nicholasjon.com :: a weblog >> posts tagged: development

Sketching in Code

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:39:28 GMT

Wireframes have less use in a world that’s no longer based on the “page.”

Link: http://alistapart.com/articles/sketchingincode

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Using a Lot of Disk Space to Scale

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:15:54 GMT

Link: http://highscalability.com/how-i-learned-stop-worrying-and-love-using-lot-disk-space-scale

How they scaled Facebook Chat

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:17:06 GMT

Link: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=14218138919&id=9445547199&index=0

New Relic

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:46:48 GMT

A whole company forms around the idea of Ruby on Rails scalability. I’m hoping a lot of neat stuff comes from this.

Link: http://www.newrelic.com/

To Launch or Not to Launch

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:50:21 GMT

How to decide when to pull the trigger.

Link: http://nextupdate.com/blog/archives/2008/04/to-launch-or-not-to-launch/

Advice from Coudal on how to transition from client work to products

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:52:09 GMT

Link: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/975-advice-from-coudal-on-how-to-transition-from-client-work-to-products

Killing Some Bad Layout Conventions

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:14:06 GMT

From Andy Rutledge.

Link: http://www.andyrutledge.com/bad-layout-conventions.php

Blue Beanie Day 2007

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:33:25 GMT

Unfortunately, all I had was a black beanie to show my support for web standards. I’ll be better prepared next year.

nicholasjon.com is iPhone-ready

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:13:49 GMT

I just whipped together an iPhone-ready version of the site based on Joe Hewitt’s amazingly quick work.

It’s “read only” for now, meaning I didn’t build commenting into it, however you should be able to browse the front page of the site without any trouble.

It’s amazing how easy it is to develop for this little device.

Scaling Rails via Twitter

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:14:42 GMT

The Twitter folk aren’t pleased with Rails scalability.

DHH points out the way their app was configured it was never really going to scale anyway, and that they certainly could improve their performance with more caching and more database servers. He does end on a sort of Rails is open source, you can always fix it yourself note, which is a little disingenuine.

Brian McCallister responds to the whole thing with I think the best perspective of all.

Update: Problem solved. (Dr Nic to the rescue.)

Update: And again. (This looks really promising.)

Update: And again. (Dr Nic again — he’s good.)

How game mechanics can make your app more fun

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:31:00 GMT

Using the psychology of gaming to improve your customers’ investments in your site.

Link: http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/03/how_game_mechanics_can_make_yo.html

Joyent Slingshot

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 08:17:40 GMT

Build offline-syncable web apps for Windows and OSX in Ruby.

Link: http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot

Devils and details

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:10:48 GMT

I stumbled across a fantastic quote in this article on software development:

The devil is in the details, but exorcism is in implementation, not theory.

(It’s attributed to Dave Farell, but I can’t find an actual source.)

Fantastic little nugget.

Ruby and MySQL on Ubuntu

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:54:34 GMT

When installing Ruby, Rails, and MySQL on Ubuntu remember the following when you get to the database part and you’ll be fine:


apt-get install mysql-server 
apt-get install mysql-client
apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/bin --with-mysql-config=/usr/bin/mysql_config

I always forget the development libraries, and that makes compiling the native Ruby bindings difficult to say the least.

30 dark designs you should’ve seen

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:16:17 GMT

Great work.

Link: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/01/13/30-dark-designs-you-shouldve-seen/

Why Ruby?

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 19:07:08 GMT

There’s a contest at ‘On Ruby’ to write the best article about how Ruby has made you a better developer. Though I consider it to be way to self-congratulatory for its own good — approaching the sort of fanboyism that puts Ruby developers in the same category as religious zealots — do feel an obligation to admit that Ruby really has made me a better programmer.

Rather than ramble on about PHP, Javascript and the way I used to code, let me just explain why I think I’m a better developer because of Ruby like so: Ruby rewards me for doing things the way I ought to do them, and once I’ve done things the right way it is very difficult for me to slip back into my old habits regardless of language.

