You may notice a little downtime, this is due to me moving hosts. Currently having slight issues with installing apache2 but when that is sorted you’ll notice around 3 hours of downtime. This’ll be in my Feedburner by then so you’ll get it from there.
Archive for May, 2007
I recently posted about my error_messages_for plugin. Since then I have turned it into a trouble ticket and also the extra’s added by Ryan McGeary.
Check out the new updates, on the svn.
Last March I decided that Dreamhost weren’t reliable enough for me, and all my good friends pimped (mt) mediatemple like there was no tomorrow. Mediatemple, although slightly more expensive are known for their support. You get what you pay for.
I have been playing around with Rails for a year and a half, some have called me an ‘early adopter’ due to it. But I never wrote any serious code that I wanted to share. My first application was due to be released back last November but I couldn’t release it, Rails on MediaTemple was playing up and I was having issues. I left the application as it wasn’t important as it was only for learning purposes.
My fiancé came to me last week, asking if I would write her a Rails poll for her Psychology experiment. I worked on it and uploaded it, after a sleuth of problems I finally get it working on the web server. Happy with my success, I head to bed. For what I didn’t know was I’d be woken up the next day by a “The poll is not working.”, it fell over somehow in the middle of the night. It had only been used by 20 people and the application is one page. Throughout the time that the poll was alive, this happened constantly, making me ssh in and restart the poll.
Since then, I’ve had SVN troubles, for some reason it won’t recognize my password. The answer I got:
Subversion is installed and ready to use on the Grid. Please see our KnowledgeBase for complete instructions regarding how to set up and connect to a repository: http://kb.mediatemple.net/article.php?id=143
…
Any other configuration falls outside our scope of support. (mt) Media Temple supports the basic operation and uptime.We also ensure that the environment we provide you with can install all of the components needed.
If you do not speak “Support tech”, this roughly translates to “Not our problem, son”. Constantly do I get a RTFM when I ask for support, in fact I expect it so much I wince when I first send it off as I know I have to wait for such a response.
MediaTemple support has gone very downhill since their new move.
“The not our problem” part is true. I am going to be moving to Slicehost in 2 weeks, although a VPS it should actually work. I was going to go with Engine Yard but hey are too expensive for what I need at this moment.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a few weeks…
David,
I found your work through Jon Hicks, of which I advocate no blame for. Your software is beautifull and functions in ways quintessential to how I suspect. I have yet to find a worthier Feed Reader. This in itself is a great accomplishment for which you should be proud. I own both Acquisition and Newsfire and enjoy them both.
In actuality, I enjoy them when they work. The myth that ‘Mac applications don’t crash’, comes from the fact that Mac applications rarely crash, but with your applications operational, this is hardly the case. I get crashes approximately every 20 minutes with a big fat “Your application has closed unexpectedly.”.
I paid cash in good faith that I’d get an application of standard quality, instead the real caliber of your programs are blinded by lack of care. And after Googling, I find this: http://squidnews.com/2007/04/17/david-watanabe-the-complaints/
I have shot off emails and even tried to get support via instant messenger. When I ask you about other things, such as Cocoa programming, I get responses but when it comes to your work, I don’t.
Asking you about transferring over licenses from Acquisition to Xtorrent (The same app, just a rebuild):
Zach Inglis: Quick question, is there a way to transfer licenses from Acquisition to Xtorrent?
David Watanabe: sorry
… Short, Impolite, And you’re rebuilding the SAME application.As a developer I know what it is to program applications, they start to become something that is a part of you. Something for which you have pride over, and I can only presume you have pride over your applications. Carry it over, let the world know. Allow people to enjoy your applications as they should.
Hopefully, this’ll get a spark out of you enough to actually get off your ass and realize you are being no more than a crook: taking peoples money with promises of quality and handing them a mangled piece of Carbon.
— Zach
Recently, I was having such a problem where Newsfire would reset itself once every day, I had no backup the first time. I didn’t feel I needed one, Newsfire only crashed, it didn’t crash so badly.
A friend of mine, Shawn Grimes had similair problems:
This post has been in the works since Jakob Nielson’s latest BBC article. I have noticed certain people got upset about. Don’t be. It’s very good to question the web. Most people seem to take what’s going on at face value and as solid truth, especially when it’s written on a well-regarded website.
Jakob questions the new league in design, Web 2.0. “Tonka toy” size inputs and buttons are not necessarily a bad thing. It has better accessibility for partially sighted people, and it’s easier for people with poorer and average sight alike. Buttons are easier to press, data and information easier to read and write.
