avalonstar.com: the blog

Can Haz Assimilation?

Bryan Veloso — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:14:28 -0000

This is the story of a guy and his process. His process? Well, while there isn’t much of one, it’s really hard for things to become part of the process. As a little break from Revyver week, he’s wondering how you’re able to

While I’m spending my first night in Park City, Utah, I had a thought at the front of my mind. Since I’ve been doing quite well with posting, why stop? :) Don’t worry, this’ll be short. You’ll be doing the talking this time!

Bryan’s got problems. Don’t say anything.

To start, I’ll just say it’s deathly hard to get anything to assimilate into my daily life. Web applications, software, anything. At best, I’ll use a program or about 2 weeks and then all of a sudden forget about it. Let’s take Twitter for instance, the only reason I’ve been able to keep up with it is because of the social utility involved. Alright, bad example.

Oh here’s one. iCal. I love it, but I can’t seem to remember to use it whenever I have a date to take note of. I’ve tried on multiple occasions to just keep the it open while I work and I always find a way to command-Q it. Another example. See how “Site of the Moment” is missing? Even though it was right there, I was never able to keep up with it.

So, here’s the question.

How hard is it for you to incorporate new programs, services or processes into your daily life? How long did it take? If something eventually falls out of favor, why and how long does it take?

Maybe I can understand my own “problem,” by seeing your reasoning. :)

Birthdays and Test Tubes

Bryan Veloso — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:33:21 -0000

This is the story of a guy and his company. After taking the level of seriousness to an all time high, he felt it was time to lighten up the mood a little bit and announce what he’s been meaning to all week. Might not be that special, but it could very well help a lot of people.

After a night of spilling my guts out for all to see, I felt it was high time to perk up the mood and talk about the announcement I alluded to a few nights ago.

Long time readers will remember that some time ago, I released archives of hand-picked Photoshop documents for all to see and play with. The response was very positive and I eventually released a total of three archives, one for 2004, 2005 and 2006. However, since I have a tendency of nuking the domain and starting fresh with each release, not to mention the numerous server moves, files I host don’t usually survive. This is mostly because I forget. The same thing happened with ChaoticSoul, my beloved WordPress theme.

A few weeks ago, after getting an email asking about the archives, I said to myself, “I really got to get these back up.” With that motivation in tow, I was able to kick something out that I hope all of you will be able to enjoy to some degree.

With that, I’m very proud to introduce, Revyver Labs which you can find at labs.revyver.com. To make a potentially long story a lot shorter, this is where I will release all of my works for now on. It’s obviously on a domain, lovingly taken care of by Media Temple, that’s far far away from the reach of my nuking button.

Everything on the Labs is provided as a sort of donation ware, so buy us some boba milk tea if you want to say thanks. But you won’t only be helping us help you. Fifty-percent (50%) of all donations will go towards the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or the ASPCA. So you’ll be helping animals, much like our own cats (2 of which are rescues) find loving homes. But in the end, it’s not about the money at all, it’s about me wanting to help people learn and grow in my own special way (read: I can’t teach for crap, I leave that to people like Andy and Dan).

Along with the launch of the Labs comes a refresh of Revyver, so I encourage you to check both out (and make sure to switch your tabs quickly between them). Well, the entry could technically end here, but for more, read on!

Batteries Included?

Let’s talk about what’s actually in the Labs. There’ll be a few things you recognize and a few things you won’t. At the current moment, the downloads are split up into three categories, WordPress themes, the Photoshop archives, and source code.

The WordPress Themes

But wait, you don’t use WordPress anymore.

That I don’t, well, not here at least. However, I have been keeping up with development and the releases. For months I’ve had the desire to release a few more themes like ChaoticSoul and Labs will provide me with the avenue to do so. So you’ll see ChaoticSoul as well as its future twin, AngelicSoul. You’ll be able to not only download the current releases, but also follow any work I do on the themes from their new home on GitHub.

The Photoshop Archives

The beloved archives have undergone a few changes. First, they’re now strictly Photoshop documents. I’ve removed all the markup, InDesign and Illustrator documents for placement in a future category. Second, I’ve thrown in the 2007 archive. Third, I’ve revised each of the archives to include documents I didn’t release in the past. Three of these files making their inaugural appearance in the archive are version 19 and the 4th prototype of this version of Avalonstar as well as the first version of Revyver. It was quite the inner battle—to release works so close to me—but I ultimately decided to include them as centerpieces of my work for each of the archives.

The Source Code

As of right now, the only project you’ll find there is Django Plugables, since that’s the only project that I’ve decided to release the source code for. More are in the pipeline, including planned releases of the backend that runs Avalonstar as well as a few other ideas up my sleeve. All of these projects, wether Django related or not, will be hosted on GitHub in case you’d like to follow along.

Need assistance? Get Satisfaction!

Finally, at the center of all these releases is the help system powered by Get Satisfaction. I’ve long wanted to redirect all the requests for support to one central location and the platform provided at Get Satisfaction will fulfill that need perfectly. So all requests for help or even ideas and comments should go there! I’ll be able to address issues a lot easier and a lot quicker. :)

All-in-all, I really hope you enjoy the Labs. I hope to keep them updated with new projects as often as I can. Also, do feel free to poke me if I haven’t. As I’ve said in the past, a swift kick in the ass does wonders sometimes.

Finally, happy birthday Revyver, this beer’s for you. :)

EDIT 1: Apparently Mint’s download pepper is giving me crap. I’m on it!
EDIT 2: And now Revyver’s down. Woohoo. D:
EDIT 3: Everything’s alright! Go eat my bandwidth! :D

The Story and State of Revyver

Bryan Veloso — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:33:03 -0000

This is the story of a guy and the history of his company. While noticing that he never really explained the background behind the company, he decided to take care of that as well as talk about the change from one dream to another. It’s a pseudo-long and personal story that stresses one of the company’s adjectives—transparency.

As the little firm that could turns two tomorrow, I wanted to be able to take a step back and take a look at what got it where it was today. If nothing else, this is a moment of self-reflection for me. As I’ve told those closest to me since turning 25 almost three months ago, I’ve learned to be a lot more honest with myself about what I can and cannot do. The direction that Revyver’s taken even in that time span has been greatly affected by my state of mind. With that said, this post could get quite lengthy.

The idea.

From the moment I discovered the possibility of going into business as a 13-year-old in high school, I’ve wanted to start my own firm. I started getting into design that same year and the dream to start a firm in general turned into the dream of starting a design firm. Said firm was supposed be named Avalonstar; we all know why that didn’t happen.

This continued through college, as I constantly tried to pull out the basic shreads of knowledge on how to start Avalonstar, even though I was being taught how to start a resturant. I remember being the only person in my Introduction to Entrepreneurship class my freshman year who presented a business plan that wasn’t related to food. But there was no getting me out of this mindset, no matter how many times I felt left out of the group or how many times certain professors would stress the importance of finding the right building.

