding someone to, or removing someone from a collective was a clear candidate for <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://domscripting.com/blog/display/41">Hijax</a>. Once I had the adding and removing working <em>without</em> JavaScript, I went back and sprinkled in some Ajax pixie-dust to do the adding and removing asynchronously without refreshing the whole page.</p> <p>That was the easy part. The challenge lies in providing some meaningful and reassuring feedback to the user that the action has been carried out. There are quite a few familiar devices for doing this; the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://37signals.com/svn/archives/000558.php">yellow fade technique</a> is probably the most common. Personally, I like the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://code.google.com/p/humanmsg/">Humanized Messages</a> as <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://humanized.com/weblog/2006/09/11/monolog_boxes_and_transparent_messages/">devised by Aza Raskin</a> and <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://binarybonsai.com/2007/10/15/humanized-messages-for-jquery/">ported to jQuery by Michael Heilemann</a>.</p> <p>I knew that, depending on the page, the user could be carrying out multiple additions or removals. Whatever feedback mechanism I provided, it shouldn&#8217;t get in the way of the user carrying out another addition or removal. That&#8217;s when I thought of a feedback mechanism from a different discipline: video games.</p> <p> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/originalnintendo/3868852163/">Super Mario Bros. Frustration Speed Run in 3:07</a> </p> <p>Quite a few arcade games provide a discrete but clear feedback mechanism when points are scored. When the player successfully &#8220;catches&#8221; a prize, not only does the overall score in the corner of the screen update, but the amount scored appears in situ, floating briefly upwards. It doesn&#8217;t get in the way of immediately grabbing another prize but it does provide a nice tangible bit of feedback (the player usually gets some audio feedback too, which would be nice to do on the web if it weren&#8217;t to likely to get very annoying very quickly).</p> <p>It wasn&#8217;t too tricky to imitate this behaviour with jQuery.</p> <p> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4096916796/">Collective action</a> </p> <p>This game-inspired feedback mechanism feels surprisingly familiar to me. <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/signup">Sign up</a> or <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/login">log in</a> to Huffduffer to try it for yourself.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/huffduffer">huffduffer</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/ajax">ajax</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/games">games</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/gaming">gaming</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/jquery">jquery</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1626/ Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:21:03 -0800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4096916796/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a video:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4096916796/" title="Collective action"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2631/4096916796_6fbaa46b28_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Collective action"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4096916796 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:48:35 -0800 Collective action animation ajax huffduffer adactio http://adactio.com/journal/1625/ <p>Huffduffer was launched thirteen months ago. I almost missed the one year anniversary but for <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://getsatisfaction.com/huffduffer/topics/is_october_huffduffers_birthday_happy_1st_birthday_to_huffduffer">an astute huffduffer who pointed it out</a>.</p> <p>It&#8217;s been quite a year. Just over <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/people">2000 people</a> signed up and huffduffed over <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/new">five and a half thousand audio files</a>. I&#8217;ve been tweaking the site fairly regularly&#8212;and <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/huffduffer">blogging about it here</a>&#8212;fiddling with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1618/">forms</a>, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1548/">machine tags</a> and <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1536/">sparklines</a>.</p> <p>Today I launched the biggest update to the site so far. I&#8217;ve added a type of social networking &#8230;kind of &#8230;not really.</p> <p>Let me explain.</p> <p>Right from the start, I was pretty sure that Huffduffer didn&#8217;t need to be Yet Another Social Network. The site was all about finding and listening to audio. If you wanted to listen to everything huffduffed by a particular person, you simply subscribed to their podcast. Simple.</p> <p>I did offer a kind of low-level recommendation feature using tags. If you tag a file with <code>for:username</code>, it will show up as recommendation in the sidebar of that user&#8217;s profile. The <code>for:</code> syntax was something I shamelessly ripped off from <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://delicious.com/">Delicious</a>.</p> <p>When <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://suda.co.uk/" class="url"> Brian</a></span> was over to visit a while back, I was showing him that feature. He then went on to show it to <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://donotremove.co.uk/" class="url"> Mike</a></span> who, next time I saw him, said <q>I get Huffduffer now; it&#8217;s a way for friends to put things into iTunes for me.</q></p> <p>That really struck a chord with me. I realised that I needed to do more to allow for that kind of sharing on Huffduffer.</p> <p>There are two problems with subscribing to individual podcasts from people on Huffduffer:</p> <ol> <li>If you subscribe to the podcasts of three different people and they all huffduff the same file, you will get that file three times.</li> <li>If you subscribe to the podcast of somebody else and they huffduff something that you have also huffduffed, you get an unnecessary duplication.</li> </ol> <p>So, as of today, you can now subscribe to a podcast created by a collection of people. There won&#8217;t be any duplicates and the list won&#8217;t include anything that you have already huffduffed.</p> <p>This is collective huffduffing.</p> <p>To add someone to your collective, just click the <code>+</code> button on their profile. Subsequently clicking the <code>-</code> button, as you would expect, removes them from your collective.</p> <p>You can take a look at <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/collective">everything huffduffed by my collective</a>&#8212;and here&#8217;s the list of <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/collective/people">the people in my collective</a>.