Midday Latte

Moving Sale!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:22:00 -0800

I’m selling a bunch of items from my apartment in San Francisco. Local sales only. If you’d like to purchase or ask a question about something, email me at allisonhouse@facebook.com. Thanks!

Crate & Barrel Queen Troy Sleeper couch. $800. Mega-comfortable couch in mushroom (dark beige) color with pull-out Queen-size mattress. Craigslist post with photos
Panasonic microwave. $60. Pretty much new. Owned for less than three months.
Black & Decker countertop oven. $20. I cook for one a lot, so I love this thing.
IKEA JONAS desk. $30. Black-brown. Some wear on the front edge, but otherwise in excellent condition.
IKEA LEKSVIK desk/dressing table. $80.
Contemporary coffee table. $60.
Adjustable silver gooseneck lamp. $39.
L.A. Noire for (Xbox 360). $5.

Custom made 13” MacBook Air Sleeve - Grey Wool Felt with Brown Leather, $25 (retail $58):

Today I'm joining Codecademy as Lead Designer

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:00:05 -0800

A few months after my move to San Francisco, I decided to leave Carsonified—wonderful folks, but the logistics weren’t playing. Since the departure, I’ve been on the hunt for a juicy new project; chatting with some of my favorite Bay Area companies about possibly working together. Just as I was finally prepared to commit, Bleikamp sent me this link. It was a Codecademy job posting.

“Lead UI/UX would be awesome there, Bouncy.”

Bleikamp calls me “Bouncy House”—or “Bouncy” for short—because I’m prone to animated fits of enthusiasm. I had a few as I worked through the Codecademy lessons.

“I’m, like, a laughably good match for this,” I told him. It’s true. I’m crazy about designing better educational experiences. I’ve worked on exactly that as an interface designer and as an instructor in university classrooms. “I’m going to email them. I’m jazzed.”

What followed was an incredibly fun talk with Codecademy co-founders Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski over Skype—they’re smart, easygoing, hilarious, and we found a lot of overlap in our ideas.

Here’s the beautiful entrance to the Wiliamsburg Bri—NOPE. BUBINSKIED.

The company is actually located in NYC (not SF, as I had originally thought), so I took a trip to meet the guys in person. They were spectacular hosts, and we had a crazy-good time working together and hanging out. By the last day, I was bummed to have to leave.

To speed along to the conclusion—we decided to make it a thing. I’m back in NYC and it’s my first official day as Codecademy’s Lead Designer!

This beautiful little papercraft NYC was on my desk when I arrived!

Watch out for us this year, gang. Big things coming.

More on Codecademy:

Codecademy: Next Frontier In Digital Education Movement (Forbes)
Cracking the Code to Get a Job (CNN)
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg takes coding course (BBC News)
Getting with the Program: Code Year (The New Yorker)

Over the holidays, Offscreen Magazine dropped me a line about...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:49:24 -0800

Over the holidays, Offscreen Magazine dropped me a line about profiling me for a small feature in their first issue. The only catch was it had to be done by Christmas—and I needed a good portrait photo! Luckily, developer extraordinaire and secret photography pro Zach Holman was still in the city and ready to save the day. (The holiday, even!)

This is the photo I chose; you can see a couple more in my Facebook album here. I suspect Offscreen is going to be a very beautiful bit of print and am quite excited for the first issue. (By the way, I believe they’re still looking for sponsors!)

Things to Do in San Francisco

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:23:00 -0800

Here’s a big, ever-updating list of places I want to visit in San Francisco—everything from attractions to restaurants to tech companies. I’ve been working on it privately for awhile now. If you’re new to San Francisco, you may find this helpful! (And if you’ve been here awhile, I’d love to hear your top recommendations.)

The list and a few photos after the jump.

Placed I’ve already visited

These are the spots I’ve already checked off my list. I recommend everything that’s starred; they’re my favourites! (Keep scrolling for my to do list.)