My company’s going to be on the internet, do I really need to learn how to get insurance for my non-existant kitchen?

Granted the knoweldge is always good to have, but still.

By the time I left college, I was pretty convinced that I didn’t have what it would take to start Avalonstar right after graduation. With all the risks I had taken and the mistakes I had made, I didn’t want to risk screwing up from the getgo. So, I started looking for management trainee jobs in Savannah, Georgia. When that didn’t work, after some prodding from my father and the sheer kindness and assistance from one Evan Eckard, I was able to get the interviews at LinkedIn and Facebook.

A good number of you followed my journeys through Facebook, so there’s really no need to rehash that. While working there was one of the best experiences of my career, the causes of my immenent departure would become a recurring theme. So this is the first point in the narrative where I am going to respect one of Revyver’s five adjectives—transparency.

Passion, motivation and actuality.

I’m a person driven on two things, passion and motivation. My motivation to do something when working is directly related to the amount of passion I have for the said task or project. With any project of mine, there is a process of depreciation. While this term is usually used to describe tangible assets, the principle works in this situation. Depending on the circumstances that happen over the life of a relationship, motivation depreciation can either accelerate or decelerate.

This is what happened at Facebook right around the time that I entered the then two-person marketing department as Creative Director. The reason I made the change in the first place was an effect of a degredation in motivation. I was the guy who knew how to fix IE bugs, but I didn’t want to be doing that, and as my primary role was evolving into one of browser compatibility, I left. I don’t think Mark will ever really forgive me for that. The total demise of said motivation happened after a Director of Marketing was hired accompanied with the overall “corporate” feeling at the time.

So, what happens when you run out of motivation and don’t do anything about it? You get let go. That’s what happened to me. Although I was told that I couldn’t move at the pace of the rest of the company when I was called to the table on that fateful afternoon in May, I had lost my will to work at least a month prior. So I did leave Facebook, just not of my own accord.

I just was never the person to stand up for myself. I was weak and probably still am in that regard.

The execution.

About a month ago, after the Facebook fiasco, I said that I had a few things up my sleeve. […] Revyver stands for many things as it is derived from the word “revive”. The revival of my entrepreneurial spirit (caused by the events of late) and the will to revive things that have been lost in time.

So the design firm was brought back and on July 1st, I did show the world that I finally achieved my dream to start on my own. But that’s not the end of the story.

Welcome to the end of the beginning. :)

If I only knew what I really meant by that when I wrote it.

Problems with the priorities.

The first weeks of Revyver would have been nothing without Will Pate, as he was able to get me a meeting with Bart Decrem, and later, the task of redesigning Flock with Matt Downey. All-in-all, there was thankfully a bit spurt of work to keep us going, but there was quite a struggle after Flock was done and paid for.

So Revyver’s stay in the front of the pack was cut off as you know what happened next. A few weeks after Webvisions 2006, I was working for Automattic and many of you also followed my tenure with them. While working with WordPress and a truly talented team was a great pleasure, the effects started to happen again within 4 months of my entry. For the sake of not being redundant, I was let go for the same reasons as my departure from Facebook.

Revyver made a swift comeback after those events and once again had a big name to catapult it back to the front of the pack, Mashable. Working with Pete was a pleasure and a little painful at times, but what client project isn’t without its bumps?

2007 in general was Revyver’s time to shine with clients, doing some great work for Groovr (work I actually forgot to announce) and Coffee Cup Software. It was a great learning period for me, but something didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel right. I was done working for “the man,” but the same symptoms from the working world started to creep in on my freelance work. Thus, my state of mind began to change. Each of those relationships didn’t end as well as they could have and it was my fault.

My blessing and my curse.

My blessing of being free also came with a curse, I wanted to be free to work on my own projects. The fact that I had started to learn Django had aided in my push away from client work. It had given me the tools to accomplish my own ideas, Wii SportsStar being the first proof of concept. By the time I had added Jen to Revyver before its first birthday, we had begun to think of ideas for our own products, most of them stemming from Jen’s side of the web.

But client work was a way of life. I couldn’t just drop everything and start creating products all day, there were bills to pay. Also, I didn’t feel any of our ideas were “Web 2.0 enough” to garner any investments. Who would want to invest in a trading card game organizer or a ranking game? We were convinced that there weren’t any venture capitalists or angel investors that would “get” us, so we decided that client work was the only way and that I would have to find time in between projects to build our flagship products.

But the more and more I worked with clients, the more history kept repeating itself. The projects themselves were great, including more work for Coffee Cup and recently, the gaming social utility GameStrata, but the relationships quickly deteriorated because of my inability to stay passionate about the work, ultimately killing my motivation and the project.

As 2008 started to progress and I was getting closer to relaunching Avalonstar, it was clear that I had completely demolished the dream I had since adolescence. How could I have a fledging design firm when I just couldn’t made client relationships work? I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I started to refuse clients who specifically wanted my style, because I knew what would happen. I couldn’t very well go back to work for a company, because we both knew what would happen. I no longer wanted people to have to deal with me and my crap.

So we made the change official in March, we were going to create products for niches that have yet to be benefited by great design and web applications. Could I make exceptions when it came to design services? Sure, but I would start those relationships citing the reasons why I stopped taking them in the first place. As long as that was clear, I would feel better about roaming free and that client would understand me better, otherwise, I would gladly point them to either Sidebar Creative or one of my freelance partners.

The follow-through and the future.

Since then, it has been nothing but excitement for the both of us as our ideas start to take shape. They’re coming together slowly, but surely. Mentally and emotionally, I’m a lot happier than I have been.

What I find funny about all this are the lengths we’ll go to be comfortable. Some people would call that selfish, and I feel that my changes and actions as of late have led to an unfavorable image amongst certain groups of my peers. But when it comes down to it, being comfortable with our situation leads to better things overall.

As part of Revyver, I’ve chosen my battles and I’ll do whatever needs to be done to keep this going. I’m no longer lying to myself to get where I need to go or acting fake to befriend specific people. I’ve made some very tough decisions and I know I’ll have to make many more in the future, both personally and otherwise. I feel I’m prepared for whatever comes our way and it’s because of Jen and the support of my friends that I feel that way.

The direction that Revyver’s taken has been greatly affected by my state of mind and I can finally stand up, be proud and say that Revyver’s here to stay. We’re going to create awesome products, hold awesome events above all make sure that Jen, myself and everybody involved are enjoying every minute at it. We only have one shot at this, there’s no reason we have to hold back anymore.

I have a new dream now and as Revyver turns two and the days go by, it’s starting to feel more and more like a reality.

Revyver Week

Bryan Veloso — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:47:58 -0000

This is the story of a guy and his little company. Said guy only realized last week that the company was turning two years old, so he got off his ass and got some things ready to help celebrate the occasion. This is just a heads up. :)

Two years ago. When I think about it, it’s a bit hard to believe I revealed Revyver to the world two years ago this week. Maybe it’s because I haven’t really done much with it? Seriously, it doesn’t feel like two years but the calendar begs to differ. I only noticed last week that birthday week was coming so, as usual, my focus completely shifted to coming up with things to go along with this seemingly special occasion.

