Planet Chris

Posts from interesting people from today, yesterday, and the day before.

Today — Tue, 09 Feb 2010

Redis Virtual Memory: the story and the code

Simon Willison

Redis Virtual Memory: the story and the code. Fascinating overview of the virtual memory feature coming to Redis 2.0, which will remove the requirement that all Redis data fit in RAM. Keys still stay in RAM, but rarely accessed values will be swapped to disk. 16 GB of RAM will be enough to hold 100 million keys, each with a value as large as you like.

A List Apart 300

Jeffrey Zeldman

Issue 300 of A List Apart for people who make websites solves password-related usability problems with a dash of JavaScript, and employs content strategy to help your site do the right thing at the right time: The Problem with Passwords by LYLE MULLICAN Abandoning password masking as Jakob Nielsen suggests could present serious problems, undermining a user’s trust by failing to meet a basic expectation. But with design patterns gleaned from offline applications, plus a dash of JavaScrip...

Rotating maps with CSS3 and jQuery

Ajaxian

One of the things I always want to do with online maps is rotate them – I am used to that with real, physical maps. As physical maps become a lot more clever these days (for example have you seen the zoomable map?) it is time we can do this with the online ones, too. Whilst Google supports this in the satellite and hybrid maps, the basic ones still can’t be turned. Which is why I took CSS3 transformations (wrapped in a very useful jQuery plugin) and voila – rotating is po...

Ignite, Syndicated Events, and Social Media Marketing

O'Reilly Radar

As we approach Global Ignite Week, a collection of Ignite events around the world during the first week of March, I can't help but think about the future of conferences, one of O'Reilly's major businesses. Here are some of the things we're learning from Ignite. People love the rapid-fire format. Steven Levy once said that Foo Camp is the wiki of conferences, an unstructured space where the attendees make things happen. Well, by that measure, Ignite is the Twitter of conferences, a way to...

Applying Mathematics To Web Design

Smashing Magazine

“Mathematics is beautiful.” This may sound absurd to people who wince at numbers and equations. But some of the most beautiful things in nature and our universe exhibit mathematical properties, from the smallest seashell to the biggest whirlpool galaxies. In fact, one of the greatest ancient philosophers, Aristotle, said: “The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.”Because of its bea...

OWASP Top 10 2010 – Cheat Sheet

Andrew van der Stock

Here is a two page cheat sheet for the OWASP Top 10 2010. OWASP Top 10 2010 Cheat Sheet (100 kb PDF) Double side to create a single piece of paper and hand it out to all your developers for free – it’s licensed under a Creative Commons Sharealike with attribution license. Once I’ve had a bit of feedback and I’ve tweaked it a bit, I’ll donate it to OWASP. This cheat sheet is an unapologetically developer centric list of things to do right. I’ve made it as s...

Testing Your Privates

Sebastian Bergmann

No, not those privates. If you need help with those, this book might help. One question I get over and over again when talking about Unit Testing is this: "How do I test the private attributes and methods of my objects?" Lets assume we have a class Foo: <?phpclass Foo{ private $bar = 'baz'; public function doSomething() { return $this...

Faye: Bayeaux protocol Comet server for Node.js

Ajaxian

James Coglan has ported a Ruby/EventMachine Comet server to offer a new Node.js server on the Bayeux protocol. The project is Faye and you can check out the code on GitHub. On the client side: PLAIN TEXT HTML: <script type="text/javascript" src="/comet.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> CometClient = new Faye.Client('/comet'); CometClient.connect(); </script> PLAIN TEXT JAVASCRIPT: ...

2010-01-16 Melanie’s Bday

Terry Chay

From a previous article, I finally found a way to work in Aperture again. But since I’m trying to pick up photography again, I thought it’d be fun to write a little bit showing a few experimental images taken from that day. It’ll also be a way to test out a new WordPress plugin I just wrote to do mouseovers. As long as you’re on this blog article, you can run your mouse over the image to see the pre-processed original. The specials are… Mission Beach Cafe, The Mission, San Francis...

Four short links: 9 February 2010

O'Reilly Radar

Track DC -- informative drill-down report from Washington DC government about the different departments. (via Sunlight Labs blog) Errors in Scientific Software -- a 1994 study of scientific software that found inconsistent interfaces (1 in 7 for Fortran, 1 in 37 for C) and poor use of arithmetic such that significant figures declined from 6sf in the data to 1sf in the result. (via "If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too" in the Guardian) How Farmville Scales -- 7...

Mobile web monopoly

Rob Allen

There's a recent post by Peter-Paul Koch called The iPhone obsession about how Mobile Safari is being treated by web developers as the only web browser to develop for. PPK likens this to how we all used to only develop for IE6. Unfortunately, the article has lots of hyperbole and iPhone hate which significantly detracts from the actual message. The fundamental point is that Mobile Safari is not the only web browser available on phones and if you are serious about providing mobile web to you...

