April 2012
4 posts
Shutting Down "Digital Intuition"
Today is my first official day as the Lead Developer at Fruitbowl Media, starting as a partner I’m going to be shutting down my personal brand of “Digital Intuition” (not that I really used it much in the first place) and start using my standard personal handle “msaspence”.
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March 2012
1 post
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Open letter to Julian Brazier on the issue of gay...
The episode of Newsnight that I make reference to was from the 15th March 2012 and can be watched (until the 22nd at least) on the iPlayer the part featuring Mr Brazier starts at around the 2 minute mark.
Dear Mr Brazier
I recently watched an episode of Newsnight, in which you were featured criticising the government’s plans for gay marriages. I am writing to express my disgust at your...
February 2012
1 post
“When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than...”
– Why the Lucky Stiff
November 2011
2 posts
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Getting Behat to Beep When it's Finished
Some times when you’ve got a big Behat test suite to run you want to go off an do other things. Which means you have to constantly check back on your terminal to see if its done. Wouldn’t it be better if the terminal beeped when it was done? Well using Behat’s hook its as easy as:
/**
* @AfterSuite
*/
public static function beep(Behat\Behat\Event\SuiteEvent $event) {
echo...
October 2011
2 posts
“Gold farming is on of those things that make you want to quit writing science...”
– Neal Stephenson
September 2011
2 posts
“You’re going to change your mind a thousand times. That’s a good...”
– Anna Rascouët-Paz
andrewmale asked: I was interested to see the mobile app you are developing at Kent and your posts about Agile. I've started as the Head of Web Services at York and I would be interested to talk to you about both of these subjects.
July 2011
1 post
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June 2011
7 posts
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Unicorns are real
@jodykemsley: Look a horse!
@jodykemsley: Oh no, its not a horse.
@msaspence: Well its not a unicorn.
@jodykemslet: No I don't think it's either.
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Add a bit of fun to your designs →
“I believe that software patents should not exist. They are a tax on innovation....”
– Fred Wilson
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May 2011
4 posts
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"The Cloud" is just clever marketing
The cloud is a buzzword that is floating around more and more these days, its even creeping in to tv adverts. In reality though it’s just another rebrand of the interweb.
“The Cloud” is just the interweb
For consumers “The Cloud” is just the interweb. Yes services like Dropbox and Spotify have become more prolific, but having services and files online is nothing...
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How to: Multiple default avatars assigned to...
Gravatars are awesome, they let commenters add a personal touch to their comments but most importantly, I think, they are way to aid visually tracking the back and forth of a conversation. Problem is not everyone has a Gravatar.
Wordpress let’s you define your own default avatar but only one. I wanted a way to define a set of defaults that got assigned randomly but consistently to a commenter...
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“Every visit is a new user.”
– http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/blog/alpha-gov-uk-design-rules
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“Google is the home page”
– http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/blog/alpha-gov-uk-design-rules
November 2010
4 posts
“If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer;...”
– http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/r2As1AIftFs/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-youre-the-product
“i would swim through a river of piss with my mouth open just so i could smell...”
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFjbPoMN5jg
WatchBlack magic i tell you, black magic.
This video is 100% CGI!
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The product of software development is two-fold
- The behavior of the system
- The options for extending and modifying that behavior in the future.
September 2010
2 posts
“Designing a website to be usable is like baking a cake to be edible. It’s simply...”
– Stop Designing Aesthetics, Start Designing Emotions
August 2010
3 posts
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June 2010
12 posts
WatchA quick test of the iPhone’s camera with video. My video skills leave a lot to be desired, especially as Aslan is massively overexposed (I didn’t know that I could just click him to get the light balance right), but the sharpness in the grass is pretty impressive.
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Functional design vs emotive design
Design can be described as functional, emmotive, any shade of grey in between or neither (otherwise know as bad). Functional design is normally the kind of design you see in applications it’s clean, effective even “pretty” but it aim is to make functionality usable not illicit an emmotion response or manipulate the user.
Emmotional design is the kind of design you see in websites and advertising....
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WatchSome cool tip and tricks if you’ve got a spare hour.
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The death of hover? →
Whilst all these new touch devices do present us with the need to consider how we use events like hover, I’m not sure when I would ever have the hover action do something different from the click action. Tool tips perhaps but I would consider that more of aid than an action and not essential to the functionality of the system.
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Cool shopping cart →
Very tempted by these, but the reason I’ve linked this up is the shopping cart. I reckon the add to buttons could be more obvious, but the animation and ajax of it all feels polished with just the right level of intrusiveness.
Google web fonts →
kevinnuut:
I am heavily against this. I cannot agree with everything being hosted in the Google cloud. I’m all for data deduplication, but the internet cannot rely on single sources to run, that’s how the terrorists win. Thanks hunsonisgroovy!
Yes… but no one else was doing it, hopefully now Google have dived in other will follow. The danger is people assuming they can’t compete...
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Smokescreen: JavaScript SWF Interpreter →
Could this be the answer to Apple vs Adobe
May 2010
16 posts
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Select a row and its descendants within a... →
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Defining a custom index controller in Zend...
In the Zend Framework the default controller (ie if you at http://www.example.com/) is index. That’s fine but what if you want to change it? Good luck trying to out how to do, what to me seemed like, a relatively simple requirement from a framework, by searching the documentation.
Anyway here is the solution I found by trawling through the source code, @rikkicarroll came back to me with the...
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The Zombie Home Page Chronicles →
This reminded me of a few meetings I’ve been to.
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New Programmer Jargo →
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