I’ve alluded to many times the shift that Revyver has taken, one that I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’ve found yourself at the site over the past few months. However, I’ve never gotten the chance to properly explain the chain of events leading to this very interesting path. My excuses for not doing so are running out, so you’ll see that this week. Throw in a surprise and a post elaborating on one of the diagrams I drew last week.

Depending on if I keep on schedule or not, this should be a pretty fun week. Time to get some cake and beer. I’d hold a birthday party a la Blue Flavor, but my little firm’s not that cool yet. ;)

EDIT: If you weren’t able to comment because the server was yelling at you, you should be able to now. The server was just crying that it didn’t have pyAkismet. Sigh.

R20

Bryan Veloso — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:51:17 -0000

This is the story of a guy and a game series. The series turned 20 last December and it seems that said guy just got with the picture. He takes relatively quick stroll down memory lane, remembering all the time he spent with the one known as the “Blue Bomber.”

I don’t talk gaming much even though it’s such a large part of my being. Why? I don’t quite know. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I’ve felt like people would look down on the fact that I geek out over stuff like this and hence, don’t want to post about it. Maybe I should look a little more professional. Well, screw that and attribute it to unnecessary paranoia. Anyway, if you’re one of those people, skip this, because this is a total geek out.

So, today we headed to Kinokuniya on Jen’s suggestion while we were in the area getting boba milk tea. I did my usual scrub through the import game soundtracks section and didn’t find anything of note. Now whenever we go, we always check the art book and figurine section to see if there are any gems that we can put in our bookcase or non-existent glass case. Turning the corner, I immediately saw the adorable face of the Blue Bomber, Rockman, and raced to it. I proceeded to pick it up, fall over after looking at the price, take it to Jen and oogle.

After getting home, I put on some Rockman music and started to look through it. If you look at the first picture, this thing is quite complete and equally as gigantic. The artwork is nothing short of gorgeous and memories of playing each one of the games rushed one after another into my head.

Rockman would have to rank as one of if not my all-time series right beside the Final Fantasy series. Actually, for both examples, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been playing games almost as old as me. But it’s those memories of Rock and Rush that I had as a child that just kept the love alive. From Dr. Wily and Airman to Gutsman, Topman and Skullman, Storm Eagle to Sigma, Gate and the Repliforce, this is just a series that never fails to make me giddy. I mean, with as evolved and experienced (and sometimes damn cynical) we are as a gaming community these days, Capcom never fails to please the lot of us by providing a side-scrolling (or recently 3D) action game in which you fight 8 robots, gain their powers and defeat an enemy that’s never defeated.

Well, I think that’s enough geeking out for one day. Well, maybe not. Rock’ll be legally able to drink this year, but even so, it’s never too late to party. Do you love Rockman or X? What are your favorite memories? I know Shaun is definitely a fan since, you know, he created Mintman. :)

Makes me wonder what “Phoenix Man” might look like. I guess I should start learning to draw.

The Drafting Hand

Bryan Veloso — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:52:28 -0000

This is the story of a guy and his friend. Said friend shows off a product to the guy that he initially doesn’t want to buy and then buys out of peer pressure. This contains a series of videos demonstrating how the former drafter wannabe uses Behance’s Dot Grid Book.

A few weeks ago, the honorable Dan Rubin got himself a Dot Grid Book from the people at Behance. He promptly showed me and I passed it off as… well… fluff, since I already had a normal grid book. Fast forward to WebVisions and he brings the same Dot Grid Book with him to show off to me. Untouched by lead with velum cover and all. Seeing (and feeling) the notebook made me immediately want to get one for myself. Note that this is usually the way to sell me on things I would otherwise push off as being unnecessary.

From the product shots on Behance’s site, you could use the Dot Grid Book for a lot of things. Like typography or curvy things of that nature. Well, not me. To me, grid books are for diagrams and straight things. Because I only feel confident enough writing in one of those if and only if I had a ruler. Chalk that up to my days in middle and high school drafting class. I cannot sketch in books like this. Give me a loose piece of printer paper and I’ll scribble all over the thing, but put a grid on it and I’m immediately in a different state of mind.

One more fast forward to yesterday. I had told Dan that I would be using the book, beating him to the punch. He asked for me to record myself using it since he wanted to possibly learn from it. So I did and then sped them up using iMovie HD even though iMovie ‘08 should have had something that simple to begin with. D:

It does go by quite fast so I do encourage you to use the pause button if you want to see what I hold up to the screen. I also apologize for the horrible lighting, but I didn’t want to take way too much time on the setup. The session was split up into two parts.

The first video shows my attempt at trying to create a legend (think drafting) for the rest of the book and then drawing a diagram of Revyver’s server grid, something I’ll talk about after I actually finish migrating. The second video is an attempt at wireframing the landing page of Hello!Ranking, Revyver’s upcoming flagship social game. Wireframing is something I’ve really never done so meticulously before, so it did take me a bit longer to figure out what I was going to do.

EDIT: The music is a bit loud, stupid iMovie, so watch those headphones.

In any case, enjoy and feel free to dissect. I realize I’m probably in the minority of people who take 20+ minutes to draw things this simple, but I also realize that I’m pretty damn anal when it comes to stuff like this.

Weather Center Live

Bryan Veloso — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:17:44 -0000

This is the story of a guy looking back into his past, where he used to be his high school’s meteorologist. It’s a short and disjointed story with video footage of an 18-year-old version of said guy, which isn’t that much different from the present day version.

In what seems to be a long time ago, I used to be a high schooler.

As many of you already know, I attended Bridgewater-Raritan High School which resided in the typical upscale township of Bridgewater, New Jersey. No, my family wasn’t what you would call upscale. The typical New Jersey township is split into two sections, the valley and the hills. If you lived on the hills, you were rich. If you didn’t, you were not. I say this because every New Jersey town I ever visited fit that mold. For every magnitude of elevation, you would have a proportional number of garages. But I digress. :)

In that high school, which seems like I went to only yesterday, I did a lot of things. It was sort of like the first whack against my extremely dense introverted shell. I tried running for freshman class president, even though nobody knew me. Ran on the platform of, “I’m not popular like the rest of the candidates,” and got 2nd place. I found my love for business there amongst other things. I also made some awesome friends whom I’ve unfortunately lost touch with.

But one thing that may have slipped my mouth at one time or another was the fact that I was my school’s meteorologist. Yes, our school had a news network on closed-circuit television complete with news, sports and (obviously) weather. I joined the crew in my freshman year and immediately loved being there. One could say that my interest in graphic design stemmed from that place.

