April 25, 2013
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Graveyard.css, or Where I’m Putting Old Code Out to Pasture

So I’ve been doing a lot of code cleanup as of late. Meaning I’ve been going through a rather large CSS file and trimming the fat, not to mention doing a bunch of theming changes. I really hate commenting things out as a regular practice, as it looks ugly and still takes up space. Now and then, sure, but when you’ve got hundreds of lines of code in a single file all commented out, I just can’t deal anymore. And, sometimes I realise there’s a bit of code that I dumped a month or so ago that I’d like to find again. In theory, version control should save the day. Course, looking at my commit messages in Git is all like “Fixed layout on landing page!” with changes to a bunch of different files (yeah, I’m super organized).

I’m doing some fairly major reskinning in an area of a site right now, and while there’s code I’m perfectly happy to just delete, there are some styles that I get paranoid I might regret sticking on the ole chopping block. Also, I’m paranoid of someone above me down the line getting reminiscent for a certain look that I killed off. So I came up with the idea for graveyard files. I’ve got a file, graveyard.css, where I’ve started pasting in CSS classes I no longer have a need for, but am not ready to just delete yet. Graveyard.css isn’t loaded by any page, it just hangs out in the CSS directory with the rest of the files and keeps them company. It caters to my natural packrat instinct, and helps cut down the anxiety that comes with deleting several hundred lines of code.

I’ll be starting a graveyard.js pretty soon as well, as I’ll be cleaning up from some functionality that’s been disabled. And, because every JS directory needs a spare closet.

April 14, 2013
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On C-Levels, and Changing Your Circle of Focus

So I’ve been noticing this thing at various companies that I’ve done work for. So you’ve got a project that’s coming along swimmingly, the team’s cranking out their tasks, and then in comes the person (or people) on top who gives input that completely alters the path of the project, not to mention the timeline. This person’s input has to be listened to, as they’re a CEO/CMO/CTO or an upper-level manager. The project is then derailed – a bunch of work is now wasted, goals become muddled, and the project is suddenly at risk of either missing the deadline or eating employees’ free time.

There’s a lot to be said for being a control freak. It’s great for getting details just right in your work, and ensuring that your work is bug free. If you’re also a control freak for meeting deadlines, you’ve got the golden combination to rise quickly in whatever industry you happen to be in, because others around you will perceive you as a high quality worker who gets the job done. Add in a few other random qualities (the right temperament, decisive, people person) and you can get shoved right up into upper management/C-level areas.

Thing is, it’s not necessarily a good thing to be a control freak once you’re at this point. I’m not sure if this is a small company curse, or is more applicable in a broader sense, but it seems that some management types have a really hard time letting go of the details of the projects they’re in charge of. There’s a level of trust at stake here, too. You likely hired the employees that are managing the project, and intruding on the project at jarring junctions suggests to those employees that you don’t trust them to get the job done themselves. So, you know, keep going this direction and you’re not only likely to get stress/burnout issues from worrying about things now beyond your scope, but you’ll also have higher turnover issues thanks to employees that want to work somewhere where their opinions aren’t second-guessed as much.

I think that, in general, as people move around positions, those of us who desire more control just have a harder time adjusting their circle of focus to the new position. It’s still good to be involved and aware of the work going on around you, but it’s also good to be aware of when your own involvement can damage a timeline as well as completely mess up what was previously a watertight project plan.

April 9, 2013
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Oh hey, I made a sealife painting

So this is the sort of thing that I paint when I want to paint something but don’t have any sort of super strong vision.

sealife

So, yeah, sealife. It’s just pretty easy to sit there and draw fish, I suppose. Sketched this in, then did watercolor with colored pencil on top, and painted in some silver in the background. Believe it or not, there’s blotted blue inbetween the silver waves. The scanner apparently didn’t care for it, however!

March 23, 2013
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How I finally figured out how to deal with stupid overflowing text

So I have randomly come across this issue where I’ve got text that needs to fit into a specific area – not all the text needs to show, but enough of it so you know what’s going on there, content-wise. This seems to happen with table data, and of course I’ve got to deal with how the content moves around on smaller screens – and usually it’s a case of where everything needs to stay on one line. So I’ve done some half-assed php character limiting, where really there was a much more elegant solution sitting out there waiting for me this entire time.


white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;

I feel kinda dirty about the fact that I discovered this via Yahoo’s homepage, but I’ll take what I can get.

February 24, 2013
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My fancybox stopped working!

