December 2005 Archives

I’ve been doing a major filesystem re-org lately in my ongoing mission to Get More Done. In the spirit of GTD, I created several directories starting with an “@” — @ARCHIVE, @PROJECTS, etc.

All was well and good until I tried to cd @<tab> in the parent directory. Rather than get a directory listing showing me the directories starting with @, it listed available network interfaces:

> cd @
@::1 @broadcasthost @localhost

What the heck? I asked around, and this morning on IRC I got my answer:

tell redmonk that bash thinks you’re typing user@host
use shopt -u hostcomplete to turn that off

Hm…

> shopt -u hostcomplete
> cd @
@ARCHIVE @PROJECTS

W00t! (Thanks to deltab on #swhack for the tip)

Useful: quicksilver:command_keys

Oh, man, this does my designer’s heart good. Elements OF Typographic Style Applied to the Web. When I was first starting out in Graphic Design I was studying print design, as there was no Intarweb yet to speak of. Typography was near and dear to my heart, and I could spend an afternoon looking at type samples. Web typography gets us back somewhat to those days when there were rules on how you used type, because they worked.

If you’re new to using JSF like me and are trying to figure out how the heck to use javascript’s document.getLementById () with JSF’s dynamically assigned HTML ids, this might be a solution, if an ugly one:

j4j:idProxy

Welie.com: patterns in Interaction Design. Also, time-tripper.com: UI Patterns and Techniques

I’ve recently been reading UIE’s blog again - and I like the short but pointed analyses of how various web sites implement the web design patterns that have evolved over the last 10 years.

However, UIE rarely gives a “here’s the way to do it” example… Perhaps they could partner with someone who would do a “markover” of one the sample sites to demo how it “should be done”.

I’ve recently rediscovered UIE’s blog on User Interface and User Experience issues, UIE Brain Sparks. I saw Jared Spool back in ‘98 at the Thunder Lizard web conference in Atlanta, and was impressed then as well. While I don’t agree 100% with UIE’s conclusions in every case, I like their approach and attention to detail, and the information is the kind of thing I want to file away for future reference.

Interesting post from Alex Bosworth about the uses of scripting and AJAX in “modern” web apps, and what users have come to expect.

I’m playing around with FAlbum, a Wordpress plugin that pulls recent posts from my flickr account. It’s nicely done, though the documentation is somewhat lacking. I’ve added several recent pics to the top of the blog.