Too Epic

Tumblr Dashboard Notifier Safari Extension

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:18:00 -0400

Tumblr Dashboard Notifier Safari Extension:

This is my first attempt at a Safari Extension. It uses the new Dashboard API to poll for unread posts in the background while you browse the web.

The source code is on github.

Compatriot Theme v.4

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:24:00 -0400

Compatriot Theme v.4:

The latest version of Compatriot has been pushed to the Theme Garden. I’m finally eating my own dog food with this release. What you see on this blog is identical to what you’ll get upon installing the theme. I’ve got some font-embedding action going on this time around. The header is set in League Gothic and the body text is in Gentium.

Tell me if you’d like any functionality added. I still have a few ideas in the works, but I figured I’d at least make this update available in the mean time.

Apparently someone at Tumblr HQ thinks the theme is an aberration, which is fine by me. I’ll make a pretty one someday, I promise.

Hi,
I use your Compatriot theme for my blog. I have a problem with it showing all the notes when i click "show trivial". It just goes back and forth. It also happens on an Is there a way to fix it?

Ashabi.

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:57:00 -0400

I’m actually in the process of revising the Compatriot theme. In the next version, there will be no “show trivial” button. Likes and reblogs will be placed in separate columns and always visible. Hopefully I’ll have it done by Sunday.

While I’m working on that, you can fix the problem by going to customize->theme and clicking the “Use custom HTML” button. Then scroll down to the bottom of all the ugly code to here:

And replace the part that says http://static.tumblr.com/3jc4ci5/w2Yktl7ph/cofunctions.js with http://static.tumblr.com/3jc4ci5/xi7l0occs/cofunctions.js.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

The Wall Street Journal cripples its Print Page feature

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:42:00 -0500

And digs itself deeper into irrelevance.

Traditional publishers have resorted to perverting their online content with needless pagination and obnoxious advertisements.

So what does poor Jimmy Reader do when he has to print a physical copy of the article for whatever reason? Click the nice “Print Version” button, of course.

Oh, what’s that, Mr. Publisher? You can’t get ad revenue from a print page? Some readers are resorting to clicking “Print Preview” and then pressing their convenient little Read Later bookmarklet because they’re fed up with your shenanigans?

Ah, so rather than offer readers real incentives to pay for content or employing less obtrusive advertising techniques, you make your Print Previews completely worthless.

And if you think that’s funny, try requesting a WebReprint. The Wall Street Journal now charges $475 to link to one of its articles. For a month. And then the URL expires.

Tumblr Staff: Dashboard API: Part 1

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:21:12 -0500

Tumblr Staff: Dashboard API: Part 1:

Get it while it’s hot!

Dashboard posts are now accessible from the Tumblr API, and there’s a shit-ton more coming to the API over the next few ~~weeks~~ days.

While I’m sure you guys will concoct plenty of things we haven’t even begun to imagine, the things we’re super-excited to see are any …

This calls for celebration.

Video Camera Glasses

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:37:33 -0500

Video Camera Glasses:

I’m so psyched that this is now a financially viable consumer good. I would love to show people what a day of school is like.

I am just now discovering that Sister Suvi is dead. I wish I...

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:17:00 -0500

I am just now discovering that Sister Suvi is dead. I wish I could have seen them live.

One day, someone will write a book about all the bands that did not quite make it. They will travel the world, from Rio to Austin to Irkutsk, and ask the people: “What was your greatest band that never was?” The author will collect stories, testimonies, oral histories of the indie-rockers, folk-singers and go-go crews that exploded listeners’ hearts right open—and then called it quits. The tale of all the groups that only live on in legend.

Sing a song for Sister Suvi at McSweeney’s

Of all the bands I’ve listened to in my short human tenure, Sister Suvi is the best that never was. Their one and only album, Now I Am Champion, is still available for purchase here.

Tesla Motors Goes Public

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:52:46 -0500

Tesla Motors Goes Public:

So this is exciting:

The IPO filing on Friday from the six-year-old start-up, best known for its $109,000 all-electric Roadster, marks the first public offering from a U.S. automaker since Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Co made its share debut in 1956.

Last time I checked, coffee did not look like that.

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:09:44 -0500

Last time I checked, coffee did not look like that.

Too Epic is Reborn

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:41:00 -0500

Too Epic is Reborn:

The former iteration of my home page was underwhelming at best. It made abysmal use of Google App Engine’s offerings to the point that my GAE account had been reduced to a free, low-latency static file server (which is by no means a bad thing).

But alas, my bank account balance is running low: I figured I should have a nice place to refer potential freelance clients to. So I took a few days out of my winter break to come up with a new design and get to work creating it. Going into the project, I had a few explicit goals:

It had to be purple.
It would serve as a lightweight portfolio with screenshots of past work.
The underlying content would come from tumblr (that link is not much of a sight to behold for the time being).

