Automating Rick Rolls with launchd
Lets face it: Your coworkers can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. What better way to remind them of this than automated Rick rolls? They’re likely to never know what hit them.
Widgets the YUI Way
Why are there so many lightbox implementations? Why are there numerous “versions” of widgets? Do you know which fork is the latest and greatest? Probably not, and for good reason. The current system sucks.
I'm Officially a Portland Local
2,300+ miles, 3 1/2 days and 10 states later, we’ve completed our move from Memphis, TN to Portland, OR.
Your Momma's So Fat...Prototype vs. JQuery Edition
The time has come once again to clear the air of fallacious statements by the myriad of people comparing Prototype to JQuery. I’m all for comparison; I believe it’s healthy to have choices in life. The problem usually isn’t Prototype or JQuery, it’s the article comparing them.
Dealing with Asynchronous Queries in Adobe AIR
Nearly all the methods of Adobe’s SQLConnection class are asynchronous. While this is nice when your running expensive operations (your interface won’t hang up), it can be quiet tough to deal with considering we come from a land where database operations have always been synchronous.
Understanding Scope and Binding in JavaScript
At the heart of binding, it’s merely a means to control execution scope—Function x executions in the scope of object y. It can be tough to grasp at first, but with the right amount of ninja references, anything can be explained so someone can understand it.
Alternate Idea: Encytemedia Reincarnated
If you’ve stumbled here and haven’t already read this post, please do so now to understand what’s going on. In short, I’ve moved Encytemedia.com to AlternateIdea.com and have some new branding.
Lighthouse Is Live
I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment, but we’ve finally launched Lighthouse, our issue tracking system primarily targeting developers. In addition to that, we were interviewed on the Web 2.0 show if you’re into audio.
The Final Straw
I’ve had enough. Run as far away from Registerfly as you can. Thats exactly what I’ll be doing over the weekend. I’m moving this domain to a different registrar because Registerfly, whom I’ve been a loyal customer for some years now, is sinking faster than a new Milli Vanilli record and causing 10 kinds of hell in the process for it’s customers. That includes me.
Scripting Photoshop With JavaScript and Ruby
You might not be aware of this, but Photoshop has had scripting support for some time now. It even comes with it’s own JavaScript debugger that adds a reflection interface. It has well documented support for JavaScript, AppleScript, and Visual Basic, all of which have their own set of problems. Thanks to the efforts of Apple on RubyOSA, we can now use Ruby to script this behemoth of an application.
Introducing Active Reload and Lighthouse
It’s great to be blogging again! I don’t think I’ve went this long without blogging since I began back in April of 2005. Well, I’ve been really busy and have some exciting news. I have just co-founded Active Reload with Rick Olson of the Rails Core team and we’re on the heals of our first product release dubbed Lighthouse.
Prototype 1.5 Released and Documentation Site Live
We’ve worked really hard getting the official Prototype site up and running and it’s finally here, not to mention we’re also releasing 1.5!
Infected with the 5 Things Meme
It seems Mr. Webb had it out for me and has bestowed upon me the 5 things meme. I’m not that interesting, but here goes.
Inject and Pluck: The Secret Sauce Behind Prototype's Enumerable
No misspelling in that title. Two of the most underused, albeit powerful, methods of Prototype are pluck and inject. Pluck provides an easy way to get at data, and inject is like the duct tape of Prototype—applicable in a variety of cases. Let’s look at how these methods can help tidy up our code and make our life a little easier.
Odd Gifts of 2006
Christmas time is that special time of year where most of us attend big family dinners with what can sometimes feel like a group of strangers. The gifting process is an adventure in its own right, as the older we get, the more cautionary we become about opening gifts from our family. Anything from tube socks to the sweater that goes immediately to the closet, never to be worn, are all part of this timeless tradition.
There is also those few gifts that make you do a double take as you peal back the holiday wrapping paper. While your grateful for the spirit of giving, these gifts can only be labeled as ”Odd Gifts of 2006”.


