starjuice.net

Body copy guidelines

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:26:31 +0200

I just sent the following email to some cow orkers. It took me ages to dig up the links. It always takes me ages, so I’m blogging it as a bookmark.

Here are two excellent references for my religious perspective on typesetting and layout of body copy. It will take you less than 10 minutes to read both articles, I promise. You will:

Discover why you feel drained after a lot of browsing.
Inspire you to make Hetzner’s copy a relaxing pleasure to read.
Discover a browser plugin that transforms your experience of reading through a web browser.

16 Pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

Better argument than the article below, and more recent. But only covers font size. You have to read beyond the guy’s marketing bias to recognize that what he’s saying applies even to transactional body copy.

The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard

Goes beyond font size. Rocked my world back in 2006. The web should be this way.

Readability Addon

Once you’ve read this stuff and gotten inspired for the future and depressed for the present… You can get an idea of what the world wide web might be like if everyone followed these guidelines, by checking out an awesome browser plugin/addon called Readability.

I guarantee you, it’ll increase your attention span, and suck your soul out through your eyeballs less. Or your money back. ;-)

Setting HTTP Referer with capybara

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:53:23 +0200

Because it took me an hour to find out… To set the HTTP Referer for a request in a cucumber step definition using capybara with the default driver (Capybara::RackTest::Driver):

referer = 'http://example.com/'
Capybara.current_session.driver.header 'Referer', referer
visit '/'

Note that this persists for the remainder of the session. If you know how you’re supposed to unset an header, please be nice and leave a comment.

Landmark moment. I finally wrote some decent code.

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:53:09 +0200

Landmark moment. I finally wrote some decent code.

The Emo Divinyls

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:13:36 +0200

I cut myself
I want you to cut me
When I’m feelin’ down
I want you above me
I search myself
I want you to find me
I forget myself
I want you to remind me

I don’t cut anybody else
When I think about you
I cut myself

My first project using my birthday present. I haven’t put...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:24:40 +0200

My first project using my birthday present. I haven’t put much effort into the drum track, because this is music for me to drum to. :-)

30 second sound byte from last night’s noodling around in...

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:46:00 +0200

30 second sound byte from last night’s noodling around in FL Studio. It’s a surprise every time when I look at the clock and realize that four hours have passed. I think I enjoy pursuits in which the joy of creation overwhelms the joy of possession.

I got a Roland A-800PRO MIDI Keyboard Controller for my...

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 08:36:00 +0200

I got a Roland A-800PRO MIDI Keyboard Controller for my birthday! So excited!

"I will never apologize for the United States of America, I don’t care what the facts are."

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:14:04 +0200

“I will never apologize for the United States of America, I don’t care what the facts are.”

- George H. W. Bush on the United States military shooting down an Iranian airliner, killing 290 civilians. And people thought his son was the idiot.

"The Sabbath Manifesto is a creative project designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic..."

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:15:00 +0200

“The Sabbath Manifesto is a creative project designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world.”

- Sabbath Manifesto

Ticon - Models On Cocaine (SynSUN Remix) (by...

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:54:46 +0200

Ticon - Models On Cocaine (SynSUN Remix) (by SynSUNofficial)

It’s the week-end, baby!

NERO ‘PROMISES’ (SKRILLEX AND NERO REMIX) (by...

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:18:19 +0200

NERO ‘PROMISES’ (SKRILLEX AND NERO REMIX) (by TheOfficialSkrillex)

Mmmm, sick dubstep. Thanks, Henlu!

Ruby rescue statement modifier

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:39:09 +0200

My copy of The Ruby Programming Language arrived today. I dived straight in to find a canonical justification for my superstition that rescue with no arguments only rescues StandardError and its descendants, not Exception and its descendants.

Along the way, I discovered that the rescue keyword can be used as a statement modifier. If the modified statement raises an exception, the argument to the rescue keyword is used as the value of the expression. For example:

# Instead of this
if (@elephant.nil? or @elephant[:color] == "pink")
  puts "Weird elephant, dude"
end

# You can do this
if (@elephant[:color] == "pink" rescue true)
  puts "Weird elephant, dude"
end

At first glance, I’m not wild about it, but maybe it’ll end up growing on me, like Enumerable#inject. Either way, it’ll probably prove useful in other ways.

The Wallaby Magic

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 08:52:00 +0200

Wondering how the Wallabies do it? After all, the Springboks were playing under the same blind, naive, unfit, incompetent has-been referee.

What the Wallabies do well, is probe the referee’s capabilities and boundaries.

Today, they discovered in the first half that they could get away with their hands in the ruck, coming in from the side, high tackling, shoulder charges, obstruction, early running and killing the ball. The only thing that lame geriatric was watching for was forward passing and failure to release.

The Springboks carried on playing a full 80 minutes against the full rulebook. The Wallabies only played the rules that were enforced.

In the end, the referee is an integral part of the game, and the Springboks need to learn to play the whole game.

On a more personal note, Bryce Lawrence, you’re a […] disgrace to the game, you lazy […]. Whatever you were in your time, you need to retire now.

(via PopTech : Popcasts : Benjamin Zander - PopTech...

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:45:52 +0200

(via PopTech : Popcasts : Benjamin Zander - PopTech 2008)

Engaging the navigator

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 18:58:09 +0200

The bad habit that I’m unlearning at the moment, is letting myself trail off mid-sentence because it’s gotten too hard to do what I’m doing and describe what I’m doing at the same time.

The computer can wait all day and won’t mind; my navigator is a human trying to participate in the thought process, not just the photon gazing.

Thanks to Graham Ashton for making me think about this.

"Many members of the Agile movement need to learn when to turn down the revolutionary, evangelical..."

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:48:41 +0200

“Many members of the Agile movement need to learn when to turn down the revolutionary, evangelical rhetoric, and when to start catching bees with honey, particularly when they have a loud/influential voice.”

- (Some) Agilistas: Still Not Yet Lean Thinkers - Martin Burns: PM PoV

As someone familiar with the Agile Manifesto, but not familiar with Lean, I found Martin’s post and follow up to my comment extremely challenging, in a good way.

magic_options ruby gem

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 09:39:00 +0200

Rory McKinley and I have published a little ruby gem that implements what I call the magic options pattern. You know the drill:

class BigThing
  def initialize(options = {})
    @height = options[:height]
    @width  = options[:width]
    @depth  = options[:depth]
    @weight = options[:weight]
  end
end

What an epic yawn.

With magic_options, you can just do this:

class BigThing
  include MagicOptions
  def initialize(options = {})
    magic_options options
  end
end

# Alternatively...

class BigThing
  include MagicOptions
  magic_initialize
end

If you’d like to program defensively, there are additional options for specifying what the options hash may and may not include.

Sure, it won’t save the world, but it’ll make the world a better place.

The source code is available at github.com and the documentation is already live on rubydoc.info. Use the usual gem install magic_options to install.

"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things."

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:28:43 +0300

“There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.”

- Phil Karlton

Unobtrusive Ruby

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:58:03 +0300

Unobtrusive Ruby:

thoughtbot:

Unobtrusive Ruby is any Ruby code that stays out of your way. It does not make you write lots of boilerplate, or stub methods, or open classes. It is decoupled. Its tests run quickly, its classes fit on one screen, its methods are tiny, and it is quickly refactorable.

Unobtrusive Ruby is a state of mind.

magic_options ruby gem

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:59:28 +0300

magic_options ruby gem:

MagicOptions is a ruby module that provides mechanisms for splatting an options hash into an object’s instance variables.