Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

The latest in HTML

mejarc — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 15:30:38 +0000

No question, HTML5 is big news. It's the subject of sold-out conferences, mobbed Meetups, and recent best-sellers. It's even become a catch-all marketing phrase perfectly contoured to shove into presentation slides. But HTML5 better watch its back. There's yet another promising HTML standard out there. It's what you'll want to use on your next project--hip, [...]

The latest in HTML is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

Test-driven CSS Development

mejarc — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:05:35 +0000

I’m not the only one to have searched this phrase. Many front-end developers (including, it seems, a statistically significant number of people named Simon) crave the benefits of a TDD-like process when devising stylesheets. The dream: define styles at the beginning of a project, test them for validity, performance, browser interpretation, then continue development feeling [...]

Test-driven CSS Development is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

Sh*t People Say to Front-end Developers

mejarc — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:12:35 +0000

We really don’t need a designer. What’s an information architect? Nobody will be looking at this page with a mobile device. This style guide from 2002 is still good. We really don’t need localization. This Excel spreadsheet is our issue tracker. Works great! Using Flash would make this so much easier! HTML5 is too risky [...]

Sh*t People Say to Front-end Developers is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

Letter to Gino Lee

mejarc — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:47:05 +0000

Dear Gino, I’d hoped the news was untrue. Surely it was unbelievable: how could you die? You were only forty-nine. You are only forty-nine–I’ll keep using the present tense. You’re still alive to me. I have vivid memories of you from over ten years ago. There you are, apparently one of the last smokers in [...]

Letter to Gino Lee is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

Stop arranging developers like the typing pool

mejarc — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:52:23 +0000

A couple weeks into the project, and despite my access to the issue tracking system, the project wiki, and the code repository, I still felt uneasy–there was something I was missing, but since I didn’t know what that was, I couldn’t ask for it. Coffee? Water? Multiple monitors? Appealing snacks? Had all those. I stood [...]

Stop arranging developers like the typing pool is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

Thrills! Chills! It’s InstallFest!

mejarc — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:06:44 +0000

Last weekend brought the latest RailsBridge workshop to San Francisco (man, these workshops are really gaining momentum–there’s yet another one already scheduled for December 3-4. And, yup, it’s waitlisted). This time I ventured beyond my usual semi-skilled volunteer roles by offering to help workshop participants install the software required for the workshop. At last I [...]

Thrills! Chills! It’s InstallFest! is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

Why there’s always a waiting list for the RailsBridge outreach workshops

mejarc — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 01:35:19 +0000

Seemingly moments after the announcement on Meetup–maybe it’s really as long as three hours–about the latest RailsBridge outreach workshop, there’s a waiting list of women really, really interested in attending, but just a hair too late in registering. Why are these workshops such hot tickets? After all, they’re just a few austere hours spent hunched [...]

Why there’s always a waiting list for the RailsBridge outreach workshops is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

“Gazelles” eat hay, not grass

mejarc — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:40:37 +0000

On Good.is the popular posts today include “15 Percent of Americans Are Now on Food Stamps”. I’ve visited the site twice this Monday, once just after the New York Stock Exchange started trading this morning, and now after the market close, as the story of our dismal economy’s enduring lifelessness makes headlines everywhere. In today’s [...]

“Gazelles” eat hay, not grass is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

Why we’ll stop using ID in our stylesheets

mejarc — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:41:07 +0000

Seemed like everybody was talking about CSSLint a couple of weeks ago. I waited for the hype cycle to slow its rotation, then dutifully visited the online linter to pay my respects. It didn’t repay them. “Will hurt your feelings” is CSSLint’s tagline. Heh, heh; I’ve written stylesheets for thirteen years now. What faults could [...]

Why we’ll stop using ID in our stylesheets is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog

What the Web industry could learn from my Tower Records jobs

mejarc — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:04:28 +0000

Minimum wage. A good chance you’d have to work until after midnight on New Year’s Eve, and then at 8:30 AM on New Year’s Day (happened to me). Boring, unglamorous duties. Dealing with clueless, irritating, or just plain drunk customers. So what was it about working at Tower that makes us former employees so nostalgic [...]

What the Web industry could learn from my Tower Records jobs is a post from: Two Banjos At Once: The Blog