Mark Provan

Martin Kool: Game Developer Gives 7-Year-Old Best Birthday Present Ever

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:33:29 +0000

Martin Kool: Game Developer Gives 7-Year-Old Best Birthday Present Ever :

Being a gaming father I try to raise my kids with a healthy balance of analog and digital fun. To the surprise of me and Mrs Kool they don’t seem to care about digital games that much, and prefer paper, glue and scissors and playing outside over anything else.

But recently my son Zias discovered

High Performance Rails Caching with nginx and Redis

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:51:27 +0000

High Performance Rails Caching with nginx and Redis:

Thanks to @ijonas for this :)

Spine.js - Javascript MVC Frameworks

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:12:20 +0000

Spine.js - Javascript MVC Frameworks:

I have been playing around with this recently. Client side MVC is scary fast. I’m looking forward to digging deeper.

Subdomains with Devise

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:28:38 +0000

Subdomains with Devise:

Neat way I found to integrate subdomains into your Rails app.

esquareda: davidkaneda: Make your Dock list view look like this...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 08:12:39 +0000

esquareda:

davidkaneda:

Make your Dock list view look like this with this quick terminal command (via usingmac.com)

defaults write com.apple.dock use-new-list-stack -bool YES && killall Dock

(via 9-bits)

Awesome OS X dock trick

"Physics can’t handle my shit."

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:58:52 +0000

“Physics can’t handle my shit.”

- Me, explaining to Matt how I roll.

Stuff to Learn in 2012

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:47:00 +0000

I’m making a list of stuff I really want to learn in 2012, language wise. Obviously my main focus will be to become a better Ruby programmer and to expand my knowledge of Rails (My day job is a Ruby gig, Mealcloud). Everyday I look at my Twitter feed I see dozens of cool new languages and frameworks that have been released and I never seem to make the time to check them out. So, heres my list:

Test Driven Development

As a Rubyist, I should probably be burned on the stake for not developing like this from the outset, but coming from a Java background at Uni, it’s something I’ve never been in the habit of it. Thanks to my friend @machuga telling me that is was “fucking awesome”, I decided to give it a go on a small project, and I think its fucking awesome too! I definitely will be building all projects in future with RSpec.

Javascript

I can’t believe I’ve not got round to digging into this properly. As I started to work more on the frontend of Mealcloud, I realised that I needed to learn JS. The whole interface is being designed for a touchscreen, so everything needs to be “instant feedback”. I also want to dig a bit more into AJAX. Another reason for learning JS is the amount of frameworks that are coming out based on it, not just for UI effects, but for building entire applications. Frameworks like Node.js and Backbone.js are high up on my to-learn list for next year.

iOS Development

At the moment the demand for iPhone and iPad apps is wild. I also have a few idea of my own I’d love to flesh out into actual, working applications. Also, an iPhone/iPad app would be a great addition to Mealcloud, allowing the whole application to become super-portable. Apps are definitely where its at the moment.

Is there any other cool, emerging frameworks I should know about? Hit me up!

Presto - a simple Ruby web framework aimed at speed and simplicity

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 02:28:45 +0000

Presto - a simple Ruby web framework aimed at speed and simplicity:

Looking forward to messing around with this.

Express.js - A Sinatra Like Framework for Node

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:45:50 +0000

Express.js - A Sinatra Like Framework for Node:

Definitely looking forward to trying this out!

Clean Minimal Buttons and UI - PSD Download

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:30:37 +0000

While playing around with a UI set for a new project, I came up with this. As I’m not using it, I thought I’d release it you you guys to mess around with!

> Get it here

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:38:37 +0000

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Ryan Bigg - Game of Life Live Coding

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:56:23 +0000

This is an awesome live coding video from Ryan Bigg of Ruby Hero fame. I find watching people code is the best way to learn. Not only do you pick up little bits of new info, but you also get an insight into how others solve problems. Enjoy!

Live Coding Session #1 - Conway’s Game of Life from Ryan Bigg on Vimeo.

Skeleton Boilerplate

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:49:28 +0000

Skeleton Boilerplate:

Up to now I have used 960.gs for all my layout needs, but this seems a little more complete. I need to try this later on today.

Thanks Rackspace!

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:49:31 +0000

Thanks to Rackspace for this awesome Christmas gift!

Nested Border Radii

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:09:10 +0000

Nested Border Radii:

Great little tip from Chris Coyier at CSS-Tricks. I wasn’t aware of this. Heads up!

Awesome Avatar Painting

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:47:50 +0000

Awesome Avatar Painting:

This is pretty cool. Makes you think what else can be recycled...

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:07:06 +0000

This is pretty cool. Makes you think what else can be recycled and made awesome again.

Gowalla: Gowalla is Going to Facebook

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:05:11 +0000

Gowalla: Gowalla is Going to Facebook:

gowalla:

Three years ago Gowalla’s journey began when I took a photograph of Lake Tahoe on my iPhone. I had just finished a phone call with my dad, and I wanted nothing more than to share that photo and place with him. Not just in a text message or status update sort of way, but with a bit of weight…

Good Design Sells

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:49:52 +0000

I have been pondering this topic for a while now, but I decided I must post about it when I read a link posted this morning by Jeffrey Zeldman.

It is becoming more and more apparent that when it comes to startups, design is selling BIG. Just look at Gowalla. They have a great design team (I know it includes Tim Van Damme), and have just been purchased by Facebook to help improve their Timeline feature. In recent weeks, services like Path have received a great deal of attention. I feel this is because of the stunning job they have done on their interface, rather than for their idea, which is nothing special by any means.

What do you guys think? Is design outdoing engineering?

Nginx Setup Script

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:37:07 +0000

Nginx Setup Script:

While setting up our server, I noticed that apt-get doesn’t seem to support Nginx anymore, or at least, there are some problems with it right now. Being the programmer that I am, finding and compiling a whole bunch of dependencies didn’t really appeal to me. Luckily I found this script by Mike Mansell that automatically installs Nginx and all of it’s dependencies. Thanks Mike, happy days!