ArtLung [Joe Crawford]

Web developer & user interface engineer
Tinkering with the web since 1996

email: joe@artlung.com · twitter: @artlung · (photo from instagram)
San Diego, California, USA

January, 2012: 62 posts.

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Happy New Year.

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Eno

Brian Eno (from film for Roxy Music’s Re/Make Re/Model)

This song is from 1972 and sounds new to me, perennially. Mostly because of Eno but the whole band together makes it work. I’ve written about this song before, in 1998’s Re-Make/Re-Model.

Snowy West Point

Corps of Cadets

Sometimes it snows at West Point. This photo was taken at a Football game in October, 2011.

The cadets go to the games and sit and cheer in weather like this.

That’s crazy and kind of awesome. But mostly crazy.

First Model in Decades.

First model I’ve made in decades. ツーフユリー FB.11

That’s a Hawker Sea Fury there, from a kit I got at a local Japanese store. Impulse buy. I bought the Testor’s glue and everything. Sadly, the glass for canopy got lost. I’ve been thinking I want to improvise a glass canopy.

I loved making models when I was between the ages of about 4 and 8. If I was good my Mom would buy me one at the grocery store down the street. I wonder if regular grocery stores have models anymore. I remember one destroyer class ship I got. No more than 6 inches long and so detailed. Lot of work. Awesome.

Model-making might be a pastime for children and old men. But forty-somethings? Well, it was over New Year’s.

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Pitch In!

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Like some sort of villa.

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RBS News: Special Bulletin

I was 13 years old when I saw Special Bulletin and it terrified me.

Previously, and also previously.

The disclaimer:

This program is a realistic depiction of fictional events. None of what you are seeing is actually happening.

Me and my nephew

From November. Quite a blessing.

Focus!!! Give Thanks

I asked Leah to take this one back in March. We’d moved out here. We had gone out to Ray at Night. That’s where it was taken. It’s a close up photo of the workbench of an artist. I think it’s at the very southeastern corner of Ray street. It’s a little directed-at-him-or-herself graffito to, “FOCUS!!!” AND “GIVE THANKS.”

That’s how artists get stuff done.

Affirmations are awesome.

Jeff Tweedy sings “I Gotta Feeling”

DRANK

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The Chicago Way

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U Heights

Happy Birthday Leah!

Happy Birthday Leah!!!

Funky Monk

Funky Monk, from Small Fry, a wonderful short that played before The Muppets, which Leah and I saw a while back.

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Soy

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Dryer vandalism

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Tart & Flavourful

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Happy January Birthdays!

Updated Open Graph Protocol Tools Plugin

I updated my Open Graph Protocol Tools plugin, on GitHub and on WordPress.org‘s SVN.

It’s been a long time since I updated the plugin, shamefully long time actually. But hopefully I’ve addressed all the existing issues and if any new ones come up I can knock them out quickly.

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FLORAL CRAFTS ART

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80% off Christmas

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Morning

Star Wars: Uncut

Star Wars Uncut: Director’s Cut.

Star Wars ’77. Chunked into 15 second segments. Segments claimed by filmmakers, amatuers, animators, goofballs, and then the segments are reassembled into Star Wars.

Certain people will find this beautiful, wonderful, incredible. I expect some people won’t be able to watch more than about 6 minutes.

I watched the whole thing.

Probably more fun to watch with an audience. Also better to watch on a couch, probably.

Reminder: I loved Star Wars

QOTD: Tom Bickle

Quote of the day, from Tom Bickle:

Now that I’m 40, my days flip by like the pages of a book left open in a storm. It’s Monday. It’s Friday. It’s Monday again

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Flor

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METAL

Duck Man!

Duck Man! from Basquiat

I’ll tumble 4 ya.

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Footprint compare & contrast

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With @leahpeah at the beach

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Leah, priming.

joecrawford.com, 2012. With Bootstrap.

Yesterday I modified my site joecrawford.com.

I purchased the domain in 1999 thinking that it would be important to have a more “professional” domain than “artlung.” I go back and forth about the utility of that.

Back in 2011 sometime, I decided to remove most of the ways to contact me, and remove the self promotional aspects, and left a cryptic, and to my eye now ugly SVG file. It looked like this:

Before that, it looked like this, not really much better:

When I first bought the domain in 1999, I was attempting, poorly, for a k10k look. This didn’t last long.

Enough with the history lesson. When my Mom died I think I didn’t have a lot of stomach for self-promotion or trying to reach out to people. I was a mess. Still am, a bit, in some ways.