I have spoken of my design process before, in a rather limited fashion. I was emailed asking to expand on it. This is my clear definitive answer.
I was inspired to write this article, from Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain’s latest article on digital-web. I shall be brief, I won’t go into a full website, but the most important page of a website: the front page (homepage).
The homepage is the most important because if it is poor, it will mean that your visitors won’t go any further. A good homepage is what sells your website. In the same way you goto an interview wearing your smartest clothes. First impressions count.
I have decided to redesign my blog in conjunction with this. I felt using a fake example would decrease the quality of this post, and I wanted to do a clean redesign. I have not achieved what I wanted to do with my live redesign.
Information Architecture
What this Website Does?
We’ll list what this website does/what it will do from a functional vew-point. I’ll then rate them on a scale of importance (from highest-lowest). You’d probably collaborate with your client on this one.
- Logo
- Navigation
- Lists Articles (of varying nature. Work, Personal and anything in between
- Categories
- Archives
- Tells people who I am. (Some people may argue that this is more important than my articles, but without an about, a blog still works)
- My best posts
- Allows me to display that I am available for clients
- Lists projects I work on
- Lists links that I have liked
- Lists links to friend’s websites
- Lists flickr photos
- Lists “What i’m Playing”
We could take this data already and make a grid out of the weight, where the first item would be at the top, and so on. However, with our discernible eye we may agree that that is not the best soloution. Photos take up more focus than text, due to their rich colours and mass. So even if we weighted it on our 1-10 scale it may not come out be weighted in such a way at the end. I also want certain things above others, like About Me to be higher than my Category List, due to me wanting to make a personal impact, though I still feel that it’s less important. At the end of the day, use the list as a rough guide and use your intuition throughout.
Because this is a blog and has limited function (people tend to stay on the homepage: partly due to RSS), I won’t be doing the next step. The next step is what I call the ‘5 Mark Step’, where you choose the 5 most important things off that list, the rest you’d leave for other pages. On a blog, all the extra items (such as flickr) are just snippets.
Wireframe
I have decided how I want my blog, I want the more important things to appear at top, while the lesser rated things lower down. No Suprise. However, I have decided I want a standard 2 column layout. I want blog posts to be bigger as they have more content in them.
I like keep my wireframes neat, some people do them messily but I believe it’s a good idea to set the grid in the wireframe stage. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect quite yet though, you should reverify the grid again when it comes to the graphical version. Some people like to draw it on pen and paper before hand, it’s really just preference. I even once new someone who made his wireframes with XHTML (using absolute positioning).
Here is the final grid I am going with:
Update: Keith has been working on a similair article, we happened to publish it at the same minute. Freaky. 
Update #2: This article was discontinued due to lack of interest.
My interview over at McVille has been posted. You can find it labeled, Zach Inglis interview.
Thanks Marko and the team.
Not only have I just set up a public HTTP SVN for my plugins (on Google Code as MediaTemple don’t do HTTP:// SVNs) …
I have created a new plugin that extends error_messages_for to give you clickable links to the form elements
The readme:
Clickable Error Messages
======================
Have a long form, or at least one that scrolls past the main page. Want to give your users more interactivity on the forms?
This is unobtrusive, no extra markup is required. If you remove it, your application will work as normal.
Example
=======
In your view:
<%= error_messages_for :user %>
Example goes here.
2 errors prohibited this user from being saved
There were problems with the following fields:
Copyright (c) 2007 Zach Inglis [www.zachinglis.com], released under the MIT license
Get it here: http://zachinglis-rails-plugins.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/svn/
I shall rename it to svn.zachinglis.com when (mt) get back to me.
Well, I finally have the LT3media site up. It’s been a lot of trouble but I’m glad it’s finally up.
I’d like to thank everyone who’s helped me throughout but most importantly Antonio Lulic for his XHTML/CSS skills.
LT3media started out as a collaborative group between myself and 4 other good friends. It quickly fell apart due to uninterest. Loving the name and the branding that Faruk and I had made, I kept the name for a new company.
There is still a bit more to do, including porting it to Mouth once I get that in a reasonable state.
Anyway, it’s 7:30am, and I have been working on the content and fiddling with it all night. So I am going to goto sleep now.
I also had planned on a slight ‘realign’ of my portfolio, but ExpressionEngine is playing up so you’ll have to make-do with a screenshot.