</p> <p>That&#8217;s pretty much it. You can create a collective and either subscribe to the resulting podcast or you can treat it as a pool of potential material for you to huffduff.</p> <p>You can also drill down by tag. Here&#8217;s <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/collective/tags">the tagcloud of my collective</a> and here&#8217;s <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/collective/tags/psychology">everything tagged with &#8220;psychology&#8221; in my collective</a>.</p> <p>Programming this (sort of) social functionality wasn&#8217;t too tricky. But once the code was written, I spent quite a while trying to figure out what to call it. I definitely wanted to avoid the inaccurate label &#8220;friends&#8221;.</p> <p>Initially I chose the word &#8220;network&#8221;. But that sounds like it implies a degree of reciprocity. So I trawled through the thesaurus, trying to find a good word for the output of a group of huffduffers; a circle, a clique, a club, a clump, a cluster, a congregation, a coterie, a crowd, an ensemble, a flock, a gang, a league, a mass, a posse, a society.</p> <p>I could have left it to <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://all-sorts.org/">the wisdom of all-sorts</a> but I ended up settling on the word &#8220;collective&#8221;. That&#8217;s because it&#8217;s a good word for describing the people (the collective) and the (collective) output. It works as a noun and an adjective. Also, it has a nice mid twentieth century socialist ring to it.</p> <p>If you&#8217;re already on Huffduffer, try creating your own collective&#8212;the link to &#8220;similar people&#8221; on your profile page is a good place to start. If you aren&#8217;t already on Huffduffer, you&#8217;ll need to <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/signup">sign up</a> to start enjoying the benefits of collectivisation.</p> <p>As always, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://getsatisfaction.com/huffduffer">your feedack is welcome</a>.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/huffduffer">huffduffer</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1625/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:56:26 -0800 huffduffer http://adactio.com/journal/1624/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor">Hanlon&#8217;s razor</a> entreats us to:</p> <blockquote> <p>Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.</p> </blockquote> <p>While <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws">Clarke&#8217;s third law</a> states that:</p> <blockquote> <p>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.</p> </blockquote> <p>Mash them up and that leaves us with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark's_Law">Clark&#8217;s law</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.</p> </blockquote> <p>I have experienced a textbook case of extremely advanced incompetence.</p> <p>When I wrote about the shenanigans of <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1623/">Perfect Pitch</a>, in which a DMCA claim was used to remove <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250">a perfectly innocuous discussion on The Session</a> from Google&#8217;s search index, I pondered about whether malice could be ascribed:</p> <blockquote> <p>Could it be that the owner of perfectpitch.com sent a DMCA complaint to Google simply because another site was getting higher rankings for the phrase “perfect pitch”? If so, then that’s a whole new level of SEO snake-oilery.</p> </blockquote> <p>In turns out that the correct cause is incompetence at a stunning level. I got an email from Gary Boucherle at perfectpitch.com who explained:</p> <blockquote> <p>Periodically we&#8217;ve contacted Google to submit the following complaint:</p> <blockquote> <p>We believe our copyrighted works have been illegally copied and made available for free download at the web sites listed below &#8230;</p> </blockquote> <p>The following URL was one of hundreds of URLS (mostly torrent sites) found with the Google search terms <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Burge+Pitch+Torrent">Burge+Pitch+Torrent</a>:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250">http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250</a></p> <p>While we try to check every URL to make sure it either contains torrents, or is a torrent file sharing site (not the case with this site), it was included with our complaint inadvertently.</p> </blockquote> <p>So here&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening: A company is doing a search for a phrase on Google, making a list of all the URLs returned by that search and then submitting that list to Google as part of a DMCA claim. Google then removes all those URLs from its search index without verifying any infringement.</p> <p>I subsequently had a phone conversation with Gary and he was quite contrite about his actions&#8212; although he did try to claim that the mere <em>mention</em> of torrents in an online discussion might be justification for a take down (a completely indefensible attitude).</p> <p>The more I talked to him, the more I realised that he simply had no idea about the DMCA. He was completely oblivious to the potential consequences of his actions were he to <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.eff.org/cases/online-policy-group-v-diebold">lose a counter-claim in court</a>.</p> <p>Gary Bourcherle abused a piece of extremely poor legislation in a scattergun approach without even understanding what he was doing. It&#8217;s like putting guns into the hands of small children.</p> <p>Well, Gary is very sorry now and promises he won&#8217;t do it again. He is going to contact Google and ask them to reinstate the discussion on The Session in the search index.</p> <p>Here is an official statement of apology, sent by email for redistribution here or anywhere else (try to ignore the bits where The Session is referred to as &#8220;a blog&#8221;):</p> <blockquote> <p>To All Readers:</p> <p>Here at PerfectPitch.com we made a big mistake.</p> <p>We instructed Google to block a blog site managed by Jeremy Keith, citing that they were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act (DMCA). As per our request, Google did indeed remove this page from their search listings.</p> <p>We wish to formally apologize to Mr. Keith and his bloggers for this mistake, for which we are deeply regretful.</p> <p>Please understand that we had no intention whatsoever to suppress the speech on Mr. Keith&#8217;s page. Please know that we are ardent supporters and advocates of free speech for everyone.</p> <p>We recognize this was a careless error, and there is really no excuse for this. Nevertheless, please permit us a moment to explain.