flavour design co. produces some beautiful, creative furnishings.
Hidden
February 24, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Creative Home Engineering integrates “silent, automated hidden passageways” into your home. How cool is that?! Beyond the standard “pull on a book” or twisting a candlestick, their custom switches give you the ability to activate the passage entries any way you want. The “triple-redundant safety features includ[e] optical sensor arrays, overtorque protection, thermal sensors, infrared sensors and mechanical obstruction detectors” as well as biometrics (fingerprints, optical and voice). They apparently have pre-fab kits ($150+) available for those who can’t afford a complete solution ($10,000). Link via one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman.
On a Roll: Children’s Paper Chair
February 22, 2006 - Leave a Comment
On a Roll: Children’s Paper Chair is “made out of drawing paper rolled up like a pair of toilet rolls, and as a child uses paper, it’s scrolled from the back roll to the front one on which the child sits. As the child uses more paper, the chair gets taller and taller, conceivably getting larger as the little tyke grows taller.”
Remote Destruction of Data on a Stolen Laptop
February 21, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Mac Geekery has a nice little article discussing how to remotely destroy data on your laptop should it be stolen. The concept is great, and the use of Perl could easily be replaced by other technologies. I like the idea of taking the machine down and notifying the user that the machine is stolen, in addition to gathering additional info as to the laptop’s whereabouts.
Animated Live Search
February 17, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Animated Live Search is a great tutorial written by Steve Smith, which discusses how he has built his site-search. The cool thing is that the search presents its results immediately in a handy container within the current page instead of a new page. Tasty demo included.
JavaScript Libraries and Patterns
February 17, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Over at SitePoint, Kevin Yank discusses JavaScript Libraries and Patterns, running through packages offered up by Yahoo and others. While a bit short on details, it is a good overview and an ideal point form which to dive into the options.
CSS Problem Solving Panel Survey
February 15, 2006 - Leave a Comment
CSS Problem Solving Panel Survey – I just may have something to add to the survey, but I need to set it up properly for submission.
Graded Browser Support
February 14, 2006 - Leave a Comment
The Yahoo! Developer Network: Graded Browser Support looks to be a very interesting development within the Web development profession…
Design and Web Books
February 14, 2006 - Leave a Comment
While I don’t have much time to actively participate in the Designers in House List, to which I subscribe, I enjoy reading many of the threads. One recent thread from a while back, titled “Your favourite web design book” served as a reminder that I should update my list of Web and design-related book recommendations. It’s been quite a while. So, here is a brain dump of the tomes on my bookshelf and ones that should be. The list is by no means comprehensive – I would love to hear your recommendations!
Items without a rating indicates that I do not own the book, but believe it is worth attention due to recommendations from other Web-type folks, or that I hold the author in high respect due to their other work and contributions to our industry.
Template amm_design_books_output could not be found. View HTML source for details.
Rosetta Compatibility: PowerPC Applications on Intel Macs
February 13, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Mac Synchronicity
February 13, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Hivelogic: Articles: Synchronicity – “My goal here wasn’t just to have my files be available on any machine I use, but also to have a live backup of everything, so that the loss of any (or worse, several) machines would have virtually no impact on the integrity or availability of my data.”
DbVisualizer – Development Tools
February 12, 2006 - Leave a Comment
DbVisualizer “is a feature rich, intuitive and cross-platform database tool for developers and DBAs, providing a single powerful interface for a variety of databases. DbVisualizer supports simultaneous database connections, it lets you explore and manage database objects, execute SQL queries, visualize information and a lot more.”
Site Upgrade
February 11, 2006 - Leave a Comment
I’ve updated WordPress to 2.0. All appears to be working properly, but please let me know if you run into any difficulties. Thanks!
Photoshop Color Replacement Tool
February 9, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Unitless line-heights
February 9, 2006 - Leave a Comment
Eric Meyer sheds some light on the interesting application of line-height within the cascade, specifically he recommends implementing Unitless line-heights (’1′ instead of ’1em’ or ’100%’ for example) in order to avoid the wrong values flowing down the cascade to descendant elements. I highly recommend you check it out should you be a Web dev type of person.
The Enkoder Plugin for Ruby on Rails
February 8, 2006 - Leave a Comment
JavaScript says "Moo"
February 8, 2006 - Leave a Comment
moo.fx is a nice, compact JavaScript effects library, which appears to be a great alternative to some of the larger libraries like script.aculo.us. Check out the demo if’n you’re interested.
The Rebirth of the End of the World
February 6, 2006 - Leave a Comment
The time has come for Apocalyptic Dreaming to rise from the pitiful state that it has devolved into. Running for years with an old design atop an outdated content management system, the site had become a burden to me, its creator. So, I present a revitalized site, ready to display its much improved strength, reliability and extra floppy appendages.
Dear Lord…What have I done?!
Many many many changes have been implemented and much toil was experienced in order to bring forth a stronger site. These changes include:
- Porting the site from MovableType 2.6 to WordPress 2
- Importing 388 entries
- Importing and cleaning up 1,357 comments
- Integration of additional functionality via WordPress plugins:
- Designing a new standards-compliant (XHTML + CSS) site from the ground up, with a focus on readability, usability and future expansion.
- Implementing a user registration system (through WordPress) which will speed up postings of new entries while easing my workload.
- Discrete implementation of Ad Sense to cover a little bit of the cost incurred for running the site