the singularity of being and nothingness
Archive for March, 2008
singularityconcepts.com Relaunched!
Mar 26th
Hey everyone!
Welcome to the relaunch of singularityconcepts.com! I am very excited to present my new design, something on which I've worked exremely hard for the last few weeks.
For first time visitors, let me introduce myself: my name is Joel Watson, and I am web designer/developer hailing from central Kentucky. Web design is a passion of mine, and I spend way more time than I should working to get better, discover new tricks, and just explore how to craft more immersive and meaningful web experiences. If you have a few seconds, take a look around, and if I can impose just a little on you, be sure to let me know what you think.
One final note: I love to blog about my experiences in web design, so be sure to grab the feed to this site's blog, and I definitely welcome any and all feedback on what you read, see or think.
Peace
Share this: Transitions
Mar 26th
I am proud and excited to announce the relaunch and redesign of my web design portfolio – singularityconcepts.com .
This redesign has been long needed (I never really liked the original), and I am very pleased with the final outcome.
For this redesign, I not only took a radically different approach to the aesthetics, but I also retooled the purpose of the site. Originally, I tried to pass off singularityconcepts as a multi-person design firm, utilizing "we" to refer to work that, honestly, only "I" do. For this redesign, I ditched the disconnected feel of that kind of language and have switched to making this site a personal web technology portfolio of sorts for myself.
This means radical changes for existdissolve.com as well. From now on, all of my technology-related posts will happen at singularityconcepts. For those who read this blog (all 3 of you) and are bored by my ramblings about web design, those days of languish are over. And for those who like that sort of stuff, you will have to change your bookmarks :). To compensate for this, I am going to endeavor to be more regular in my theological postings. Life around my house is starting to normalize, so I More >
Adobe's Spry Framework, Part Second
Mar 24th
A couple days ago, I posted an example of how Adobe's Spry Framework allows one to easily and quickly incorporate XML datasets into an application, allowing for a great alternative to page-to-page navigation and data mining.
One of the limitations I pointed out was the initial amount of coding involved. Well, that was because I'm an idiot.
While I've used Spry's Spry.Data.XMLDataSet() many times before, I literally had no idea how powerful it is, nor that it could interact with dynamically generated XML files, such as I was doing with ColdFusion components in my last example. However, such is not the case. Not only does this method allow me to do everything I was doing before, it involves a heck of lot less code. The entire invoke for the datasets here is:
var dsCities = new Spry.Data.XMLDataSet("getlocations.cfc method=getCities", "cities/city");var dsLocations = new Spry.Data.XMLDataSet("getlocations.cfc?method=getLocations&cityID={dsCities::@id}", "locations/location");
Two lines of javascript! Now of course, there is more to handle some of the behaviors…but I have effectively cut out about 100 lines from what I was doing before. Pretty cool!
Finally, the best part about this is it allows me to take full advantage of the framework's "spry:state". With this, one can set different "states" that will fire in relation More >
Web 2.0 Goodness – Adobe's Spry Framework
Mar 24th
Ok, so as everyone who reads this blog knows (or should know…), I am a web designer/web developer. On the development side, I am best at ColdFusion , one of the under-appreciated programming langugages out there. While ColdFusion is awesome, one of the drawbacks of it (as well as of PHP, .NET, etc.) is that it is a server-side technology, meaning (surprise, surprise) that all of the code processing done is accomplished on the server. So, any of the cool Web 2.0 stuff out there, like asynchronous form submission, has to use Javascript.
While ColdFusion 8 has some seriously cool AJAX features built into it that handle alot of this kind of thing with ease, it is not free and wonderful hosting companies (like GoDaddy) are slow to upgrade their servers to the newest version. Therefore, the onus is upon the developer to utilize the various work-arounds until ColdFusion 8 is firmly entrenched.
One tool that makes life significantly easier is Adobe's Spry Framework . While Spry includes a lot of the cool effects of other Javascript frameworks, one of the best parts of it is the easy way in which it allows Spry to make server-side calls to allow applications to harness More >
The Day to End All Days
Mar 24th
Well, in case you live in a hole somewhere, the next three weeks are shaping up to be huge. In less than two weeks, God-fearing Americans will celebrate the day-before-Lent (Fat Tuesday) by more or less determining the identities of the Democratic and Repulican presidential nominees. In another week and two days, lovers across the world will commemorate their passions with cheap chocolates and over-priced floral arrangements.
Yet few realize that an even more momentous event will occur between these big days. But this event will be truly earth-shaking, and it will hit February 12th.
No, it's not the most recent Jack Van Impe prediction for the return of Christ, and it is not the release date of what is going to be the incredibly awesome sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight.
Nope. February 12th is none other than the death of Internet Explorer 6.
Okay, that was a bit dramatic, and not entirely accurate. Despite fervent prayers in support of IE6's digicide, IE 6 has proven, historically, to be more difficult to kill than it is to design a website for (and that's saying something!). Rather, February 12th marks the date when Internet Explorer 7–IE 6's better (but still not More >
On Becoming a Better Web Designer
Mar 24th
Anytime one approaches a new design project, it is easy to get distracted by trying to have the project finished NOW, instead of doing necessary preparation work to ensure maximum work efficiency. I am as guilty of this as anyone. In the past, designing a website and bringing it through development was a hodge-podge of cutting Photoshop files and piecing together random bits of code, all the while constantly being frustrated that things were not finished YET.