By the time junior year came around, I decided to try my luck at standing in front of the camera. It wasn’t awesome, but I did have a lot of enthusiasm. But I tried to add a lot to the program in terms of maps, graphics and other little quirks which the students responded well to. Every week, I’d come in dressed in a suit and tie, just like my predecessors. I tried to predict the weather as well and on some occasions, I was surprisingly accurate, more-so than the guys on TV. ;) Senior year came and I obviously wanted another year. So I got my wish. We also added a co-host, Jean Lutkenhouse, who obviously boosted the viewership amongst the guys. All-in-all, it was an awesome experience that I remembered quite fondly.

Fast-forward to the present day. A few weeks ago, I decided to email my old advisor, Richard Rowe to see if he still had the master of Weather Center Live. He did and transfered it from VHS to DVD and sent it over. Well, that’s what I have to show you today:

That’s 18-year-old Bryan and Jean. This is also provided as it was shown to the students, VHS tracking and all. As to not over-emdbed this post, here’s a link to the tag on Viddler. What you’ll see above was what we would refer to as a “normal” episode. If you happen to be bored enough to look through them all, you’ll find gems such as:

Bryan getting a bat thrown at him.
Complete and utter video mixer breakdown.
Choreography mishaps.
Many things that any normal person would refer to as, “embarrassing.”

As Jen says, “It’s never as good as you remember it, right?” I would have to agree with that. At any rate, enjoy and get a good laugh out of it. :)

Spring Cleaning

Bryan Veloso — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:15:14 -0000

This is the story of a guy and a broom. One’s virtual, and he hopes to use that to sweep up some of the messes he’s left behind over the past few weeks. The other is physical, since he actually has some cleaning to do around the “office.”

While Seattle is finally noticing that spring has arrived, albeit a month before summer starts, it’s time for some spring cleaning. As for me, I just got back from a 14-day, 3-city travel stint that has completely stolen the energy out of me. Thankfully, June will be a month of no travel and one of “hopefully” a lot more activity here at Avalonstar. Still so many things I need to do, and the recent WebVisions conference in Portland was a welcome wake-up call to the things I still need to get to!

So things I’ll be doing?

Consolidating my email accounts on Revyver’s Google Apps account.
Working on tweaks for Avalonstar (or 25.1).
Building the next revision of Django Plugables.
Yet another version of bryanveloso.com (the current one has grown old very quickly).
Starting on a few of those visual blog posts I’ve talked about.
Cleaning the damn house, and my damn desk. Yes, actual cleaning.
Finding a way to stop the damn dust from settling.

What will you be doing? (Or, what have you already done?)

Blogging Visually

Bryan Veloso — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:16:14 -0000

This is the story about a guy and confidence. Said guy lacks said confidence so he tries to go about ways to circumvent it. Honestly the post doesn’t make that much sense, but there’s no use in telling you the ending in the summary.

Confidence. I lack it.

In this case it’s confidence in my ability to write. My lack of confidence in everything else can be equated the metaphorical elephant in the room.

It’s quite the double-edged sword, blogging is. On one hand, I can talk in ways here that would get me slapped across the face. Not that I do, but I could. On the other hand, I seem to suck at the only language I know how to speak in. I have habits of writing really long run-on sentences and overuse commas, so much so that it starts to get confusing and I’m sure the average Avalonstar reader gets a laugh out of my excuse for grammar at times. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Remember, you see the version that’s been read over about 15 times.

I’ve always had an affinity for public speaking. It’s something that’s been a part of me since the 8th grade and when I’m prepared, I seem to do a pretty good job at it.

Forget for a second the time I accepted the Best Blog award at the 2006 SXSW Web Awards where the only words that came out of my mouth were “uh” and “Look, I’m on the screen.” Forget for a minute the instance where I presented by myself for the first time at the Webmaster Jam Session and had to improvise after going through my hour-long presentation in half that time. If you disregard any time you’ve probably ever seen me on stage, I’m pretty good at this.

What I really need is the charisma of Merlin Mann and the voice of Dan Rubin, but alas, I’m stuck with the atrocities that puberty left me. Lessons? Operations? Please?

Oh, did I mention I tend to get lost in my thoughts when writing? Too late for that, let’s move on. In the coming weeks, I want to mix things up a little. I had a lot of fun—subtracting the fact that I had a couple of Coronas—doing the mediacast about Distortion, and in order to make me feel like ScreenFlow is paying for itself, I want to do more of them.

So here’s my half-thought-out plan.

ScreenFlow & Keynote, in place of the usual blog post fare. I see it as more of a visual blog post rather than a videocast or presentation. That way I’ll save you the horrors of having to read my writing all the time, leaving you to deal with my voice accompanied by pretty transitions and animations.

Why? Keeps things fresh. I’m trying to find different ways to express things I would usually want to write about, instead of defaulting to say—a Django post. The more I think about things to write, the less I feel I have to say about design—a fact that makes sense considering the hobbies I’ve been taking up lately.

Let’s leave this with a nice open end. Thoughts? Suggestions? Tomatoes?

Django Plugables

Bryan Veloso — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:36:32 -0000

This is the story of a guy and his company’s first application, Django Plugables. Well, actually it’s more of a utility but that’s besides the point. Said guy takes you on an overview of what went into the creation of said application.

For those of you who haven’t heard or have been living under the proverbial rock, Revyver released its first “application” about three weeks ago. And yes, only now am I getting around to writing about Django Plugables. I put application in quotes mainly because it’s more of a utility than a ~~social network~~ application¹.

So here it is, “The story of Django Plugables” or “How I built something in 5 days.”

Day 1: Find what’s pissing me off

This story starts with a problem. Every story has to start out with a problem, right? “Boy gets dumped by girl, fights to get her back,” or “Evil emperor using midgets to enslave humankind, only one dwarf can save them.” This story can be summed up with this:

Guy gets frustrated trying to keep his applications up to date by visiting code hosting site, wants to build something that aggregates everything.

Not as exciting, but you get the picture.

So our lovely free code hosting companion, Google Code, is the source of our problem. Note, before I go on, I have nothing against Google Code. I think it’s an awesome idea and super easy to get going. However, like most free services, it doesn’t do quite as much as one would like it to nor does it adapt to any specific need. Now before I even got the idea to try and build an application out of it, I thought of my options:

Dedicate a browser window to Google Code. All the pluggable applications I used would technically be in one place. A little annoying, not very reliable though.
Set up a cron script to automatically svn up all the downloaded apps. The fact that I use Piston to manage my externals doesn’t help the case, nor does the fact that it’d also be slightly annoying to maintain.
RSS feeds! Travel over to Google Code though and you’ll find they don’t supply RSS feeds for changesets. I later asked about this as being the basis for Django Plugables, where I was politely told that such features weren’t sought after.

I was out of ideas after those three, so TextMate was immediately opened and I started to code.

Day 2: Kicking feature creep’s ass

After conquering some of the basics, I asked myself,

So what do I want this thing to do?

I didn’t want it to do much. My mission was to provide a place where people could see what applications were updated and when. I didn’t necessarily want it to be an interactive application, just a utility. Things like comments, tagging and voting were all features that I felt didn’t need to be there to start out.

