author: Diana Peterfreund
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2010/01/17
date added: 2010/01/19
shelves: fantasy, fiction, kid-lit
review:
One of those books where I was totally caught up in it *while* I was reading, but that felt off somehow after I was done. Not sure how much of that was due to the super-perfect BF she ends up with at the end of the book. (Sexy, nice, smart, and totally ok with her not being able to boink pretty much ever.) Or maybe it was just the whole virginity thing. But it was a fast read, and action-packed, as they say. 🙂
iPhone web dev class, wk2
(BTW, here’s the course info. Free! Also, intro session notes.)
iPhone Biz Card
(as before, 1st 10 mins are housekeeping. I’m playing with phonegap emulator.)
1st poll question makes no sense. 2nd poll question needs a fourth answer “don’t have a mac” also, these graphs suck.
sizing pages for iphone
her author page on o’reilly — doesn’t look that bad, actually, but small text in particular.
following along with sample. phonegap doesn’t make it look so dang small. I wonder if it’s setting the viewport. yep, adding meta name=”viewport” doesn’t actually change anything. (doesn’t work unless designed to scale, btw.) and initial-scale doesn’t do anything in phonegap either.
digression into html 4.x vs xhtml vs html5. officially annoying.
she said that desktop safari ignores viewport, which I’m assuming explains why it’s not working in phonegap.
getting antsy to get past Q&A session.
does -webkit-gradient not work in phonegap either? curiously, it works in Chrome, so I’m just going to resize a chrome window ATM. (actually, opened Win Safari instead.)
grar. digression into box model!
so what DO you do if you need the same page to be seen in IE?
is there a way to create a site that works well on netbooks?
webkit-gradient works in both bg-image or bg-color.
non media-query browsers pick last link?
I don’t think she’s explaining viewport vs media query very well – guy is doing that nicely, tho.
“at some point mobile browsers will all standardize” I doubt that the sizes will standardize, but I’m guessing there will be some typical ranges.
navigator.userAgent
mmmm, browser sniffing. (sigh) can use to load different Drupal themes? (is there a module/theme for that?) “become much more standardized” — has it? I guess for broad matching it works.
went into the example before I had a chance to finish typing!
well, hey: had forgotten about develop menu for pretending to be iPhone. (iTouch says it’s iPhone, apparently…also iPod.) so what would be a grouping for high-end mobile?
or maybe not (re iPod touch as iPhone).
this has ugly maintenance connotations.
more fiddling with display styles. nothing new/special to see here, at least not for me.
somebody’s getting fussy about which tags she should be using: div vs p & addr. she took that really well, actually.
use a reset stylesheet on mobile? she hasn’t, but could, and sounds like maybe not a bad idea.
Lists – good for “drill-down” items.
This example might be more than I can type along with. Also getting kinda tired, and cube neighbor is on phone conversation.
support for text-overflow in CSS? (pretty clever IMHO)
supports :visited but not :hover — alternatively something with touch (:active?)
looks like that link example would do really well with a dl, as in: I think that’s actually what they’re designed for.
webkit-border-top-right-radius etc.
“always, thank you the internet”
apparently are “goodies” segments post the official end time. (and yes, the intro needs to be SHORTER.)
accessibility – voiceover only on 3GS. so, wait, you have to know where you’re tapping in order to hear stuff.
other browsers — screenshots of Android default, dolphin & opera mini. (guh that last looks pretty crappy IMHO.)
simulators: marketcircle.com/iphoney, phonegap (air app), testiphone. huge list of other simulators for other devices.
pretty sweet screenshot of MIT mobile website.
homework: create own biz card for the iPhone. think about: user motivation, intended experience, goal/focus, how displaying what people care about? twitter the url with the hashtag. (#ipwa)
oat bread
I’m gradually trying new recipes out of the Kneadlessly Simple bread cookbook that I got for Christmas. First up: oat bread. As it happens, I have some extra molasses on hand, which is the one ingredient in addition to the usual flour, sugar, salt, yeast, oil & water. Oh, and of course in this case also oats, and I always have oats on hand, either for oatmeal or for cookies. 🙂
Mixing up was pretty much the same as the basic white bread I’ve made before; the molasses gets mixed in with the liquid ingredients, and the oats with the dry ones. It seems like this dough was even less interested in rising* than the white, unfortunately, but it did finally rise enough to get put in the oven.
It also rose a little less in the baking, but smelled fantastic. I probably overcooked it by a couple of minutes: the crust was a little darker and tougher than I would have liked. OTOH, it was delicious. Almost dessert-like, good flavor, solid texture. Not all that much cold, but incredibly good lightly toasted with a little butter. I think it would’ve been heavenly topped with a little honey, but we didn’t have any. Actually had just bread for lunch one day this week (horrid canned soup that I couldn’t stand to eat) and was surprisingly full all afternoon.
Will definitely make again with a slightly shorter time in the oven.
