90 Percent Gravity LLC - Home

Why won't my iPhone 3G see my apple-touch-icon.png?

2008-07-15T21:26:00Z

Like the uber-dork mac fanboy I am, I was one of the many wannabe trendy hipsters who thought a phone could both make me more popular and more attractive to women. Thus, I was one of the fools that happily sat in line for hours to purchase the new iPhone 3G last Friday when it was released. This machine has not only changed a lot of how I do my daily computing, but also made me rethink a lot when it comes to mobile computing and browsing. Simply put, I love the iPhone 3G and feel I can adequately justify the gargantuan chunk of funds it requires each month to continue making me smile.

Problem

First off, I don’t believe I’ve become more popular and/or more attractive to women yet. Oh, the false hope of consumerism. But how about a problem I can actually attempt to fix? I was quite saddened when I browsed to my website to add a home icon of this site’s logo (which I love dearly and will never be able to thank my designer, Oak, enough for), and instead I was given a screen shot of my site to look at as a link.

FAIL. I set up my apple-touch-icon.png last year when the original iPhone came out, and I was delighted that one or two of the maybe fifteen people who read this site could have my little icon on their iPhone. But now I couldn’t? I had watched a friend of mine add it to his iPod Touch a few weeks ago. What was my iPhone’s problem?

Solution

Today I found the solution:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://90percentgravity.com/apple-touch-icon.png" />

If you ran into the same problem as me, simply add the above link into the head section of your website, replacing 90percentgravity.com with your site name, and make sure you have your icon set up in the proper location. It seems the old default assumption of the icon name has been lost, so now you should set the link tag in your website yourself. Alternatively, you can name the png whatever you want and change that name in the href too, but I am a fan of conventions, so I suggest this as the way to go.

Hope this stops other people from scratching their heads as well.

And then they will like me…
And then I will become more popular…
Oh, iPhone 3G, you are a sneaky devil.

90 Percent Remix: The Overview

2008-05-15T00:38:00Z

As most kiddies are finishing up their studies and looking forward to a long, relaxing summer, I’ve decided to take the opposite approach to the climate change. Business has been good, but I don’t want to settle for good. Good is bland. I want the type of business that excites me to no end, where I get giddy like a school girl talking about it. So instead of spring cleaning, I’m summer revamping.

I’m in a unique place to take risks in life. I’m young, I have a small amount of overhead, and the only person depending on me is me. I’ve always seen this as a wonderful strength when it comes to my business. I can take an idea, form a plan, go with it and see where it takes me. Simple as that. So in an effort to revitalize my business, I’m going to take the next few months and push the envelope. I want to find out for myself what this can be and where it can take me.

I’ve decided to write this series of business ventures down as I go. Maybe they will be able to give people a few ideas of how to shake up their own small business. Maybe it will simply turn out as an entertaining log of horrible business mistakes to avoid at all cost. But at the very least, these entries will be open, honest, and a way for me to show you all how I’m pushing at building a more successful and exciting business. I’m risky, but I’m not stupid, and I think a whole lot of good will come out of this push, for both me and my clients. I welcome any ideas and suggestions for mixing things up and I look forward to sharing this adventure with you.

The Importance of Being Updated

2008-04-16T11:42:00Z

Yesterday I was contacted by a company about the possibility of doing some contract work. The recruiter had stumbled upon my web portfolio, liked what she saw, and asked if I was interested in taking new projects. I love getting messages like this that I know aren’t spam and are genuine interest in me and my work.

After looking into the company via there web site and a few google searches, the opportunity seemed excellent. A solid company that works with big names and does very good work. So I emailed back, wrote a bit about my experience, and said I was interested to hear what kind of work they were looking to have done.

This morning I get a phone call back from the company. I love getting new clients and new work so I get excited when things seem to move along so smoothly. And then I hear the words “here in the Loop.” As a former resident of Chicago, now living in New Jersey, my heart drops a bit. Where did this person get the impression that I still lived in Chicago? A quick review of my site and a slap on the forehead later, I discovered my own idiocy. “I’m 23, originally from South Jersey, currently the proud new renter of a Chicago studio apartment in Lincoln Park.” Kind of hard to misinterpret that.