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s what happened:</p> <p>We were actually submitting to Google a list of sites that were illegally distributing copies of our copyrighted intellectual property. We of course have every right to request that Google have these sites removed from their search engine results because we believe these sites violate the DMCA, which prohibits the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials over the internet.</p> <p>To our shock and horror, an employee of ours mistakenly included Mr. Keith&#8217;s site in our list, merely because it made a reference to illegal copies of our course. Naturally, this is not grounds for removal of this page at Google. Our intention was only to remove actual pages where the course is being illegally distributed, and not any pages of free speech, such as Mr. Keith&#8217;s blog. This was a misjudgment and error on our employee&#8217;s side, and on behalf of our company, we sincerely apologize.</p> <p>This event has never happened to us before when reporting illegal distribution of our materials. Please rest assured that we will redouble our efforts to ensure this never happens again.</p> <p>We have requested that Google immediately reinstate this page in their search results, along with our apology to Google as well.</p> <p>If we have offended any potential musicians who wished to purchase our best-selling, university verified ear training methods, again, we sincerely apologize. To make it up to you, we would invite you to try our courses at a substantial discount not offered to the general public, valid until the end of this month. Please go here to retrieve your special offer with our apologies:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.discount-offer.perfectpitch.com">http://www.discount-offer.perfectpitch.com</a></p> <p>Again, please accept our sincere regrets for this goof.</p> <p>Happy blogging, everyone.</p> <p>Sincerely yours,<br /> Gary Boucherle<br /> PerfectPitch.com</p> <p>Contact: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.PerfectPitch.com/contactus.htm">http://www.PerfectPitch.com/contactus.htm</a></p> </blockquote> <p>Apology accepted. Now don&#8217;t do it again.</p> <p>No word from Google on their &#8220;obey first, ask questions never&#8221; approach to DMCA claims.</p> <p>And if you thought the DMCA was a bad piece of legislation, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/">just wait till ACTA arrives</a>.</p> <p>Now, if you&#8217;ll excuse me, I&#8217;m off to change my email signature to &#8220;Burge Pitch Torrent.&#8221; It has a nice ring to it, don&#8217;t you think? Like &#8220;<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaatu_barada_nikto">Klaatu Barada Nikto</a>&#8221;.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/dmca">dmca</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/law">law</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/google">google</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/perfectpitch">perfectpitch</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1624/ Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:43:45 -0800 http://adactio.com/journal/1623/ <p>We were having a chat in the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://clearleft.com/">Clearleft</a> office today about site stats and their relative uselessness; numbers about bounce rates are like eyetracking data—without knowing the context, they’re not going to tell you anything.</p> <p>Anyway, I was reminded that I have an account over at <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/">Google Webmaster Tools</a> set up for three of my sites: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/">adactio.com</a>, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/">huffduffer.com</a> and <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://thesession.org/">thesession.org</a>. I logged in today for the first time in ages and started poking around.</p> <p>I noticed that I had some unread messages. Who knew that Google Webmaster Tools has a messaging system? I guess all software really <em>does</em> evolve until it can send email.</p> <p>One of the messages had the subject line <cite>Blocked URLs</cite>:</p> <blockquote> <p>For legal reasons, we’ve excluded from our search results content located at or under the following URL/directory:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250">http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250</a></p> <p>This content has been removed from all Google search results.</p> <p>Cause: Somone has filed a DMCA complaint against your site.</p> </blockquote> <p>What now?</p> <p>I visited the URL and found a fairly tame discussion about <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250">Perfect Pitch</a>. Here’s the only part of the discussion that references an external resource in a non-flattering light:</p> <blockquote> <p>I think that is referring to www.PerfectPitch.com. I’m not saying anything about such commercially-oriented courses because I don’t know them, but I think we’d all be wise to bear in mind the general comments voiced in the first two posts on this thread.</p> </blockquote> <p>That single reference to a third-party site is, apparently, enough to trigger a DMCA complaint.</p> <p>Google link to <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=11869">the complaint on Chilling Effects</a> but that just says <q>The cease-and-desist or legal threat you requested is not yet available.</q> It does, however, list the party who sent the complaint: Boucherle.</p> <p>By a staggering coincidence, Gary Boucherle of American Educational Music, Inc. is <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://whois.domaintools.com/perfectpitch.com">registered as the owner of perfectpitch.com</a>.</p> <p>So let’s get this straight. In a discussion about perfect pitch, someone mentions the website perfectpitch.com. They don’t repost any materials from the site. They don’t even link to the site. They don’t really say anything particularly disparaging. But it all takes is for the owner of perfectpitch.com to abuse the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act with a spurious complaint and just like that, Google removes the discussion from its search index.</p> <p>To be fair, Google also explain <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.google.com/dmca.html">how to file a counter-complaint</a>. However, the part about agreeing to potentially show up in a court in California is somewhat off-putting for those of us, like me, who live outside the United States of America.</p> <p>There is another possible explanation for this insane over-reaction; one that would explain why the offended party sent the complaint to Google rather than going down the more traditional route of threatening the ISP …</p> <p>The Session has pretty good Google juice. The markup is pretty lean, the content is semantically structured and there’s plenty of inbound links. Could it be that the owner of perfectpitch.com sent a DMCA complaint to Google simply because another site was getting higher rankings for the phrase “perfect pitch”? If so, then that’s a whole new level of SEO snake-oilery.</p> <p>Hmmm… that gives me an idea.