Words that Zing

A List Apart

When someone consults a website, there is a precious opportunity not only to provide useful information but also to influence their decision. To make the most of this opportune moment, we must ensure that the site says or does precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. Understanding the rhetorical concept of kairos can help us craft a context for the opportune moment and hit the mark with appropriately zingy text.

The Problem with Passwords

A List Apart

Abandoning password masking as Jakob Nielsen suggests could present serious problems, including undermining a user’s trust by failing to meet a basic expectation. But with design patterns gleaned from offline applications, plus a dash of JavaScript, we can provide feedback and reduce password errors without compromising the basic user experience or losing our visitors’ trust.

Think You Know Javascript? Try this Quiz!

Ajaxian

If you know you think you know your objects from your arrays and your null from your undefined, here's a quiz for you from Perfection Kills. I was recently reminded about Dmitry Baranovsky’s Javascript test, when N. Zakas answered and explained it in a blog post. First time I saw those questions explained was by Richard Cornford in comp.lang.javascript, although not as thoroughly as by Nicholas. I decided to come up with my own little quiz. I wanted to keep question not very obscure,...

Javascript ePub Readers

Ajaxian

eBooks have gone mainstream, and right now the open ePub format is getting a lot of attention, being the iPad's book format of choice. Often overlooked in gadget-centric media is the fact that ePub is based on web standards, and therefore amenable to being rendered in the browser, sans plugins. Pure Javascript ePub readers are starting to crop up, and Keith Fahlgren has written about several of them: Just in the last few days, details emerged of two new JavaScript ePub readers, rePublish f...

Flickr Photos In Google Street View

O'Reilly Radar

Google Maps has added more user photos to its Street View (above). Now the Yahoo-owned Flickr is joining the Google-owned Panoramio and Picasa photo sites as a supplier of alternative street views. GeoBloggers reported it earlier today and also noted that the photos are available in the Panoramio 3D view (below). This is significant for two reasons: 1) Flickr has millions of geotagged photos (2.3 million photos with location data were uploaded this month; 95,634,285 in total as this w...

Jay-Z

Matt Mullenweg

As I noted on Twitter, Jay-Z now has a WordPress-powered blog. It’s bare right now, but hopefully they really start to stretch WP soon. By the by, Jay, let’s grab a bite and talk tech and design. Hat tip: Michael Koenig....

Seven on Seven – Rhizome

Matt Mullenweg

In April I’m going to be participating in an event called Seven on Seven put on by Rhizome. “Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new — be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine — over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum on April 17th.”...

Yesterday — Mon, 08 Feb 2010

Unsupported RAW workflow in Apple Aperture

Terry Chay

One of the most annoying aspects of Apple Aperture is that there is no API for RAW plugins. This means that you’re stuck with Aperture’s RAW rendering—and Apple has been slow to update support for the latest cameras. For instance, the Olympus E-P1/E-P2/E-PL1 series has been out since August, selling like hotcakes, but there is still no RAW support for these models, even though the E-30, which is supported, uses the same basic RAW file format. Well finally my workaround seems to work fo...

sIFR default CSS hides content from at least one screen reader

Roger Johansson

Just a heads-up to anyone using sIFR to render text: the default CSS that comes with sIFR hides the replaced text from the VoiceOver screen reader. I don’t know if any others are affected – VoiceOver is the only screen reader I have been able to verify this problem in.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, CSS, Typography. ...

Pseudo 3D tricks from old computer games for all your Canvas needs

Ajaxian

It is quite interesting to see how technology moves in circles. With canvas being the new fun toy to play with for creating browser-based games we have to find solutions to fake a 3D environment to be really fast (sure there is Canvas 3D but it is overkill for most games). The trick is to dig into the tricks arsenal of old-school game development on machines full of win like the Commodore 64 or Amiga. Louis Gorenfeld some very detailed explanations on how to fake 3D including some of the fo...

Color Theory for Designer, Part 3: Creating Your Own Color Palettes

Smashing Magazine

In the previous two parts of this series on color theory, we talked mostly about the meanings behind colors and color terminology. While this information is important, I’m sure a lot of people were wondering when we were going to get into the nitty-gritty of actually creating some color schemes.Well, that’s where Part 3 comes in. Here we’ll be talking about methods for creating your own color schemes, from scratch. We’ll cover the traditional color sche...

Román Cortés and Ajaxian make up with amazing CSS demos

Ajaxian

We have been long term fans of Román and the fantastic demos and samples that he puts together, usually involving CSS goodness. We messed up the other week though when we linked to his work on a scrolling coke can. I do these postings as a labor of love, and since Ajaxian isn't my day job, that means that the labor often happens at 2am. In this case I made the rookie mistake of grabbing an iframe to his demo so it would run inline. Román then looked up to see his servers getting pummeled a...

