Fun with Scammers
I just sold my laptop on Craigslist, and of course I had a bunch of scammers respond.
This is the transcript from the email thread with my favorite one
Using the Latest Stable Version (v0.6.10) of NodeJS on Heroku
Update: you can also use nodejs-versions in the labs plugin.
If you’re starting some NodeJS fun on Heroku, you might find that it is not using the latest stable version (as of today is v0.6.10). To help fix this problem Heroku has provided the means to build your own buildpacks with the Cedar Stack. This article has one of the better tutorials, but it requires you to use aws; which just seemed silly for something as standard using the latest stable version.
I was in the process of building my own buildpack, when I found Heroku has already provided the stable versions of Node and NPM.
To use these:
- Fork Heroku’s NodeJS buildpack
- Clone your new repository locally
- Edit the bin/compile
Replace this:
with this:
- Commit and push changes
- Create a new Heroku application
I haven’t found any documentation on how to change the buildpack url setting in an existing application, so I’m going to assume it isn’t possible. If anyone knows otherwise, feel free to let me know.
Code Themes
Professionals work hard to keep their tools sharp and ready, and developers tend to be quite passionate about their tools.
I’ve been looking at different IDE themes, and am curious as to what people might be using.
I find myself leaning toward the Railscasts theme in Espresso.
SXSW 2012 Submission
Since Tony Holguin tweeted Mickey’s 10 Commandments last year I’ve been itching to present on how they relate to User Experience and Interaction Design. So I’ve finally submitted the topic to SXSW 2012 with Tony’s permission. Check out the session page on SXSW for the full details.
If you’re not familiar with the SXSW process, the topic submissions are closed, but now the community is invited to vote for their favorite sessions. It’s not required that you be registered for the event to vote, but you do have to sign in/create and account. The community votes count for 30% of the decision-making process, 40% is by the SXSW Advisory Board, and 30% by the SXSW staff. (full faq)
So in summary, and in the words of the great Mayor Robert “Bob” White, “Vote for me”
While you’re at it, why don’t you vote for Andy Branch and Leonard Souza‘s sessions.
Clean Illustrator FXG Files
When saving Illustrator Files as FXG there is an option to “Save Illustrator Private Data”. Even with this option unchecked I find the resulting FXG file has more data in it I need for use in a Flex project.
I have a quick regular expression to remove most of the unnecessary namespaces and data from the file; I figured someone else might find it useful.
(ai:|ATE:|flm:|d:)(\w*)(=")([^"]*)(")( )?
Clean Code Course Notes
AdobeXD brought in Robert Martin to teach a Clean Code Course over the next few days. Decided to post my notes as we are going along. I’ll keep posting my notes as we go along. Updated: day 2, Refactoring; day 3, Unit Tests.
12 Heuristics of UX
I’ve been meaning to post these awhile ago, but I did a session back at 360|Flex 2010 DC and I included a list of 12 Heuristics for UX. To be completely honest, they are influenced by Jakob Nielsen’s Ten Usability Heuristics, but I don’t really like his angle or implementation and they are definitely lacking as far as user experience is concerned.
Here is the list:
- Response
- Metaphor
- Navigation
- Consistency
- Training
- Efficiency
- Design
- Prevention
- Recovery
- Help
- Emotion
- Anthropomorphism
I’m working up a more in-depth exploration and will post it soon.
James T. Edmondson: Typography Hero (updated)
Yesterday I again found myself enjoying the Lost Type Co-op site. It is a wonderful site that hosts some beautiful fonts. It is a name-your-price system that gives the designers 100% of the proceeds.
I decided I should support the wonderful program and buy a couple of fonts. I don’t have any specific project in mind to use them, they are just pretty. Feeling cheap by not paying anything (which is totally allowed by the site) I decided to pay at least $1 for Wisdom Script created by James T. Edmondson.
This morning I received a thank you email from James. I thought it was quite decent to get a system generated thank you email even for my $1 purchase, but scrolling down I realized that James had personally written it (handmade even) when I saw this drawn message.
For this – James T. Edmondson is my Typography Hero; follow him on twitter and send him bags of money on Lost Type Co-op.
Update – James has released a new font called Duke. After purchasing it he sent me another thank you.
Why Does UX Rock So Hard
I spoke at Flash and the City last week in NYC. My session was titled Why Does UX Rock So Hard.
I’ve included my slides, but, to be honest, they are fairly minimal and don’t make as much sense without context of the presentation.
I was also asked to participate in the keynote on why it is a good time to be a UX Designer.
