July 2010
1 post
Update.
I have been very busy with clients. At London Made we have taken on our biggest client yet and are currently working on that. Keep an eye on my portfolio to see it when it’s done.
I have been updating tl;dr. My tumblog. With…
My photos.
Funny work-related images.
iPad apps.
Interesting reblogs from colleagues.
I have been photographing lots. To show a few…
I have created some...
June 2010
2 posts
5 tags
Me & My iPad. Was it worth it?
My initial thoughts of the iPad were merely of Apple over-hype. I thought it was on over-priced and over-sized iPod Touch. After some time I eventually realized that there was a few ways it could make me money, and would eventually pay for itself. One of my greatest luxuries I partake in is spending countless hours in the bath. I sometimes chatted to friends on my laptop outside the bath, but the...
Mini blog. →
I’ve started more of a proper tumblog here.
May 2010
1 post
1 tag
January 2010
2 posts
Words You Won't Find In The Entire Tumblr Codebase
marco:
Factory.
Ooh; a game.
Stability
:D
Factories are quite a useful tool with tests I must say. Considering how many finickity bugs do pop up on Tumblr; I could not expect there to be any tests. Granted that the major bugs seem like server load, there are so many tiny ones that I could only imagine would be bypassed by decent test coverage.
I hardly think Tumblr is the right...
December 2009
4 posts
3 tags
Open Letter To Tumblr
Dear Marco et al,
I have just been alerted to your new ‘Ask’ feature, which gives you exactly the same featureset as Formspring.me. I appreciate the fact you are trying to satisfy the Tumblrverse, but everyone would of been quite happy if you hadn’t. There was nothing broken, so nothing needed fixing on that front.
However; Tumblr is probably THE buggiest website I have ever...
1 tag
"Your portfolio is pink, I hope you are not...
clientsfromhell:
After having a quite pleasant phone conversation with a client and discussing a proposed strategy for moving forward, they told me they hope I was not homosexual, because my site looked a “bit gay” with the pink.
I wrote off the hour and a half on the phone and did not proceed with any more negotiations.
My submission got through!
This happened to me a few years ago. I had a...
2 tags
How To Take a Great Portrait →
Taking portraits is a very popular way to use a camera. However, everyone can be sensitive about having themeslves photographed. As with the whole of photography; it is our job as photographers to get the best result we can and hopefully this tutorial will help with that. Every subject is different (be it face shape, skin colour, hair colour, etc).
Read more on Compose, Focus & Click!
November 2009
3 posts
Crummy now on GemCutter. →
Crummy, the simple and tasty way to add breadcrumbs to your Rails applications is now on GemCutter.
Thanks to netzpiraten for getting this started.
3 tags
The Importance Of Pocket Books.
Many times in my years as an entrepreneur and networker, I have raised the question of best organizational practices. I am constantly looking for quick tips to create a better and more productive me. One of the most vital tools, especially for the forgetful, is a pocket book.
Throughout mine you can find random questions and thoughts. The image above shows one task page list. Other items in the...
October 2009
1 post
September 2009
4 posts
Quick Note
I lost my feed when MediaTemple rudely shut my blog down and I moved to Tumblr. I have just managed to claim my Feedburner URL again, so thanks to the few that stuck around.
August 2009
4 posts
RailsRumble Picks '09
I was randomly assigned a group of Rails Rumble entries to judge this year. I’d like to call out my favourites of the ones I’ve judged. I’m looking forward to seeing the full list after I judge.
In no perticular order, my favourites are:
Tablesurfing
Bartender Cocktail Recipies
omnominator
Heart On
Judging Rails Rumble
So after doing having the great honour of doing the preliminary design for Rails Rumble, It has just been announced that I am joining some amazing people and judging Rails Rumble aswell. It’s a great privallage and I look forward to judging your apps.
Minor Suggestion: Unless.nil? - Down with double...
This is a very small tip aimed for people to clean up their code-base and remove some of the double negatives.
Often I shall see:
unless @user.nil?
The issue with this is approach is that unless is harder to read than if, then you have to mentally process the #nil?
The other approach is:
if @user
However, for a lot of people this is not explicit enough. I find that too few know about...
Deploying Thinking Sphinx with Capistrano.
I’ve had a lot of issues trying to deploy ThinkingSphinx with Capistrano. This has been for a multitude of reasons. The following is my recipe for deploying and hopefully making it public will make a few peoples lives easier.
This assumes you are using the plugin, not the gem.
In your deploy.rb, add the following at the top:
require...
July 2009
4 posts
Don't Accept Doing Anything But Your Best
Now this may seem vulagrly blatent, but I have been mulling over past jobs the last few days. I realised that I did myself no favours by being constantly belevonant. When I was asked to “Complete a design in 2 days” or such, I would say jump at the oppurtunity to prove myself or to try and help out in any way I can. Now I realised, by rushing the design work, my performance was...
New jQuery Plugin: Animated Linethrough
I have created a new plugin for jQuery that allows you to animate the text in an element with linethrough.
Visit the repository.
Visit the jQuery documentation page.
Visit the demo.
3 tags
Make Your Rails Development Environment Slower,...
I’m about to do some work on a Rails project that requires the environment to be that of a real production environment for users. I have created 2 bash functions to aid me in this;
I put them in my bash profile. This is my first foray into bash programming, so if you think something could be done better, please tell me.
1 tag
Portfolio Updated! →
I have updated my portfolio with a selection of recent clients and websites. They include:
Rails Rumble: It was an honour when I was asked to design the yearly competition’s website.
Clickscape: I developed for this website for a few months, refactoring and finishing any uncompleted features.
Zach Inglis v7: The current website you’re looking at.
Zach Inglis v6: The previous...
June 2009
2 posts
2 tags
Tutorial: How to display your last played artist...
In this tutorial I will teach you how to display your last listened to track on your website with the jQuery library (although it can be easily translated to any other library). The JSON library for Last.fm is not very well documented.
Log into the API Account page and fill in the form for your application however you would like. Name the Callback URL ‘LastPlayed’. Write down your...
1 tag
New Start
After some ‘complications’ with MediaTemple which ended up with them deleting my data, including all my posts from 4+ years, I have now switched over to a hosted soloution for my blog.
I am going to try and post a lot more than I did, through here.