existdissolve.com
the singularity of being and nothingness
Fun with CSS3: RGBA
Jun 20th
If you’re a web designer, there are times (I’m sure) when you’ve wanted to have a transparent background for something. After all, Web 2.0 is all about transparency and rounded corners, right? 😉
In CSS2, there were generally two ways to go about this. The easiest was to use the “opacity” property. Sure, it didn’t validate, and you had to use an alternate syntax for IE7, but still…super easy.
.opacity {opacity:.7;}
The major downside (besides lack of support) of this approach is that the opacity is applied to the entire element. So, if you have a div with a bunch of text in it, any opacity setting applied to it will rollup to whatever content is contained within the element to which the opacity is applied. Especially with text, this can make for some washed-out-looking content:
In this example, the heading has a simple color of “white”, yet it looks very washed out. This is simply because it inherits the opacity of its parent element.
So if the opacity of the content is important, the next best option is to use a .png as a background image. With this approach, we get all the benefits of background-opacity, while still preserving the natural opacity of any More >
New Reading
Jun 18th
Just got this in the mail…quite excited to dive in!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html?a=0061230928
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Ext JS is Now Sencha
Jun 16th
This caught me a little by surprise. A few days ago, Ext JS–a pretty awesome JavaScript framework–announced that it is joining forces with jQTouch and Raphaël to form a new company named Sencha. Branding, domain–everything is changing.
Personally, I really like this move. To me, it shows that Ext JS is interested in expanding in very important directions–vector graphic JS manipulation and mobile content–by teaming up with jQTouch and Raphaël. I’ve used Raphaël in the past for some pretty cool and simple effects, but have yet to really play around much with jQTouch (although it looks pretty sweet). Anyway, I am definitely looking forward to what’s ahead for this already great framework..the future looks very bright 🙂
Interested in learning more? Check out Sencha’s official blog post about the merger.
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The Final Touchdown
Jun 15th
In case you didn’t hear, the iconic “Touchdown Jesus” (or “Big Butter Jesus”) that guarded the I-75 passage from Cincinnati to Dayton, OH, is but a skeleton of its former self. In what is the stuff of blogger’s dreams, the 62-foot statue in front of Solid Rock Church in Monroe, OH, burned to ground Monday night after–ironically enough–being struck by lightning.
I was fortunate enough to be able to see Touchdown Jesus 6 days before this transpired. It will be missed (probably not…).
Before: After: Share this:
Reformed Armour
Jun 13th
Ok, I ran across this humorous picture the other day, and just couldn’t resist spoofing it to my own ends.
Enjoy!
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Jun 12th
Over the past weeks, I’ve listened with great interest to people’s opinions about the BP debacle in the Gulf of Mexico. With little deviation, most reactions have been a combination of disgust, anger, and finger pointing. While I certainly understand such feelings, let me offer another perspective. Warning: it probably will not be popular…
To start off, let me make this clear. BP (and other contractors involved) is certainly responsible for great negligence and sheer incompetence. They should be held responsible for their role in this disaster, and I personally hope that they are made to help for years to come in cleanup and restoration efforts.
However, before we begin erecting soapboxes against oil companies, let’s not forget our own culpability. Sure, BP was negligent–perhaps criminally so. But what caused this? Greed? Sure. Oil companies are out to make money, and they–like everyone else–want to make as much of it as they can. But what drives their profits? Do they make money simply from the pure act of extracting crude from beneath the earth? No. They make money by fulfilling a need for petroleum. And currently in the West (and now the developing world), that need is thoroughly insatiable.
In the West, we More >
Migrating a Custom Blog (or blogs…) to WordPress
Jun 11th
When I first got into web development, one of my first projects was to create a custom blog for myself. Apart from the sheer necessity of needing a blog at the time, I embarked on this coding journey because I had read somewhere that developing a blog would provide a good introduction to the nitty-gritty of application design.
While this wasn’t 100% accurate, it also was not terrifically far from the truth. Through many struggles and achievements, I finally wound up with my own custom blog, complete with commenting system, RSS delivery, and eventually automatic posting to Twitter.
This modest blog served me pretty well for a few months, but I quickly outgrew it. I found myself pouring precious hours into little development projects to try to get it to do cool stuff that I came across in other, more robust systems.
Eventually, however, I ran out of time and motivation. First, the continual development stopped. Then, out of total laziness, important things like bug fixes and comment-security fell to the wayside. While I still loved to blog, the sheer effort of posting (my interface was a bit clunky…) was a big hindrance, so the posts became quite sparse.
Then I got my iPhone. More >
Books in Strange Places
Jun 9th
I’ve often wanted to blog about finding interesting books in places other than used book stores, estate sales, and the like. For example, what books do furniture stores use for decoration? What volumes line the shelves of a hotel breakfast nook?
Well, I finally found my chance. Armed with my iPhone, I took some quick snapshots of some of the more interesting titles that I came across at the Homewood Suites in downtown Baltimore. Enjoy!
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Monty Hall Problem…in ColdFusion
Jun 6th
If you saw my post about the Monty Hall Problem, you know that calculating the probabilities in this puzzle, while not terrifically complicated, are nonetheless a bit frustrating to our feelings of common sense. Therefore, I decided to whip up a quick script that would simulate the Monty Hall problem in code.
It turns out that this has been done many times before, and if you head on over to rosettacode.org, you can find scripts for nearly every language you could imagine…except ColdFusion.
Thinking this to be an incredible travesty, I have produced a CF version of the problem, and have posted it over at rosettacode.org.
If you’re too lazy to click a link, however, here is the script in its entirety:
<cfscript>
function runmontyhall(num_tests) {
// number of wins when player switches after original selection
switch_wins = 0;
// number of wins when players "sticks" with original selection
stick_wins = 0;
// run all the tests
for(i=1;i<=num_tests;i++) {
// unconditioned potential for selection of each door
doors = [0,0,0];
// winning door is randomly assigned...
winner = randrange(1,3);
// ...and actualized in the array of real doors
doors[winner] = 1;
// player chooses one of three doors
choice = randrange(1,3);
do {
// More > 