Lou's Pseudo 3d Page

Simon Willison

Lou’s Pseudo 3d Page. Spectacularly detailed exploration of the road graphics used in racing games prior to true 3D. This is a potential gold mine for anyone looking for a fun project to try out with canvas. Bonus points for comet integration—I’m still looking forward to the first real-time multiplayer game in the browser using comet and canvas.

Integrate Tornado in Django

Simon Willison

Integrate Tornado in Django. A handy ./manage.py runtornado management command for firing up a Tornado server that serves your Django application.

Google Book Settlement Round 2

O'Reilly Radar

The US government filed its Statement of Interest regarding the revised Google settlement yesterday with the District Court in New York. While the statement was signed by an attorney from the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, several agencies including the Copyright Office reportedly contributed to it. As you may recall, the judge has only 2 choices: he can approve the settlement, or send it back to the parties for revision. He cannot modify it himself. The US government stat...

Feedback and analysis: the missing ingredients in local's recipe

O'Reilly Radar

There's plenty of enthusiasm for local / hyperlocal projects, but the sweepstakes has yet to be won. PaperG CEO Victor Wong digs in to some of the missed opportunities in a paidContent.org guest column. I found this excerpt intriguing: How useful would it be to know when local used-car dealerships have a large increase in inventory (and thus are probably more willing to sell at a lower price)? Other data like new-car listings could show what the local population is buying by examining wha...

Four short links: 8 February 2010

O'Reilly Radar

Kindle Development Kit APIs -- Amazon will release a Kindle SDK. These are the API docs. (via obra on Twitter) rePublish -- all-Javascript ebook reader. (via kellan on Twitter) Peer Review: What's it Good For? (Cameron Neylon) -- harsh and honest review of peer review with some important questions for the future of science. But there is perhaps an even more important procedural issue around peer review. Whatever value it might have we largely throw away. Few journals make referee’s ...

Nine Legendary Hypochondriacs

Mind Hacks

ABC Radio National's Late Night Live has a fascinating discussion with the author of a new book on nine famous hypochondriacs: James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol. I'm not sure Daniel Paul Schreber is necessarily the best example of someone with hypochondria is he is famous for writing a personal account of being genuinely mentally ill and floridly psychotic. However, I've not re...

Word Count

Lorna Mitchell

There's a little command line utility on *nix which I use a lot - it's wc or "word count". This is especially useful to because I live in a world where everything is plain text right up until I have to send it to someone else (and sometimes not even then). Despite its name, word count can count more than just words - it can do characters, words, lines and can tell you the length of the longest line while its at it. Counting Lines The biggest problem with counting lines is remembering the...

The Day Before — Sun, 07 Feb 2010

Zend Framework Tutorial for ZF 1.10

Rob Allen

Zend Framework 1.10, was released a week or so ago. As a result, I have updated my Zend Framework tutorial so that it is completely current. The main change I made was to remove the _init methods in the Bootstrap as they are no longer needed. I also take advantage of the new features of the zf tool to enable layouts and create forms. It's a shame that it gets the class name of the form wrong though! ...

Mozilla Labs’ Weave can become a platform for us

Ajaxian

Mozilla Labs has released the magical 1.0 version of Weave and the doors are now open for developers. When I was a part of Mozilla Labs day to day, I always loved the vision and team behind Weave. I kept wanting the implementation to match the vision, but it is a tough problem and it takes time to bake. Well, it is getting there now. Weave is special because it offers a series of back-end services (more than just sync) that are build with users (and their privacy) in mind, rather than busin...

SimpleFolio: A Free Clean Portfolio WordPress Theme

Smashing Magazine

Today we are glad to release a beautiful, simple and clean portfolio WordPress theme — SimpleFolio, designed by Omar E. Corrales and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. SimpleFolio is a portfolio theme that includes a blog and a very extensive option page that allows you to exclude all your portfolio items from the blog page. It also includes a front page slider.It has 2 different widget areas and threaded comments, and also supports paged comments and has 2 ...

Sketchpad - Online Paint/Drawing application

Simon Willison

Sketchpad—Online Paint/Drawing application (via). Impressive canvas based bitmap drawing tool with an extremely smooth UI.

svg-edit

Simon Willison

svg-edit. Click the “Try out SVG-edit 2.4” link—this is an impressive, full featured open source vector graphics editor that runs in the browser.

A quote from Emmy Huang, PM for Flash Player

Simon Willison

As has been pointed out by the community, there is an existing crash bug that was reported by Matthew Dempsky in the Flash Player bugbase (JIRA FP-677) in September of 2008 that still exists in the release players. It is fixed in Flash Player 10.1 beta, and has been since we launched the beta in early November 2009. [...] So what happened here? We picked up the bug as a crasher when it was filed on September 22, 2008, and were able to reproduce it. Remember that Flash Player 10 shipped in Oc...

A quote from Kevin Lynch

Simon Willison

Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don’t ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today. - Kevin Lynch

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