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ColdFusion Wrapper for Aviary Effects API
May 11th
Sometime last week, Aviary (the super-sweet collection of online image editing tools) launched their new developer site, along with a new Effects API. When I see “API,” I think “ColdFusion wrapper,” so that’s exactly what I did 🙂
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A Broken Ethic of Love
May 3rd
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; but rejoice when they get a bullet to the head — Jesus, Matthew 5:44
I’m late to the party. Bin Laden is dead, and everyone and their mother has blogged their brains out about it. Alas, it cannot be helped…
I’m at a loss for words because I’m genuinely filled with sadness about this day. I’m saddened because I’ve seen Christians–many of them unwittingly–rejoice and exult in the death of Bin Laden. I sincerely don’t mean this in a judgmental way–I have enough flaws of my own to not waste my hypocritical breath on others. But I’m saddened because my tongue-in-cheek revision of Jesus’ directive to love seems to have actualized itself in far too many ways.
I’m saddened because barely one week after Easter, we’ve forgotten the profundity of forgiveness and the depths of divine love (did we realize it to begin with?) that was displayed unconditionally to an infinitely twisted, broken, hostile, rebellious, and murderous race.
I’m saddened because on Divine Mercy Sunday, where all are invited partake of the Eucharist and find salvation, hearts are yet closed and actually rejoice in the destruction and presumed damnation of a human person…even if he was an More >
IE9 Support for Gloss
Apr 24th
Today I released a major revision to Gloss…it now supports IE9!
One of the reasons I hadn’t provided support for IE9 was because of a bug in ExtJS’s TreePanel, which would not correctly attach events to tree nodes. However, I found a nice workaround (read hack) that resolved the issue, so now I’m pleased to release this app for IE9 users.
One of the things I am pleasantly surprised about is how darn well Gloss operates in IE9. The animations are smooth, the page loading is super-quick, and it’s just all-around a very slick experience.
So if you’ve wanted to use Gloss, but were impeded because of the lack of IE support, now’s your chance to turn over a new leaf 🙂
Share this:TECHNICAL NOTE: Because of the necessity of localStorage for Gloss, running Gloss in IE9 will only work correctly if you are running in IE9 Standards Mode.
Sencha Touch Theming: 1.1.0
Apr 23rd
In my last article, I showed how to get setup and started with creating custom stylesheets. After a significant release (1.1.0) and several reader requests, I’m updating the walkthrough with screenshots and instructions for v1.1.0. This version will be strictly business: for discussion about the more interesting points of what’s going on, refer back to the original post 🙂
Step 1: Install RubyTo get SASS setup, you’ll first need to install Ruby and Ruby Gems (SASS is bundled with something called “Compass”, and Compass is a “Gem” that can be added into Ruby). You can go the painful route and install Ruby and then add Gems into it. However, if you’re stupid about these things, you can do what I did and just grab the Ruby 1.92 installer–it comes pre-built with Gems already configured.
Get the Ruby 1.92 Installer When prompted, choose “”Add Ruby executables to you PATH”I installed to the default directory on Windows (C:\Ruby192\)
Step 2: Setup CompassNow that Ruby is installed, the next step is to get Compass (e.g., SASS) setup. This step actually took me the longest, simply because I’m stupid about command-line stuff. So here’s a play-by-play of what to do (this is for Windows…I assume Mac More >
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.
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