★ Aquarium of the Bay, aquarium — Oct 2011 with Zach
★ Mission Dolores Park, park — Apr 2011 with Kyle
★ The Exploratorium, museum — Oct 2011 with Alex
★ Facebook HQ, company (Palo Alto) — Jun 2011 with Chris, Francis + others
★ Foreign Cinema, restaurant — Sep 2011 with Olga
★ Google HQ, company (Mountain View) — Nov 2011 with Morgan, Jake, Jeff
★ Ike’s, sandwich shop — Apr 2011 with Kyle
★ Laszlo Bar, bar — Aug 2011 with Chris, Pasquale + others
★ Pacific Coast Highway, highway — Dec 2011
★ Palace of Fine Arts, landmark — Oct 2011 with Alex
★ Samovar Tea Lounge, tea room — Sep 2011 with Alex
★ San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, museum — Sep 2011 with Ben
★ Twitter HQ, company — with Aug 2011 Connor, Mark + others
AT&T Park, sports venue — Jun 2011 with GitHub
Bourbon & Branch, bar — Oct 2011 with Sabrina, Amritha
Crissy Field, park — Oct 2011 with Alex
De Young Museum, museum — Dec 2011
GitHub HQ, company — Jan 2012 with Zach, Ben, Jake
Golden Gate Bridge, landmark — Dec 2011
Golden Gate Park, park — Nov 2011 with Nathan
Fox Theater, music venue (Oakland) — Oct 2011 with Matt
In-N-Out Burger — Jan 2012 with CH
Instagram HQ, company — Aug 2011 with Kevin
Japanese Tea Garden, park — Dec 2011
MindSnacks HQ, company — Aug 2011 with Pasquale
Painted Ladies, landmark — Apr 2011 with Kyle
Pier 39, landmark — Apr 2011 with Kyle
Wine Country, region (Northern California) — Dec 2011

Beach view in Mendocino, CA, from a trip up and down the South Pacific Highway

View of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge from Pier 39

Giant Android phone found touring Google HQ with friends

More places to visit

The remaining locations, recommended by friends and travel guides.

Alcatraz Island, landmark
Apple, company (Cupertino)
Bi-Rite, restaurant
Buffalo Paddock, zoo
Cable Cars, tour
California Academy of Sciences, museum
Cliff House, restaurant/view
Coit Tower, landmark
Computer History Museum, museum (Mountain View)
DISQUS HQ, company
Exploratorium After Dark, museum
Goldsworthy Spire, artwork
IGN HQ, company (I stood in the lobby once, but that doesn’t count!)
Lombard Street, landmark
Mozilla, company (Mountain View)
Pixar, company (Emeryville)
San Francisco Botanical Garden, park
Seward Street Slides
Strawberry Hill, park
Supperclub, restaurant
Sushiritto, restaurant
Twin Peaks, landmark
The View Lounge, view
Walt Disney Family Museum, museum
Yahoo HQ, company (Sunnyvale)

"Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a..."

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:57:00 -0700

“Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.”

- Claude Monet

Tumblr Themes: How to Render Tags in a Comma Separated List

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:18:05 -0700

This is a quick tutorial on displaying tags on your Tumblr in a comma-separated list. I was prompted to share these instructions by Dorijan Covran, who wrote in to inquire about my method:

I recently started modifying a Tumblr theme and want to achieve a similar layout of tags like in your Midday Latte blog. Could you share some insights or code to achieve this?

For this example, I’m using the HTML straight out of the custom theme documentation.

{block:HasTags}
  
    {block:Tags}
    {Tag}
    {/block:Tags}
    
{/block:HasTags}

Without any styling, the above generates a bulleted list of the tags for that post, with each linking to a tag page. Something like this:

Hooray! Appropriately semantic. From here, I can use my stylesheet to do the rest of the work. The following CSS resets browser defaults for unordered list items, floats each one left so the list is inline, and adds commas (except for on the last item).

.tags li {
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
  list-style-type:none;
  display: block;
  float: left;
  }

.tags li:after { 
  content: '\002C\00a0';    /* Add comma and space after each tag */
  }  

.tags li:last-child:after {
  content: ' ';    /* Eliminate comma after last tag */
  }

Here’s what those additions produce. Ta-da! A comma-separated tag list.

One last note—if you want to add the number symbol (#) before each tag so that they look like hashtags (like #ui, #wireframes, #planning), just add this declaration to your CSS:

.tags li:before { content: '#'; }

Tumblr Themes: How to Add Fluid Width Video

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:52:00 -0700

If you want to expand your YouTube, Vimeo, and other embedded videos out of the 500-pixel wide Tumblr standard and make them scale fluidly, this post is for you. These instructions assume you’re familiar with CSS and customizing Tumblr themes.

