David Eisinger

RubyNation PresenTation

2009-06-01T11:00:00Z

I’m taking my Optimizing Perceived Performance show on the road for the RubyNation conference, June 12-13 in Reston, VA, alongside three of my fellow Vigeteers. I’ve been busy revising the talk to include material from High Performance Web Sites, by Steve Souders, the creator of YSlow, as well as information about relevant updates coming in Rails 3.

The first time I gave the talk, I had to switch back-and-forth between Keynote and the web app I built, which made for a somewhat jerky experience. This time around, I’m creating a jQuery-based presentation framework to show slides and code, and then, within the same browser window, execute the code and demonstrate its effects. My goal is to create NOTHING LESS than the premiere browser-based system for giving presentations about unobtrusive javascript. Check out the content and the jQuery plugin that runs the show.

I’ve also submitted the talk to Windy City Rails, taking place in Chicago in September. I’ve wanted to visit Chicago since the last time I visited Chicago, in 1989.

UPDATE 6/5: Accepted to Windy City Rails!

O Hai Tad

2009-05-28T13:10:51Z

About two weeks ago, this little guy showed up on Craigslist. I drove out to Cary to meet him that Saturday, and it was love at first site. His former owners called him Blooper, but we unburdened him of that as soon as we got into the car. Tad is a six-month old blue quaker parrot of indeterminate gender, but he’s a boy until I’m told otherwise. Here we are:

Tad loves cheerios and peanut butter and especially cheerios covered in peanut butter. He can say “peekaboo” if prodded about 70 times. His former owners clipped his wings, which isn’t something I plan to keep up with, but for now we’ve been enjoying hanging out in the courtyard next to my apartment. He shits everywhere. Keep up with our adventures with this Flickr set I created.

Site Redesign: Misanthropy and the City

2009-04-02T05:24:26Z

Before she left to travel around the world in 2007, I helped my sister set up a website to chronicle her various adventures. Two years later, the site was looking a little dated, so we decided to completely overhaul it. She did some drawings (in her distinctive style), and I turned them into a new skin for her existing Textpattern setup. The new site, Misanthropy and the City, is now live, and I’m pleased — nay, delighted — with how it turned out.

It was great to have an excuse to work in Photoshop and Illustrator. There was a time when I wanted to do this stuff professionally, and though I love the development side of web work, it felt good to use some of those skills for the first time in years. Putting this redesign together has made me appreciate the work the designers at Viget do that much more; I can’t imagine doing this kind of visually creative work 8-10 hours a day.

Have a look around the new site, and let me know what you think. And if it’s broken in IE, I do not care.

Durham Developer Day

2009-03-14T17:59:16Z

One week from today, I’ll be speaking at Durham Developer Day, a small web tech conference being put on by Relevance and Viget Labs. My talk, “Optimizing Perceived Performance,” is about using client-side techniques to make websites feel faster, without resorting to complicated caching setups. My goal is that the talk will serve three purposes: to explain some of the psychology behind user impressions of website performance, to introduce unobtrusive javascript to the uninitiated, and to describe some novel techniques to more experienced web developers.

If you’re in the area, head over to the website and sign up. The speaker lineup is awesome. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot to do to get ready.

UPDATE 3/23: Developer Day was a big success, and my talk was well received on the whole. It got some good laughs and generated interesting discussion, and I learned a lot about what makes for a successful presentation. I’ve uploaded the slides, the code from the sample app I created, and a screenshot of the site in action.

The Eyes of March

2009-03-02T03:23:55Z

Super excited to be participating in this month’s Experimonth, “The Eyes of March,” taking a photo every day. Starting us off with an espresso shot I took in Philadelphia this morning. Not sure if I’m gonna keep up with the coffee theme, or post some Durham shots. Anyhow, keep an eye on the Flickr pool and my individual entries.