* I’ve got a batch of English muffin bread rising at the moment, and it seems to be coming up much faster. It’s also somewhat wetter dough, and I’m starting to wonder if I haven’t been adding enough water to all my doughs.
iPhone class – 1st session
I’m taking this “build iphone apps w/HTML, CSS & JS” class online. I find I pay more attention if I’m writing down notes. these may or may not make any sense to anyone else.
First 15 minutes or so has been housekeeping, how all the bits & pieces work.
iPhone simulator. is jQTouch a jQuery spinoff?
first week is building a “business card app” that turns an info page into something nice-looking for iPhone.
simulator – developer.apple.com/iphone – get apple id to get dev center stuff.
downloads only for leopard & snow leopard. (we have tiger still?)
is the simulator only for mac? she’s showing it via mac. got distracted in chat. yes, simulator only for OSX leopard or higher. I’m surprised they’re not prepared with more options for those of us w/out. in the chat someone notes that using Safari or Chrome gets pretty decent results. also iPhoney?
does it work for blackberry or android? android should look much the same as iphone. nice. phonegap simulator, adobe air. phonegap itself is a development environment.
2nd week will do actions, web app: call, email, video, and gmap. how to get to the home screen, also how to get rid of safari chrome. sample has shiny red button, then stuff you can do in re: creative tech.
Q: inside the web app, can you tell that it’s a web app? all-in-one app can’t tell hardly at all, but when you link to new page, chrome etc comes back.
more questions that are obvs, basic answer is: it’s a web page running in a browser. if you can do it with a web page, you can do it in an iPhone web app.
will cover what phone functions can be accessed w/web apps.
week 3 – more JS! animating, detect touches (like keypress), implement gestures. iUI library (am I remembering correctly that there’s a Drupal module for it?) — then do it again w/jQTouch. yes, is jQuery, apparently more powerful. and hey, debugging! very different look from iUI to jQTouch.
any way to make web app use existing window if safari browser is open? sounds like not.
week 4 – native app. this may be where I’m SOL.
audio died in gotowebinar…apparently they’re pausing the whole class. :\
ok, now back. native app writing is all tightly tied into mac platform. (surprise surprise) “kinda painful” to get your app onto your phone. (not covering store) not super-excited about this session, but will watch at least some, I think. (this makes me hope and wish that android takes over, honestly.) interesting: all of the items on the app, except blog, are owned services. (flickr, twitter, youtube)
[got interrupted by phone call]
can’t import biz card web app into address book.
flash iphone packager? CS5 will come with feature to convert flash apps into native apps. but still not actually putting flash on the iphone.
poll whether people are more interested in web or native apps. (web, I think, at least for the time being.) most people want both, 20% just web, 6% just native.
stuff: metal stencil to design iphone apps uistencils.com; plastic version from kapsoft/mobile sketchbook. notebooks pre-printed, vol5.com. graffletopia (stencils) for omnigraffle. photoshop stencils 320480.com. keep the web weird. tons of sources for button icons “iphone icon” search.
looking at some other things. was brought back by her saying “bus schedule.” if only. intercity transit doesn’t even offer schedules as web pages. (gddmn pdfs)
Q: graceful degradation for non-iphone users? conditional css with media attribute; or (OMG!) javascript browser/device sniffing. ::sigh::
can use cookies to store sessions. mentions html5 offline storage. (?!)
can buy files, etc. from o’reilly. not sure yet if I will. will be offering a 10-week class on building native apps? wow. you srsly have to pay $99 to distribute native apps? ew. “hard to teach a class when there’s an NDA on the material for the class.” it took her TWO HOURS to submit her first app.
but I’m pretty excited about getting into the web app stuff, seems like it would be handy for multiple devices.
that phonegap simulator looks handy.
logging off…now. 🙂
accidental cyclist
I wasn’t intending to bike this morning — ok, last night I got my bike staged, but then I woke up after not enough sleep and with the rain coming down and decided: to hell with it, I’m not going to ride. Took my shower, got dressed & packed up, managed to get to the stop just ahead of the bus.
And it slowed down…and then kept moving. I ran a bit, yelled after it (I apologize to any of the neighbors of that stop for my incredibly loud and probably NSFW shouting), but it just kept going.* Which left me with three options:
- Wait a half-hour for the next bus.
- Drive the truck.
- Bike.
Didn’t want to be late, didn’t feel like driving, and hey: my bike was already staged to get out of the house easily. (This is one problem with our house and the Xtracycles: no good place to park.) So I quick-changed, wrapped up my bag, and took off.
I’m glad I did. I haven’t biked to work for almost a month, what with the freezing, that hell-cold, holidays, etc. It was fairly dark and rainy, but mild, enough so that I switched to my fingerless bike gloves, and the trails were clear. Plus my brain was really in need of that exercise; I feel about 1000% better than I did when I woke up, even though I’m running on not nearly enough sleep.
So, yay for unintentional biking!
* The stop is pretty much in the dark, which is annoying to begin with, but I was wearing a REFLECTIVE ORANGE rain jacket. Srsly, WTF?