Initially, I tried just implementing the site as a tumblr template and loading the rest of the content (twitter, flickr, last.fm, AIM) through JavaScript with some simple $.getJSON calls. After a few days of private use, I decided this method was too unreliable:

Twitter’s JSON API failed to return the data I asked for about 30% of the time.
Users with JavaScript disabled would wind up not seeing half the site.
Tumblr occasionally goes down a few minutes for maintenance, and I’d rather have as much uptime as possible.

So, with these observations in mind, I returned to my former mistress, App Engine, who welcomed me with outstretched arms. I am by no means a proficient Python programmer, but I was able to hack together a passable backend that stores incoming data at regular intervals.

The end result is something that hopefully looks decent and renders reliably. I’m using a ton of experimental CSS, some of which is webkit exclusive for the time being: custom scrollbars and -webkit-transitions come to mind. The redesign should, however, look half decent in most modern browsers. I have not even tried visiting in IE; I’m guessing it won’t be too colorful, seeing as most of the colors are in rgba.

I’m prone to borrow and experiment with ideas unapologetically, but I must give credit where credit is due:

All the pretty icons come from Glyphish.
Much inspiration and background-texture theft from Meagan Fisher’s post on 24 ways.
The heading typeface, League Gothic comes from the League of Movable Type, purveyor of prime open source fonts.
@font-face embedding was vastly simplified by Font Squirrel.
jQuery will forever hold a special place in my heart.
Tumblr might be somewhat to blame for my obsession with faux picture frames.
The ever helpful Hao Lian ensured that I didn’t make any fatal Python blunders.

I’m sure I’ve overlooked a few, but so it goes. Now, if you’ll humor me, here’s something I’m proud of that I haven’t really seen elsewhere. Despite having a Python-powered backend rendering the initial page, I’ve got my script checking for new content every 30 seconds, so if I happen to be listening to a song or posting a tweet or getting onto AIM when you visit, the page will dynamically update in (almost) real time. Feel free to poke around and critique the source code.

I have a few novel ideas for making good use of the tumblr-powered content. Stick around long enough and I might even get around to realizing them. In the meantime, please send comments, questions, amorous solicitations, and potential freelance website work my way via email.

Scrollbars, as it turns out, are a bit complicated. I thought...

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:38:26 -0500

Scrollbars, as it turns out, are a bit complicated. I thought this diagram might help.

Visit webkit.org for an extensive list of relevant pseudo elements and classes.

Emergent Trend: Custom Scrollbars

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:54:00 -0500

The recent redesigns of maxvoltar.com and ~~orderedlist.com~~ both feature a design subtlety that I haven’t formerly seen in the wild (omitting webkit.org):

Minute as they may seem, the custom scrollbars are a nice touch, offering the designer that much more control over the viewing experience (provided you’re using Chrome or Safari, of course). I’m guessing we’ll start seeing many more sites donning custom scrollbars as we move into 2010.

If you’re interested in how the effect is achieved, here are the relevant bits of CSS for hiding the default scrollbar (extracted from Maxvoltar’s stylesheet):

// the @media stuff is for viewers on mobile devices
 
html {
    overflow: hidden;
}
 
@media only screen and (max-device-width:480px) {
    html {
        overflow: auto;
    }
}
 
body {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    right: 10px; // could be a different value
    overflow-y: scroll;
    overflow-x: hidden;
}
 
@media only screen and (max-device-width:480px) {
    body {
        position: relative;
        top: auto;
        right: auto;
        bottom: auto;
        left: auto;
        overflow: auto;
    }
}

Beyond that, it’s just a matter of styling the scrollbars to your liking. Check out Ordered List’s style sheet as a starting point.

For whatever reason, in-page scrollbars don’t play nice with some of Safari’s keyboard shortcuts (command up/down, spacebar), but page up/down still function as expected.

I guess I’ll start counting down the days before this becomes as commonplace and abused as rounded corners. The irony of it all is that Internet Explorer was actually the first to implement scrollbar styling. We’re ten years late to the party.

Update: Looks like Ordered List has removed their custom scrollbar for the time being. I think it might be my fault.

Version 3 of the Compatriot theme is now available with infinite...

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:54:52 -0500

Version 3 of the Compatriot theme is now available with infinite scrolling, keyboard navigation, and music posts with album artwork. Enjoy.

Showtime, the iPhone web app

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:15:00 -0500

Showtime, the iPhone web app:

mrgan:

Nial Giacomelli has done a bang-up job with Showtime, his web app for keeping track of your favorite TV shows. It’s not fabulous “for a web app”, it’s fabulous period.

John Gruber has two fair and true complaints about it:

Scrolling (it’s slow even at maximum speed.)

The ON/OFF toggle switch has to be tapped (instead of the deeply satisfying native ability to slide it as well.)

As someone who’s into iPhone web apps, I’m going to side with Nial and focus on the positive.

