May 2012
12 posts
Django Podcast: Task Queues →
I’m a huge fan of Django. I believe it is one of the best modern frameworks for building web applications.
There has been a lack of frequently updated Django podcasts (or news sites for that matter) in the community. Rails has everyone beat on that front.
My buddy Greg and his partner Bryan Helmig aim to fix all that. Greg is a very knowledgable guy with some great insight and a stellar...
Responsive Images →
Everyone’s talking about responsive images so I took a pass at what type of syntax I would love to see. A few notes:
I tried to ignore current limitations. In current browsers this may load four images, I don’t care, it’s on browsers to fix that.
I tried to keep structure and presentation separate. Too many solutions go and mix presentational elements right into the HTML. I...
Ethics
Re: Google’s problem is that it now believes itself above others – even governments.
I don’t know how to respond to Google’s actions here. Call me naive but if they’re capturing data while driving on a public street why are they at fault?
I know a lot of people jump to the postal mail analogy saying that it’d be wrong of Google to look at your physical mail as the...
iPhone Simulator Symlink →
I needed to do this just the other day and could not find the new simulator. Thanks Greg.
Why Postgres Part 2 →
A follow-up to last week’s link, but this time with new features!
Inbox.py →
Inbox.py is a simple SMTP server for Python. Hell, you could use it with any piece of software.
This is another great idea from the man who is ascending to legendary in the Python world, Kenneth Reitz. Even in this, its earliest form, it’s incredibly easy to use.
I’m a big Reitz fan, and he’s doing the League of Kenneths™ great justice. You can barely get 5 minutes with him...
Davis.js →
I think I’m in love. My only complaint is that you can’t run multiple apps on the same page. I’d love to have HMVC in Javascript, not just MVC.
Why Postgres →
Craig Kerstiens is one of the smart guys who makes Heroku chug along. In this post he discusses all the great things that Postgres does as a database.
When I started doing Python stuff I noticed that the community was all about Postgres. Having come from a MySQL background it was actually a pretty easy transition to start messing around with it. I have yet to deploy a site with it, but it looks...
Facebook Release Engineering →
I like this idea:
I eventually reached the area where the release engineering team is headquartered. Like the rest of the development personnel, release engineering uses an open space at shared tables. But their space has a unique characteristic: a well-stocked bar.
Deployments are hard. They’re even harder when you’re supporting a real-time app that can’t have any...
Tumblin' along
We’ve moved to Tumblr and updated our look. We’re really proud of it, but we decided to launch with a few polishes left. We hope you don’t mind. Iterate, iterate: right?
There are so many people to thank but in particular we’d like to thank two individuals. First, Kevin Tamura for designing the whole thing. Kevin went through several iterations and we really struggled...
April 2012
2 posts
Nginx configuration examples →
These nginx configuration examples are some of the best on the web. If you don’t know what nginx is, it’s a great replacement for Apache. It’s much faster and the configurations are much easier to understand.
March 2012
1 post
Buy These Screencasts
Friend of The Nerdary and elitist liberal developer, Greg Aker, has put out some great screencasts if you want to learn Python. You should buy them. Greg is smart, talented and has a great radio voice.
Python for PHP Developers
If you are a PHP developer then this is your gateway to glory. Transitioning from PHP to Python was an eye-opening experience for me and Greg does a fantastic job of...
February 2012
1 post
Hey youse guys, I'm finally using Sass
We are head deep in Redesign Week at Happy Cog and after so much time not trying out Sass, I finally decided to give it a whirl for the project. So far, I’m kinda more than okay with it. I love the SCSS syntax since it makes it easy for anyone to jump into files and still write traditional CSS, but also lets us take advantage of variables and mixins.
As my coworker Allison talked about...
January 2012
2 posts
The Things They Carried: Kenny
How pretensious is THAT title? Pretty pretensious, right? Let’s move on.
This is a tools pornography post which means I just list out a bunch of tools and we all just start sharing with each other.