As I've matured, I've learned to identify several time black-holes that serve to quickly derail a project's timeline.
Unorginization
Without question, this is the one for me. It is especially a problem because from design concept (Illustrator) to web-ready images (Photoshop) to HTML (Dreamweaver) to database (MySQL) to application code (ColdFusion), my files are touching a lot of applications. If I'm not careful, it's easy to, say, save Photoshop files to random places and then have to search for them when I need them in Dreamweaver. While this is only a matter of seconds (normally!), it adds up over the course of a project and is frankly annoying.
So the biggest time and headache-saver I've learned is to standardize every aspect of the project. This means I More >
Coming Up for AIR
Mar 24th
(Please ignore the absurdity of the title–I couldn't help myself!)
A little over a week ago, Adobe officially released Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) 1.0 along with Flex 3 . While I've looked into a AIR a bit in conjunction with Flex apps, I've not really gone beyond that.
However, with the official release, I decided to take another look.
What is AIR? As the full name explicates, it is a runtime that can be used to, um, run programs on your computer, mobile device, etc. So as with Microsoft's .NET framework, AIR allows developers to create programs that can be packaged up and installed on these devices.
However, unlike Windows-only or Mac-Only (or Linux-Only) programs, AIR is ambivalent about the OS. As long as the client machine has the runtime installed, any application developed in AIR can run on it. This in itself is really cool, and takes the bite off the exclusivity of OS platforms.
But the coolest part about AIR is that you can leverage different technologies when building applications. For example, a while ago I built an extremely simple Countdown application using Flex 3. Easy enough.
But what if I don't want to use ActionScript 3? No problem! Using the HTML, CSS More >
IE8 Beta and Kicking Microsoft to the Curb
Mar 24th
Ok, so for those who know me, I've never exactly been the biggest fan of ANYTHING that Microsoft has forced upon the genearl computing public. IMO, Word is about the best thing that they've done, and even that is pretty lame.
Obviously, I have complained more than once about how Microsoft does (or maybe I should say "doesn't do) the web. However, because of the fact that the majority of people still use this inferior browser, I've tolerated it.
Well, this last week, the beta of IE8 came out .
(Warning: To install IE8 you will have to install it over the top of IE7–you can't run them side-by-side. However, IE8 does allow for the emulation of IE7, which is a reasonable compromise)
Over the last couple of weeks, I've done a fair bit of reading about IE8, and even blogged about it . So it was with some anticipation that I signed up for the beta. On the whole, the improvements are positive. The interface itself looks a bit better (less off-color-ish than IE7 and IE6) and cleaner. There are a bunch of add-ons (called "Actions") that can be downloaded, and for what is the first time (I think), developers can actually begin More >
Good Friday Reflection: The Universe and Resurrection
Mar 21st
Ok, so I know it's technically Saturday while I'm writing this, but I wanted to get down these Good Friday reflections before the weekend is over…
In pulpits across the country this weekend, congregations will hear various messages about the meaning of Easter: Christ's death and resurrection, the triumph of Christ over sin and damnation, etc. Obvoiusly, these are fitting subjects to pursue.
However, when we think of Christ's death and resurrection, what does it mean beyond the sin-oriented connotations? That is, is the cross merely about forgiveness of sins and the defeat of the powers of evil, or it is possible to find even more basic threads of meaning?
For example, is there a primal meaning in Christ's death and resurrection for existence itself? Let me explain.
We live in a universe that, according to the best evidence, is at least 15 billion years old. This history of temporal existence is marked by cycles of life and death, decay and new birth. Stars grow, age and then spectacularly supernova, spewing in their deaths the seeds of "life" that will become the incubators for yet-to-form stars. Animal life is similar: we grow, age and reproduce, the energies of our lives being passed on (whether More >
IE8 Beta and Kicking Microsoft to the Curb
Mar 19th
Ok, so for those who know me, I've never exactly been the biggest fan of ANYTHING that Microsoft has forced upon the genearl computing public. IMO, Word is about the best thing that they've done, and even that is pretty lame.
Obviously, I have complained more than once about how Microsoft does (or maybe I should say "doesn't do) the web. However, because of the fact that the majority of people still use this inferior browser, I've tolerated it.
Well, this last week, the beta of IE8 came out .
(Warning: To install IE8 you will have to install it over the top of IE7–you can't run them side-by-side. However, IE8 does allow for the emulation of IE7, which is a reasonable compromise)
Over the last couple of weeks, I've done a fair bit of reading about IE8, and even blogged about it . So it was with some anticipation that I signed up for the beta. On the whole, the improvements are positive. The interface itself looks a bit better (less off-color-ish than IE7 and IE6) and cleaner. There are a bunch of add-ons (called "Actions") that can be downloaded, and for what is the first time (I think), developers can actually begin More >