The latter problem, the toggle, is fully solvable. There’s no technical reason this can’t be done with Javascript; it’s just not a ton of fun recreating native behaviors (who am I kidding - yes it is, sometimes!) If Nial doesn’t fix this soon, I’ll take a crack at it. But here’s the punchline: when it’s fixed, it’ll be fixed on everyone’s copy of Showtime the next time they launch it. How much would SDK developers give up to gain that ability?

The former problem - scrolling - may be trickier, or even unsolvable (or not!) It’s a bummer. But, I can live with it. I know Nial’s developing this with a pocket knife and a can of plumber’s putty, so I’m granting him a generous handicap.

iPhone-style checkboxes with touch events are entirely feasible. There’s even a jQuery plugin available to do just this. I’ve never used it in a project myself, but their demo page works as expected on my phone, dragging and all.

Oh, and Showtime’s not so bad either.

If you use Espresso and don't have TEA installed...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:26:58 -0500

If you use Espresso and don't have TEA installed...:

You, sir, are at a loss. The inclusion of Zen Coding alone makes authoring markup a joy.

There’s also a Coda version if that suits your fancy.

This is a fantastic album. I grabbed it on CD last summer while...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:23:42 -0500

This is a fantastic album. I grabbed it on CD last summer while in Boone. Each track is worth many listens.

Google, subtly using Sesame Street to sell the Motorola Droid to...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:12:00 -0500

Google, subtly using Sesame Street to sell the Motorola Droid to infants. And just when I thought vending candy cigarettes to toddlers was rock-bottom, Dr. Donoevil carves out a new crevasse of lowliness to aspire to.

mrgan: Japanese iPhone commercial. In which a dog plays piano....

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:56:21 -0500

mrgan:

Japanese iPhone commercial. In which a dog plays piano. (via rands)

What a whimsical country.

staff: Tumblr iPhone 1.1 Sneak Peek! It’s been submitted to the...

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:22:00 -0400

staff:

Tumblr iPhone 1.1 Sneak Peek!

It’s been submitted to the App Store and should be live this week! Here’s a preview from its wonderful developer, Jeff Rock:

Video posts. Choose from your camera roll or capture a new video right from the app (iPhone 3GS only).

Native editing. Need to add tags or update a post on the go? Just tap the ‘edit’ button on a post in the Dashboard to load it up in a native post editor.

Search. Supports searching across Tumblr, in your Dashboard or on just your posts.

Built-in web browser. No more losing your place when you tap a link in Dashboard. Now a web browser will pop up and let you investigate the interwebs.

Post upload status. Never wonder how long it’s going to take that Audio post to upload again.

Post geotagging. Even I’m not sure what this is for, but I’m sure that it’s going to be awesome.

Rewritten Dashboard tab (replaces the Sites tab). See all your posts from each of your blogs, including drafts and queues.

Rewritten Advanced Post Options. New support for Save as draft, Add to Queue, Publish on, Custom post URL’s, Send to Twitter and Ask a question.

Dashboard now only reloads on command. Not every time you tap the tab. Sorry about that one :P

Better quality photo posts. Photos are now sent with less compression.

New bookmarklet format for links. More info coming once 1.1 goes live.

Note: The rest has been removed for brevity’s sake.

Whoa.

I’m excited. And the first thing I did upon reading this was start playing with URLs. Turns out the tumblr website components of the 1.1 release are already up and running. See:

I still can’t figure out, however, what the URL is for viewing just your posts.

Medicine Man off of Zero 7’s latest album, Yeah Ghost....

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:16:25 -0400

Medicine Man off of Zero 7’s latest album, Yeah Ghost. This album is much funky-fresher than their earlier stuff. It’s great.

Too Epic

Tumblr Dashboard Notifier Safari Extension

Compatriot Theme v.4

Hi, I use your Compatriot theme for my blog. I have a problem with it showing all the notes when i click "show trivial". It just goes back and forth. It also happens on an Is there a way to fix it? Ashabi.

The Wall Street Journal cripples its Print Page feature

Tumblr Staff: Dashboard API: Part 1

Video Camera Glasses

I am just now discovering that Sister Suvi is dead. I wish I...

Tesla Motors Goes Public

Last time I checked, coffee did not look like that.

Too Epic is Reborn

Scrollbars, as it turns out, are a bit complicated. I thought...

Emergent Trend: Custom Scrollbars

Version 3 of the Compatriot theme is now available with infinite...

Showtime, the iPhone web app

If you use Espresso and don't have TEA installed...

This is a fantastic album. I grabbed it on CD last summer while...

Google, subtly using Sesame Street to sell the Motorola Droid to...

mrgan: Japanese iPhone commercial. In which a dog plays piano....

staff: Tumblr iPhone 1.1 Sneak Peek! It’s been submitted to the...

Medicine Man off of Zero 7’s latest album, Yeah Ghost....

Hi,
I use your Compatriot theme for my blog. I have a problem with it showing all the notes when i click "show trivial". It just goes back and forth. It also happens on an Is there a way to fix it?

Ashabi.