BeauDesigns.net

Unobtrusive Photography

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:08:00 GMT

Photography is integrated into our lives in nearly every way. Not only are digital cameras cheap enough for average consumers, but many devices, including phones now include picture capabilities.

As I see it, there are two “schools” of photography for the casual layperson with a camera, these are what I like to call the “Say Cheese” school, and the unobtrusive school. Let’s take a look at them, shall we?

“Say Cheese”

It happens all the time, the person behind the camera wants to capture the “perfect” photo and they’ll force you to smile and pose to get it. There’s one in every family, many times more than one, not content to capture a moment in time, but desiring to try and recreate that moment before capturing it.

The “Say Cheese” camp dictates that those involved take time out of their merry-making to freeze in time while the capturer fiddles with their camera and motions to move slightly closer together before counting, “1…2…” and snapping the picture.

Don’t get me wrong, portraits have their time and place and can be good for the occasional Christmas card or family photo, but for your average portrait it is very inefficient and ineffective at capturing memories.

Unobtrusive Photography

A well composed photograph is a frozen moment in time, capture with love, care and hard work. Many times, dozens of photos can be taken without finding one capable of presenting artistic image that the photographer is desiring, however, those dozens of photos don’t need to involve active participation of those being photographed.

Take a step back and remember what a photograph is. A memory. What is it that you want to remember though? The people, place or setting? My guess is all three of the above and much more. The emotions, feelings and thoughts that were flowing freely at the time. Those can be captured, but only if they are done without the subjects altering their mood and expressions.

Hooray for the IE team!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:34:00 GMT

Dan Cederholm’s Twitter feed:

High fives the IE team. What great news.

I rushed to the IE blog, hoping beyond hope only to find… Yes, it was true. Microsoft had listened! The RSS feeds started buzzing with the news, spreading like wildfire.

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can.

This is phenomenal news, those who criticized Microsoft for their previous stance, are now praising them. Personally, it’s wonderful to me to see the IE team taking a stance that’s for web standards. Thank you IE team.

Clean, Meaningful Variable Names

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:25:00 GMT

If you use any kind of computer programming, chances are you’ve use a variable or two in the process. If you’re a professional working in the trenches, chances are you’ve used more than a couple and have had to deal with other programmers’ code in the process.

When you’re mind is a step ahead of your fingers and the code is rapidly appearing on the screen, it’s often hard to stop and think of variables that have good semantic meaning. But taking that moment to think of a variable name that adds meaning to the content it’s holding can be crucial to future development and maintenance.

Obscure variable names

There’s nothing worse then digging into someone else’s code and finding names like $tempvar and $tempvar2. Not only do variable names like that carry no meaning at all, but it can be extremely hard to track down future references of them.

The code can become even more cumbersome when the programmer has used the same variable names multiple places but for completely different purposes. Overwriting the value can cause massive amounts of confusion.

Meaningful variables

You may know everything there is to know about a script you’re writing, but will you still know it 5 years from now? What about 10 years? Do you care about future developers having to maintain your code or do you want to be the one maintaining it for the rest of it’s life.

Those can all be questions to consider when choosing variable names for your code. Variable names should convey meaning that relates to the information they hold, descriptive of what they are being used for.

CamelCase? Underscore?

There are several standards that have developed over the years, which I won’t go into in this article. Choose the one that is easiest to read and then stay with it! Consistency should be the primary focus, the rest is personal preference.

Wrap it up!

This is by no means an exhaustive look at variables names, conventions, etc. It’s just a way for me to express some of the frustration of digging through other’s code and to remind myself how important it is to write clean, readable code.

Introducing Singularity

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:38:00 GMT

Several weeks ago I started noticing badges popping up on various sites across the web. Every badge I saw hinted at something, but never gave away any details to exactly what they were referring to. They simply said I am Singularity.

Now we finally know exactly what Singularity is. It’s the world’s first large scale online web conference and it looks like it’s going to be great.

Aral Balkan, a flash guru, is organizing the whole deal. A price hasn’t been set yet, but keep on eye on the site for more information. It’s been said there will be over a hundred speakers in a three day span.

The great thing about Singularity is that local groups are expected to form in BarCamp style meetings that will let people not have to deal with the hassle and expense of traveling to traditional conferences while maintaining the social aspects that everyone enjoys so much.

Paul Boag recently did an interview with Aral in the Boagworld podcast, episode 111. Keep an eye on Singularity, it sounds very promising.