</p> <p>If you have a blog or other personal publishing platform, perhaps you would like to write a post titled <cite>Perfect Pitch</cite>? Feel free to republish anything from this post, which is also coincidentally titled <cite>Perfect Pitch</cite>. And feel free to republish the contents of the original discussion on The Session titled, you guessed it: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250"><cite>Perfect Pitch</cite></a>.</p> <p><strong>Update</strong>: Thanks for inbound links, everyone. The matter is now being resolved. I have received <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1624/">an apology from Gary Bourcherle</a> who was being more stupid than evil.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/dmca">dmca</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/law">law</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/google">google</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/seo">seo</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/perfectpitch">perfectpitch</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1623/ Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:39:02 -0800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062286161/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062286161/" title="Guinness"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2531/4062286161_cf94c8faa8_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Guinness"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4062286161 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:16:15 -0700 Guinness halloween brighton zombie crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062285395/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062285395/" title="Annie and Josh"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2787/4062285395_29a1d5a038_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Annie and Josh"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4062285395 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:15:57 -0700 Annie and Josh halloween brighton zombie joshrussell crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063030876/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063030876/" title="Jessica"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2467/4063030876_bcd28dcef6_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Jessica"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4063030876 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:15:40 -0700 Jessica halloween brighton zombie jessicaspengler crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062283767/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062283767/" title="Intestines"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2581/4062283767_3293d46acf_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Intestines"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4062283767 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:15:19 -0700 Intestines halloween brighton zombie tomkiss crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063029188/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063029188/" title="Tom and I"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3477/4063029188_940d138947_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Tom and I"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4063029188 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:15:02 -0700 Tom and I halloween brighton zombie jeremykeith tomkiss crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063028522/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063028522/" title="Tom's intestines"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2685/4063028522_8b4f244024_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Tom's intestines"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4063028522 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:14:45 -0700 Tom's intestines halloween brighton zombie tomkiss crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063027692/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063027692/" title="Me eating Tom"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2643/4063027692_aca09aed2c_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Me eating Tom"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4063027692 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:14:25 -0700 Me eating Tom halloween brighton zombie jeremykeith tomkiss crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063026852/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063026852/" title="Cennydd"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2599/4063026852_4a50103f8b_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Cennydd"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4063026852 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:14:05 -0700 Cennydd halloween brighton zombie crawlofthedead cennyddbowles crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062280133/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4062280133/" title="Zombie chick"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2648/4062280133_1d21979695_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Zombie chick"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4062280133 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:13:50 -0700 Zombie chick halloween brighton zombie crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 cotd5 adactio http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063025616/ <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/adactio/">adactio</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4063025616/" title="Jessica, Max, and John"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3586/4063025616_a0de3d4a0f_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Jessica, Max, and John"/></a></p> nobody@flickr.com (adactio) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/4063025616 Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:13:36 -0700 Jessica, Max, and John halloween brighton zombie jessicaspengler maxwilliams crawlofthedead crawlofthedead2009 johnlinklaterjohnson cotd5 adactio http://adactio.com/journal/1622/ <p>I&#8217;ve been doing a fair bit of yakking lately, all recorded for posterity.</p> <p>First off, I had a chat with Tim from <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.designcritique.net/">Design Critique</a> on <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/7706">Ajax design considerations</a>, mostly recapping what I talked about UI13 last year.</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/7706">Jeremy Keith on Ajax design considerations on Huffduffer</a></p> <p>After that, I had a natter with Ross from <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://webaxe.blogspot.com/">Web Axe</a>, this time focusing on <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/8337">practical web accessibility</a>.