Ned thunkit

And... gone

2009-01-06T02:48:00.000-08:00

meh.
removed it - dont know what im talking about.

Currently I amuse myself with the Apache Wicket project.

Check out the wicket framework if ur a java dude. Its sweet!

A long time between drinks!

2006-11-12T17:35:00.000-08:00

So.. maintaining a blog is apparently not for me.. at least most of the time. It's been over a year since I wrote anything.. sure.. some fun and interesting things have happened in that year.. but I'm not going to play catchup.

What I do find quite amusing... is that I won the JQuery icon competition after 10 minutes of photoshop!

Check out this gem of icon (and the competition) further at the
JQuery button contest winners announcement!

For those that don't know, JQuery fken rocks :) It's an "everything you practically need" javascript library... and its beautiful!

Check out the official JQuery site and the visual JQuery site for info and examples of this great javascript package.

Political Quizness. Are you evil?

2005-10-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

So.. I've just filled in a political quiz thing after reading about it breifly on Andy's blog.

Hmm.. we aren't so different, and perhaps thats why we get along. :)

I've ditched the graph and content because the HTML was so horrendous.
~~The graph~~

Check it out :) It'd be interesting to know where people fit in this graph.

From looking at the photo on the homepage of the political test if you are to the right of centre, you're cool. If not... my goodness... what a shame, you should seriously be embarassed. Have your own views... just dont push them on me as law or make my society more dangerous.

Ned thunkit

2005-10-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

I've just come back from the Web Essentials 05 conference in Sydney.

The conference was awesome :)

It's comforting knowing that so many people out there care about standards, and the quality of their work. It's also nice to know that the gurus are people too, and that the Next Big Thing is something the community (or members of) will invent.

I really enjoyed Dougs - Zooming Out from the Trenches. Very inspirational... :).. All the sessions were good, but Dougs stood out.

The session that shocked me the most was the Steve Faulkners "The Title Attribute: What is it good for?"

He presented a server side technique using XSLT parsing the XHTML to put a title attribute after links. This used only 2 full pages of code, and has issues. The screen reader software companies really need to pull their finger out.

My notes from that session consisted of "screen readers suck".

What did I bring away from the conference? Well... I'm involved with some of the "bad" sites from John Allsop's top 83 (and it doesn't feel great ;)). I've been tryin to get the political issues blocking the quality of these sites fixed for a couple years now. I keep having pushback from "those above". I feel reinvigorated to argue for a better web.

One last thing... its amazing just how much beer computer geeks can drink (and I think Melbourne needs to invent the schooner). On the start of the second day, I woke up at 5am, still blind drunk. I managed to pull myself together in time for Tanteks 7:30 breakfast... albiet smelling of cigarettes and beer.

Warcraft kicks it :)

2005-09-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

In the World that is Warcraft, Shneeky and Drainy have been owning it up big time on Bloodscalp recently.

I played an Undead Warlock called Starva during the beta (he had no jaw and no doubt would be ever hungry). It was a blast. I then got suckered into playing a Rogue, which was also pretty cool for a while... then the coolness petered out. But now... Drainy... gnomish engineering warlock is owning it up in WSG battlegrounds, and generally kicking ass. Its good to have the lock back :)

I'm a big fan of the warlock. Every encounter I'm surprised at how powerful and beefy the stumpy gnome is. He's the ugliest thing on the planet. Vomiting on his head would be an effective way of beautifying him.

And... a little message to my single reader... I'm wearing the pants of anger, and t-shirt of singletness. (no... not really but... my solitary reader.. do not think for one second I dont know who you are!)

Grumpy Thursdays

2005-08-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

I feel I'm not utilised effectively. My expertise is acknowledged, but seems to only help other people and their tasks. This isn't all bad, at least something's getting done.

Just once... ONCE... I want to do something amazing without having to be bottled up behind archaic, unfinished, uncommented, convoluted work that's so simple in principle, but unplanned and bordering on unsalvagable.

I had a discussion recently about the development complexities between applications and web applications. My view is that, in general, web applications are easier to build than non web, but harder to build well. I guess thats come about by the sloppy non standard "everyone and their dog can write it" language we call HTML.

I dislike working on stuff that consists of string concatenated messes of unreadable crap mixing client code, server code, layout and even application state etc into this "structured" heap that will never get rewritten, and will not evolve in a cost effective manner.