The Future of SimpleLog

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:56:00 GMT

This site is currently built on top of a great little blogging app called SimpleLog that’s written by Garrett Murray. I love the concept of lean software which is one of the reasons I like SimpleLog so much. It does exactly what needs to be done without extra features and frills that get in the way of my writing.

However, there are a couple of things that I’ve noticed could be improved upon that I believe would only add to the functionality of it while still keeping the mindset that you should be allowed to write without anything getting in the way.

Prepublishing preview

While SimpleLog has a great content preview feature that will automatically show you the parsed content while you write, it would also be extremely handy to have the capability to view the post in it’s published format without having to actually publish it. There’s been so many times that I’ve had to adjust tiny things as soon as I publish the article.

Easily upload files

I, like many other people, use images or other files in my articles. If I want to add an image currently, I have to pause, whip out my FTP client, upload the file and link to it. While this is fine and dandy, it would be so much better to be able to upload files via SimpleLog to a (possibly categorized) folder on the server. This would cut down on the interruptions from actually writing.

Summary

Adding a few new features, as long as they’re well chosen, will only increase my love for using SimpleLog. So please Garrett, can you put these is SL 3?

Safari: Reload Every...

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:37:00 GMT

The general consensus is that Apple’s MacWorld keynote this year didn’t impress people the way the past two have. We did get a new laptop, but while the design is amazing and the size is enthralling, I don’t see myself buying one in the near future, if ever. I’m extremely happy with my 15” MacBook Pro and would rather spend my money on a truly portable device instead of another full-fledged computer.

I think what I most enjoyed about the keynote was the anticipation and excitement that surrounded it. I took my laptop to work that day and set it up to the side of my desk. The plan was to follow some live blogs and watch a streaming video feed. I knew that Opera had a feature where you could reload the page at specified intervals. This would be very handy for following a live blogging session, however, though I have the ReloadEvery extension for FireFox, as well as Opera installed on my machine, I really like Safari and wanted to use it.

The solution is a bit of extremely simple AppleScript that I whipped up. It’s really the first time I’ve played with writing AppleScript, but it’s an amazingly simple and intuitive scripting language which makes writing in it almost as easy as “talking” the computer through what you want it to do. The following function simply repeats every 30 seconds, reloading the first tab in Safari.

tell application "Safari"
    repeat
        do JavaScript "window.location.reload()" in tab 1 of window 1
        delay 30
    end repeat
end tell

I won’t describe the code in detail as it’s so simple and self-explanatory. I will say that, while this method works, it’d still be extremely awesome to have “Reload Every…” functionality built right into Safari. I may have to look into Safari extension development someday!

Do We Need Better Interfaces?

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:58:00 GMT

Cameron Moll, a well known mobile developer, recently wrote a blog post about DOS user input. He basically says that the speed which DOS or a similar platform offers is currently much better than more modern interfaces.

Excerpt:

There’s a lingering temptation among those of us in the industry to replace all so-called “antiquated” means of doing things with newfangled web interfaces. And rightly so, given the many benefits the web provides. Yet, I cringe when I think about these two satisfactory DOS experiences being replaced with point-and-click web interfaces. Please keep me a DOS secondary user for the foreseeable future, point-of-sale citizens.

I work for a company that makes software for state government offices with a huge focus on data entry. It’s not a stretch at all to say that the company’s foundation is data entry and the handling of that data.

One of the oldest products that we have is the DOS Court System which is built on FoxPro and features little UI aside from what you’d typically see in DOS. Several years ago, there was a Windows version of the system built that the company has been deploying, with the end goal of not supporting the older DOS system anymore. One of the complaints of the people using the newer system was the speed with which they could enter data. They were so familiar with the DOS version that they could easily breeze through their records with incredible speed.

The article Cameron Moll writes is definitely thought provoking. I see myself as somewhat of an innovator, at least in the area of clean, accessible user interfaces. I believe that if an interface is done correctly, it can be just as fast or faster than a comparable DOS system. But it has to be built to work intuitively and quickly for the user, and would require the ability to use just the keyboard. One of the huge downsides to a DOS program, is the learning curve it takes to get used to how things should be entered. Once the person entering the data figures out how to do things quickly and efficiently, it’s very impressive to watch.

Portable Web Device Options

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Using a portable device to access the web on the go has always appealed to me. As much as I’d love to drag my laptop around everywhere, sometimes, it just isn’t always a viable solution. The iPhone has huge appeal simply because it uses a cellular network to connect to the Internet, while devices such as the iPod Touch and Nokia N810 rely on a Wi-Fi connection to access the web on the go. But since I refuse to be tethered to AT&T as a mobile provider, let’s take a quick look at both of those devices.