But I’m enjoying the craft of web development these days. I like to make websites. I like changing them. I like using the new and excellent tools we now have available. Twitter Bootstrap–I just call it Bootstrap–is an incredible tool that does a great deal with a very small filesize footprint. It does a rational CSS reset, provides a set of “magic classnames” that you can use to get a very quick and smart layout. I really like it so far. So here’s what joecrawford.com looks like now:

It’s very plain, and does not vary from the default Bootstrap colors. But it plants a flag about what I am doing and what I’m about. I’m not sure it does everything I want. I’m not sure about everything I need it to do. It doesn’t mention my current employer or link to my resume. But it mentions the networks I’m part of and how you might try to reach me.

So why don’t I colophon you a bit? I’m using HTML5, fairly plain CSS, Google Web Fonts (that one’s Michroma, which looks like the old Microgramma). I’m using the default .container class so it’s 960 pixels wide and centered. I’m also using Magpie RSS under the hood to pull in my last 20 public flickr photos (which also pulls in my Instagram photos) flickr’s API. That means it should update regularly as I do more photos with Instagram. That uses the .media-grid of Bootstrap. What else? I think that’s it.

Thanks for reading, all ten of you.

Still Life from Dayjob

Chumby Software Updates

The Chumby (Chumby Classic, Pearl Edition) is not really for work, but it should provide some entertainment for my co-workers. Which you may recall (unlikely, really) I won back in June 2008 at the L.A. Flash Users Group.

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Chumby Software Updates

Suzy Wong (lyrics by Stew)

William Holden is a soldier
and Nixon will not send him home
with every card game he gets older
so when on leave he needs to roam
don’t judge him by his desires
the puppet wires
are strong
oh

William Holden is a BART rider
bound for Hong Kong or Seoul
William Holden holds a token
and asks
“Does this plane flow to tokyo?”
in his nightmare she’s a vampire,
and an empire,
and a song oh
but when he wakes up
there ain’t no Suzy Wong
no
there ain’t no Suzy Wong

William Holden is a brush fire
and only ghosts will walk him home
and in his horror movie quagmire
the truth got stripped right to the bone
he never was much of a listener
he needs a prisoner
to go with his war
oh
so come along
on the search for Suzy Wong
there ain’t no Suzy Wong
no

Hans moved back to live in Hamburg
he bought a wife,
didn’t you know?
she does the unthinkable absurd
she nails him to a pedestal
in his nightmare free of feeling
he is kneeling
at her throne
and she holds a cold revolver,
a problem solver,
her chaperone
and you and know this is not right
but after midnight
your halo’s gone
one suitcase into the street hurled
and half of his world
is still Viet Cong
oh, don’t you sing along

there ain’t no Suzy Wong
no
there ain’t no Suzy Wong
no
there ain’t no Suzy Wong

from the new Making It. Buy it on Amazon MP3 or iTunes

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Green, green, green.

Wireframing: Hello Lonesome

One thing I’ve really come to enjoy is the process of wireframing. Wireframing is low-fi design for a digital product. I do it for websites and apps. It’s a lot of fun. The tool I generally use is Balsamiq Mockups, which runs on Mac or Windows.

I’m doing some housekeeping, so here’s a wireframe from the Hello Lonesome website, from back in 2010.

It was a great way to come to quick agreement on what was actually to be built. In this case we built a WordPress theme to support this design and allow the Director/Writer/Producer of Hello Lonesome, Adam Reid, to manage the site himself. He also wanted to make sure the trailer was front and center, and that opening other content pages didn’t interfere with the trailer. That’s pretty much how it ended up, with a few minor exceptions in the case of much heavier pages.

ArtLung Rosetta: comparative anatomy for JavaScript Libraries

Back in 2010 I mentioned presenting on ArtLung Rosetta. Well, the thing I wanted to do back then, I have finally done, and that’s add AJAX examples for all the libraries.

So, for example, here’s loading a chunk of HTML into a certain div from a link click in the different libraries:

dojo

	dojo.connect(dojo.byId('ajaxloadHtml'), 'onclick', function(e){
		dojo.xhrGet({
			url : "ajax/chunk.html",
			handleAs : "text",
			load : function(response, ioArgs) {
				dojo.byId('ajaxOutput').innerHTML = response;
				return;
			}
		});
		dojo.stopEvent(e);
	});

Ext Core

	Ext.get('ajaxloadHtml').on('click', function(e, target){
		var url = 'ajax/chunk.html';
		Ext.Ajax.request({
			url : url, 
			method: 'GET',
			success: function ( result, request ) { 
				Ext.get('ajaxOutput').dom.innerHTML = result.responseText; 
			}
		});

	}, null, {preventDefault:true});

Glow

	glow.events.addListener('#ajaxloadHtml', 'click', function(){

		var url = 'ajax/chunk.html';
		var opts = {
			onLoad: function(data){
				glow.dom.get('#ajaxOutput').html(data.text());
			}			
		};
		glow.net.get(url, opts);
		return false;
	});

jQuery

	$('#ajaxloadHtml').bind('click', function(){
		$.get('ajax/chunk.html',null, function(data){
			$('#ajaxOutput').html(data);
		});
		return false;
	});