</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/8337">Web Axe Episode 75: Jeremy Keith interview, Google Wave on Huffduffer</a></p> <p>Then <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://andybudd.com/" class="url"> Andy</a></span> , <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://clagnut.com/" class="url"> Rich</a></span> and I paid a visit to the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://boagworld.com/">Boagworld</a> crew out in the back of beyond where we had a free-for-all five-way chat about <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/8388">Clearleft and Headscape</a>.</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://huffduffer.com/adactio/8388">Boagworld 188: Clearscape Or Headleft? on Huffduffer</a></p> <p>Lastly, I had a video chat with <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.havocinspired.co.uk/" class="fn url">Ryan Taylor</a></span> for his series, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.havocinspired.co.uk/please-start-from-the-beginning/please-start-from-the-beginning-with-jeremy-keith/"><cite>Please Start From The Beginning</cite></a>.</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://vimeo.com/7032931">Please start from the beginning&#8230; with Jeremy Keith</a></p> <p>Add them all up and you&#8217;ve got a veritable aural onslaught. If you manage to make it through all of those, then you will almost certainly be very weary of listening to my voice.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/podcast">podcast</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/speaking">speaking</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/audio">audio</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/video">video</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1622/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:56:29 -0700 http://adactio.com/journal/1621/ <p>When I first heard that Yahoo were planning to bulldoze Geocities, I was livid. After <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/1573/">I blogged in anger</a>, I was taken to task for jumping the gun. <q>Give ‘em a chance,</q> I was told. <q>They may yet do something to save all that history.</q></p> <p>They did fuck all. They told Archive.org what URLs to spider and left it up to them to do the best they could with preserving internet history. Meanwhile, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2280">Jason Scott continued his crusade</a> to save as much as he could:</p> <blockquote> <p>This is fifteen years and decades of man-hours of work that you’re destroying, blowing away because it looks better on the bottom line.</p> </blockquote> <p>We are losing a piece of internet history. We are losing the destinations of millions of inbound links. But most importantly we are losing people’s dreams and memories.</p> <p>Geocities dies today. This is a bad day for the internet. This is a bad day for our collective culture. In my opinion, this is also a bad day for Yahoo. I, for one, will find it a lot harder to trust a company that finds this to be acceptable behaviour …despite the very cool and powerful APIs produced by the very smart and passionate developers within the same company.</p> <p>I hope that my friends who work at Yahoo understand that when I pour vitriol upon their company, I am not aiming at them. Yahoo has no shortage of clever people. But clearly they are down in the trenches doing development, not in the upper echelons making the decision to butcher Geocities. It’s <em>those</em> people, the decision makers, that <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/adactio/status/1049793928">I refer to</a> as twunts. Fuckwits. Cockbadgers. Pisstards.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/geocities">geocities</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/yahoo">yahoo</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/culture">culture</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/linkrot">linkrot</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/preservation">preservation</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/history">history</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1621/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:44:20 -0700 http://adactio.com/journal/1620/ <p>It has been said before but I&#8217;ll say it again: copy is interface. <cite class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://bokardo.com/" class="url"> Josh</a></cite> sums it up nicely in his post <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://bokardo.com/archives/writing-microcopy/"><cite>Writing Microcopy</cite></a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing.</p> </blockquote> <p>The canonical online example is <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://moo.com/">Moo.com</a> with its adorably anthropomorphised Little Moo robot personality. An oft-cited offline paragon is Innocent Smoothies with their cheeky little packaging easter egg delighters.</p> <p>My favourite meatspace exemplar is right here in Brighton. The Earth and Stars pub has an outside chalkboard with a distinct personality. Over the past two years, I&#8217;ve been chronicling its announcements <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/sets/72157604457092007/">on Flickr</a>.</p> <p>Some samples:</p> <blockquote> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/1578992332/in/set-72157604457092007/">Why does everyone always look at me? I know I&#8217;m a chalkboard and that&#8217;s my job, I just wish people would ask before staring at me. Sometimes I don&#8217;t have anything to say.</a></p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/2211285809/in/set-72157604457092007/">All the chalkboards inside think they&#8217;re so special! They seem to forget that I was here first! If I can see off the English weather, then I can certainly see off those punks!</a></p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/2497765096/in/set-72157604457092007/">I&#8217;m the unluckiest chalkboard in Brighton. Summer&#8217;s coming and this side of the building is always in the shade. Please come inside and tell them to move me to the western wall.</a></p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/2552453604/in/set-72157604457092007/">What are you looking at? I&#8217;ve told you before that it&#8217;s rude to stare! Be warned&#8230; I&#8217;m the chalkboard Kung Fu champion and not afraid to use my skills.</a></p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3289138806/in/set-72157604457092007/">So bored of this job. I don&#8217;t want to be a chalkboard anymore. I wish I&#8217;d paid more attention in woodwork, I could have been a skateboard or a sun-lounger&#8230; at least I&#8217;m not a chopping board.</a></p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3997303835/in/set-72157604457092007/">Stop looking at me like I&#8217;m a waste of space! I&#8217;m not just a chalkboard you know! I&#8217;m also a supporting wall. I provide shelter from wild beasts and tropical storms. Go inside so I don&#8217;t have to see you!</a></p> </blockquote> <p>And my favourite:</p> <blockquote> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/2744142303/in/set-72157604457092007/">Help me.