One Hundred and Fifty-Three

You know what’s better than programming? Programming...

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:24:55 +0100

You know what’s better than programming? Programming outdoors. (Taken with instagram)

Show me the code

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:20:17 +0100

Backbone.js, I have nothing against you. I’m merely singling you out because you’re popular, and it’s endemic.

What’s endemic, you ask?

Look at the home page.

Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.

Ok, great. But how do I use it?

The project is hosted on GitHub, and the annotated source code is available, as well as an online test suite, an example application, a list of tutorials and a long list of real-world projects that use Backbone. Backbone is available for use under the MIT software license.

Yes. But how do I use it?

You can report bugs and discuss features on the GitHub issues page, on Freenode IRC in the #documentcloud channel, post questions to the Google Group, add pages to the wiki or send tweets to @documentcloud.

I’m sure I can. But how do I use it?

When working on a web application that involves a lot of JavaScript, one of the first things you > learn is to stop tying your data to the DOM. It’s all too easy to create JavaScript applications that end up as tangled piles of jQuery selectors and callbacks, all trying frantically to keep data in sync between the HTML UI, your JavaScript logic, and the database on your server. For rich client-side applications, a more structured approach is often helpful.

But how do I use it?

With Backbone, you represent your data as Models, which can be created, validated, destroyed, and saved to the server. Whenever a UI action causes an attribute of a model to change, the model triggers a “change” event; all the Views that display the model’s state can be notified of the change, so that they are able to respond accordingly, re-rendering themselves with the new information. In a finished Backbone app, you don’t have to write the glue code that looks into the DOM to find an element with a specific id, and update the HTML manually — when the model changes, the views simply update themselves.

Getting there. That’s still not what I mean.

Show me the code.

It’s all I’m asking. When looking at a framework, or library, or whatever the fuck you’re pitching, I want to see the code, writ large above the fold. It’s all well and good waffling on for the best part of 2000 pixels about high-level English descriptions of why exactly I should care. But if I don’t see the code, I lose interest.

I still have no fucking clue how one goes about writing a Backbone.js app.

Compare and contrast: . Bottom of the screen, to the left. What’s there? Code. With a big button to run it. Sold.

Home page. Top right. A screencast? I’m busy, but sure. Code. Sold.

Cropped, and it links to screencasts, but: you guessed it. Code. Sold.

Back to Backbone. It looks, reads and feels like an API documentation page. Hell, for the most part, it is. It needs a nice splash page with calls to action in big-ass Helvetica.

And code.

Photo

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:26:07 +0100

Things that went badly this afternoon

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:59:00 +0100

After a wonderfully sunny and productive morning, I:

Fell down a kerb on the way to the library, grazing my hands.
Had to pay a £15 library fine.
Had to go home to pick up the Bluetooth dongle I forgot.
Had to go home (again) to grab the pizza I had intended for dinner.
On the way home, someone stepped in front of my bike. I swerved, caught the pegs on a low-lying wall, and I flew over the handlebars, grazing my hands in the exact same place.
While at home, I also picked up a battery charger and phone charger. The former was for the Bluetooth keyboard that suddenly stopped typing mid-word, the latter for my now-dying phone. Except the old batteries had leaked in the keyboard, rendering it useless, while the cable I had picked up for the phone was not, in fact, Micro USB, but Apple Dock Connector.
Burnt my aforementionedly grazed hands on the aforementioned pizza.
Utterly failed to do anything productive.

Fibers

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:57:41 +0100

Fibers:

I wish I’d heard about Fibers a month a go, before I’d started rewriting Gusto using Promises.

Dear Tumblr,

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:10:00 +0100

Today is the 25th of March. In what universe is the 27th of December two months ago? Use round, not floor, please.

What would be great

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:06:06 +0100

If Samuel L. Jackson would read to me the lyrics of “Meet Me on the Corner” by Lindisfarne.

If Coco’s error message line numbers weren’t off by one. Every time.

No. Bad Chrome.

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:18:00 +0000

Stop preferring your autocomplete to what I’m typing. You don’t know better than me.

5-minute Chocolate Cake

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:56:41 +0000

5-minute Chocolate Cake:

In a mug. I ate two. I feel ill.

Shame, really.

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:07:13 +0000

Shame, really.

It terrifies me how much time I spend on the internet, consuming for consumption’s sake. Given...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:40:04 +0000

It terrifies me how much time I spend on the internet, consuming for consumption’s sake. Given half the chance, I’ll while away hours middle-clicking TVTropes links.

So I’m taking the chance away. I’m allowing myself but ten cumulative minutes per day on any remotely distracting website, courtesy of StayFocusd.

And I’m giving myself more opportunity to create. I code more. I’m writing more. Pretty soon I hope to be creating for 40 hours a week and be given money for it, so let’s see if I remember how.

Deactivating my Facebook account was one of the least pleasant experiences I’ve had in a long...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:28:00 +0000

Deactivating my Facebook account was one of the least pleasant experiences I’ve had in a long while. The page is littered at the top with pictures of me and various people, with the captions “ will miss you”. It went on to ask me why I’m leaving and list all the things that would break were I to go through with it: pages I was the sole admin of, apps I was the sole developer of, that kind of thing.

It forced me to go through each and resolve who would take care of them after I’m gone, with links that opened in the current page, forcing me to go through the whole ordeal again.

Finally, I click the Deactivate Account button, and it asks for my password. Fair enough.

“Oh, wait, no, you forgot to reassign this one app. Im’ma go ahead and reload the entire page for you.”

Gee, thanks, Facebook. Try it again. Creepy photos, check. Reason for leaving, check. Things that break, check. Password, check. CAPTCHA, wait, what?

So you know I’m human, because you made me do a CAPTCHA when I signed up, an whenever you didn’t like the look of a link I tried to post. And you know I’m me, because I just entered my freaking password. What the hell is the point?

The cynic in me says “to make it more difficult to leave”. The idealist in me reluctantly agrees.

I even told them it was only temporary. I’ll be back.

Honest.

I have, two days running, on two separate email clients, on two separate operating systems,...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:16:42 +0000

I have, two days running, on two separate email clients, on two separate operating systems, accidentally replied by email to myself. This is 2012. This kind of shit shouldn’t happen anymore.

kriskowal/q - GitHub

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:59:26 +0000

kriskowal/q - GitHub:

I wish I’d found out about promises when I started writing Gusto. Because now I want to rewrite it.

It turns out that Struct was a rather poor choice of name. Dammit, Apache. It shall heretofore be...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:32:19 +0000

It turns out that Struct was a rather poor choice of name. Dammit, Apache. It shall heretofore be known as Gusto.

I went for a walk in the snow.

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:00:00 +0000

With a scarf around my face, a camera over my shoulder and two pairs of socks, I headed toward campus.

Through wind, sludge and gates, I arrived at a pond that two freshers were pushing a tonne of snow into. It sank. My lens cap promptly embedded itself inches deep in snow.

Up spiral stairs and frosty ladders I came to a gravelled roof and views of everything.

Down and home to radiators and blogging.

Blofeld

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:33:00 +0000

Blofeld:

Easy Git website deployment.

Tenth of a second? I can live with that.

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:32:13 +0000

Tenth of a second? I can live with that.

Better Touch Tool

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:30:23 +0000

Better Touch Tool:

Lets you map actions to trackpad and mouse gestures. Also has an Aero Snap workalike. Oh, and it’s free. Configuration dialog could use some work, but that’s by the by.

Zsh, where have you been all my life?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:52:48 +0000

Zsh, where have you been all my life?