Wil Shipley's talk to students

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 09:33:19 GMT

I’ve seen Wil speak extemporaneously before, I can only imagine the hilarity of a planned speech (oh, and the content looks good too)

Link: http://wilshipley.com/blog/WWDC_Student_Talk.pdf

JavaScript Performance Recommendations

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:13 GMT

From the IE team no less — really good stuff

Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/08/28/728654.aspx

Ruby's new clothes

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:11 GMT

The Ruby site got a bit of a facelift

Link: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

Scope in JavaScript

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:11 GMT

Oddly timely (for me)

Link: http://digital-web.com/articles/scope_in_javascript/

Fixed or fluid width? Elastic!

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:23 GMT

Always a good choice, when you can get away with it

Link: http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200504/fixed_or_fluid_width_elastic/

An introduction to using patterns in web design

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:11 GMT

I need to figure out if this is really a good idea

Link: http://www.37signals.com/papers/introtopatterns/

AssetPackager

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:19 GMT

Compress CSS and JS files for production apps

Link: http://synthesis.sbecker.net/pages/asset_packager

Cork'd

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:16 GMT

The Dans (Cederholm and Benjamin) have launched a new wine site

Link: http://corkd.com/

The web design trend obituary and death clock

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:38 GMT

Guessing when popular trends in web design will finally die much as the “page curl” did before them.

Link: http://www.pingmag.jp/2006/05/01/the-web-design-trend-obituary-death-clock/

bloglines and memeorandum don't bother with databases

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:26 GMT

Flatfiles are enough for them

Link: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/04/database_war_stories_2_bloglin.html

Rails developers: Use params, not @params

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:24 GMT

I’m guilty in the worst way — I’ve been doing about half with @ and half without with no real logic

Link: http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/articles/2006/04/25/use-params-not-params

Making popular layout decisions

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:24 GMT

A web designer is a fascist oppressor

Link: http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/making-popular-layout-decisions

How to set up a load-balanced MySQL cluster

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:34 GMT

High-performance, database-serving goodness

Link: http://www.howtoforge.com/loadbalanced_mysql_cluster_debian

The time is now for front-end architects

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:27 GMT

John tells me I’m a front-end architect, and I think he might be right

Link: http://www.garrettdimon.com/archives/the-time-is-now-for-front-end-architects

Rails for Designers

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:27 GMT

A write up of the “V” in Rails’s MVC

Link: http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2006/03/21/rails-for-designers

moo.fx

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:16 GMT

Looks to be a nice lightweight Javascript effects library

Link: http://moofx.mad4milk.net/#documentation

What Are CSS Sprites?

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:13 GMT

A very fast way to do image switching and rollovers with CSS — I think there might be some IE related issues with this tutorial, but I’m not entirely sure

Link: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=447210&rl=1

Ten of the biggest mistakes developers make with databases

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:07 GMT

Effective SQL can absolutely make or break your apps

Link: http://www.developer.com/db/article.php/3589351

How to host a subdomain on another server or hosting company

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:41 GMT

Good notes

Link: http://www.thirdsquare.com/how-to-host-a-subdomain-on-another-server-or-hosting-company-213

Using Ruby on Rails for Web Development on Mac OS X

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:30 GMT

A how-to from Apple itself

Link: http://developer.apple.com/tools/rubyonrails.html

The Envelope Pattern of Content Management

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:25 GMT

Who’s building a CMS? Not me…

Link: http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/4203

The Content Tree

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:25 GMT

Making a tree the backbone of your CMS

Link: http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/4237

Taking Aim at Target(.com)

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:14 GMT

Derek Featherstone on Target.com’s accessibility woes

Link: http://www.boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2006/02/09/taking-aim-at-target-dot-com

Alphabetized lists are random lists

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:14 GMT

Unless you know the exact wording of each item (each!) not just the one you’re looking for

Link: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2006/02/06/alphabetized-links-are-random-links/

How to access your project with RadRails and SVN

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:12 GMT

Can you tell I’m learning subversion?