There’s a lot of empty calories here but sometimes that’s enjoyable. If you, in turn, write about the tools you use I would love to read it.
Prelude
A couple of weeks ago,...
Sites made of awesomesauce: acko.net
Have you guys checked out Steven Wittens acko.net? It’s totes awesome. Over the weekend as links to it sprung up on twitter there were a bunch of “holy crap thats amazing“‘s and a lot of “Boooo that’s unusable rabble rabble rabble”s. Jeff Croft took a look at the latter and covers the spirit of experimentation honestly.
Both the site and Jeff’s...
December 2011
2 posts
Transitioning Max Height
Over at Happy Cog, we recently worked with MTV on their second Online Music Awards event. The project consisted of both a live streaming event as well as a supporting web site where users could come and vote on nominees. As a site that was designed to be exciting to use, we also wanted to make sure the experience was easy to use, while including some “surprise and delight” factors. The...
Generators and the yield keyword
Everywhere I look, generator tutorials are doing a bad job of teaching the material. The reason for this is that generators are taught right from the iteration point of view (for/in).
The problem with this is it doesn’t help the beginner. A better example of generators is to look at them as a result of a sequence of events (step-by-step) instead of in a loop.
This is primarily for Python...
November 2011
2 posts
Git Tips & Tricks
I don’t have to start this article with some cheap filler about how great Git is, right? or how everyone should use it every day? Great.
Here are some great tricks. All of these rely on creating a file called .gitconfig in your home directory (in my case /Users/kennymeyers).
CP
In my .gitconfig, I have the following:
[alias]
cp = commit -am 'cp'
Anything after the [alias]...
Systems v. Frameworks
I’m a system guy through and through. I love the stable, feature-complete, systems that I can install and be done with. I look for systems that won’t require me to cobble together a thousand and one extensions to produce a finished product. I avoid frameworks that require a gem for this, a plugin for that, or a spark for that other thing. I could never really put my finger on why this...
September 2011
2 posts
OSX Lion's /etc/hosts file
Having trouble with a locally hosted nginx or apache site not displaying? Here’s a little fix I discovered about Lion, which runs counter to previous versions of the OS.
When adding local domain names to your host file make sure they are written above the following or they will not work:
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
Thanks to John for...
Show me your CSS
Have I mentioned I’m writing for .net Magazine? I am!
In December I took over writing the CSS Gallery section. What does that mean for you my fine Nerdary reader? It means that if you make something new (its got to be new) or your friend makes something new or you see something new that has awesomesauce CSS you should let me know on here or on Twitter and maybe I can use it for an upcoming...
August 2011
3 posts
Remove Your Double Negatives
For a lot of young developers it’s common to write something like:
if ($('#div').is(':hidden')) { ... }
And on the surface that’s fine and legible. You’re simply checking if a particular div is hidden. But what if you want to check if that div is visible? Some may write:
if ($('#div').is(':hidden') == false) { ... }
To read that line we first have to understand what...
Girl Develop It: Philadelphia
I’m excited to say that tomorrow will be my first adventure into teaching! Girl Develop It is a super radical group started in NYC whose goal is to provide low-cost coding/programming classes for women. When I first talked to Co-Founder Sara Chipps, about it, I was sold on the project instantly. It can be super intimidating to learn a new subject and I think the idea of having a supportive...
Textmate
I know that abandoning Textmate is the new “I buy vinyl because it sounds better”, but I just can’t give it up. Since text itself hasn’t changed it still does 99% of what I need done really well.
(X)HTML Style Formatting
You can make Textmate’s bundle use proper XHTML endings. XHTML may be dead, but the beautiful way it makes you write HTML lives on.
If you...
June 2011
3 posts
Shimmy Shimmy Video!
I mentioned I’d keep y’all up to date on the videos we’ve been watching at Development Cinema Lunch and will be doing so right now!