Here’s the problem—when you use the {Video-500} variable, your video will come with fixed width and height attributes. Unlike images, you can’t resolve this problem with a simple max-width:100% declaration because the height won’t resize proportionally. You’ll end up with a really wide, short video. This solution will always present your video with a 4:3 ratio, even as the containing element is resized. (See here for an example of the fluidity at work.)

In your HTML…

When setting up your {block:Video} block, make sure your {Video-500} variable is in a container

with a class name. I’m going to use media. Here’s the example.

{Video-500}

In your CSS…

Add the following rules to your stylesheet. (If you used a different class name for your video container, replace media with that.)

.media {
  position: relative;
  padding-bottom: 75%;
  height: 0;
  overflow: hidden; 
  }

.media iframe, .media object, .media embed {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  }

Note that padding-bottom:75% results in a video height that is 75% of the video width—in other words, the video is displayed with a 4:3 ratio. Feel free to adjust this number if you’re posting video in another aspect ratio.

Update: A really neat jQuery plugin was just called to my attention—FitVids.js facilitates fluid width video and gives you perfect aspect ratio. (Thanks for the tip, Rogie!) Also, I almost forgot to note—this solution was adapted from this post on elastic video.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship,..."

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:08:00 -0700

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

Refreshing Midday Latte

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:47:00 -0700

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself and blogging, I have to keep things fresh to stay interested. It’s been a few months since I’ve written a real blog post—partly due to busyness, but mostly due to the stale design. It was time to spruce things up around here!

Previous version of Midday Latte, March 2011 – August 2011

Since Midday Latte’s initial design, I’ve learned a lot about how I like to use Tumblr and what’s possible when building a theme for it. The code has been completely overhauled to reflect those lessons, but I kept the visual style similar to previous iterations.

Midday Latte, refreshed!

So, what’s new in version three?

Rebuilt the layout from scratch with responsiveness in mind. Simplified the HTML (I got a little happy with semantic HTML5 elements in previous iterations), animated the layout transitions on resize, and switched to TypeKit for font serving. (Did you hear they were acquired by Adobe? You did? Like, a thousand times? Okay, sorry.)
Implemented maximum width photos and video, breaking out of the standard Tumblr 500px column. Woohoo! Level up! I’ll share these hacks soon.
Dropped in an easy-peasy infinite scroll script by Cody Sherman. Rock ‘n’ roll.
FB Comments plugin in, Disqus out. I like Disqus, but styling it is kind of a pain in the keester. FB Comments looks and plays nice right out of the box.

Reblogged from mindsnacks: Allison House is visiting...

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 11:31:00 -0700

Reblogged from mindsnacks:

Allison House is visiting today!

I visited the MindSnacks office yesterday—what a fun space! Pasquale and I decided to keep working on our hand tricks for my guest photo.

At the Front-End Design Conference, Chris Coyier and I interrupt...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:13:00 -0700

At the Front-End Design Conference, Chris Coyier and I interrupt Dan Denney with a slide across the stage! (Thanks to my wonderful friend Olivier Lacan for the video.)

Hand tricks with Bailey and Pasquale.

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:02:00 -0700

Hand tricks with Bailey and Pasquale.

Apartment Hunting in San Francisco

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:00:00 -0700

After a couple days recovering from the sleepless nights leading up to my move (too excited; see My Cross-Country Move: Orlando to San Francisco), I serious’d about finding an apartment.

Looking for Available Apartments

My first step was to decide what I wanted in an apartment. In Orlando, I paid $895/mo. for a 975 sq. ft. 1-bedroom apartment in a “luxury” community. Here, I focused on finding a studio or 1-bedroom under $2200/mo., over 500 sq. ft., with a cool landlord in an area I liked. I used PadMapper, which I especially loved for its neighborhood overlay.

I was focusing on The Mission, Hayes Valley, Alamo Square, and Lower Haight, but was open to Haight-Ashbury, Nob Hill, Portero Hill, and Russian Hill as well. I selected these neighborhoods from walking around, reading descriptions online, and recommendations from friends.

When I first searched PadMapper, it was evident nice apartments in my areas of focus were tough to come by. Listings were sparse in all my first-choice locations. I hid a bunch of duds and marked a few favorites, taking a few hours to sort through everything. I also signed up for alerts from PadMapper to be notified of new listings that matched my preferences throughout the day. (This was also recommended to me by @PadMapper on Twitter, who is very friendly and helpful!)