Programmers... what are they?

Some are stubborn and are beyond help.
Some are niche geniuses
Some are condescending and believe their work is beyond flaw, and its just the rest of the world who doesn't get it.
Some are inexperienced but eager to learn.
Some are lazy.
Some are stupid.
And the smallest minority can build good web pages.

I fit into all of these categories to some degree :). I'm sure their are other categories.

I'm good at what I'm good at. Simple, powerful, understandable, feature rich, accessible standards complaint blah blah blah. Oh.. and design (not the graphicy one)

I'm self taught. I used to think there was this mythical world of programming where you could write some fancy mathematical formulas over a few nights and have such amazing code that it could solve any problem you had. After a while, you realise how simple it is and why it doesn't need to be convoluted, and that all the errors occur when someones trying to be to clever for the sake of being clever.

Of course there are uber programmers out there (eg. Carmack) who are on some other elemental plane compared with the rest of us mortals. I'm not going to be involved in that ever :)

I don't know where I'm going with this :) I'm not a writer, but god damn I've had a shitty day.

Happy Happy YAY

2005-07-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

So... my birthday's just been (27th July). WOoHOO. Im a spritely young 26.

I got another monkey shirt from Tracey. Its the best, a cute little gorilla with a snowboard.

I now have 7 monkey shirts :) One for each day of the week.

I've also got a brand new crumpler barney rustle blanket bag. Its the business :D

Tuesday Blerghing

2005-07-19T01:20:00.000-07:00

Well... Weeks go quickly..

I'm turning 26 in a week. Getting older, fatter, wiser and grumpier. I'd hoped to use this blog as an output of humour and technology, but I find myself mentally crushed after a day of "work", and all I feel like doing is chillin in front of the TV. Blergh!

The Ruby on Rails camp have... Barely redeemed themselves with 0.13.1 after pushing 0.13 out the door with some poor bugs. Fortunately, the framework is good enough to overlook this sloppy style release.... Once.
That was a couple of weeks ago.

While Rails rocks, Im somewhat sceptical of the way David Heinemeier Hansson talks about it. Sure, he's obviously smart, but he's a bit too "OH WOW.. look at this OH WOW.. look at this OH WOW OK". Its probably very effective for the marketing of rails, but grates slightly.

I plan on checking out DJANGO soon. Its got some tasty features. The one that I like the most is defining data models in code. Now that is full Stack.

Ruby on Rails 0.13

2005-07-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

Ruby on Rails has just had another milestone release.. 0.13. This framework has been amazing since early on, and just keeps getting better.

The framework is... how web development should be. Less typing, more structure, more consistency and reusability, advanced integrated client javascript, templating, ORM, mailing, scaffolding, simplicity.

Its the most appropriate framework for pretty much all standard web development.

People harp on about the ORM functionality (wah wah its not hibernate)... this is not rails.

Rails is the sum of its parts, and so far every part is brilliant.

I'd like some real world examples of what it cant do, or is inappropriate for.
REAL WORLD.

You wont know your framework sucks, until you try something thats good! That something is Ruby on Rails

I'm in the credits!

2005-06-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

So, after lookin at the Invasion of the Body Switchers 2 (iotbs2) I was somewhat surprised to see my name in the credits.
This can be found at Brothercake IOTBS or Stuff And Nonsense And All That Malarkey

Ahh all that time being a pedantic bitch in forums has finally paid off... ALL HAIL NED :)

Wooo console news!

2005-06-29T18:09:00.000-07:00

Soo...

I'm slightly "less hyped" about next gen consoles after reading anandtechs ps3 vs xbox360 article.

I still have hope for the new systems. They are going to be better than current offerings. Hopefully, the next next gen will get it right.

On another note, I'm really starting to dislike accessibility rule
14.1 Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content.

It's so subjective, and after reading 150 odd pages of legalise... its really hard to judge what is and isnt "clearest and simplest".

Only another 150 pages to go!! YAY.

Validation

2005-06-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

I have a mentoring type role at work. One of the things I've tried to push for is HTML validation at a developer level. Validate your code, then you dont make silly mistakes.

