#developoment

[lh-communicationandinteraction]

These are the last illustrations completed. I redid some that I had done earlier because I felt the looked a bit creepy/terrifying!

Although I’m still not happy with the Ram I feel at this point it’s more important to get the navigation completed and working 

[hello-logicexpress]

You are genuinely intrigued by creating a successful online business, then it would be a decent thought to teach yourself about different website development.

[marley-fuckin-kingston]

Nurse's Announcement

Patient Marley Kingston was found dead in the hospital grounds. We suspect that this was not an attack, and that Mr. Kingston jumped from the roof in the early hours of the morning. He is currently unconscious and is accepting visitors. The patient's next of kin has been notified.

Staff would like to remind any visitors to take caution if they visit the patient, as it is likely that he will be extremely scared, confused or irate.

Have a pleasant day.

[ashitanojoe]

Prototyping today and ran into a weird issue where a background-image was being shrunk when viewed in Mobile Safari. I was running an iOS 5 beta so I thought it might be a bug or something new related to iOS 5. Turns out I was just using too big of an image for Safari to handle and it was downsampling it to a size it could manage. Luckily this guy had already figured it out and even points to a Apple Developer page explaining iOS resources limits. Good to know.

[ashitanojoe]

The Web is really just HTTP over TCP/IP. What gets transported over HTTP does not define the Web.

and

Hyperlink traversal matters. The Internet being global and decentralized matters. HTML does not matter.

Trying to decide if this is obvious and I agree or if I just want to agree because it sounds contrarian. Makes a lot of sense either way. Reminds me of the whole hiding-the-file-system paradigm that iOS/Lion is trailblazing actually.

All computers have a file system1 and all developers need to use that file system to build applications. Do normal users need to use—or even know about—the file system to access and use those applications? Apple doesn't think so. And if the way the iPad is selling is any indication, they're right.

So think of URLs as the file system of the web. How often do you type in URLs to get to a website – beyond maybe two letters before it autocompletes from your history? Google has already tried to hide the URL bar in Chrome. This was anathema the first time I heard it. I love a beautifully descriptive and memorable URL as much as any web dev worth their salt should. I also don't mind organizing and reorganizing the folders on my laptop. I doubt many non-geek computer users care about URLs or organize their folders obsessively. If we grant that Apple is on to something with the non-user-facing file system in iOS what's the difference between that and hiding the URL?

As a dev, yes, I'll always want to know the URL of the page or service I'm using (or know how to find it if I wanted). The point is when I'm browsing as a "normal" user it really doesn't matter. Like the article says, who cares if what comes over the connection is HTML, plaintext JSON, a binary stream that can be reorganized into a JPG image, or some proprietary format yet to be invented? As long as it let's me traverse links and looks good/works well on my device I could care less if it's using an HTML renderer, a Cocoa View, or a Android view to show me the information.

As a web dev it definitely makes me wary to think like this but as a User Of The Internet it makes me excited.

I don't know, there might be computers out there that don't have a filesystem but for all intents and purposes all our *NIX and Windows machines do and that's what I'm talking about. ↩︎

[ashitanojoe]

> Every good iOS developer I know of is obsessed with user input touch responsiveness and animation frame rates. —[John Gruber](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/15/allsopp-web-apps) As should be every web developer. The problem is that Apple—just like in the mobile OS space—is the only one obsessed with touch responsiveness and animation frame rates in the mobile browser space. This is what allows developers to obsess as well, which is why the iPhone 4 is such a great all-around gadget (best ever if you ask me). Not only does it provide native app developers a great environment for their apps to run, but Mobile Safari is the best mobile browser. Android, et. al. still won't let you run a web app full-screen. And do they have hadrware-accelerated css animations yet? Sure, as web developers we don't get to be first class citizens on iOS. No camera or photo library access, no music library access, poor audio support, the list goes on. I doubt we'll ever get everything native apps do but don't think that means Apple won't keep adding on functionality ([gyroscope access](http://www.macrumors.com/2010/12/22/developers-harness-new-accelerometer-and-gyroscope-support-in-mobile-safari/) for instance). Second class is still pretty great. Native apps are great but they're not what I know how to make. Until someone makes a competing mobile browser that allows me to obsess over touch responsiveness and animation frame rates the iPhone 4 is the only platform I'll care about. I'll make sure the site loads and works on Android but if Google won't bother optimizing for responsiveness and frame rates then what can I do?

