the singularity of being and nothingness
existdissolve
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Posts by existdissolve
Album Review: Emery’s “We Do What We Want”
Apr 1st
In the extremely remote chance that an album review could be “objective” (which is hideously false), I will not feign such notions: I am a devoted Emery fan, so what follows is unadulterated fanboy subjectivity. Go read something else if that offends you.
We Do What We Want has been highly anticipated for some time now. First, it was released under Tooth and Nail Records‘ sister label, Sold State Records, which is *typically* known for releasing “harder” music. This, of course, led to much speculation that this album would be Emery’s “hardest” to date (it’s not). Second, Tooth and Nail/Solid State did a really nice job via social media of promoting the album. From releasing certain tracks in advance, to putting together nice pre-order packages, to inventing fun and interactive games for fans, the March 29th, 2011 release date was hard to miss.
And like other Emery releases, it was not one to miss. WDWWW is pretty much what you would expect from Emery-pounding, in-your-face songs that rarely let up, yet are consistently underpinned by really thoughtful lyrics. The classic interplay of alternating melody and screaming is brilliantly pulled off, and the album is diverse enough to not become redundant, while maintaining enough More >
Sencha Touch Theming: Building Our Custom Stylesheet with SASS
Mar 7th
Ok, let’s recap. So far, we’ve looked at some basic concepts related to how to approach modifying a Sencha Touch app theme, as well as walked through exactly how all the pieces fit together in the SASS magic. With all this behind us, it’s finally time to create a custom .scss file-let’s get started!
Setting Things UpIn the following example, we’ll be doing some minor riffs on the standard sencha-touch.css file. If you’re in the mood for a super-customized theme of your own, well, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. Instead of jumping headfirst into something like that, why not start with some small changes, and build from there?
First things first, we need to decide where we want our new .scss file to live. While we can put it in the /resources/sass/ folder where the other core ones are, for this example we’ll create a new folder at the same level…just to keep things straight. I’m going to call mine “custom” (pretty creative, eh?).
Now, in order for us to let Compass know where our .scss file lives, we need to create our own config.rb file (check out the last post for more info about this). I’ll create that file, and here’s More >
Sencha Touch Theming: The Lay of the Land
Mar 6th
If you followed the steps in the last post on setting up your development environment to leverage SASS, you should be all set to start rocking some seriously awesome custom themes for your Sencha Touch app. But before you dive in, you might take a few moments to take a deep breath and survey all that’s going on to build out the default Sencha Touch theme.
It’s not that you couldn’t immediately jump in and produce something awesome-you definitely could, and it would be pretty simple. I suggest browsing the default theme, however, because despite how easy it is to being customizing your own .scss file with new colors, icon masks, and whatever else strikes your fancy, actually understanding (if even in a very preliminary sort of way) what’s going on will help prevent future frustrations that may dampen your sudden excitement to start theming.
With that thought in mind, let’s take a few moments to peek around the default theme to see how the magic happens.
config.rbIn your Sencha Touch installation, browse to /resources/sass/. In this folder, you’ll see a file named config.rb. This file, written in Ruby, is one of those “setup it up and leave it alone” kind of files. More >
Sencha Touch Theming: Getting Started
Mar 5th
If you’ve worked with Sencha Touch for more than 5 minutes, you have GOT to appreciate the aesthetics which the framework brings out of the box. You literally have to do nothing at all in order to get a slick, polished looking interface that works in webkit browsers and on iPhone and Android devices.
However, if you’re like me, you probably get to the point with your apps where you want to customize the look and feel. I mean, while the Sencha Touch default palette is nice, it’s pretty generic, so before long you’ll need to start developing a custom theme for your app.
An Abortive StartInitially, this can be a challenge with Sencha Touch apps. The challenge stems not from the fact that anything magical is happening behind the scenes: it’s just JavaScript, CSS3, and HTML after all. Rather, it’s the way that it’s all packaged up.