A question came up this week about why an iframe's "innerHTML" was not functioning correctly! (Think

<iframe><html><head>...

etc)

If you dont fully understand DOM, read about the elements you're thinking of using before you use them. There isnt a lot to learn, but guesswork will help no one, and may be detrimental, considering some browsers may display the content... in a way you are expecting.

When building software (be it front or backend) the bugs.. if any.. should be related to flawed logic, not flawed syntax or document structure. Think of HTML validation like a "compiler" for html. It makes sure its correct.

Let the tools out there help. Do less typing. Keep it simple, predictable, reusable.
Its easier for everyone :)

World of Wowcraft

2005-06-11T22:06:00.000-07:00

I want to be 60!! I want uber gear.. I want to slay dragons and giants!

It's taking forever. I've been level 50 for what feels like an eternity!

Can I be bothered :)

2005-06-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

As you will notice from this post.. i dont have a structure to how I write. It'd be nice if i was a professional writer :).. but I'm not. Ironically, English was the only class I passed in my last year of school.

Well im going to hold off on the new template/css. I'm not an artist, and without having a specific goal, I find myself lacking in the motivation department :).

If someone... anyone has some creative I could use for my template, please write some contact details in comments, and I'll turn my blog into your creative (provided its classy)

The one point I'd like to enforce across all web programming

Keep it simple!
Its the web.. we serve strings to a browser. Do it.. the documented proper way. (hah, who says its proper).

Read up on justifications of standards if you have an argument with that :).

Stuff that rocks:
Ruby on Rails
This rocks more than pretty much everything else web related. I couldnt sleep for 2 days after discovering this gem (hah little pun) of a framework. Still it enthrals me :). Rather than harp on about it, go find out at www.rubyonrails.org.

CSS + HTML/XHTML + standards
I dont care how much experience you have, go learn CSS and tableless layouts if you havnt already.

It's ironic that developers can talk about seperation of layout, business and logic layers and elegance.... but then mash everything together for the HTML... which is the bit that EVERY client will receive.

These technologies are easy and fun :)

If you know how to build stuff in tables, then forget everything you know, and go learn the real way :) (css zen garden, alistapart, w3schools, sitepoint whatever... just do it).

tables = tabulated data. Remember that.

If you know what you are doing, you do more work with less writing.
You become more efficient, more work is reusable. Dont punish yourself and clients by refusing to learn the "right" way.

Google
Google owns me. Without Google.. i'd be a lot worse off in the knowledge department.

.NET 2.0
The next generation of .NET looks to be uber. Master pages, themes, IDE integration, Web server integration.. it really looks like MS have pulled the finger out. (lets hope multiple forms come). The drag and drop components come out as valid HTML. This is all out of the box.

.NET 1.1 was a pile of garbage for web work. I think MS suffered the problems described above in the CSS + HTML section.

Javascript + DOM + XMLHTTPRequest
We all know about Ajax these days. I've been using it for a few years in one way or another. The uptake is becoming a lot better, thanks to the coining of the term Ajax.

No longer do we have to hide iframes and get their onload events to populate divs. YAY.

DOM is cool. I've worked with people who know the buzzword DOM but get lost in their own complex brains so that no one can use/modify/read the code. Maybe years ago I was like that. Keeping it simple is where the power is.

Stuff thats... indifferent
Java... and its plethora of frameworks (hibernate, spring, struts.. whatever)
Flash...
PHP...
XSLT... *sigh* (why do people use this for HTML output?)
I dunno.. everything thats not listed above in the "Rocks" section :)

Greetings

2005-06-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

So I have a blog now.

This is going to be a place where I can dump my thoughts on web programming (programming for the web), standards, simplicity, accessibility, usability and all that stuff with "ity" at the end. I'll probably get sick of doing that at some point, and branch out into other areas.

I've been addicted to computers for ages. I remember Dad bringing home one of the first "portable" PCs, a big monochrome beast about 30kgs and the size of 2 slabs.
State of the art PCs ran some archaic version of DOS, there were no hard disks, you were lucky if you had 360k disks, and colours other than orange and black.

Now I've got 50 times more RAM than the size of the first hard disk we had, more colours than I can count... and anyway.. whatever :), all that bit is just an echo from the millions of others who are writing their first blog entry.

Technology rocks.

I'm gonna go try my hand at a custom template, and write another entry when I'm done.