[ashitanojoe]

Bookmarklet to turn any webpage into Katamari Damacy! Do not use until you have time to spare... via [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318076)

[ashitanojoe]

How I use Instapaper and Pinboard + a script to send descriptions

To me [Pinboard](http://pinboard.in/) (and before it, [Delicious](http://delicious.com/)) would almost be pointless without the ability to add a description to your saved bookmarks. It's like dog-earing the page of a book but not underlining the passage that caught your eye or writing a note in the margin that you want to remember. When I come back to that book in two, five, twenty, whatever years I don't want to have to read that page all over again to figure out what I thought was so special that I saved it. Or if someone else finds it they should be able to see why I thought this page was worthy of marking. Same goes with online bookmarks. Sure, for some articles the title and your tags are enough ([e.g.](http://pinboard.in/u:joeminkie/b:dd9555f0c230)). Others I want to save for their design or because they solved a design/Ui problem particularly well or creatively.[^1] But, [at least for me](http://pinboard.in/u:joeminkie), when I scan my bookmarks I'd like to know what was so great about the article without having to click on every link. Sometimes the only reason I save the article is to save that one paragraph or quote. Scanning the list is like scanning a notebook. I'd like to know how people with thousands of "undescribed" bookmarks use the service. Is it just a pack-rat thing? Just knowing you saved it somewhere is enough? Are tags enough to jog your memory? Do you search your bookmarks before you search google? Pinboard isn't even really about the "social" thing so that can't be it for everyone. I've got tons of bookmarks saved in my locally in my browser(s) from before I started using these services that, yes, I'll eventually move over, but half of them I may just delete if I can't easily see why I saved them in the first place. I can understand keeping them in my browser so the address bar auto-complete might work better (speaking of which, is there a Safari extension to sync Pinboard and Safari bookmarks? Would that even be useful?) but I really want to use Pinboard as a place to archive my online reading history for posterity, if nothing else. Another issue is _when_ the notes are made. With a book I'm not going to finish reading one day and go back the next and highlight all my favorite passages. Similarly, I can't save a bunch of pages to Pinboard and then at some point later go back and edit them all at once with the passages I thought were pertinent at the time. It's not even just a memory thing,[^2] it's a time thing. I'm addicted to my RSS reader. For all human intents and purposes there's an unlimited amount of things to read on the web. A lot of it I read/skim and forget about. When I want to remember something though I want to note it right then, save it, and then move on to the next immediately. This isn't an issue with bookmarking sites when reading in the browser, only when using a mobile device. Since I got the iPhone one of my most consistently used apps is [Instapaper](http://www.instapaper.com). Most of the time if an article's good enough to be saved in Instapaper it's good enough to be saved to Pinboard after I read it. But the whole point of Instapaper is to be able to read on your iPhone/iPad when you're out of the house/office and most likely when you're without a cell or wifi signal. So when I finish an article on the subway home how do I save it to Pinboard **and also** include a note about why I am saving it in the description field? I can't imagine I'm the _only one_ who needs this feature... but of course that's what every user says when they find some missing functionality from an app. So even though I'm all for simplicity in these new times of mobile/web/iOS apps I wrote polite and brief emails to the respective developers of Instapaper and Pinboard stating my case. Of course nothing came of it but that's fine. It's not like I'm going to stop using them. But, but, but... They don't _do_ exactly what I want them to _do_... Just one little change in their code would make my life, like, a million times better... It's _so easy_ why can't they just add it... Of course, this is another thing needy users say. Most of the time they learn to deal with it and move on. I was prepared to as well but then I remembered: I know how to code. I know a little [Ruby](http://ruby-lang.org/) (and this would be a good way to learn more). I have a [web hosting account](http://www.webfaction.com/) to fool around on. If it's so easy, why don't I just fix it for myself? And so I did. My problem: On mobile, **there is no way to save a bookmark from Instapaper to Pinboard and include a description** (or tags either but I'm mainly worried about the description). There is currently one and a half ways to transfer at least something though: - You can setup Pinboard to read your starred items from Instapaper and import them into your bookmarks automatically but there's no way to add a description or tags without having to go to Pinboard at some later time and editing the bookmarks. I've already explained why this is not useful to me. - You can send an email to your private pinboard address to add bookmarks on the go but the email must be plaintext otherwise Pinboard doesn't parse out the information correctly. Instapaper let's you email an article but iOS sends an html email by default. Not to mention you have to do some deleting and copy/pasting with the way Instapaper places the article information in the email. My solution: I set up a special email address on my domain, run all email sent there through a script that parses out just the plain text, formats it correctly and then forwards it to my real pinboard email address. You can [view the script here](https://gist.github.com/803237) (minus my private details). It took me an hour here and there during one week in order to figure out what I needed to do and then a solid chunk of time on a weekend to finish. Most of my time was spent looking up Ruby stuff relating to STDIN and file IO and debugging (waiting for emails to be sent from the script took 30-60 seconds each time which adds up if you have to do it 20-30 times). Most of the work is done by the [Mail gem](https://github.com/mikel/mail) though. In fact, almost all of the work is done by the Mail gem. It parses the incoming email into separate plaintext and html parts and then all I do is send along only the plaintext version. Which again, makes me think it should be as easy to implement in PHP on Pinboard's end, especially if there's already an decent email parsing library, but I don't want to assume too much. And really, in the end, who cares? My problem is solved. [^1]: I save these pages locally with [LittleSnapper](http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/) as well because Pinboard's [archive feature](http://pinboard.in/faq/#archiving), while great in theory, is not quite up to snuff for what I need yet. [^2]: As the elder Dr. Jones [said](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/quotes): "I wrote them down in my diary so that I wouldn't _have_ to remember."