The quirky features that are currently there stemmed out of ideas I got while coding. Simple things, like the repository list, which came to be because I disliked going to Google Code to copy and paste all of the repository URLs. However, after inputting a lot of the initial data, I found that Google Code had a simple naming scheme.

http://project-name.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
http://code.google.com/p/project-name/

This actually helped when inputting the first batch of projects, but it was still a process I wanted to make a lot easier.

Features and coding progressed in tandem and the first hurdle I had to jump over was the problem of actually importing the changesets from every single repository. Luckily, the answer was right in front of my face in the form of Jacob Kaplan-Moss‘ [jellyroll][8] application which imported all of Jacob’s commits for Django, among other things like his Flickr photos, last.fm playlists and even his Google searches.

Obviously, the relatively hidden Subversion features of jellyroll were just what I needed to base Django Plugables on, not to mention that it was the only implementation of its type out there. While jellyroll focused on a single person and their commits, I changed it to just grab anything and everything. Highlight, delete, and move on.

The rest of the night was spent actually inputting all of the data on the different projects and the authors related to those projects. Remember that Google Code doesn’t have any sort of useful APIs to do this. It took me about 4 hours; mostly due to the fact that I had 50 pages of results to go through many of which ended up being repeats and projects that merely stated the name, django.

Day 3: Some green and a logo with one “G”

So the code was on my development PC and working, the initial data imported; it was time to design! From the day I came up with the name, I knew the logo was going to have something to do with either a plug or an outlet. So, I decided to search for the outlet first. I eventually came upon a few on iStockPhoto and created this from it. Didn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

When it came to doing the logotype, it took me a little longer to decide on what I wanted to do. I really didn’t want to take the normal route which consisted of having the “django” part of the name set in the official Django font. So I tried the usual suspects, Helvetica, Trade Gothic and Interstate, but didn’t think the look felt right. Perusing through my list of fonts a second time yielded Dispose from TypeTrust, a font that I had bought for a client project last year. I liked it immediately, but something bothered Jen about it. Jen said that it would look better if the 2nd “G” in “pluggables” was removed. I had already bought djangopluggables.com, but welcomed the thought and took out the “G”. I liked it as well and subsequently bought the misspelled djangoplugables.com.

The plug between the two words was a corny idea that turned out to work really well. Gave the logotype a little more umph. :)

Unlike the sheer length of time it took me to lay out Distortion, this layout seemed to come together by itself with the help of Nathan Smith‘s 960.gs and the 16-unit grid template inside it. Since this was going to be a relatively simple layout, I was happy stopping with a finished homepage design before moving back to TextMate to code the templates.

Day 4: Let 960.gs make my job easy

After coding Distortion which was to say the least, complex, it was a nice balance to again, design while coding. Using 960.gs in the template stage however was foreign to me. I loved using Nathan’s PSDs for designing, but it took me an hour or so of experimenting with the different container, grid, prefix and suffix classes before actually jumping into the thick of things. I do have to say though that designing through class names is both an odd and an interesting feeling at the same time.

Special thanks to Mr. Rubin for helping me tame the outlet at the bottom of the page.

Day 5: Twitter launch

People that know me and my tendencies know that I’m not the person who understands the meaning of the word “wait.” So after I set up the server, with a pseudo-clone of the configuration that runs this site (and the addition of a few cron scripts for great justice) I decided to Twitter-launch it. That in addition to the ensuing “Sidebar Slam” was all the site needed to get itself off the ground and into the crosshairs of the Django community.

The launch however didn’t come without an ensuing mini-firestorm from an active group of people in the community. I’m going to refrain from going into detail about this here, mainly because it’d be kicking an already dead and decomposed horse. If you would like to read a synopsis of what happened after the launch, Eric Florenzano wrote his thoughts on it.

I have since teamed up with the group to further the development of Django Plugables and I’ve already learned a hell of a lot from them. That and it’s always interesting to see developers talk about design. :)

Time to plan for tomorrow

To me, Django Plugables as I launched it, is feature complete. There was nothing that I had to put off or cut in order to get it out the door, but there are definitely things I’ll be working to support in the near future. Things like support for Git and other version control system repositories, graphs of developer activity and the aforementioned comments and voting capabilities.

The project is also technically an open-source project and by open-source I mean strictly the code—templates and design not included. Swing by the GitHub repository if you’d like to take a look. If you have any suggestions, problems or comments about the project, definitely comment or head over to Revyver’s shiny new GetSatisfaction page!

Getting Django Plugables out was a great first step in Revyver’s new direction a direction that I really hope to touch on soon enough. It was also a way to test my own skills and get involved in the community as a whole.

Sorry, couldn’t avoid sounding like Zuck for a sec there.

With One Wish

Bryan Veloso — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:18:01 -0000

This is the story of a guy and his brain. While sitting in bed one early Sunday morning, a geeky thought strikes him. He wonders what properties or attributes designers would pick if they could have one implemented from HTML5 or CSS3 today. The comments should be where all the action happens, hopefully.

If you’ve read (and hopefully got a giggle out of) my browser manifesto, you would have seen that I truly consider this to be a great time to be a designer. And after seeing the awesome commentary of the last entry, I wanted to pose a question that i hope spawns some more discussion.

If you could have one HTML5/CSS3 property or attribute added into every modern browser today, what would it be?

Usually at this point I’d make an excuse to post two things, but I’ll play it clean and only state one. The first one that comes to mind is text-shadow.

When I talked about Distortion’s design process a few weeks ago, I believe I mentioned that the shadow whoring you see before you was the result of adding a drop shadow to mock copy in the fifth prototype. Albeit a bit more subtle than some of the other design elements that make up this version (am I allowed to use the word subtle and “this version” in the same sentence?), it is one of my favorite parts. I’ll look at Safari versus Firefox and frown like a sad panda because Firefox doesn’t support text-shadow. All the bitmap elements have drop shadows, why shouldn’t the text? (It also sort of bothers me that you can’t add a shadow to the bullets of an unordered list, but that’s just getting picky.)

So with that, what’s your wish? :)

Pixel Prostitution

Bryan Veloso — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:33:30 -0000

This is the story of a guy who saw a good friend of his post about clients on Twitter. The messages hit a chord with him, but didn’t think his answer (or subsequent “advice”) would fit within 140 characters. We now commence with the ranting.

My good friend Croftie posted this this morning (links to individual tweets are in the footnotes):

Ever had a client take your design, “rework it” and send it back to you so you can do the rest of the site their way? How did you handle it?¹ I don’t want to be someone’s pixel prostitute. If they want to push my pixels around, they can do it themselves, after I’m done.² My job is to give them the best possible solution I can come up with. They don’t have to use it if they don’t want to.³ It’s work for hire. They hire us, we do our best, we give it to them. PERIOD. If they want to redesign it AFTER that, fine.⁴

To answer the question simply. Yes. I have experienced that. We could leave the entry at that, but that wouldn’t be me. ;)

Oh look, there’s blood. :O

To be honest, I was naive little bastard who didn’t know how to say stop. I took beatings from clients more often than the nearest high school’s stereotypical wimp. Granted, Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some awesome clients, but as they always say, it’s the little things that get to you. So I can empathize with Jeff. I have his back even because I know what this feels like. What I have learned through all of this, is that this business requires a backbone. I’ve learned that the hard way, obviously, but I had people tell me that this wasn’t the way to do things.