Our CSS Best Practices are Killing Us
A blog post and video from Nicole Sullivan on when to start breaking the rules we’ve been following. From limiting amounts of font declarations to being okay with Classitis. Some of the thoughts...
Development Cinema
Two weeks ago at Happy Cog, I started a lunch time activity known as “Development Cinema Lunch.” The idea, is that instead of eating lunch at our desks or in the streets of Philadelphia that smell like hot garbage in this heat wave, we eat lunch in the conference room and watch a video or tutorial about anything web development related. So far it’s been pretty neat-o!! Everyone...
The perfect conference
If I were to build a perfect conference, here’s how I would envision it.
It would focus mainly on becoming a meeting point for social interactions. Hangin’ out like the Fresh Prince in Summertime.
People talking at you would be supplemental to social events and gatherings. For example, a photowalk will get much more <3 than another speech by a web designer about creativity, or...
May 2011
3 posts
Beginning APIs: First Step
This is a very, very basic introduction to APIs. If you’ve worked with APIs before, then this is not for you.
The obvious first question is what is an API? It’s an acronym for application programming interface. Is that any clearer? No? I wonder why. Is it because of the generic combination of complex multi-syllabic words? Probably. Like so many other professions, programming is mired...
Removing Subversion From Git
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you’ve added a bunch of .svn files to a Git repo and would like them removed, the following should work quite nicely for you:
git status -s | grep ".svn" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs git rm -f
It’s worth going over though because there’s some really interesting things going on in that single line.
First, the | characters simply...
URL Driven
I’ve begun planning applications and websites as URLs first. It’s how you can envision the site’s scope without needing to understand the design of it, while providing a practical map for development (e.g. deliverables).
I then use this map to build out the application. “They want a news section so clearly we’ll have to have a /news/ url, etc.”
A Special...
April 2011
5 posts
Notes from Standards Next
Today I spoke at Standards.Next an event I was honored to be asked to be a part of as it’s totally bad ass. The talks so far have been really interesting and the conversation has been radical. The conference is essentially taking a partial un-conference format and it’s really awesome to hear everyones opinions. I encourage y’all to check it out if it comes near you.
I gave...
On Being Epic
A few weeks ago, I turned 30. Yes. An age they tell you as a woman you aren’t supposed to admit. But my Friendster account says it so it must be true. A gentlemanly Kenny Meyers wrote a very sweet post on this here site, which a bunch of you commented on, about said event and it really meant a lot to me. Since then, I’ve been rolling around ideas in my head for a first post since that...
.htaccess Environments
If I were commissioned to film an ad for Pepperidge Farm mine would go something like this:
Remember developing on live servers over FTP? Maybe you downloaded files then re-uploaded them or maybe you used Transmit’s editor feature. Pepperidge Farm remembers. And it sucked. Don’t ever do it again.
Over the years SCM tools, automated deployments, and robust web frameworks have...
How CodeIgniter Works
First, let’s talk about what an excellent conference EECI is and that you should attend this year. Mark Huot and I will be there. Mark will be providing something of value with a talk while I will be making fun of speakers before they share their knowledge. It’s in beautiful New York City, one of the finest cities in the world. If you’re new to ExpressionEngine, I can tell you...
Securing ExpressionEngine 2
Video from last year’s EECI Conference in San Francisco is finally made available.
I believe most, if not all, of The Nerdary will be at EECI this year. It’s a really great conference with one of the best communities on the web. Even though I don’t use the software as much as I did during my freelance days, the community keeps me coming back. Buy a ticket. It’s going to...
March 2011
6 posts
PhpDocumentor
Documented for my own sanity and anyone else doing a Google search for PHP Documentor, /bin/sh, “bad interpreter” or any combination thereof.
If you grab PhpDocumentor from SourceForge it’s going to come down with Windows line endings, so you’ll need to convert them over to Unix line endings. To do so just apt-get install dos2unix and then dos2unix the phpdoc file you...