The iPod Touch

Shortly after the release of the iPhone, Apple released a new iPod, which is basically an iPhone, but without the phone. The appeal of this devices is amazing, Apple is extremely good at user interface design and the result with the iPod touch is simply stunning.

The device itself has very nice technical specifications. It’s a full-fledged iPod featuring the ability to play music, view photos and video all on a beautiful 480x320 resolution at 163 dpi. But on top of that is it’s Internet capabilities, in essence, a full version of Safari that works how you would expect it.

While it may have it’s limitations, such as only being compatible with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi (not the n draft), it’s still an amazing device and well worth it’s price. Lack of extendibility, both on the hardware and software levels may deter the more technically inclined.

The Nokia N810

Nokia just released a new device that’s a cousin of the N800 and looks extremely promising if you need a nearly fully functional OS on the go. With the option to install literally thousands of apps for the Palm OS, it’s a very appealing device indeed. The biggest downside for me? The price tag.

It comes loaded with a plethora of amazing specs that would make any technophile drool. Packing an amazing 800x480 resolution on a 4.13”, beautiful connectivity options such the obvious Wi-Fi, BlueTooth and USB. A built in QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the back, with the option to pair a BlueTooth keyboard including the new wireless keyboards from Apple. It’s memory is extendable via mini/micro SD cards and it’s OS is Linux based which should allow for almost limitless applications.

If you’re still wanting more information, Cali Lewis does a review of the N810 on GeekBrief TV in brief #278.

Parting Shots

While there will always be a better device in the future, I think for the time being, my dream device is the Nokia N810. Much as I love Apple, the N810 is far more advanced, but as a result has a far heftier price tag.

Caffeine - The Surprise App

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:35:00 GMT

A while back I came across a list of “must have” Mac apps. Since I had just upgraded to Leopard, I decided to go ahead and download the ones that sounded interesting and give them a shot. I’ve used several of them during the time I’ve had them, but it just struck me recently that one tiny app was getting used more and more. Lighthead’s Caffeine.

Since statistics show that for the last month, 40.3% of my visitors use a Mac, I thought it would be alright to have a short review of Caffeine. Oh wait. I just realized those are all me! No worries. I’ll write it anyways.

Basically, it does exactly what it advertises, which is to: “…prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers”. The brilliant thing is, it does exactly that.

I’ve been toting my Mac along to the office more frequently lately just for basic things because our Internet connection is fairly slow at home. Whenever I have to download a fairly large file, it’s just easier to bring the Mac along and use the WiFi connection I’ve set up in my section of the building with an old Airport Extreme Base Station. While on battery power, it’s always annoying when the screen will dim, especially when I’m in the middle of showing something to someone. Sure, I could just change my settings in System Preferences, but there are other times when I want the screen to dim to conserve energy.

With Caffeine, all I have to do is hit the icon at the top of my screen, and instantly, my Mac’s so awake it’s like my Mom when she drinks too much coffee before bed!

Anyways, just try it and see what you think. I didn’t find it useful at first, but now it’s become an important part of my on-the-go computing. Just keeping your screen from dimming is well worth it. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

Proper Intranets and How They Should Work

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:13:00 GMT

Nearly a year ago, as a fairly new employee of KellPro, I was tasked with merging the company’s existing toolset and creating an Intranet out of those tools, which included a forum, a bug tracker, a wiki and a company knowledge base search tool.

I went ahead and created a framework for a widget interface that would allow the Intranet to pull corporate information and provide users with a customizable method of displaying that information without things they didn’t need. The current Intranet pulls 90% of it’s information directly from an internal application that houses pretty much all of the companies information. The main problem with the proprietary software, is the database format. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that it’s not very standard. This makes it fairly hard to update information from the Intranet. Another problem posed is maintaining multiple ways of updating information can be very costly and inefficient.

I’ve been examining our current Intranet and determining some of the problems posed, such as corporate acceptance, mobile access and poor expandability. There are some specific things that would be extremely beneficial to implement into our Intranet that would solve the current problems and make it much more useful.

Ideally, the Intranet would consist of widgets that could be quickly and easily created. These widgets would pull data that could easily and automatically be formatted for desktop, mobile viewing or RSS feed. The formatting would be done on the fly depending on which sub-domain the user is accessing. This would eliminate the need to have multiple versions of the widgets which would be costly and inefficient.

These are some of the ideas that I’ve been kicking around. I’d like to make an attempt at implementing them soon so there may be an update on this in the future.