Blog and Linked List

I post anything I find intersting or entertaining -- from tech news to book quotes to new sites I've found (and tips on web development, in general).

June 16, 2011 (∞) More Apple. » Source

Apple’s Back to School Offer 2011

Via Apple.com:

Here’s the deal:

When you buy a new qualifying Mac with Apple education pricing* from June 16, 2011, through September 20, 2011, you’ll get a $100 Back to School Card to use on the Mac App Store, the App Store, the iTunes Store, and the iBookstore.

I’m not sure exactly when Apple started doing their Back to School offer for students, but for the better part of the last decade they have been essentially giving away free iPods with the purchase of a Mac to qualifying students in the summer.

This year marks a big change in the deal, whereby you’ll receive an iTunes/App Store gift card instead of a “free” iPod. Still, it’s an awesome incentive on top of already discounted prices for students.

June 2, 2011 (∞) More Apple, Tech. » Source

Windows 8 on Arm

Via ArsTechnica:

ARM Windows won’t include an x86 emulator, and as such will not be able to run existing Windows programs. It is, however, the same operating system with the same APIs, meaning that it should be possible to recompile existing software and device drivers for ARM Windows with few difficulties. The same applications should, therefore, become available on both platforms, as should access to the same hardware.

So, as soon as they’re (nearly) done transitioning their user base from 32-bit -> 64-bit OS, drivers and apps, Microsoft is going to force another bifurcation, but for what benefit? The advantages of running on ARM will likely be negated by background Windows processes.

Or, maybe they’re banking on ARM Windows 8 taking a sufficient amount of time to come to market that they’ll be able to get “all day” battery life on their tablets.  Meanwhile, your iPad will last all week under full use.

Update 5:41pm: Apple has avoided issues like this in their architecture switches (most recently, PPC -> x86) by allowing for Universal Binary applications, containing the code for both architectures all in one App bundle.  For the sake of their users, Microsoft should implement this.  Or perhaps they’re expecting everyone to buy Office 2012 ARM edition for their tablets and a separate x86 edition for their laptops and desktops.

June 1, 2011 (∞) More Web Design/Development.

This Week in Twitter [Updated]

It’s been a big week for twitter, with some official (an unofficial) announcements:

  1. Yesterday, the introduction of the official Follow button (which you can conveniently try out in my footer).  This is iFramed out, just like the Tweet button, which allows for more information to be displayed — in this case, the number of followers.

    As an aside, I’ll be writing a post at the end of the week about how to make these iFramed buttons work correctly on AJAXed sites

  2. Today, we got the official announcement of native photo support and revamped search, active now on Twitter.com and coming soon to devices. This sparked an interesting debate I stumbled upon regarding the archiving process of tweets and their accessibility in search (quick summary: they’re not there, because it’s too hard right now, but maybe they will be there sometime):
  3. Along the lines of the twitter photo integration, there have been rumors floating around this week that twitter functionality will be fully baked into iOS5, bringing its social media sharing capibilities more inline with what we see in Windows Phone 7 or HP’s WebOS.

Whichever way it goes with iOS integration, it’s nice to see twitter taking hold of its own platform.

Update 6/2/2011: ArsTechnica puts the new Follow button to good use on the Twitter page on their site

May 27, 2011 (∞) More CSS, PHP, Site News, WordPress -

Site Redesign Features

A redesign of my personal site has been long overdue, but I finally got the inspiration, motivation and the time to give the site a much-needed overhaul. Here’s what’s new:

  • Backend completely powered by WordPress, using a custom post type for my web development portfolio and traditional posts for the blog/linked list.
  • Linked list functionality achieved by custom post meta data, giving any traditional post the ability to not only have a source link, but have that source link be the default link for the post. I’ll write a post about that sometime soon!
  • A complete visual redesign. CSS3 everywhere, AJAX-ified for a more fun experience, and just all around easier on the eyes. I even threw in some webkit keyframe animations, so if you’re not using a webkit brewer, make sure to check it out in one (use the contact form to email me and you’ll see!).
  • A real photo portfolio, grabbing my photos from flickr and spitting them out on my site in a pretty neat way. On the photo page, you can not only see when and where the photo was taken, but you’re given a download link so you can use the image as your background without having to drudge through flickr.
May 26, 2011 (∞) More PHP, WordPress.

AJAX + WordPress, made easy

One of the main reasons I redesigned my site – beyond the obvious facelift – was to give it a much needed new backend.  Everything is now powered by WordPress, which is awesome for control and simplicity, but isn’t exactly known for its AJAX prowess.

As a theme developer, I have been using a little technique to AJAX-ify WordPress themes for a while.  In the page template, you can use PHP to find out how the page was requested — was it an AJAX request, or was it a traditional page request? :

$isXHR = (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) && ($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] == "XMLHttpRequest"));

Then, with a few conditionals, you can customize your template so things like the header (get_header()), footer (get_footer()), and sidebar (you guessed it, get_sidebar()) get left out of the page request if it was an AJAX request.

For example:

if (!$isXHR) get_header();

This is a clean and efficient way of serving up just the page content without the headers, footers, and whatever other content you want to omit from the AJAX request.  Less content = smaller file size = faster load time = less waiting for your visitors.

See it in action in the individual photo pages of my portfolio.

May 24, 2011 (∞) More Book Quotes.

Hunger Games

Real, or not real?

The Hunger Games is a trilogy of novels about a dystopian future where children are randomly chosen and forced, at the behest of the government, to fight each other to the death in a Roman Colluseum-esque arena.

Worth the read. The movie is coming out next year, and it’s going to be huge.