Preparing for Apartment Viewings

To be ready to apply if I found a place I really liked, I made sure I had:

Credit report - I used freecreditreport.com, which will give you your Equifax score as soon as you sign up. (You can get all three for an additional $29.95, but they won’t arrive on the same day.) I canceled their service right away.
Proof of income - I’m paid by wire transfer since I work for a UK company, so I don’t have pay stubs. Instead, I printed out 3 months’ worth of bank statements. This may be a good way to prove income if you’re a freelancer, too. If you have pay stubs, bring ‘em. I believe tax returns usually work as well.
Checkbook - I haven’t switched to a national bank yet, so this was only helpful after I got past a certain stage.

Apartment Viewings

I decided to start with the place that was most nearby, a $2095/mo. 560 sq. ft. 1-bedroom in the Lower Haight, and called to schedule a viewing for that afternoon. (If you’re interested, here’s the ad.) I also sent off some emails for a couple places in Nob Hill and The Mission I was interested in seeing the next day.

The Lower Haight was the one neighborhood I hadn’t visited on my first-choice list, but I immediately liked it as I made my way there on foot. I also posted a link to the location on Twitter, and friends came through with approval right away.

I met the landlord at the building and had a good first impression—he was very friendly and seemed like a genuine guy. He told me that in the couple days he had listed the apartment, three couples had come to look but no one had made a move. I really liked the apartment and it met all my requirements, so I went ahead and expressed my interest in starting the paperwork. (My understanding is that this is pretty rare, so I lucked out.)

Signing a Lease

He needed a credit report (✔), proof of income (✔), and a verified $500 deposit. I couldn’t use my personal checkbook for that last one and couldn’t get a cashier’s check since my bank is regional. He gave me the option of wiring a transfer to his bank account or paying $500 in cash. I opted for cash, so we jumped in his truck for a trip to an ATM in the Upper Haight.

After the bank visit, he very kindly drove me down Haight St. to Golden Gate Park and back past our apartment, showing me some of the sights and places of interest. It was really cool to get a tour of my neighborhood and a taste of the craziness that is driving in SF.

Once I paid the deposit, I covered everything else (security deposit, first month’s rent) with a personal check. And that was it! My lease began the next day and I am now officially a San Francisco resident!

Reader Q&A with .net magazine — ask a question!

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:59:00 -0700

I’ll be responding to reader questions in an upcoming issue of .net magazine. They’re taking questions now, so ask me anything web: techniques, process, inspiration, career, whatever!

Tweet in questions for me to answer here.

My Cross-Country Move: Orlando to San Francisco

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:00:00 -0700

Since deciding to head out to San Francisco, I’ve received a lot of questions about the process of making a cross-country move alone. Here are some details that may be helpful to you if you’re thinking about taking the same big step.

Selling, Donating, and Giving Away (Almost) Everything

I considered shipping most of my things in a moving pod, but decided that the cost to do so (over $2000) wasn’t worth it. If you’re interested in a pod, I don’t recommend U-Haul—their customer support was really difficult about getting back to me on questions. My friend Zach Wood—who recently moved from Orlando to Salt Lake City to join welikesmall—had a good experience with Door to Door.

Instead of using a pod, I chose to pare my things down to a few boxes and ship those.

I started unloading by selling all my furniture on Craigslist. Here’s what I learned:

The most reliable buyers prefer to deal by email (Gmail ranked highest) or text. Almost every potential buyer who asked me to call flaked out.
Responding to emails immediately and arranging same or next day pickup dramatically increases the chances of a successful sale.
You meet a lot of interesting people this way! I had a lovely time talking to almost everyone who passed through.

I made over $1000 selling furniture and other items on Craigslist. Hustle.

Next, I inventoried most of my clothing, shoes, and books, determined a value for them (for the tax receipt), and donated them to Goodwill. I paid a friend $75 to help me handle the delivery. The donation was valued at $1224.

My co-worker Nick Pettit showed me Amazon’s Trade-In program (after I’d donated all that stuff)—it looks like it may be a good way to get acceptable prices on media items. I didn’t use this, but it’s worth looking into if you shop there frequently. (The “catch” is they give you Amazon credit.)

I also donated my 1998 Ford Taurus to NPR through the vehicle donation program sponsored by Car Talk. It took several hours and over $100 at the DMV to change the title, but after that it was pretty breezy. They called as soon as they had the paperwork and offered to pick up the car the same day.

Shipping Everything Else

I ended up shipping three boxes, a poster tube, and my PC. The boxes mostly contained clothing, shoes, and a few books I really love or haven’t read. The items cost $156 to ship.

