Olympia Tech Tuesdays

The last couple of years, I’ve been peripherally involved in some attempts to get together a web developer community in Olympia: went to some meetups before those petered out, offered to help with Refresh Olympia, which didn’t ever really get off the ground.

Well, after C bugging me for a long freaking time, and then a fortuitous conversation this week, I decided to just start something. There’s lots of smarts in this town, but not as much sharing and community as there could be!

It seemed to me that the biggest problem with the previous attempts was that there wasn’t a set date; events just happened “whenever.” And as people get busy or distracted, “whenever” turns into “never.” By contrast, my volunteer gigs with the ENA and the Friends of the Library have set dates, which at least forces everybody to throw something together every month/quarter. Same deal with the writers’ group I used to be in: we met on the same day at the same place every week: builds up the habit. Besides that, you know going in that not everybody is ever going to make every session, so you don’t worry quite so much about setting a time that meets everybody’s schedule.

So: “Tech Tuesday” is nice and alliterative, and open enough of a name to allow for it not necessarily to always be about/for web professionals, but obvious enough of a name that people know WTF you’re talking about. (Vs Refresh [City Name], IMHO.)

As a starting point, I decided to put together a little survey. If you’re in Olympia (or environs), please take it, and pass the word!

February 3, 2010 | Posted in Professional | Comments (0)

iPhone web dev class, wk4

Creative Techs is looking for a studio or freelance designer in Seattle to spiff up their page. (Sounds like what they really need is a UX person.)

I’ve been fiddling around with the homework from 2 weeks ago, plus some of the tidbits I got from the beginning of last week. (can’t remember how first-child works!!!!)

Interactive Scripts… (oh, and apparently this is actually week 3: the first week doesn’t count, I guess.)

More audio weirdness. Today, it’s not losing audio, but adding lovely piano tunes, very much like the music at Nordstrom’s. :) Whoa, got kicked off. :(

Not thrilled with this background image/absolute positioning concept for the photo album. And all the animation comes with browser-specific CSS extensions. I’m finding this really baffling, honestly…why not all the animation in JS? wacky effects on loading the page. I can really see why you’d want to use a library!

touch events are analogous to the usual JS events. (srsly, could they have gotten a finger with nicer nails?!) so build a listener same as if it were onClick, etc. but the touch events are specific to the iPhone. (is it patented?)

whew, that’s too much JS to type along, unfortunately. but she’s got some good interactivity built into the exercise. I wonder if using those super-abbreviated variables is making people more confused. it’s odd, she’s assuming a lot more JS expertise than CSS expertise out of the box. unless there’s stuff I missed last week, which is possible.

and then even MORE JS…I guess this would be the reason to buy the package.

I’m *still* confused why you’d want to use webkit animation extensions vs JS animation. I guess the simplicity of notation in CSS is a big plus. (and I actually asked the question. let’s see if gets answered) someone asked about diagonal, and yes you can do that, which is kinda cool. lots of questions and speculations about the “unicorn” (can’t remember who I saw call it that on twitter: fakebaldur?) iTablet. there’s something about this that feels very much like “old school” pre-standards advocacy coding. very fragile.

got distracted looking up jQTouch…I guess I’m kinda antsy to actually DO something now.

chopin scherzo #2 in b(flat?) minor?

iUI — to keep the chrome away, keep all the content in one file.

I jumped away from the class to start playing with an idea. also, I’m hungry. really wish this class didn’t overlap with lunchtime.

Ok, too hungry to pay attention, plus I got distracted tracking down Drupal-related ideas. Going to come back and play with this stuff after lunch.

January 26, 2010 | Posted in Professional | Comments (0)

bored with this already

Alas, I got started on this design idea and now I’m already bored and disinterested. At least it’s readable, and I finally updated the little headshot photo. Plus I’m figuring out the whole “widgets” thing in WordPress.

Maybe I’ll wait a week or two and come back to it after I see some crazy thing that gets me all inspired. We’ll see.

January 25, 2010 | Posted in General | Comments (0)

futzing

I’m having one of my occasional hankerings to redesign. This time I’m kinda doing it on the fly, using the sandbox theme as a starting point. So things might look funky for a bit, since it might take some time to do this in amidst everything else. But with any luck I’ll end up with a new look that I’m happy with.

January 24, 2010 | Posted in General | Comments (0)

on the sparkling beach

I used to be in a writer’s group, about 10 years ago. One fall we decided to have our own little writers’ retreat and rented a suite in a rundown motel in Long Beach. There were eight of us, IIRC, crammed into the two rooms (plus kitchenette) for a long weekend of lots and lots of writing. We did some exercises and some reading. It was all great fun.

But at night Kat, Joe and I walked out to the beach, which really is a “long beach” — an amazing expanse of long flat sand. It was a clear night, and the sky was glittering with stars. Strangely, the sand was glittering as well: lit up with some sort of luminescent something.

We stayed up late, walking and talking, but what I remember most is the feeling of a vast and fascinating universe. I don’t think I really have words for it. I’m not even remotely a religious person. But this was an ineffable experience.

January 24, 2010 | Posted in writing prompts | Comments (0)

to help a headache

I tend to get the occasional sinus headache, and in the main it seems to be an issue of hydration. Counter-intuitively, headache formulas that include caffeine seem to be the only thing that works. And even better on top of that is a coffee-based beverage, like a mocha. Just opens my head right up again.

Several years ago, I suffered from excruciating and frequent headaches, including the worst of my entire life, one that sent me home from work in a freaking cab. I was given some medication that knocked out the headaches, but knocked me out too. Massage helped, chiropractic not so much.

And then they went away. I don’t really know what happened. (Well, I have a reasonably good idea, but it’s just a wild hunch.)

So I’m happy to just get ordinary headaches that I can deal with in ordinary ways.

January 24, 2010 | Posted in writing prompts | Comments (0)