I’ve had clients that have taken my designs, opened up their copy of Photoshop, “tweaked” said designs and send them back to me. Was I offended? Yeah, I was. Did I do anything about it? No. It didn’t feel right to yell at a client for opening up Photoshop. It didn’t feel right to yell at the person paying me. I had no backbone, I didn’t take any recourse, and I was beating myself over the head with a mythological hammer created by both.

Oh, and then there’s Flock. Matt and I still mourn that loss.

I know I’ve said this before somewhere—maybe here—but just because you are paid to do your job, it does not mean you are a slave to, or in Jeff’s case, a pixel prostitute for the client.

But wait, who are you to give any advice on the matter?

But what’s this? Advice coming from a guy who can’t even make ends meet some months? Yes, laugh, get it out. But this guy is looking out for yours and his own sanity. I would rather take one client a year and have awesome relationship with them where I can have free reign over the creative, then suffer financially; instead of taking clients and subsequently risk getting abused just to make ends meet. (If you see “the man” as a client, that’s pretty much the reason Facebook and Automattic failed for me—restriction.)

That’s not the way I roll and I’m happier for it. I get the phone calls and the letters. This is my life. Jen and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So here’s the moral of the story.

What Jeff wrote today really struck a chord with me, and I didn’t feel my answer could be a simple “yes,” nor would it fit in 140 characters. But here’s the moral of the story, and I’ll prefix with “if you’re comfortable with it.”

A client comes to you, looking for your expertise. They pay you for that expertise. Whether or not you stand up to them is your prerogative, but you are the expert. Remember that.

In a perfect world, we’d all spew our collective creative genius on the web and consequently the web would be a much more beautiful place. It isn’t, but it shouldn’t mean that we can’t fight for it.

If you’re comfortable doing so, when you see the red flags go off, do something about it. Pull the client aside and give them the what for and if that doesn’t work, fire them. Do not put your own sanity and self-confidence at risk if you don’t have to. Give your expertise to the clients who respect you, the clients who deserve your knowledge and experience.

Or… you could just spend your days making your own stuff. :)

Edit: Oh, one more thing.

I’m going to amend this post and say frankly that this is the opinion of one guy who isn’t fit to be part of an agency, design firm or anything of the sort. This post is the very reason I closed Revyver off to design requests and is something I’ll detail later when I finally get to writing the “State of Revyver” post in the next few days. I just don’t have the personality nor the patience, so I’m out of the game altogether.

If you’re looking for some good information on what you should do if you’re not going in my direction, Jeff Croft’s (#001), Keith Robinson’s (#013) and Sean Madden’s (#014) comments below are perfect examples of what should be done.

http://twitter.com/jcroft/statuses/791226440
http://twitter.com/jcroft/statuses/791226674
http://twitter.com/jcroft/statuses/791226674
http://twitter.com/jcroft/statuses/791233058

Obsessive OS Rearranging

Bryan Veloso — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:16:34 -0000

This is the story of a guy and an operating system. Said guy loves to reformat his computer and reinstall said operating system, but whenever he does it, he seems to change his routine around. He asks the audience to validate his claims, hoping that he’s not the only one with this “problem.”

While I attempt to write one or two more update posts (one on the recent Revyver release, Django Plugables, and one on the state of Revyver), I thought I’d pose a question that has been in the back of my mind for quite a while.

When you reformat or reinstall your operating system, does the way you use it change?

What I mean by that is quite simple, but I think I can best explain it by answering it. It seems like every time I reinstall OS X, it’s never for a concrete reason that would say, hold up in a geek talk. It’s usually something along the lines of,

Well, I probably have too much crap in my Library folder left by all those MacHeist apps I was “conned” into buying.

But recently, I’ve liked the excuse to start anew. I could have sworn that Spaces would have become a necessary part of my workflow ever since I first saw Chris Messina using Virtue Desktops at the first SuperHappyDevHouse (have there really been like 20 since then?). My foray into Virtue didn’t work so well and, as it seems like during this last refresh, Spaces didn’t quite stick for me either.

I also seem to have an obsession with not wanting to use 3rd-party programs unless they are required beyond a reasonable doubt. Like, I won’t install Quicksilver because I’m perfectly happy with Spotlight’s application launching functionality. A lot of it also has to do with the way applications look. Forget how useful they are, if that logo sucks, I won’t use it. Tell me to get the stick out of my ass, but it’s stuck. But I’ll save that little bit for another post.

So now it’s your turn? Am I the only one who seems to have this obsessive compulsive disorder? Or are there others in the same boat? I hope so, since it feels a bit lonely in here. :(

Sidebar Creative: Year Two

Bryan Veloso — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:29:05 -0000

This is a story about a guy and his three friends. A year ago, the four guys started a collective with the name Sidebar Creative. Since then, they’ve had lots of fun and have built wonderful things. This is the story of what has happened, as well as what’s to come.

You’re probably going, “what in the hell is going on?”

Well, when you see the four of us update at the exact same time (especially Dan ;P), you know there’s something coming. Sidebar Creative—the little dream that one Skype call turned into a reality turned one this past January. One year of a lot of talking, a lot of laughing, a lot of thinking and a lot of creating.

Working with Dan, Steve and Jon has not only been tremendously fun, but quite the learning experience as well. So have we proved that you could take four friends, have them work together in a pseudo-company and have that company work? Yeah, I think we did.

I guess it’s time to start from the top.