In the end, the contract was for some on-site work, and I had to decline, but I think we both had a chuckle at my expense. The event drove home the importance of keeping a very active eye on your web brand. I had unknowingly been spreading misinformation about myself and my business, and simply put, that’s not cool. When a business doesn’t properly represent itself on its own website, both the business and the customer suffer. I highly recommend that everyone take a moment today and review your own about or contact pages. I doubt everyone’s life changes as drastically and frequently as mine has in the past 6 months, but even little things matter. New email, different hours, raised prices, etc. Your website is your interactive, international 24/7 store-front window. Treat it as such. Lesson learned.

90 Percent Gravity LLC, Y1Q1 review

2008-04-04T00:04:00Z

On January 2, 2008, 90 Percent Gravity LLC was officially formed. After three months into business for myself, there is good news to report. I’m surviving. Better then surviving. Business is going very well.

The majority of my programming time has been spent working as the developer of a promising Ruby on Rails website, FlashGarden. Sign up, good people, and look for a launch before the end of the second quarter. Working with an intelligent, tech-savvy startup team has made it very easy to enjoy being their hired gun. It is by far my biggest undertaking yet and is going to be a rather large programming feather in my cap. This project has solidified my love for Ruby on Rails, and pushed me to explore far deeper into the rabbit hole of programming then I’d like to admit. Consider me addicted.

In addition to this project I have been a part of a few side projects. I had the pleasure of adding a few hours to the new Slicehost website, designed and developed by Steve Smith, the man who helped me set up my first RSS feed reader over three years ago on my first day at the Notre Dame Web Group. I’ve owned a slice for almost 15 months now (this site is hosted on it), and it has been my favorite server experience. Do yourself a favor, get a slice.

I’ve also been working with Chas Grundy on a Tim O’Connor designed site which will be launched within the next week or so. As much as I love the east coast, I will always jump at any chance to work with my South Bend crew. Look for that site soon. I also had the opportunity to do some Rails work for Acidblue Ltd., which was a great deal of fun. I look forward to working with the company again.

All in all, I’m very happy for just starting things off. When I first started the business I took a part-time job cleaning to ensure I’d have enough cash to pay the bills. It’s a bit scary not knowing whether work will come in or not. I’m glad to say that it quickly became apparent that my time was much better put to use at my laptop screen, and I soon felt secure enough in the workflow to quit the distractions. (On a side note, nothing will make you work harder towards building a business then cleaning toilets.)

It feels very good waking up everyday knowing I’m in control of my day and my profession. As I get more comfortable running the business, doing the paperwork, and controlling my work hours, I can feel myself starting to hit my stride. That means there is much to come. I’m learning, growing, living, and coding it up. Here’s to a rewarding and successful first quarter at 90 Percent Gravity LLC, and to continuing the dream of this developer, the freedom to live my life and leave my mark.

Hello World!

2007-09-28T12:48:00Z

Newly launched and with a promise of a better tomorrow, here is my web development blog, 90 Percent Gravity. Some of the new features currently implemented here are:

New host, now running on the much more reliable Slicehost , compared to the crappy old mishap of running a rails app on dreamhost
New cms, now powered by Simplelog, a much lighter and easier to configure and hax0r away on then the hunky chunky behemoth that is typo. A strong thank you goes out to John Nunemaker, who helped me with a strange theme issue which was impending my launch, in addition to the already vast amounts of wisdom and assistance he gives me on a regular basis.
New site logo, created by the wonderful and recently birthday’d Tim O’Connor. He was kind enough to point out that I desperately needed one and then take it upon himself to make it.
New layout design, once again designed by the happily married Tim O’Connor, with tiny elements by me, and then coded in XHTML and CSS by me again. This design is tighttt and I owe Tim several more high fives and cases of beer for it.
New focus, to be employed by me for the life of this blog. Tho I will find each entry personal in that it comes from my voice and is written in my words, this blog is now the official web development blog of William H. Harle Jr. I’ve been into standards-based web development for two and a half years now, developing applications for the better part of the last 15 months, with a great focus on Ruby on Rails most recently. I learn new things everyday and I need somewhere to share my views, expertise, idiocy, and love for web development. That is what this site is for.

This blog is agile. It will continue to grow as needed. Sign up for my RSS, and get ready for some discussion. Here goes.