Author Archives: m
Vine, HTML5 Video, Animated GIFs, and the End of Civilization
So, Vine was rudely thrust into my consciousness today when a friend of mine posted a link to a site (buzzfeed.com, of course) to a link with several embedded Vine videos (of Ryan Gosling, of course). I had been trying … Continue reading
Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 12.04 with Rubyenv
I recently got involved in a project with an existing codebase in Ruby using Rails. My life isn’t hectic enough, so I decided, why not learn a new language and framework. I was familiar with the basics of Ruby from … Continue reading
Zynga stock shares hit all time low.
I doubt that my article pointing out the absurdity of Zynga’s engineering blog was enough to send their stock prices into a tailspin, but I’d like to think that it helped. I’ve long been predicting the death of Facebook. Either … Continue reading
Zynga’s Developer Blog
The title of this post is not a joke, but I do find it hilarious. Despite the fact that Zynga’s “games” are thinly disguised torture devices that usually barely function, they have a technology blog, Zynga Engineering. I guess they … Continue reading
Useful WordPress Plugin to use Google’s CDN
Use Google Libraries is an aptly named plugin for WordPress that uses Google’s CDN for Javascript libraries. Here’s a list of all supported libraries: Dojo jQuery jQuery UI MooTools Prototype script.aculo.us swfobject Hopefully you’re familiar with the benefits of CDNs. Even … Continue reading
Common PHP mistakes
In doing more WordPress work, I ran across more bad code in a theme. Bad code was a reoccurring theme in this theme. global $options; foreach ($options as $value) { if (get_settings( $value[’id’] ) === FALSE) { $$value[’id’] = $value[’std’]; … Continue reading
Bad WordPress code, or is that redundant?
I discovered two levels of bad/bizarre/baffling code while working on customizing ghostpool.com’s Delapidated theme for WordPress. The sidebar and slider were not working because they both use the is_home function to determine whether or not to display. The WordPress Codex … Continue reading
Recruiters, the pronunciation of Django, and karma
Hi there. It’s been a while, I know. I’m getting things together. I had a great experience working at Bankstreet College with a friend and former colleague Rory Solomon. But now I’m back on the bandwagon looking for work. Which leads … Continue reading
Easy MySQL backup shell script
I accidentally deleted my MySQL backup script. No backups is bad news. I was looking for replacements and found a bunch, but they are all overkill. And half of them don’t even zip your backups. The only two elements I … Continue reading
Solved: Cleanr WordPress Theme conflicts with Disqus comments
I’m a big fan of Disqus (especially since they use Django), but the comment form was not displaying correctly in another blog I was working on. Specifically it was being displayed in the wrong place on the individual post page. … Continue reading