Sidebar Creative, the 2nd — You’ll notice that our site is more than one page, oh and the budget slider is gone too. Just by taking that away, we’re sort of pointing to the direction we have chosen to take. As Jon talks about in his “State of the Union”, we didn’t end up taking much design work. Each of our own companies, Revyver, Ordered List, Snook.ca and Webgraph were growing well on their own, since that was our income, that’s where our focus was. We did eventually take on two projects, one of which has been something that has thrown Dan and myself completely outside our safe zone. But back to the site, Dan (who I refer to as “the polisher”) took version one and realigned it into something a little more blue and a little more fitting. :)
My Mile Marker — This one was all Steve last year, as he came up with an idea to try and track his mileage for a leased vehicle he owned. The rest is pretty much history. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s simply a site that keeps track of your fill-ups, predicts how much you’ll spend, and gives you a true MPG rating. As many of you know, this was our first foray into building a web application, but the process was very smooth. Jon threw in the wireframes, I designed the identity and the first version of the site, Steve coded it in Rails and Dan put on the finishing touches (later iterating on my design). Almost a year and 10,000 members later, we’ve done so much with it. Twitter updating, an awesome iPhone version and so much more up our sleeve. Oh before I forget, a collective thank you to Edward Scherf for creating those beautiful icons that adorn the front page.
Snitter — If you’re not using it, you should be. It’s better than Twhirl, but that’s a completely biased opinion. This one was all Jon, hence the name. Steve and Dan contributed themes to the application which later led to its placement as a Sidebar product. As for me, well… I think doing all the themes for WordPress sort of burnt me out. I’ve promised one, but I still have no idea what it’s going to look like. ^_^;;
Overheard.it — I still adore the name. Thank you Italy. And where would we be without Twitter? They call it a “barnacle application,” but I haven’t the slightest clue why. Anyway, Dan did the lovely design while Snook did the programming in CakePHP. If you want to try it out, just prefix a twitter with “OH:” but make sure you’re actually overhearing something. o_O.
Sidebar Workshops — We’ve been wanting to do more outside the realm of the web application and client work. We’ve all spoke at one time or another and thought that it would be great to hold little sessions where we can share our knowledge. With the workshops, we hope to come to areas which are not already represented by a major conference (that’d be quite unfair). We hope to get started in the fall with Ottawa and Washington D.C.(oddly, both national capitals) and we’ll definitely add more as we go along. So check it out and if you’d like us to come to your town, throw us a line!

We have a bunch more that I’d love to talk about in detail, but I’m under a personal NDA. Now that we’ve gotten past the products,

It’s time talk about the experience.

“Three-out-of-four,” has been a running joke within the collective for a while now and it’s something that’s applied to so many aspects surrounding the four of us. For example:

Three white guys, one asian.
Three guys with spouses (or spouses-to-be), and one single guy.
Conversations usually happen with three people in the room, while one is missing the party (usually me). If I idle, the other three usually aren’t there. T_T;
… and the list goes on.

But as I said, it hasn’t been all fun-and-games, there’s been a lot of learning involved. The fact that each of us has our own respective forte proves to be a great resource for the other three who either want to learn or want to improve that part of themselves.

Jon’s the Javascript and CakePHP expert.
Steve’s the functional designer and Rails expert.
I make things pretty and I know Django.
Dan’s the user experience expert and is having a hard time picking what framework to learn. :P

It’s not every day that you get to work with people you can constantly learn from and whom you can constantly look up to.

If it wasn’t for Steve and Jon, I would have never touched jQuery.
If it wasn’t for Dan I wouldn’t be a 55 in Call of Duty 4, I mean… he’s sharpened my eye when it comes to details and has taught me to pay attention to things I wouldn’t have ever noticed.
Steve, who was previously mentioned as our Rails expert, took the time today to sit down with Python and Django. Jon has also expressed interest in learning it.
I’ll be attempting to build the application for ABX09 in Rails, when that time rolls around.

I can’t say exactly how invaluable this experience has been for me. However, I can say that I’ve grown as a designer and as a developer because of those three. Now more than ever I would recommend people who would like to do the same to take the jump You learn so much from each other and only good things can come out of that.

Sure, we still have our little companies, but Sidebar is where the four of us really shine. As I said, we have a lot more in store in the coming months, so another year won’t pass until you hear from all of us again. ;)

Dynamic Javascript In Django

Bryan Veloso — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:15:27 -0000

This is the story of a guy, Google and Django. After a hard fought battle with jQuery, the guy takes on Google Maps. After conquering them, he doesn’t feel right leaving all of the Javascript embedded in his templates. This is his journey to liberate them.

Work has started and is continuing on what I’m labeling 25.1. Yes I’m treating this as an app, but more on that later. ;) Part of 25.1 involves Google Maps, which like jQuery is something that would usually lead to me wanting to decapitate myself. Thankfully, Google helped and sample code is the shit.

But first, a little history. Like Jeff, I’ve been going on a geocoding spree. I’ve made it a habit to accurately geocode all of my Flickr photos and then bring them to Django using django-syncr. Unfortunately, django-syncr isn’t working for me and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be fixed anytime soon, so it seems like 25.1 will be waiting on that. Anyway. The landing page of “Phoenix Hunting” has a map of all of the cities I have registered. Minus the Flickr photos, that number stands at nine. Adding the Flickr photos doubles that number.

Now if you haven’t dealt with Google Maps before, each time you place a marker, you have to tell it a few things. The most important of which is where you’re going to put it, specifically using latitude and longitude. Then you have a few line for the marker code itself, a few more lines if you’re going to add an information window, etc. It gets kind of long when you’re throwing in the kitchen sink. Thankfully, loops save the day.


{% for city in cities %}
point{{ city.id }} = new GLatLng({{ city.location.latitude }}, {{ city.location.longitude }});
markerOptions = { clickable:true, draggable:false };
marker{{ city.id }} = new GMarker(point{{ city.id }}, markerOptions);
map.addOverlay(marker{{ city.id }});
marker{{ city.id }}.info_window_content = '<p><strong>{{ city.full_name }}</strong></p>';
GEvent.addListener(marker{{ city.id }}, "click", function() {
    map.setCenter(point{{ city.id }}, 6); 
});
{% endfor %}

Google Maps - City Loop (Javascript + Django)

Alright, I’ll stop pulling your leg. Of course you’d use a loop for something like this if you’re reading the data from your database.

The problem for the rookie (me) was that I didn’t want all this code sitting in my HTML template. Sure, now it’s just a housekeeping thing, but if I’m going to exile all the rest of my CSS and Javscript to the confines of their own files, Google should get no special treatment. Besides, that loop times about 20, just looks bad, am I right? Then I remembered seeing this in Django’s documentation:

A template is simply a text file. It can generate any text-based format (HTML, XML, CSV, etc.).

Alright, but how. Google couldn’t help me there. I couldn’t just use a normal JS file since I needed it to loop for the different values. But every time I searched for something about “creating Javascript with Django,” I got endless amounts of articles about how the Dojo framework had adapted Django’s template language for Javascript. Great, but that does me no good. So I opened the Django book and saw the following on page 132:


def author_list_plaintext(request):
    response = list_detail.object_list(
        request,
        queryset = Author.objects.all(),
        mimetype = 'text/plain',
        template_name = 'books/author_list.txt'
    )
    return response

Plaintext Author List (Python)

Woohoo, getting somewhere! Just need to change the mimetype and the template_name and we’re in business. So for this problem, I put the following in my views.py:


def location_index_js(request):
    """
    Returns a generated Javascript file for use with the location index. It
    includes all the logic for rendering the appropriate Google Map as well 
    as all the applicable markers.
    """

    from django.views.generic.list_detail import object_list

    cities = City.objects.all()

    return object_list(
        request,
        queryset = cities,
        mimetype = 'text/javascript',
        template_name = 'geo/javascript/location_index.js',
        extra_context = {
            'cities': cities,
        }
    )

View for Location Index's Javascript (Python)

So I’m using a generic view, which I’ve always used to generate HTML, to generate the Javascript for the map. Again, I just made sure that the mimetype was correct. So how do we actually use this thing? Head on over to your urls.py and point a pattern to it. I used the following:


urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(
        regex   = '^js/$',
        view    = location_index_js,
        name    = 'location-index-js',
    )
)

URLConf for Location Index's Javascript (Python)

If you’re not keen on using directories to point to Javascript files or the syntax I’ve used above, you could even do this:

(r'^location-index.js$', location_index_js),

I had no idea prior to tonight that you could point a URL pattern directly at a file and it’s something that could definitely come in handy later on. Note that location-index.js doesn’t actually exist in the filesystem. It’s rendered when called for, just like the page you see now.

