d3 example code is horribly convoluted, depending on dozens of unstructured variables (and often some global magic) to achieve even the simplest effects. To improve the readability of my d3 projects, I’ve introduced a Canvas container, with the most commonly used properties conveniently encapsulated in a single object. Combined with mbostocks discussion in Towards Reusable read more
Category Archives: Technology
Observers? In *my* syntax?
December 7, 2012 – 08:13
Modern graphical programming is dependent on the observer pattern. Its use in Model-View-Controller architectures vaulted the pattern into widespread use. Its continues to find applicability in event and interrupt based systems. The underlying conceptual pattern is astounding. In traditional APIs, the user is allowed to call library code arbitrarily, but there is no mechanism for read more
HTML5 Form Validation
July 9, 2012 – 07:23
Client-side form validation is a cross-cutting concern helping users get the most correct data into a form as quickly as possible. Good form validation will tell users what fields are most important in your form and exactly what is expected of their input. Form validation is not concerned with guaranteeing correct data gets sent from read more
Mass Effect 3: The Actual Ending
June 26, 2012 – 22:38
Oh look ME3 has a real ending! You know, the kind of ending that has resolution to a storyline! Still not as good an ending as I could have written, but oh well. More tomorrow, when I’ve played more than one of the endings and am not buzzed. PS Scotch Parties FTW!
Superscore
June 16, 2012 – 08:27
Underscore.js is a fantastic tool, something that nearly every javascript project will probably want to pull in at some point. Underscore is the collections framework for Javascript. It does all the collectiony things, in a functional way, very quickly and efficiently. There are still a couple other every-day things that JS libraries need, that don’t read more
Fedora Chrome Installer
June 16, 2012 – 08:26
This gist saves the Chrome repo block and installs latest stable.
It’s a spetus!
May 6, 2012 – 10:11
2008 August 25′s NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day NASA makes a joke about this not being a planetary forming nebula. While they are correct in that this nebula is not a fetus, it looks like a fetus. Ergo, spetus.
Need Firefox, have bash
April 29, 2012 – 07:56
For web development, we often need to test our code on multiple browsers. Firefox makes it really easy to run multiple versions side-by-side, so long as we take some care to not clobber profiles. This is a quick script to download and install the production versions of Firefox from 4 through 12 (13 is in read more
git svn dcommit hooks
April 13, 2012 – 14:47
Working with git and svn is as easy as git svn init ; git svn rebase ; git svn dcommit. What is slightly less trivial is adding hooks to enforce certain project behavior when working with git-svn. Specifically, I want to ensure and enforce that the build (locally, at least) is successful before I push read more
Agile Development Consulting
April 13, 2012 – 07:03
This is an open letter from me to nearly any potential client. The client and I have talked for a few emails, and I have just read an email asking me to spend 4 to 8 hours in a meeting working to detail every single piece of their software project for the next 6 months, read more