</a></p> </blockquote> <p>Walking past the chalkboard this week, I was pleased to see that it had been updated. Taking out my camera, I read the latest message:</p> <blockquote> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4012169563/in/set-72157604457092007/">Call me paranoid but I&#8217;m sure someone&#8217;s watching me, some are even taking pictures. I&#8217;m not sure of my rights as a chalkboard, but I feel violated. I&#8217;ll be watching you Mr. Keith!</a></p> </blockquote> <p>I&#8217;m being cyberstalked by a paranoid existentialist chalkboard.</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/4012169563/"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2549/4012169563_3116085051.jpg" alt="Paranoid existentialist chalkboard"/></a></p> <p>Made me smile.</p> <hr /> <p> Tagged with <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/copy">copy</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/interface">interface</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/chalkboard">chalkboard</a> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://adactio.com/journal/tag/pub">pub</a> </p> http://adactio.com/journal/1620/ Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:01:26 -0700 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/122 <p>November is shaping up to be a very busy month for JavaScript.</p> <p><span class="vevent"><a rel="nofollow" class="url summary" target="_blank" href="http://fronteers.nl/congres/2009/information">Fronteers 2009</a> is a two-day event in <span class="location">Amsterdam on November 5th and 6th.</span> <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://ejohn.org/" class="fn url">John Resig</a></span> and <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://crockford.com/" class="fn url">Douglas Crockford</a></span>—that alone makes it worth the price of admission.</p> <p><span class="vevent">Straight after that, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://jsconf.eu/2009/" class="summary url">JSConf.eu</a> takes place in <span class="location">Berlin</span> on November 7th and 8th .</span> It’s a tight squeeze but it would possible to go to both events with a train ride in-between. I wonder if that’s what John is going to do; he’s speaking at both conferences.</p> <p><span class="vevent">But the highlight of the month still looks like being <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://2009.full-frontal.org/" class="url summary">Full Frontal</a> on November 20th . That’ll be held right here in <span class="location">Brighton</span> which probably explains why I’m kind of biased.</span> But seriously, check out the line-up:</p> <ul> <li class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.quirksmode.org/" class="fn url">Peter-Paul Koch</a>,</li> <li class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.wait-till-i.com/" class="fn url">Christian Heilmann</a>,</li> <li class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://simonwillison.net/" class="fn url">Simon Willison</a></li> </ul> <p>…and more.</p> <p>You can still <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.stubmatic.com/leftlogic/event/741">grab tickets</a> for the early-price of just one hundred squid.</p></span> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/122 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:16:26 -0700 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/121 <p>I remember when I spoke at the first @media conference in London in 2005, mine was the only talk related to JavaScript. Just a few short years later, there was an entire @media spin-off conference devoted to JavaScript: the slightly-inaccurately named @media Ajax. JavaScript has come a long way in the past few years.</p> <p class="vevent">This year’s be-there-or-be-square JavaScript event is the newly-announced <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://2009.full-frontal.org/" class="summary url">Full Frontal conference</a> to be held at the fantastic <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema_home_date.aspx?venueId=doyb" class="location">Duke Of York’s Picturehouse in Brighton</a> on November 20th :</p> <blockquote> <dl><dt>full-fron•tal (JavaScript):</dt> <dd>with nothing concealed or held back.</dd></dl> </blockquote> <p>It’s being organised by <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://leftlogic.com/" class="fn url">Remy Sharp</a></span>. Doesn’t this guy ever sleep? Not content with creating <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://jsbin.com/">JS Bin</a> and <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://api.jquery.com/">the JQuery API browser</a>, and writing a book on <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://jqueryfordesigners.com/">jQuery for Designers</a>, now he’s going to organise a conference too.</p> <p>It looks like being an absolute bargain. A mere £100 will get you a ticket to a day of <em>serious</em> JavaScript talks from some of the smartest people in the business: <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.wait-till-i.com/" class="fn url">Christian Heilmann</a></span>, <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.quirksmode.org/" class="fn url">Peter-Paul Koch</a></span>, <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.kryogenix.org/" class="fn url">Stuart Langridge</a></span>, <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://simonwillison.net/" class="fn url">Simon Willison</a></span>, and more.</p> <p>Best of all, I don’t have to travel anywhere for this conference as it’s being held in my adopted hometown of Brighton. But if you do have to travel, I can think of now better place to travel to. Come along and I’ll make sure the geeks of Brighton welcome you.</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.stubmatic.com/leftlogic/event/741">Tickets are on sale now</a>.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/121 Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:09:11 -0700 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/120 <p>A little while back, <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.hawksworx.com/" class="fn url">Phil Hawksworth</a></span>, a very smart web developer at Osmosoft, created <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://unobtrusify.com/">Unobtrusify.com</a>. It&#8217;s a self-describing and rather lovely-looking ode to semantic markup, appropriate CSS and unobtrusive JavaScript.</p> <p>You can <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.hawksworx.com/journal/2009/01/05/unobtrusify-your-javascript/">read all about how it was made</a> or you can simply <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://unobtrusify.com/">go and play around with it</a> &#8230;go ahead; click on stuff.