MooTools

	$('ajaxloadHtml').addEvent('click', function(e){
		var url = 'ajax/chunk.html';
		$('ajaxOutput').load(url);
		e.stop();
	});

Prototype

	$('ajaxloadHtml').observe('click', function(evt){
		var url = 'ajax/chunk.html';
		new Ajax.Request(url, {
		  method: 'get',
		  onSuccess: function(transport) {
		  	$('ajaxOutput').update(transport.responseText);
		  }
		});
		Event.stop(evt);
	});

You can fork the project on GitHub if you are so inclined.

Fancy banner on Open Graph Protocol Tools

It’s been a banner week for development for me. Tonight I just learned about how to add a fancy banner to a WordPress plugin page, and lickity split I made one.

Check it out on the Open Graph Protocol Tools plugin page.

Here’s what it looks like in context:

How do I make one of those cool banners for my plugin page?
Start by creating an “assets” directory in the root of your SVN checkout. This will be on the same level as /tags and /trunk, for example.

Inside that assets directory, you can make a file named “banner-772x250.png” or “banner-772x250.jpg“. The image must be exactly 772 pixels wide and 250 pixels tall. No GIFs.

Previously.

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Baggie

Lawrence Lessig interviews Jack Abramoff

Lawrence Lessig interviews Jack Abramoff.

via John Lilly who notes: “Wow”

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The Band

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Sunset from La Meaa

Smorgasborg, not Smorgasbord

I spent some time reworking a page I’ve had hidden, or at least deemphasized for about 5 years.

The page is the one I named Smorgasborg in 1988. It has been my “entertaining, silly and educational junk drawer” ever since then.

I remember a time when things on the web seemed to have shorter lives, and some of what’s there are things that I thought were cool and I felt should have permanent homes.

Some of it is stuff I made but I didn’t have a rational place to put. A macaroni salad recipe, for example does not belong in a resume or portfolio.

So I invite you, now, to visit the smorgasborg. New items include the Roman Numerals 0 to MMMMMMMMMM and IT OKAY, DON’T BE CRY.

Like I said: silly.

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Veterans Hospital NEXT EXIT

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Mural at Pete’s

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Health

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When closed throw coins in slot

To Ojai

Yesterday we spent the day with Tony, who’s in the midst of some staggering decisions. Rock on Tony!

Google Latitude has a record of the datapoints of where we were. Which is alternately cool and frightening and also cool.

Veterans Hospital NEXT EXIT

Mural at Pete's

Health

Signs & Wonders (from yesterday)

When closed throw coins in slot

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Signs & Wonders (from yesterday)

Remember when we sold nearly everything?

From November 15th, 2009. Wow a lot has happened since then.

Big Big Sale!

Whole House Sale Sat-Sun 13-14 Nov 2009 [9am-4pm]

[REDACTED], Moorpark, CA

We are selling EVERYTHING in our house this week and this weekend. EVERYTHING MUST GO

EVERYTHING MUST GO FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR OF THE ORIGINAL VALUE!

We have:
     refrigerator (viblis by whirlpool – $200)
     several desks
     tall bookcases (pine, unfinished, great condition)
     shelves
     treadmill
     kids games and toys! lots of fun stuff
     misc furniture
     mattresses – several one
     decorative items of many kinds
     clothes
          medium teen boy clothes
          women’s large and plus size
     christmas
           ornaments
          misc
     ps2 game system (ps2 slim, 2 controllers, 2 guitar hero guitars, many games)
     gamecube game system (2 controllers, many games)
     vhs machine
     older console tvs super cheap
     ladder
     kitchen table + chairs
     kitchen
          appliances
          dishes (lots of nice dishes)
          silverware
          cooking pots
     art supplies
          canvases
          paper
          pens, pencils
          paint LOTS OF PAINT
     craft supplies
          fabric
          beads
          miscellaneous
     frames – $1.00 a piece
     books galore!
          art
          fiction
          science fiction
          comics
          graphic novels
          religious
          computer programming
     musical instruments

If you have questions about what we have to offer and get a feel for items and prices feel free to call [REDACTED] or send an email via craigslist!

We did sell almost everything, but we still have a lot of stuff. 1% of a lot of stuff is still a lot of stuff, as it turns out.

Also, this ended up driving us to Virginia, where, unbeknownst to us, we ended up spending the last year of my Mom’s life with my Mom and Dad. These are the kind of serendipitous acts of Grace and what you might call divine intervention that have acted in our lives in the past few years. It’s quite a run.

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