Now Direction

State of Salads

benxamin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:34:18 +0000

I had the best tasting lettuce salad that I have ever had last night.
It was at Epic casual dining and the salad was the Mr. Martinez’s. Here’s how it’s listed on their menu:

Mr. Martinez
Baby Mixed Greens, Poblano Chile & White Balsamic Vinaigrette, Pepitas, Manchego Cheese & Fresh Mango

It follows the template of a what’s considered a good veggie salad these days:

Pile of diverse lettuce and herbs: Baby Field Greens (could have been chopped or chiffonade)
Tossed in vinaigrette: Poblano Chile with White Balsamic (so damned good!)
Topped with something slimy batonnet: Mango (it could be roasted squash, peppers, ham, etc.)
Generous roasted nuts: Small Pepitos
Acid fruit: Halved Grape Tomatoes
Pungent Cheese: Manchego

Follow this formulation, and you cannot have a bad salad.

A very warm Thank You

benxamin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:02:15 +0000

Hi everyone,

I’m finally getting my feet underneath me after a whirlwind, well, four months or so, but I wanted to make sure to thank you all for your gargantuan efforts on this project, not just in the end, but throughout these past several months. Our timeline was ridiculous even by our standards; but, somehow, you guys managed to pull it out.

I don’t want to overlook anyone, so I’m not even going to begin to try to thank everyone individually : but I want you all to know that there was no way we could have done it without you, and I am very thankful for how everyone pulled together and knocked everything out. We’ve heard nothing but positive reviews in the last two days; I even directly asked our CEO what he liked about the site yesterday, and he informed me that he liked that it finally clarifies what he’s been trying to emphasize the whole time he’s been here: what our company is, who our audience is, and where people can go to get investor information.

Basically.. you guys rock. Thank you for all of your hard work. Please take some much needed and much deserved time off. I’m sure we will have lots and lots of work in the weeks and months ahead..but for now, cheers to you all. Great, great work.

Thank you,

Hans

JavaScript Is Old Enough to Drive

benxamin — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:01:26 +0000

On December 4, 1995 the browser language, “JavaScript” as we call it today, was officially released. Whether you count the September launch earlier that year under a different guise, it is now at least old enough to drive.

p0wnd!

benxamin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:32:47 +0000

Damned artists.
Not only was my style stolen, they did it way better. Don’t worry, I’ve got another redesign coming…

Also, Ben Eien’s business cards & letterhead.

CSS3 Word-Wrap

benxamin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:26:26 +0000

As noted over at Impressive Webs, this is a great property that has cross-browser support. You should be using this for all content areas in your CMS.

.content-area { word-wrap: break-word; }

Calendar Programming

benxamin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:43:38 +0000

To help ease the pain of programming dates, here’s an old chart I dug up.

Days in Month		DOY		Leap Year
Days in Month	Month	Begin	End	Begin	End
31	Jan	1	31	1	31
28	Feb	32	59	32	60
31	Mar	60	90	60	91
30	Apr	91	120	92	121
31	May	121	151	122	152
30	Jun	152	181	153	182
31	Jul	182	212	183	213
31	Aug	213	243	214	244
30	Sep	244	273	245	274
31	Oct	274	304	275	305
30	Nov	305	334	306	335
31	Dec	335	365	336	366

Spotify Invites…

benxamin — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:02:37 +0000

Here’s the deal. I pay $5 a month to listen to music ad-free via Spotify. I was allowed a paltry two (2) invites for my friends and fellow music lovers to try the service in advance of the waiting list. Of course I used them!

Imagine my confusion when I find a Spotify invite in my inbox from one of the aforementioned friends. I was underwhelmed and slightly offended.

Is he just being courteous? Forgetful? Or are our circles reached Spotify-saturation? Are the invites no longer rare? If they are still hard to come by, then why waste one on someone who already has it? Was this a matter of address book spamming? Regardless, why would Spotfiy waste their exclusive invites on an already paying account? Something’s not quite right here.

Dear Spotify Invite Admin,

I’m already ON Spotify. Why would you let my friend waste an invite?

At my company, we run computers. They’re good for things like automation. You should try it on your email invite system.

Something like:
if ( submitted_email is already associated with a spotify_account)
then ( stop. Don’t spam our existing users. )
and ( generate UI feedback to submitter: “That email is already signed-up for our service! Would you like us to socialize your account with them?” )

Thanks for your time and consideration,
Ben

Killing mysql process on Mac OS X

benxamin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:53:15 +0000

Mac OS X comes installed with a version of MySQL, so this needs to be turned off before XAMPP’s version of MySQL can run.
Here’s the most effective way to do this.
1. Open the Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor). Open the Activity Monitor Window (⌘ + 1). At the top right type “mysql” in the searchbox.
** You might be tempted to quit the process by pressing the red stop-sign icon at the top left. It’s futile; the process will be re-spawned by launchd.
2. Find the Process ID (PID) of the mysql program that is running.
3. Open Terminal and type:

sudo kill -15 [process id]

You should see it go away from the Activity Monitor.

Visualizing CSS Shorthand

benxamin — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 19:30:53 +0000

CSS box model shorthand is easy. There’s two things to remember:

They are applied clockwise, starting at the top.
Opposites pairs reduce.

Go clockwise, and opposite pairs cancel.

iPhone Localhost Testing

benxamin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:01:11 +0000

1. Ensure that both your Mac and your iPhone* are using the same wireless network.

2. On the Mac, open System Preferences. Under the “Internet &amp Wireless section click the “Network” settings icon.

3. Look at the AirPort Status. You should see “Connected” and a short message:
AirPort is connected to (wireless-network-name) and has the IP address 123.123.123.123
, where the 123′s are your local IP.

4. Open a browser on your iPhone. Enter the IP address, plus port 80 into the URL location bar.