Jenn Lukas is amazing
Our own Jenn Lukas celebrated a pretty awesome and significant milestone this past Friday. So I’d like to take a few moments here to talk about how great she is.
I first met Jenn at SXSW in 2009. It was my first time in Austin and I had yet to be jaded by my own crippling depression brought on by days of chocolate-covered oreo binges and Jeff Croft. So I was out and about meeting as many...
Extending CodeIgniter's Controller
Greg Aker recently posted a great writeup on Extending CodeIgniter’s Controller. The post was well timed as I had the following post waiting to go. So, here’s how I extend CI’s controller:
class MY_Controller extends CI_Controller
{
public function _remap($method, $args)
{
$prefix = strtolower(@$_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']) ?: 'get';
...
ptags
Sure, the cool kids may be using TextMate these days. The nerds may be trying out Kod or Sublime Text. Me, though? I’m stuck in 1992 using BBEdit because it still does the things I need an editor to do.
One of those things just got 1000 times better with my (late to the game) discovery of Exuberant Ctags. Now, for the benefit of those that don’t use BBEdit, it’s got a pretty...
Opinions Wanted - No Excuse: Web Designers Who...
Happy Friday, folks! Are y’all heading down to SXSW next week? I am excited for warm weather!
I am on a panel at SXSW this year with the “Why I Never!” inducing-title: No Excuse: Web Designers Who Can’t Code
A bit ago I wrote a post on it, Jack of all trades, master of development, and now I’m hoping some of your opinions can help re-shape my thoughts on it.
Can...
Web/App Development
I’ve been doing a fair amount of Objective-C development lately, both for Mac OS X and for iOS. It’s been a nice break from web development and a fun way to experience a whole new side of the development landscape. What strikes me most though are the vast differences between two platforms that both claim to abide by the MVC paradigm.
PAC
In my little world of web development I find...
February 2011
5 posts
FU&@&R@(#)E@)&#^&!!!!!
If you’re trying to get EE working on Dreamhost make sure you set up your domain to not use fcgi. If you leave fcgi enabled you’ll have to use query strings in your .htaccess. That will break EE template names which have periods in them.
Found this nugget buried way too deeply in the EE forums.
With Dreamhost, you have to turn off fastcgi in the Dreamhost Control Panel on the...
Bootstrapping EE for CLI Access
Recently I needed to run EE from the command line. Specifically I needed access to the, still shiny, EE API. It’s amazingly easy to do and here’s how I went about it:
Duplicate your index.php file and name it cli.php.
Move the index.php file outside your DOCUMENT_ROOT. Now, technically, this isn’t required, but there’s no reason for prying eyes to see your hard work so...
The Quick Python Book, Second Edition Review
To delve deeper into Python, I began reading Manning Press’s The Quick Python Book, Second Edition (referral link) and found it to be ok.
For one thing, quick is a misnomer. There is nothing quick about a 400 page programming book. Granted it’s not the giant tome/testament to Python that Learning Python is.
The tone and style of the book are very dry. Nothing particularly stands...
Why I use Beanstalk for Git
I use Beanstalk for all of my Git repositories. I want to take a moment to talk about why.
I enjoy how Beanstalk is 100% private. For client work, this is really helpful. While I understand alternatives also have private repos, Beanstalk’s are private by default. This is more in line with the work that I do. Scary, cryptic government work like on Fringe.
Beanstalk is a great looking...
Accessibility Spec Work?
Fix the Web is a site that attempts to help fight the good fight by having users report accessibility issues with web sites. Volunteers then verify these reports and contact the site owners about them.
On one hand, without a site like this, it’s likely that site owners would never know that there was any issue with their site. On the other hand, we have this argument from Andy...
January 2011
5 posts
Unique Login URLs?
While developing authenticated sites I’m constantly at odds with how to implement user login, specifically what URL to display to the user. Let’s look at a use case:
A user comes to your site via an email. The email links them directly to their account management pages, say /account, or something like that. Unfortunately, they need to log in before seeing their account details.
...