Dented Reality

Lessons Learned

Aug 03 2010
1

A few weeks ago I had a pretty rough time with something I was working on, so I thought I’d take the chance to share some lessons with you that I learned along the way. I’m taking these specifically from my experience as a developer of web-based systems, but I feel like at least some of them apply to a lot of other situations in life as well. YMMV.

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Proximity Detection on a Mac

Aug 03 2010
18

I get really annoyed when I find myself having to do things over and over that a computer could easily do. I am also really bad at remembering to do small things that don’t seem that important.

The latest intersection of these 2 things is that I’ve been forgetting (or not bothering) to set my status as “Away” or “Back” on all the communications apps I have running when I leave the computer. This is something that a computer should be able to do itself, and something that I’m horribly bad at remembering to do.

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Federated Social Web Summit

Jul 18 2010
0

I’m in Portland today and taking part in the Federated Social Web Summit, before attending OSCON for the next week. Today is so far packed with lighting presentations from all sorts of companies, projects and protocols in the space to bring us all up to speed. After lunch we’re going to all be discussing and looking at how we can put together all the building blocks and bring to life this concept of a federated social web. Here are my (long) notes on all the projects etc from the morning:

Apologies to any names I’ve misspelled, product names I’ve left out, etc.

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Dynamic Headings in WordPress

Jul 02 2010
5

One thing that’s always bugged me in writing Posts/Pages content within WordPress is that you have to cater for different presentation possibilities. If you’re into web-standards, then that makes life difficult for things like headings (h1, h2, etc), when a block of content is presented in different contexts.

Ideally, your page should be structured with an h1 tag around the title of the most important concept on the page, an h2 around a sub-topic/concept, etc. On your home page, the h1 usually ends up going around your logo/site title, since that’s the over-arching concept. Then under that, you might have a listing of recent posts. Each of those posts should probably have their titles in an h2. No problem so far, right? You just set up your template like that and you’re good to go. Read the rest of this post…

GorillaPod iPad Stand

Jun 24 2010
7

Last night, I purchased “Awaken“, a pretty cool clock/alarm app for my iPad. I wanted to try it out as a bedside clock, but to do that I needed a stand of some sort so I could stand up my iPad on my bedside table. My previous theory was that a simple business card holder would make a decent iPad stand, but I didn’t have one handy. What I did have handy, was my Gorillapod (SLR). Turns out they make a perfect iPad stand. Rubber grips, flexible legs, works in portrait or landscape mode, super-stable. Perfect. I dub thee “GorillaPad Stand” (and yes, probably infringe on 2 trademarks at once).

WordPress 3.0

Jun 17 2010
2
$ svn up

Now running WordPress 3.0. This is going to be a game changer.

Gravatar Wall

May 04 2010
17

If you’ve ever posted a comment on this website, your face should appear on my new Gravatar Wall. I’m going to release this as a simple WordPress plugin soon :)

WordCamp SF, 2010

Apr 24 2010
0

I'll be at WordCamp SF, 2010

Backpack Camping Mission Peak

Apr 03 2010
2

A few weekends ago, we went camping at Mission Peak, in the East Bay here near San Francisco. We drove in to the Sunol Visitor’s Center and then hiked from there to the Eagle Springs camp ground, which is just off from Mission Peak. The hike was pretty tame, and a lot of the way it was on quite well-made fire roads and unpaved private roads. Personally I prefer to hike (and camp) in more densely wooded areas, but I guess this was an interesting change of scenery.

Getting prep'd

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ForageSF Wild Kitchen Dinner

Mar 23 2010
4

Although far from being a “tree-hugging hippie“, I guess I’ve got a few opinions when it comes to the food system here in the US. I won’t bother going into any detail, but needless to say that the way food is produced here is not good for us or the world we live in, and needs to change some time soon. Through a bit of an interest in the general area of “alternative” food sources and processes, I came across the SF Underground Farmer’s Market (thanks Timoni!), which ended up leading me to forageSF. This was a whole new experience in food, let me tell you why…

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