If you take a look at one of the stylesheets, you’ll notice how crazy complicated they are. Let’s say you wanted to change the color of all the navigation backgrounds, for example. Well, you could use Chrome’s developer tools to inspect each and every interface, grab the selectors, and then try to overwrite them with a More >
God is Not at the End of the Universe
Mar 4th
God is not at the end of the universe. One could encapsulate within oneself the whole of knowledge that there is to be had about and within the universe, and one would still be no closer to verifying nor invalidating the existence of God.
Gods existence cannot be rationalized epistemologically — it is only through the super-rational assent of faith that the existence of God can be beheld. Anything else, in the words if Mr. Hume, would only be a curious “offspring of the brain“.
So from the perspective of human epistemology, agnostics (the real ones) are on the right track in this regard. Where they falter is, firstly, buying into the spurious notion that knowledge must occur along the lines of the materialist/objectivist paradigm in which most of the Western world is currently entrapped; and, secondly, concluding that this is sufficient reason to discontinue the quest.
My First Sencha Touch App
Feb 21st
As readers of this blog know, I’m a pretty big Sencha fan. I <3 ExtJS…seriously, I love pretty much everything about it, from how great the default UI is, to how ridiculously easy it is to build awesome applications in zero time. So when I heard a while back that Sencha was combining ExtJS, jQTouch, and Raphael to create a mobile framework (Sencha Touch), I knew it was something I’d have to try.
And try I did…well, really, it was more like dabbling. I had ideas that I wanted to test out, so over the last few months I’ve been experimenting in between life and other projects. But no matter how hard I tried or how good my ideas were, I couldn’t really find the motivation to bring anything to completion…or even to a real start. Until this weekend.
The CatalystYou see, my darling 5-year old daughter is valiantly learning to read. But like a lot of kids (I think), she has trouble staying motivated and gets frustrated easily when she’s not able to hit a home run with the new things that she tries.
As I’ve been working with her on reading, I have reflected on my own experiences. While I’ve always loved More >
Epic Music Import of 2011: Some Stats
Feb 8th
A few days ago, I posted some reflections on my efforts to import my CD collection into iTunes. Well, it’s finally done, and here are the final stats:
No. Songs: 4595 No. Albums: 592 No. Genres: 45 Library Size: 21.1 GB Biggest Genre: Religious Year Span: 1940-2011 Best Album: In Shallow Seas We Sail (Emery) Best Artist: Emery Best Decade: 2000′s Best Genre: Rock Most Used Word in Song Titles: “Love” Best Discovery: I have about every Toad album ever Most Disturbing: Clay Aiken Christmas albums *shudder*
Chrome Web Apps Upgrade
Feb 4th
Just a quick note-if you didn’t see, Google Chrome has revamped the display for your personal app dashboard. You can now re-order apps by drag-n-drop, rather than installing and uninstalling in the right order.
Check it out
CDs are a Hassle
Feb 1st
For about the last 9 years, my wife and I have been lugging around giant, fabric-bound cases of CDs. While most of the music we listen to nowadays is delivered via iTunes or MOG, we’ve held onto these portable discs of sound…and I’m not really sure why.
Sure, there are some gems that I’ve found-albums that I’ve all-but-forgotten about, but smile fondly when I am now reminded. But, it’s still mostly a pile of garbage…and it’s still something I can’t bring myself to throw away!
But finally this weekend, after going through the collection for about the 1 billionth time, I decided that I had had enough. I vowed, then and there, to ditch this pile of garbage for good…after I imported them into iTunes, of course
So I started importing the music, disc by disc, album by album. And here’s something I’ve noticed: when your entire CD collection is spread across several zippered carrying cases, it doesn’t seem that large. However, when you pile them all up next to each other-and have to wait on a less-than-speedy CD drive, you realize (very quickly) just how much of a chore awaits you.
Now here I am, nearly 60 discs into the over 350-disc More >