Link: http://wiki.railsplayground.com/railsplayground/show/How+To+Access+Your+Project+With+RadRails

Subversion - A quick tutorial

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:12 GMT

Yet another reference

Link: http://aymanh.com/subversion-a-quick-tutorial

Subversion FAQ

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:12 GMT

For some reason, I’m thinking I’ll be visiting this page frequently

Link: http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#bdb-recovery

CSS Basics

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:11 GMT

Very basic (very), but a good place to start

Link: http://www.cssbasics.com/

CSS opacity and transparency

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:43 GMT

Notes on CSS3 transparency filtering

Link: http://www.mandarindesign.com/opacity.html

Ten realistic steps to a faster web site

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:38 GMT

Pretty reasonable tips

Link: http://alexander.kirk.at/2006/02/02/10-steps-to-a-faster-web-site/

Web authoring statistics

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:25 GMT

Google’s analysis of the naming habits of web developers

Link: http://code.google.com/webstats/index.html

Simplify PHP Development with WASP

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:19 GMT

Is PHP growing up?

Link: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2006/01/19/wasp_intro.html?page=1

The first computer bug

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:20 GMT

If you didn’t know, it really was a bug

Link: http://history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566k.jpg

Sane css typography

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:16 GMT

How did I miss this?

Link: http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/typography/index.html

Linux newbie guide

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:10 GMT

Many (many many) shortcuts and commands

Link: http://www.unixguide.net/linux/linuxshortcuts.shtml

Universal child replacement

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:10 GMT

An extremely useful CSS technique from Eric Meyer

Link: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2005/05/31/universal-child-replacement/

A dinner with web-based email giants

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:37 GMT

Gmail, Yahoo! mail and Microsoft’s web-based mail programs had dinner and talked about their apps

Link: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113513060952028080-FphgngKufzazqjmsp2vkGNe7SVU_20060120.html?mod=blogs

Switching to Subversion

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:25 GMT

I’ve been meaning to do this for about a month now but just haven’t taken the time

Link: http://jroller.com/comments/thuss/Blog/switching_to_subversion#comments

iPhoto-like image resizing using Javascript

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:17 GMT

Nice effect

Link: http://www.agilepartners.com/blog/2005/12/07/iphoto-image-resizing-using-javascript/

Ruby on Rails v1.0

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:07 GMT

Released while I was at lunch no less, looks good

Link: http://www.rubyonrails.org/

Centered Tabs with CSS

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:07 GMT

No more width-guessing

Link: http://24ways.org/advent/centered-tabs-with-css

Random image rotation in Rails

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:06 GMT

Another example demonstrating why I think programming in Ruby is so easy

Link: http://hivelogic.com/articles/2005/11/30/random_image_rotation_in_rails

How to make RoR talk to MSSQL from Linux

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:38 GMT

Variations on a theme

Link: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoConnectToMicrosoftSQLServerFromRailsOnLinux

Using /usr/local

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:21 GMT

*nix geekyness gets me giddy

Link: http://hivelogic.com/articles/2005/11/29/using_usr_local

The Web 2.0 Checklist

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:21 GMT

Geekwell meets about half of these now, and will meet about 80% of them by the time I get all the features finished up

Link: http://msippey.tadalist.com/lists/public/155420

In search of the One True Layout

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:35 GMT

Perhaps the greatest collection of CSS techniques ever committed to markup

Link: http://positioniseverything.net/articles/onetruelayout/

An interview with Jeremy Keith

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:09 GMT

He says DOM scripting is the new CSS, and I agree

Link: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/jeremy_keith/

Introducing the CSS3 Multi-Column Module

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:41 GMT

JavaScript to dynamically swap your text into multiple columns based on CSS 3 specs, but should you really do that?

Link: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/css3multicolumn

DOM Scripting Task Force

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:27 GMT

The gang from WaSP takes on JavaScript

Link: http://domscripting.webstandards.org/

Build a blog in 15 minutes with Ruby on Rails (QT)

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:19 GMT

Talk about efficient

Link: http://www.rubyonrails.org/media/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov

Why 'Enterprise' Development is Hard

nicholasjon@nicholasjon.com (Nick) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:31:39 GMT

It’s not that the apps are more robust, it’s the requirements they have to juggle

Link: http://www.koziarski.net/archives/2005/05/21/enterprise-development