</p> <p>Phil&#8217;s co-worker <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://blog.whatfettle.com/" class="fn url">Paul Downey</a></span> is responsible for such printed masterpieces as <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://thewebisagreement.com/"><cite>The Web Is Agreement</cite></a> and <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/2918889380/"><cite>The URI Is The Thing</cite></a>. He has now created <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/3290532276/">a printable version of Unobtrusify</a>. Head on over to archive.org, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.archive.org/details/Unobtrusify">download and print</a> to your heart&#8217;s content.</p> <p>Now I just need to find some sticky material so I can slap my copy up next to my desk.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/120 Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:23:47 -0800 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/119 <p>jQuery was first released on January 14th, 2006. Now, precisely three revolutions of planet Earth later, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://docs.jquery.com/Release:jQuery_1.3">jQuery 1.3</a> is out.</p> <p>This release features some significant <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://blog.jquery.com/2009/01/14/jquery-13-and-the-jquery-foundation/">changes and improvements</a>. There’s all the usual speed improvements, of course, but what I like in particular is the way that jQuery is ditching browser sniffing in favour of feature detection. That’s the way to do it.</p> <p>The way the community is developing is as interesting as the code. <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://sizzlejs.com/">Sizzle</a>, the CSS selector engine inside jQuery, has been spun off into its own standalone project so that it can be used by other libraries and frameworks. Meanwhile, the jQuery project itself is coming under the banner of the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/">Software Freedom Conservancy</a> to formalise its standing as free and open software.</p> <p>Congratulations to <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://ejohn.org/" class="url"> John</a></span> and the rest of the team. Congratulations also to fellow Brightonian <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://remysharp.com/" class="url fn">Remy Sharp</a></span> for putting together the very handy <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://api.jquery.com/">jQuery API browser</a>. The boy done good.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/119 Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:55:25 -0800 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/118 <p>A <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastebin">paste bin</a> is a very handy tool when you&#8217;re working as part of a team, especially if there&#8217;s any remote work involved. Basically, they&#8217;re web-based clipboards where you can paste in snippets of text&#8212;JavaScript, CSS, markup or whatever&#8212;and then share the URL in an email or a chat message (a lot cleaner than pasting code straight into an email or chat window). Often you can specify a life span for the snippet so, for example, if nobody visits the page for a three month period, the URL rots.</p> <p>At <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://clearleft.com/">Clearleft</a>, we often use <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://pastebin.com/">pastebin.com</a> though I&#8217;ve also used <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://dpaste.com/">dpaste</a> in the past. I like the way that pastebin allows you to create subdomains on the fly: just type in the URL to create it.</p> <p>These services are great for collaborative debugging but they have one slight flaw when it comes to client-side work. JavaScript and CSS don&#8217;t exist in isolation; they are used to enhance an existing HTML document. So passing around a snippet of JavaScript or CSS might not be much good unless it is accompanied by the corresponding markup.</p> <p>Enter <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://jsbin.com/">JS Bin</a> from <span class="vcard"><span class="adr"><span class="locality">Brighton</span></span>&#8217;s own <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://remysharp.com/" class="fn url">Remy Sharp</a></span>, the man behind the superb <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://leftlogic.com/lounge/articles/microformats_bookmarklet/">microformats bookmarklet</a>. This is a paste bin with a twist. As well as being able to share a snippet of JavaScript, you provide the markup that the JavaScript is acting on as well. If you&#8217;ve been sent a JS Bin URL, you can play around with the JavaScript and/or the markup, saving as you go.</p> <p>There are some other nice touches too, like the ability to include a JavaScript library at the flick of a dropdown. For a proper explanation, be sure to <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://jsbin.com/about">watch the screencast</a> that Remy has recorded.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/118 Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:22:35 -0700 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/117 <p><span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" class="fn url" target="_blank" href="http://ejohn.org/">John Resig</a></span> is a machine. Not content with dividing his time between working on <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://jquery.com/">jQuery</a> and working on <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://getfirebug.com/">Firebug</a>, he&#8217;s also got another few irons in the fire.</p> <p>Just for kicks, John has created <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://github.com/jeresig/sizzle/tree/master">a standalone selector engine called Sizzle</a>. It&#8217;s not quite ready for prime time yet but it looks very promising. It uses the CSS syntax that has helped make jQuery such a popular library. Right now, the code is coming in at less than 4 K !</p> <p>I really, really like this modular approach to writing JavaScript. Instead of bloating a library with <em>more</em> features, the components of the library are instead being split into separate standalone pieces. I wonder if the same thing will happen with event handling and effects. Those three actions (selector, event, effect) probably make up 80% of jQuery use cases:</p> <pre><code>jQuery(selector).event(function() { effect(); }); </code></pre> <p>For an event of a different kind, there&#8217;s a <span class="vevent"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://events.jquery.com/" class="summary url">jQuery Camp</a> scheduled for September 28th , the day before The Ajax Experience in <span class="location">Boston</span></span>. The exact location has yet to be determined but given the number of jQuery fanboys out there, I&#8217;m guessing it won&#8217;t be &#8216;round at John&#8217;s house. There&#8217;s a nominal registration fee of $50 to cover lunch. If you use jQuery and you find yourself anywhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States at the end of September, you should probably register now.