green galoshes » found

Patterns for the Color Blind (and for Craftsmanship)

Justin D. Henry — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:09:44 +0000

This type of improvement isn’t limited to the “8% of the male population” that are colorblind – it creates a better user experience for almost every visitor to your site.

Accessibility (and Universal Design) is an integral part of Craftsmanship.

(Via Waxy.org.)

CakePHP to Rails

Justin D. Henry — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:33:14 +0000

In a blog comment, Nate Todd lays out an extensive description of why he switched from a PHP based framework (CakePHP) to Ruby on Rails. The points he makes reflect a lot of what I hear from people coming to rails, and some I’ve made myself – albeit not as eloquently as those you’ll find in Mr. Todd’s comment.

Why Blog

Justin D. Henry — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:44:57 +0000

Once in a while Dave Winer hits one out of the park – this is one of those times:

“ … the posts I’ve written here have served as a calling card, a way of keeping my name and ideas on people’s minds.
… And that’s the role of a blog, it’s a way of communicating what you’re doing. Companies, consultants and authors need to do a lot of communicating, and blogs allow you to go direct, and be more efficient, less diluted. People get a real feel for who you are and how you think and what you’re like as a person.”

As sensational as that title (and some of the content that follows) is, if you can see past the numbers the logic is all right there. This post could just as easily been titled, ‘Why I blog’.

Short and Stout

Justin D. Henry — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 06:31:02 +0000

The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol is a little over 10 and a half years old:

“The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP for short) is a protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots. … Although the RFC describing the protocol is an April Fools’ Day joke and not to be taken seriously, it specifies the protocol itself accurately enough for it to be a real, non-fictional protocol.”

Users of the spec should take note of return code 418, “I’m a teapot”:

“Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error code “418 I’m a teapot”. The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout.”

On tipping

Justin D. Henry — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:48:34 +0000

Corey Gilmore has a breakdown of how much it costs to run a cab, and a good reminder to tip your cab driver. And tip well. Apparently, even a decent tip leaves the driver paying for income they didn’t get:

…the government assumes about a 23% gratuity…

Ouch. These days I try and aim for 25% but I still think the standard is 20%, and there are a lot of people still putting down %15 out there.

If you can’t afford the gratuity, then you should seriously consider wether you can afford the service in the first place.

Closing the Canadian Studies Office at UVM?

Justin D. Henry — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:39:25 +0000

My friend and colleague Paul Martin writes about the imminent closure of the Canadian Studies office at the University of Vermont (disclosure: I am currently employed at UVM). Near the bottom of the post he offers suggestions on how you can help, as well as a link to a lengthy article on the situation at the Burlington Free Press.

found_drama’s interface critique of GoodReads

Justin D. Henry — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:23:30 +0000

Rob Friesel has a lengthy and thoughtful look at GoodReads, complete with wireframe sketches and in-depth interaction scenarios.

You know you’re doing something right when you have users that give you feedback like this. Here’s hoping they put his suggestions to good use.

Automatically fill forms with hCard mapper

Justin D. Henry — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:04:20 +0000

Omnia Computing’s hCardMapper is yet another example (tip of an iceberg, really) of the power of microformats. Think how quickly your users will be able to fill out your registration forms if when they have a public hCard.

I’d like to see a greasemonkey script that uses this so I can auto fill other people’s forms using one of my selected hCards.

(Via John Allsopp’s microformatique.)

Tags vs. Categories

Justin D. Henry — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:57:24 +0000

The distinction between tags and categories is an oft-requested point of clarification. The question has been asked at every blog workshop I’ve run, and yet for some reason I still find myself struggling to find the best way to explain it. Well no more. In the process of posting a killer new release of his blog publishing software, Daniel Jalkut lays it out for us:

One of the things that the blogging systems of the world haven’t been able to get their story straight about over the years is whether to support tags, categories, or both. What’s the difference? In a nutshell, think of categories as hierarchical categorization, and tags as more for indexing purposes. For example, the City of Lincoln and President Lincoln both deserve the tag ‘Lincoln,’ but one belongs in the category ‘Cities’ while the other belongs in ‘Presidents,’ while both belong in the category ‘America.’

Well put. By the way, if you have been waiting to take MarsEdit for a spin, now is a good time to check it out.

Seven Days is publishing their archives

Justin D. Henry — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:02:02 +0000

Local alt-weekly Seven Days is in the process of re-publishing their archives:

We’re starting with 2001, and working our way back. We’ll also be filling in the holes in 2002-2007. If you want to check our progress, click on the Search/Index page of our site, scroll to the bottom, and click to the last page of results. Those are the oldest stories, and they’re getting older all the time.

It certainly won’t approach the scale or depth of the material recently released by the New York Times, but I like to think this is representative of the direction papers are moving in. After all, they could have put it behind a pay wall. This is also a significant move on the part of a publication that is such a big part of the community and local culture. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of the Seven Days “vault”.