So I was randomly puttering around on varoper.com and made the scandalous discovery that, in the art section, none of the images were opening in lightboxes. For shame! First came denial: I went through a brief period of self-doubt where I began questioning whether the lightboxes had ever really worked in the first place. The came the bug-checking. And then came the googling. Apparently Fancybox (the particular brand of lightbox that I’m using) doesn’t work with the latest version of jQuery (version 1.9.0). This thread gave me some options as to how to fix it, and I went with adding the migration script below my jquery script. And, fixed! Woo.

January 21, 2013
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I randomly found a “to-do in 2012″ list

These sorts of lists usually end up containing much more optimism than realism, and this list is no exception to that. It was scrawled out in one of my random notebooks. Let’s see what I wanted to get done, versus what I *actually* got done:

  • Finish 2011 NaNo CYOA novel
    Hah. Haven’t touched it since December 2011. Poor little novel!
  • Translate Quest into Spanish
    Talk about ambitious. Didn’t happen.
  • Continue min of once a week food blogging
    I’m lucky if I get one out once every 2 weeks these days. Hard to say why. When actually writing the posts, I enjoy it. But, I’m coming up on 5 years of having that blog now, so I suppose the novelty wore off long ago.
  • Get WP responsive design theme, update it for tastyniblets.com
    Oh hey, I actually did this one. Cross it off the list!
  • Responsive design theme for ptocheia.net (maybe trash current look)
    Another one I actually did. Course, the old look got trashed for a kinda crappy templatey look with a half-assed header, one of these days I’ll do some reskinning.
  • Rapidsthuglife.com: pull data from twitter, blogs, news. Possible scoreboard?
    Heey, we’re pulling data from twitter, 2 blogs, and I’ve got the schedule up which indeed includes scores (when I remember to add them, at least…)
  • MLP/Last Supper painting
    Didn’t happen. Kinda forgot about this idea. A bloody brilliant idea it is, though!
  • Tumblr for ptocheia (& do what with it?)
    “Make a tumblr” is a pretty sad item to have on one’s to-do list. But make a tumblr I did. And I even update it about as often as I update the rest of my blogs!
  • Once a month work blog post
    Nope. No one read the posts I did make, and as I don’t work there anymore, it’s all kinda moot.
  • Revamp varoper.com (D7? Rails?)
    Revamped, yes. Looks better now, and is responsive. The job hunt drove the completion of this one. Never learned Rails, still not sure if it’s worth it to learn Rails. Might convert to D7 at some point though, just for organization’s sake for when I (hopefully) start making more art and adding photos of said art to the site.
  • Get better keyboard/piano. Use it.
    Well, hijacking a significant other’s keyboard counts, I presume? Still have to use it more. I suffer from this problem where I like playing songs I know, I only know how to play a few songs, and almost every one of them are songs that Chris can’t stand. And thus the keyboard sits.
  • 2-3x a week gym
    Yeah right. I am figuring out better methods here, at least. Rather than make myself work out for 45 minutes and then dread going back to the gym, I do 20-25 minute increments so it’s a bit more pleasant and I’m thus more likely to want to do it.
  • Do more things with beans
    I’ve made quite a bit of hummus and refried beans in the past year? Let’s pretend that counts.
  • D7 CYOA module
    Yeah, too ambitious. Ignoring the fact you can probably build CYOA functionality with views and fields anyhow.
  • More Drupal meetups
    Not so good at this. Social groups full of people I don’t know are intimidating. Gotta work on getting over that as well, I suppose.
  • Edit binary shirt
    Wow, I don’t remember if I still own this shirt. Got it like 10 years ago, says “You are dumb” in binary. And it’s kinda big and flappy. Or was kinda big and flappy until I gave it to Goodwill or lost it or whatever. Hmm…

And in conclusion, I only seem to be good at getting things done if they involve my websites. Now, to contemplate making a similar list for next year so I have a list of things I haven’t completed to fondly look back on next January!

September 23, 2012
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Holy Hairclips!

I made a bunch of hairclips.

So many hairclips!

Most hairclips that you buy in stores are a.) overpriced and b.) usually packaged such that colors/patterns I want are inevitably paired with ones that I think look awful. Thus, I made a bunch of my own!

You can get packs of blank hairclips at your local Hobby Lobby (or other giant craft store) for around $4.50. And, if you’ve already got a nail polish collection, you’re pretty much set in terms of painting them. This also guarantees that they’ll match at least something else you own. If you’ve got various craft supplies, you can raid that as well. I did that with the gold-leafed set of clips, as well the one covered in tiny pastel flowers and the one with small fish glued at each end. I’m half expecting the one with the flowers to fall apart at some point – despite the two layers of clear polish I put on it, it’s still kinda flakey. However, if and when that happens, I can just scrape all of the flowers off and use that clip for something else. Yay!

