Google Translator
8 days ago - David Crean
There is a certain brand of people, you have all encountered them in your life. Mostly I deal with this in a professional capacity, but it isn't an exclusively professional trait. These people, they convey nothing meaningful, useful or constructive to any conversation. They cause confusion. They spend 30 paragraphs, conveying the same information that a more secure and knowledgeable person could convey in one sentence. There is no getting to the point, there is a lot of wasting time.
What I recommend for google is a translator for these people. I need a "crap" to "meaningful text" translator. So, if there is a project manager for google out there somewhere, can you please get on that for me?
Thanks!
More changes...
10 months ago - David Crean
Seems to happen around this time of year, every year. Can't help it, I'm like that.
Attempts at making things interesting...
about 1 year ago - David Crean
I'm constantly tweaking and experimenting with the design of this site. I know that few ever see it, so it is a safe place to experiment. I can play with typography and experiment with my spacing in a care free environment. I hope that one day I might make this into something more than an occasional sounding board for my scattered thoughts.
I've been also been using this to snag my pictures from my vox, and give folks another way to discover my iPhone snapshots.
I'll be leaving for Vegas in a short while, and I'm very excited for the time off to defrag. I'm not sure how the weekend will go, but I think it will be nice to be around my family for a bit.
Been a While
about 1 year ago - David Crean
I've been really, really swamped. I haven't been doing much interesting work, just the standard chaotic maintenance tasks that pop up in a large code base.
This is how we roll
about 1 year ago - David Crean
var TickerManager = { ticker: null,
elements: null,
curElement: null,
curElementIndex: 0,
leftPosition: null,
init: function() {
this.ticker = $('ticker');
this.elements = this.ticker.getElementsByTagName('li');
this.leftPosition = YAHOO.util.Dom.getX(this.elements[this.curElementIndex]);
this.addTriggers();
this.animateTicker();
setInterval('TickerManager.animateTicker()', 10000);
},
reorderElements: function(order) {
},
animateTicker: function() {
if(this.curElement) {
//move current element out of the way
var scrollAnim = new YAHOO.util.Motion(this.curElement,{ points: { to: [this.leftPosition,250] } },1, YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut);
scrollAnim.animate();
var opacityAnim = new YAHOO.util.Anim(this.curElement,{ opacity: { to: 0, from: 1 } },1, YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut);
opacityAnim.animate();
this.curElementIndex = this.curElementIndex+1 }
this.curElement = this.elements[this.curElementIndex];
this.curElement.style.top = '-40px';
var scrollAnim = new YAHOO.util.Motion(this.curElement,{ points: { to: [this.leftPosition,200] } },1, YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut);
scrollAnim.animate();
var opacityAnim = new YAHOO.util.Anim(this.curElement,{ opacity: { to: 1, from: 0 } },1, YAHOO.util.Easing.easeOut);
opacityAnim.animate();
},
addTriggers: function() {
var upArrow = $('ticker-up');
var downArrow = $('ticker-down');
YAHOO.util.Event.addListener(upArrow, 'click', TickerManager.reorderElements, 'up');
YAHOO.util.Event.addListener(upArrow, 'click', TickerManager.reorderElements, 'down');
}
}
These things just make sense to me sometimes.
Typography
about 1 year ago - David Crean
In general, my use of typography has been influenced by a few key factors.
1. My love of the swiss design aesthetic.
2. More importantly, the complete lack of decent font availability for web publishing.
http://www.clagnut.com/blog/1980/
This sounds like a great way to start it. As with any other tool... it should not be handled by the faint of heart.
Moving threads...
about 1 year ago - David Crean
For a personal project of mine I'm attempting to do a live update thing. It should be fairly simple, I go and retrieve the most recently updated threads in order that they were updated and inject them to the top of the list... removing the duplicate from the list of threads. Basically, it's a quick way for people to see threads as they come in. It will be handle on those rare occasions that people are all posting at once. I can have it run every 20-30 secs and update the list for people.
For some reason, my splice code is not working. It's not really the friendliest of codes, but it should be working... it's quiet perplexing.
for(i = 0; i < topicLim; i++) { topic_id = getTag(topics[i],"id");
topic_list[i] = topic_id
for(j = 0; j < cur_topic_list.length; j++) {
if(cur_topic_list[j] == topic_id) {
cur_topic_list = cur_topic_list.splice(j,1);
topic_table.deleteRow(j+row_count);
}
}
ThreadManager.addTopic(topics[i],row_count);
row_count++;
if(document.title.match(/^\(\*\)/) != '(*)') {
document.title = '(*) '+ document.title;
}
}
Spacing
about 1 year ago - David Crean
It seems like my most recent obsession is pixel precision spacing. In past employment, I never had to pay too much attention to the minutia of every pixel that appears in a website. In more recent months, it's been all I've been doing.
I've discovered through this process how important it is to the professional look and feel. I now pick apart other sites and look at their spacing. It's a point of supreme importance to me anymore.
Creating Something
about 1 year ago - David Crean
The nice thing about the internet is the immediate gratification. I can make a change, refresh my browser, and see it appear. In the world of design, I love that technology has allowed us to reach a point where the tedium has been replaced by tools that can open up a world of creativity.
The down side of the ease of this new world we live in, is that there is no threshold of entry. In many industries, there is a throttle that prevents the unskilled from joining their exclusive clubs. Doctors and lawyers have years of school, licensing test and boards to prevent the uninitiated into their hallowed halls. Web design has no such structure. Some of us have college degrees, but its not necessary. Some of us have years of experience, but that's not always a good thing.
The smell of fresh rails...
about 1 year ago - David Crean
So, I've finally gotten around to redesigning and revamping the site to be a lot more robust and inline with what I'm interested in it being. I haven't created things for personal use in a long time and I have to learn to be just as demanding of myself as a client or employer would be.
Anyway, this is the first post of what I hope will be many. I'm at work and I just wanted to make sure some content was on the site before I make it totally public. I'll finish the rest of the sections shortly.
About Me
I'm a UI developer living in Los Angeles with my wife and 5 hell-raising cats.
I will randomly be spouting my random thoughts and highlighting work that I'm proud of, or sometimes, not so proud of.
One aside about this site, I don't go out of my way to hack around IE6 here, I spend enough time doing that day in and day out. It should work reasonably well in modern browers, but I don't go out of my way to hack around fawlty border implementation or lax support for child selectors.