api design, apis
Back in the day when APIs were limited to hardcore desktop application programmers and CSS seemed revolutionary, nobody minded if one API functioned differently from another. It was commonplace to see APIs with totally different, weird, esoteric interfaces, for one simple reason: there just weren’t that many.
It annoyed people, sure. People complained occasionally, sure. But in the grand scheme of things, what did it matter if some annoying GUI programmer had to re-learn the next version of the Windows Forms API? After all, they’re only GUI programmers.
But then APIs became more important. APIs started exposing data, actual, useful data. They started to let developers do actual, important things. Public things. We started to see the age of Web 2.0, of mashups, of applications that didn’t reinvent the wheel every time they had to do something someone else had already done, of the web moving to the desktop and mobile connectivity becoming really prominent and useful. We started to see the real internet.
Read more »
music
My best friend, Alex Woolf and myself are writing a musical. It's called "Illustrating Elliot" and it's about a director who moves to Hollywood to become a success, and then everything goes horribly wrong. At the peak of it, and closing the first half, he goes up onto the hill and looks down at the city's lights. He sings the following song.
Read more »
expressionengine, hints
One of the great new features that have been implemented in the EE2 BETA is autosaving. With autosaving enabled and the publish page open, the system will repeatedly save the current post you're working on, so if the
unforgivable happens and you loose your post, you can get it back from the autosave feature. Unfortunately, in 2.0, autosave isn't enabled by default, but it's easy enough to do.
Read more »
conferences, eeci, speaking
I'm very happy to announce that I will be presenting both a talk and a workshop at this year's
ExpressionEngine CodeIgniter Conference, held in the amazing American city of San Francisco! I'm very, very excited about this one. Among the other speakers are Rick Ellis, Derek Jones, Derek Allard, Colly, Tom Myer, Leslie Camacho and many more - all huge names in the EECI communities.
Read more »
reviews, tools
Project management is one of those things that you've either got a first-class Oxbridge degree in or you've got less clue about than a monkey's backside. Needless to say, it's pretty important, and especially for a freelancer. I always find that the management makes or breaks a project.
Read more »