August 31, 2012
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Hiding the node:title field but still having it available (using Omega theme in Drupal 7)

I have a Drupal 7 install for a site I’m building, and am using an Omega subtheme. Due to the site’s layout, I’ve needed to place the node title in a different zone (and am using Views to do this) in one of my content types. I needed to hide/remove the node title from the main content area, but wasn’t sure of the best method of doing this. I could just do a “display: none” in the CSS for that field, but it doesn’t seem like good practice to have two identical H1 tags in the content, with one hidden. I tried installing a module called Exclude Node Title, and that worked for the most part, except I also have the Meta Tags module installed, and the node:title field no longer showed up in the meta title field. Looks like this is a reported bug for that module, so this module may be a solution for this issue in the future. On a related note, I’d love to see the title field added to the “Manage Display” page for every content type! That would eliminate the need for this module.

I had the thought of editing a tpl file to make this work, and figured out that this field lives in region–content.tpl.php. Based on what I’ve found looking around online though, I can’t duplicate this and make a version that is specific to that content type. I did find a workaround for this, however – I created region–content–page.tpl.php (as I’m doing this for the “page” content type), added that to my “templates” directory, and edited the HTML around the H1 tag.

Then, this code goes into preprocess-region.inc:

function [yourmodule]_alpha_preprocess_region(&$vars) {
  $menu_object = menu_get_object();
  if (isset($menu_object->type) && $vars['region'] == 'content') {
    if ('page' == $menu_object->type) {
      $vars['theme_hook_suggestions'][] = 'region__content__page';
    }
  }
}

Clear your caches, and this should work!

On a related note, this may also be something that you can do with the Display Suite module. Though, since I just needed to do something tiny, I figured a chunk of code or two would be a more lightweight solution than adding another module.

July 27, 2012
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The process of the Bellossom painting

So I did this Bellossom painting. Since I took pictures at each step, figured I’d dump them here:

Bellossom step 1

I did a sketch on canvas based off of a few pictures, and the background swirls & petals I just kind of made up. Filled in the alternating swirls with silver acrylic paint.

Bellossom step 2

Did a light wash of color using oils and mineral spirits.

Bellossom step 3

Bellossom step 4

Next layer of oil was thinned with a mixture of mineral spirits plus linseed oil.

Bellossom step 5

Did another layer of oil, then a final layer, each of them having more linseed oil and less mineral spirits mixed in.

Bellossom step final

The silver paint got a nice layer of galkyd plus glitter on top. After that, came more galkyd mixed in with gold leaf bits. Still can’t decide if I should have used fewer, larger gold leaf pieces or not. But hey, it was my first time trying that method, mayhaps next time!

July 18, 2012
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Dropbox Saves the Day!

So I’m super into keeping my files organized via directory structure. For example, as much as I like the sorting capabilities of iTunes, I dislike that it sorts based on artist in the actual directory structure, meaning all of my awesome mix CDs are structurally compromised and split apart when importing, unless I make a playlist out of them. Which only works if I’m using iTunes.

Anyhow, like every other person with a photo-capable phone out there, I take photos with it. I want an easy way to import, but still a simple directory dump. I use photos on sites, and so I’m also frequently grabbing files and moving them out of said directory(ies). I also wanted organization, so one day in the vague past I decided to eschew whatever native plugin my iPhone was dumping all of my photos in, and find something a bit better. So I went for Picasa. Which worked fine for awhile, but either it’s convoluted or I didn’t take enough time to understand how it functions, because I would inevitably download photos I’d already downloaded, and they’d be stored in mysterious locations. At some point later (perhaps around the time the amorphous Google entity absorbed them) I stopped being able to smoothly move around the interface. It just…changed. Like some googlebeast invaded my directories and started munching on them, so photos I thought I’d deleted long ago started appearing again.

Anyhow, I became disenfranchised with Picasa.

I’ve had a Dropbox account for awhile now, but aside from using it to grab a bunch of old PSDs of art off my Windows machine, I’ve mostly left it alone. Well, it became sentient. At some point during the Picasa fiasco, when I connected my phone to my computer, Dropbox just randomly started grabbing all of the photos off of my phone. I never enabled anything. I didn’t even open anything when connecting my phone, Dropbox just did it. And, this is normally the sort of behaviour that irks me when an application develops a mind of it’s own and starts doing something I’d never asked it to do. However, in this case, I was already disgruntled about my Picasa situation, and often put off grabbing photos off of my phone because of it. But, no more! Dropbox just grabs them and unceremoniously dumps them into a single directory – automatically organized as each photo is already named based on the date of photo took anyhow. So, Dropbox is both sentient and  telepathic. You have been warned.