After that, all I had to do was to point the new Javascript reference in my template and it worked! Obsessive-compulsive urges satisfied! I later expanded by applying the above to each of the detail pages. To be honest, other than getting the squeaky clean sensation, doing this little exercise really reminded me that Django’s views and templating language can do more than just show HTML pages. It’s almost common sense to the everyday developer, but it’s really helpful for the rookie, especially if said rookie is trying to move on from building blogs using the framework. ;)

Note: I am not an expert at this, I’m learning just as much as you are. I just happen to want to chronicle things in case it could possibly help somebody else. So, if you know I’m doing something completely stupid, please feel free to correct me and I’ll update the post accordingly.

BASH-ing My Birthday

Bryan Veloso — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:17:19 -0000

This is the story of a guy who usually writes birthday posts on this birthday. This year calls for something completely different. Why? He feels that the posts could be perceived as boring and he agrees completely.

Usually, I’d write a post related to adding one year onto my age and stuff like that. Twenty-five. Well, now I don’t have to pay the underage fee to rent a car anymore! And my insurance should go down right? RIGHT?

Anyway, I’m sure those posts were boring to everybody else but me, so here’s something completely different:


extract () {
    if [ -f $1 ] ; then
        case $1 in
            *.tar.bz2)  tar xjf $1      ;;
            *.tar.gz)   tar xzf $1      ;;
            *.bz2)      bunzip2 $1      ;;
            *.rar)      rar x $1        ;;
            *.gz)       gunzip $1       ;;
            *.tar)      tar xf $1       ;;
            *.tbz2)     tar xjf $1      ;;
            *.tgz)      tar xzf $1      ;;
            *.zip)      unzip $1        ;;
            *.Z)        uncompress $1   ;;
            *)          echo "'$1' cannot be extracted via extract()" ;;
        esac
    else
        echo "'$1' is not a valid file"
    fi
}

Extract Anything (Bash)

This should go in your .bash_profile—now.

Did you do it yet? If you do have it, then isn’t it awesome? If not, then it’ll save you the hassle of trying to remember how to extract .tar, .tar.gz, bz2-whatever and .zip files on the command line! Sure, you might be a master with the tar zxvf stuff, but this is a must for those absent minded folk such as myself. :P

Well, with that I shall go celebrate being 25… and pondering how to get this geeky CLI feeling out of my system.

The Future Browser Manifesto

Bryan Veloso — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:00:00 -0000

This is the story of a guy who wants a better web, a guy that wants a web where the only limits are people’s creativity. It is time to move on. It is time to believe in the future¹. Maybe… it’s time to laugh? Look at the date silly people.

My fellow designers, developers and general web aficionados; we are embarking on an incredible journey, one that in the future will be looked at as a necessary step towards the growth of our industry as a whole. We are seeing new strides in design, new experiments in bringing rich interactivity to our world and new minds joining the fight on a daily basis. It is truly a wonderful time to be working in this industry and it’s only going to get better.

Two-thousand, four-hundred and ten (2410) days ago, Internet Explorer 6 was placed into our collective lap. At the time, we all used it and designed for it. Netscape 4? It just rendered the pages wrong. Didn’t it? But my browser couldn’t have been displaying the web wrong! My friends, denial is the first step towards the recovery of despair. As time went on, this browser started to inflict wounds on our collective body, wounds that every single designer has suffered. We have wasted hours upon hours upon days of our lives trying to fix errors that should have never been there in the first place!

Suffer no more my friends, for today, IE’s time has come. I’m saying I want none of my fellow designers to suffer with browser incompatibilities. I want none of my fellow developers to waste time on people who now refuse to partake in an upgrade that takes a menial amount of time. I want none of my fellow web aficionados to have to wish for the rich web they can have today. I desire a web that supports all of the incredible capabilities placed upon our doorstep by the W3C and other industry leaders. HTML5, CSS3, microformats, OpenID, OAuth and whatever else comes our way in the future. Today my friends, is the day I stop supporting the browser that has been the bane of the existence of every web citizen out there. I am going to spend my hours beautifying the web, and not making it backwards-compatible for 6 year-old-browsers.

However, my actions will not stop with IE, but with all browsers whose product life has come to an end. When it is time to move on, we will move on because this industry needs the future-focused who will make sure that the innovation will never falter and never end.

My friends, I ask you to join me. Renounce your desire, wether true or otherwise, to let go of the past and lead the way to the future. Wear this on your shoulder and wear it with pride. Spread the word. Crush its market share into oblivion. And then, when another browser meets its end, do the same to it. Do it for yourself. Do it for the industry. Do it for the future. WE ARE SLAVES NO LONGER!!

I am a designer, and this is my manifesto. You may stop me, but you will never stop us².

If you believe in this, believe it. If you don’t, happy April Fools Day.
This last line is credited to the Hacker’s Manifesto.

The Design Distortion

Bryan Veloso — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:26:15 -0000

This is the story about a guy, a guy who could be seen as not wanting to write a post about how his recent redesign. It could also be seen as a way to vary the type of posts said guy does write. Either way, this is a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of Distortion.

For once in my career, I’m actually going to talk about the a design I did. I don’t think I’ve ever done that. I usually just say I will and then forget after realizing how much work it would take to gather all the screenshots. But no more! With the power of ScreenFlow I shall finally bring to you a very casual walkthrough of the design behind Distortion.

It’s 30 minutes of me talking, Jen typing and the kitties even hiss! I think you can hear sirens as well, but just ignore that, my headset is a bit more sensitive than I had ever intended.

I strongly encourage you to watch this in fullscreen as I have spent my week’s Vimeo quota bringing this to you in lovely HD. I know I didn’t cover everything either, so as I’ll say in the video, make sure to email me or leave me comments! Wether or not I answer them in another video or write about it has yet to be decided.

But anyway, enjoy it! I’m pretty happy with it myself… and that’s rare. Here’s the direct link in case you’re looking for it. The video is a bit stretched only because I was completely blind to the fact that Vimeo needed 1280x720 (and the original is 1187x720) or higher in order to activate the HD feature (two really long uploading periods really drove that into my head). I might replace it, someday.

Update: Alright, for some reason, it won’t let me embed the damn thing in HD, so you’re going to have to go to Vimeo to be able to see it as I intended. o_O;