</p> <p>In his spare time, John likes to relax by <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs/">porting the Processing visualisation language to JavaScript</a>. Freak.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/117 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:44:28 -0700 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/116 <p>Another day, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://jquery.com/blog/2008/06/04/jquery-126-events-100-faster/">another incremental release of jQuery</a>. This one is sporting 13% faster CSS selectors and 103% faster event handlers.</p> <p>Meanwhile, as the JavaScript libraries continue to evolve and improve, the browser engines are also focusing on speed improvements. Dave Hyatt and the WebKit gang have announced <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/">a brand new JavaScript engine called SquirrelFish</a>. This looks like being about 60% faster than the previous WebKit interpreter so you can expect quite a speed boost in the next version of Safari.</p> <p>If you&#8217;re interested in what happens under the hood with Squirrel Engine, Dave shares some of the philosophical underpinnings:</p> <blockquote> <p>SquirrelFish owes a lot of its design to some of the latest research in the field of efficient virtual machines, including research done by Professor M. Anton Ertl, et al, Professor David Gregg, et al, and the developers of the Lua programming language.</p> </blockquote> <p>You can find plenty of gory details on <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://webkit.org/blog/">the Surfin&#8217; Safari blog</a>.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/116 Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:57:54 -0700 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/115 <p>I was in the illustrious surroundings of <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.therissingtonpodcast.co.uk/">Rissington</a> last week to deliver a DOM Scripting workshop. My good friend <cite class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://pixeldiva.co.uk/" class="url"> Ann</a></cite> was in attendance. During the latter part of the workshop — which was deliberately more loosely structured than the rest of the day — she pointed me to a really lovely bit of JavaScript form enhancement.</p> <p>Take a look at <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/">the UK and Ireland TV and radio listings on Yahoo</a>. See that search form in the upper right corner? It’s using the standard design pattern of allowing you to specify exactly where you’re searching. But unlike most implementations, this one is built on a rock-solid foundation of semantic markup.</p> <p><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://nascentguruism.com/journal/search-and-ye-shall-fail">Steve Marshall has the lowdown</a>. Under the hood the form is using radio buttons for choosing where to search. Then, using a combination of JavaScript and CSS, this default representation is augmented to look and behave as desired. Switch off JavaScript and you can still use the search form perfectly well.</p> <p>What impresses me about this isn’t so much the code (although I’m sure it’s top-notch), it’s the thinking behind the implementation: start with solid semantic markup with good ol’ fashioned form elements for interaction; <em>then</em> think about how it can be enhanced. Nice one, <cite class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://nascentguruism.com/" class="url"> Steve</a></cite> .</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/115 Sun, 11 May 2008 08:06:14 -0700 http://domscripting.com/blog/display/114 <p>Don&#8217;t tell <span class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://boagworld.com/" class="url"> Paul</a></span> but I sometimes listen to <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.boagworld.com/podcast/">the Boagworld podcast</a>. I&#8217;m sharing this dark secret with you because recently the podcast featured <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.boagworld.com/archives/2008/02/113_hiring.html">a good interview with Christian Heilmann</a>.</p> <p><cite class="vcard"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.wait-till-i.com/" class="url"> Christian</a></cite> talks about best and worst practices in writing JavaScript today. It&#8217;s well worth a listen.</p> <p>But when the subject turns to Object Oriented Programming, Christian makes a pointed reference:</p> <blockquote> <p>And there&#8217;s not much magic to it. I mean I get annoyed when I see JavaScript guys going on stage and saying like: <q>Well guys, this is a function and when it&#8217;s an object it&#8217;s a method and why should I know this?</q> Well you should know this because you need to communicate with other developers as well sooner or later.</p> </blockquote> <p>Um&#8230; that would be me. In my books, presentations and workshops I&#8217;ve often explained methods and properties as being like functions and variables, just within the scope of an object (hence the dot syntax). But I never, <em>ever</em> said <q>And why should I know this?</q></p> <p>What I was trying to do was explain objects using reference points that I think most people will understand. I know that for me personally I had a lightbulb moment when I grokked methods and properties as being like functions and variables. The whole point of explaining this terminology is precisely so that people can communicate with other developers. As Christian says:</p> <blockquote> <p>And these people speak that lingo and rather than you having to explain yourself for 15 minutes you could communicate in 3 minutes.</p> </blockquote> <p>Exactly! That&#8217;s why I think it&#8217;s important that I take the time to at least explain the terminology of objects ( i.e. methods and properties) even if I don&#8217;t delve into the technical details. My aim, like Christian, is to encourage better understanding and communication.</p> <p>Evidently Christian takes issue with my teaching techniques. That&#8217;s fine. But I wish he wouldn&#8217;t put words in my mouth by claiming that I&#8217;m telling people that they shouldn&#8217;t have to learn the terminology around JavaScript objects.</p> <p>Then again&#8230; maybe his comment wasn&#8217;t aimed at me at all and there is some other conference speaker out there who is going around telling people that they don&#8217;t have to know what the words &#8220;method&#8221; and &#8220;property&#8221; mean. If that&#8217;s true, then I agree with Christian. Such exhortations are not useful. But in lieu of any source for Christian&#8217;s imaginings of what he thinks he heard, I&#8217;ll take the egotistical paranoid route and assume he&#8217;s talking about me.</p> <p>Anyway, I guess I&#8217;ll have to make sure from now on that I&#8217;m clearer about what I&#8217;m saying. More importantly, I&#8217;ll have to make sure that I&#8217;m clear on what I&#8217;m <em>not</em> saying.</p> http://domscripting.com/blog/display/114 Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:47:49 -0700