I brought two suitcases with me on the plane. A smaller one contained all the usuals for a trip (a week’s worth of clothes, makeup, etc.), and a larger one contained some items from my childhood, my Nikon D90, a tripod (gift from my father), and some documents. I carried my MacBook Pro with me as well.

Making It Happen

As far as just getting it done, here’s my advice.

Get organized. Commit to a date, buy your ticket, and plot everything you think you’ll need to do before you get there. I used Flow for this, but whatever keeps you on track.
Make roomy estimates for how long tasks will take. Give yourself 2-3x longer than you think you’ll need for stuff. There will be a lot of time-consuming miscellaneous tasks, especially toward the end—and few people will “get” how much is involved in moving. I gave myself a month and a half to move. It was tight.
Don’t schedule anything a week before the move. This is a big one. If you can, clear your schedule (including work) and focus on moving and hanging out. This is when it will hit all your friends that you’re actually leaving, so everybody will suddenly want to see you before you go. I took a couple days off, but I was absolutely slammed those last couple weeks—and not for lack of planning!

Moving Cost Summary

$302 for a one-way ticket to San Francisco
$156 to ship a poster tube, three boxes, and a PC
~$100 to update the title for my car
$75 for a friend to help me out with donation delivery
$190 to have my apartment cleaned (MaidPro, great service)
$50 to check two bags on my flight to SF

Overall, close to $900 to get out of there and on a plane to San Francisco.

I’ll be posting about my apartment hunting experience next!

Update: Read about apartment hunting in San Francisco.

THIS IS IT.

Sun, 29 May 2011 13:34:00 -0700

I’ve come to terms with swapping hurricanes for earthquakes and kissed my in-apartment washer and dryer goodbye. When this post is published, I’ll be cozying into a window seat on an Airbus A320, eagerly waiting to see those California mountains appear on the other side of the acrylic. In six hours, I’ll be home. San Francisco, here I come!

—

Update:

That Adventurous Impulse. Recorded on my last night in Orlando....

Sat, 28 May 2011 23:30:00 -0700

That Adventurous Impulse. Recorded on my last night in Orlando. Thoughts on friendship, change, and doing my thing.

Eric and Amit at my bye-bye dinner.

Fri, 27 May 2011 23:57:21 -0700

Eric and Amit at my bye-bye dinner.

Got a haircut last weekend.

Wed, 25 May 2011 09:25:00 -0700

Got a haircut last weekend.

Achieving Browsing Zen

Tue, 24 May 2011 09:32:06 -0700

Since posting about Being Better at Browsing, I’ve made a few big changes to the way I browse that have dramatically improved my habits. The simple, focused experience I was seeking? Nailed it. Here’s what I use.

1. Pinned Tabs

Solves the problem of… getting sidetracked when hunting for an often-used tab (like Hype Machine); distracting notification counters (Facebook, Twitter, Campfire).

Holy fig, guys. I should have known about this! In Chrome, you can find Pin tab in the context menu for any tab. It shrinks the tab down to its icon and moves it to the left of the non-pinned tabs.

2. Autoclosing tabs

Solves the problem of… leaving tabs open for reminders/to-do tasks; opening too many tabs at once.

Autoclosing tabs are some serious tough love for tab addicts. It’s a little scary—I, uh, screamed the first time one closed on me—but nothing has been more helpful. It trains you to be choosy about what you open, forces you to address tabs right away, and discourages too much multi-tasking. Now I concentrate on single tasks, rather than being all over the place. I use Tab Wrangler for Chrome.

3. Search keywords

Solves the problem of… losing focus on a task.

I set up quickie keywords in Chrome for search engines I use a lot, like Google I Feel Lucky (’), Wikipedia (wiki), and Dictionary.com (dict). These are all sites I regularly have to visit while my focus should remain on another task. For example, if I’m writing a blog post, I may need to flip open a tab for Wikipedia to verify a related fact. Using keywords instead of a regular Google search minimizes distraction and gets me back to my main task quickly.

In Chrome, you can set this up with Edit search engines in the address bar context menu. In Firefox, you can add smart keywords.

—

A huge thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions and feedback on their own experience. I have a feeling the way we browse is a just small part of a bigger habit that helps us process and organize tasks. I was excited to see I’m not alone in caring about the issue. Here’s to better browsing, gang!