Category Archives: Misc

posted

November 2, 2012

A Lightweight jQuery Notification Bar

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Notifying users with quick messages and alerts in a website is one of the most recurring needs of a web developer.
Every time I need to implement something like that, I start looking around the web hoping to find some Javascript/jQuery plugin that would do the work for me.
The good thing is that a lot of people have already faced this problem.
The bad thing is that the results of the search are way too many and often very confusing.
Chances are that most of the time, you don’t really need a 3MB-super-fancy-hyper-customizable-highly-priced plugin, but you just want something that works, and that you can quickly incorporate into your code.

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posted

September 20, 2012

How to Tell When a Meeting is Pointless

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Lame Meeting

Meetings. When used correctly, they lead to synchronized teams, informed stakeholders, and better requirements. They help to identify issues affecting an organization. They’re great for resource planning, sharing vision, and all kinds of useful stuff.

A clear, focused meeting energizes the participants. These meetings are a force for good. These meetings make the office smile.

Then there are those other meetings. 

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posted

August 14, 2012

CSS3 Media Queries: Making Your Site Mobile-Friendly, Now With 50% Fewer Excuses!

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If you’re like me, you probably do an increasing amount of your personal business on your mobile device, such as paying bills and conducting transactions with your banking accounts.  And why not?  It’s been five years now since the first iPhone came out, and since then mobile Internet use has become a part of everyday life.  What’s more, major institutions such as Wells Fargo, Citibank and AT&T have their own mobile apps.  So taking care of your financial business on your smartphone should be a complete breeze, right?

Wrong!

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posted

July 9, 2012

UIWebView JavaScript to Objective-C communication

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When building an iOS application there are times when the best solution for a particular view or screen is to build it as a webpage and then embed it into the app using a UIWebView. There are certain things a webview can do really well that are otherwise hard to replicate, and while not as sexy, web development can be much quicker than native iOS development. The specifics of when to use a webview and when to go native I won’t dive into, but if you decide to use a webview, the first major question you’ll probably wonder is how to communicate between the native app and the webview. For full integration into the app, being able to send messages from the JavaScript to Objective-C and back is critical, and luckily it’s quite easy.

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posted

May 14, 2012

Preventing spurious “error: failed to push some refs” messages from git

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Kitten in a shoe

On larger Git projects, I often see the following scenario play out after someone’s done some work and is ready to push it to the remote repo:

...making and committing changes to "develop" branch...
$ git pull
Already up-to-date.
$ git push
Counting objects: 5, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 363 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To git@github.com:test-repo/test_repo.git
   e8c1210..1a0c4d4  develop -> develop
 ! [rejected]        new_feature -> new_feature (non-fast-forward)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@github.com:test-repo/test_repo.git'
To prevent you from losing history, non-fast-forward updates were rejected
Merge the remote changes (e.g. 'git pull') before pushing again. See the
'Note about fast-forwards' section of 'git push --help' for details.

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posted

April 9, 2012

Grio Comic :)

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In this week post I decided to do something a little different. Being a designer, I am used to drawing more than writing. So, here I am drawing. . . I hope you guys enjoy.

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posted

December 4, 2011

Is Software a Science or an Art?

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As we approach software today, often through web or mobile applications, people generally appreciate the elegance of the interaction or lack thereof. But as software engineers know, there is a lot going on behind the scenes.  Of course, with user interfaces for the masses becoming a necessity for modern applications, designers and more artistic–oriented folks have been contributing to the practice of software development. That leads to the question: Is software more of a science or an art?

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