Neil Merton

there's plenty of thunk left in this thinker

[neilmerton]

Where have I been?

So... I’ve just pushed a new blog post, after nearly 4 years! Crazy! You might want to know what I’ve been up to during that time. Or maybe not.

I’ve changed jobs a few times, currently I’m doing a very enjoyable role at a start-up (yes, right at the beginning when there was no product, just ideas), and this has been lots of fun (and hard work!).

This has involved getting my hands dirty and learning a new skill-set, mainly Vue.js. Along with Vue.js we’re also using Vuetify.js as the main Front-end Component library. This has saved us so much time compared to rolling out our own library from scratch.

[neilmerton]

Vaping

I’ve been a vaper for just over 12 months now, and during this time I’ve tried a few different devices (mods as they’re referred as) and juices (a.k.a. e-liquids).

Some have been great, others not so much. Some of what I’ve found enjoyable are down to personal preference.

Currently though, I’m having the best results with a Vaporesso Cascade One Plus kit. It has a 3000mah built-in battery, so is pretty hassle-free. The only down-side I’ve found is the mesh coils you can get - these pretty much tend to start leaking after about 2 days use. The ceramic coils definitely work better, but don’t have as much flavour production as the mesh version.

I’ve recently got hold of the VooPoo Drag mini kit (4000mah built-in battery and mesh coils), and I’ll update in a few weeks on my experience with it.

On the juice front, I’ve become a big fan of most of the Charlie’s Chalk Dust range. Especially the Bake Sale off-shoot.

I’ve also been tempted by the Vandy Vape Pulse Dual kit - but that would be quite a change. I’ve never ventured into the world of squonking before - or RDAs. Maybe if the VooPoo doesn’t work out I’ll give this a bash.

[neilmerton]

A great Chrome Extension to make your New Tab more productive.

[neilmerton]

Disable Smallapp Launcher for Sony Xperia Z2

If you have a Sony Xperia Z2 and would like to disable the Smallapp Launcher then simply follow these instructions:

KitKat

adb shell pm block com.sony.smallapp.launcher pm block com.sony.smallapp.app.widget exit adb reboot

Lollipop

adb shell pm hide com.sony.smallapp.launcher pm hide com.sony.smallapp.app.widget exit adb reboot

Enjoy!

[neilmerton]

My Twitter Week - 39 2014

Particleground - A jQuery plugin for snazzy background particle systems - http://jnicol.github.io/particleground/

Bootstrap Confirmation - jQuery plugin for Twitter Bootstrap. Use Bootstrap Popovers as confirmation dialogs. Simple and easy - http://ethaizone.github.io/Bootstrap-Confirmation/

Thelia, a Symfony-based e-commerce solution - http://symfony.com/blog/thelia-a-symfony-based-e-commerce-solution

A guide to the HTML5 #time element - http://www.sitepoint.com/html5-time-element-guide/

CSS Audit - taking stock of your css code - http://alistapart.com/article/css-audits-taking-stock-of-your-code

Off-Canvas Menu Effects - showing off menus stylishly - http://tympanus.net/codrops/2014/09/16/off-canvas-menu-effects/

[neilmerton]

Birthday Google Doodle, thanks Google.

[neilmerton]

Waves - Click effect inspired by Google's Material Design

Very cool!

[neilmerton]

Making HTML tables suck less

Wonderful, looking forward to this expanding in the future.

[neilmerton]

Concise is a lightweight front-end framework that provides great features without the bloat.

Very promising

[neilmerton]

This is a fixed navigation that allows your users to access the menu at any time while they are experiencing your website. It's smaller than a full-width fixed

Very useful

[neilmerton]

All you need to know about the new Material Design from Google

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Select or Die - Yet another jQuery plugin to style select elements.

Really like this one!

[neilmerton]

WinJS - The Windows Library for JavaScript

Dedicated to creating the best possible solution for HTML/CSS/JS application development.

[neilmerton]

Technical debt 101

An interesting read about technical debt, legacy code, big rewrites and ancient wisdom for non technical managers.

[neilmerton]

Enjoy!

[neilmerton]

Fenix Web Server

Fenix is a beautiful desktop web server designed for developers and designers.

Brilliant! How did I not know about this application before?

[neilmerton]

How to fix "Insufficient Storage Available" error on Android

I was recently having issues with updating both Facebook and Twitter apps on my Oppo Find 5 running AOKP 4.4.2, Android was complaining about insufficient storage, yes the “insufficient storage available” error. So, I installed LogCat and tried installing Twitter (in this instance) again and then trawled through the log for something suspisious. I came across the following:

04-15 13:27:00.660 W/NativeHelper(731): Could not delete native binary: /data/app-lib/com.twitter.android-1/libtwittermedia.so 04-15 13:27:00.660 E/PackageManager(731): Cannot rename native library directory /data/app-lib/vmdl354040019 to /data/app-lib/com.twitter.android-1

Ah-ha, so it's not an error due to insufficient storage, it's actually a problem with deleting some native binary and not being able to rename a library directory. So, here's how I fixed the problem (note - your Android phone will have to be rooted in order to follow these steps):

Ran Sliding Explorer with SU (SuperUser) permissions

Navigated to the FileSystem (right swipe menu)

Navigated up to the root folder (up arrow)

Went into 'data/app-lib' folder.

Scrolled down to the 'com.twitter.android-1' directory

Went into the directory and deleted the 'libtwittermedia.so' file

Went back, then deleted the 'com.twitter.android-1' directory

Exitted theSliding Explorer application

After that I was able to install the Android Twitter app again without getting the dreaded insufficient storage error message being displayed to me. I also repeated the same process for Android Facebook app and was able to successfully install it again.

UPDATE (25-Apr-2014) - there is an app on the Google Play store that will do this for you, it's call InsuFixer. Again, your phone will need to be rooted in order to use this app.