The retina display is like beer goggles. It makes things that usually look bad look better, but it also makes things that used to look okay look worse
– Dwayne on the Retina Display (2014)
Text looks clearer, sites using high resolution graphics look crisper, viewing photos and movies looks like you’re looking at them on a jewel encrusted high definition television and saving parentless orphans from a burning orphanage, these are some of the things the Retina Display offers.
If you are a frequent visitor to my blog you might have noticed the last couple of months, the last month in particular, my writing frequency on weekdays has been around two to three posts per day on a wide variety of subjects.
What you probably didn’t know is I have been running an SEO experiment this whole time to see if blog post frequency helps you rank higher in Google (as well as other search engines like Bing and Yahoo) based on a discussion I had with my SEO Edmonton company friend. Although I just wanted to write more as well.
A problem a lot of first-time and yet to succeed entrepreneurs encounter is getting caught up in thinking that their idea is unique and that if they tell people about it, it will get stolen.
The reality is: nobody else cares about your idea, especially not enough to steal it.
An idea is just that, an idea. It isn’t an action, it isn’t a real thing you can hold, it is merely a thought stored away in your head. Even if someone were to steal your idea, unless they worked out a way to clone your brain and view the details, they only have the concept, but not the finer grain details you’ve meticulously thought over in your head.
It seems all the designers over at LayerVault News aka Designer News talk about on an almost daily basis is Sketch 3 by Bohemian Coding. This product is touted as a successor to Adobe’s now discontinued Fireworks application. I am a massive Fireworks fan, in-fact, I still use it over Photoshop.
Things that Sketch 3 gets right… Ability to export SVG files Everything is a vector, so you can resize all vector items to your hearts content without them losing detail The UI is quite nice to look at It feels a lot more stable than Adobe Fireworks for most things (in the short few days I’ve been using it) Effects are all based on CSS. Unlike Photoshop which ships with numerous effects that aren’t easily replicable in CSS. Things that Sketch 3 does not get right… SVG export functionality is buggy and sometimes the result SVG file is wrong Inability to work with Fireworks PNG files (for an app pretty much shopped as a Fireworks alternative, this is a big deal) Inability to work with PSD files (they open, but they’re flattened) Grid system creation feels limited and not as flexible as Fireworks which allowed me to move individual guides around Source files for designs can’t be handed over to developers on platforms other than Mac OS who have a copy of Sketch 3 on their machine. Some argue developers shouldn’t get source designs, as a developer, I disagree as it makes getting font sizes, colours and spacing much easier Lack of option to export a Photoshop PSD file that can be imported into Photoshop and edited Understandably, Sketch is new on the scene and Bohemian Coding has significantly smaller team working on Sketch, a smaller budget and hasn’t had the luxury like Adobe to work on the product for 20+ years.
If you are getting calls from the number (08) 6228 4010 do not answer or call them back. A telemarketing company called TSA Telco Group Australia who acts on behalf of Telstra for telemarketing services is trying to call you.
They don’t leave a voicemail message and don’t seem to get the hint either. For the last month they’ve been trying to repeatedly call me. The past week they’ve been trying to call me at least twice a day.
I haven’t made it shy I love a good conspiracy theory. After the NSA revelations, I promised myself I would scrutinise and question things a little bit more. But having said that, it is important to not go overboard and proclaim you know the truth, when in reality, a conspiracy theory is speculation.
So what do Tony Abbott, a proposed metadata collection scheme and ISIS have in common? Quite a lot when you think about it. Whether or not the link can be drawn between the three or not is another story.
Recently, I encountered a REALLY annoying issue with my Mac Magic Mouse disconnecting every time it was bumped.
Sometimes when I listen to music I like to tap my desk and without realising, I tap my mouse as well (the Apple purists are probably shrieking reading that). Recently I put some new batteries into the mouse because the other ones went flat and then found I kept getting disconnected.
The issue wasn’t the batteries coming out, because letting the mouse sit and then tapping it would reconnect it to my Mac. The issue is actually the type of batteries that you use in your mouse and a subtle design flaw in the Magic Mouse battery compartment.
An interesting topic I thought would be better served as a post. Are email confirmation fields still needed in modern web forms?
Recently I was tasked with building a registration form. This form had a lot of fields in it including an email and confirm email field. I made the case for removing it because I felt another field was just a barrier to entry and in the age of “Sign Up Using Facebook” buttons anyway, the tolerance people have for long forms has dwindled.
Even though I recently purchased a MacBook Pro, I still use a Windows PC at home running Windows 8.1. There are so many quirks and issues in Windows 8 I would love to see version 9 fix and a few new features to make things better.
Start Menu
Supposedly already featured thanks to leaks from Microsoft themselves, Windows 9 will see a return of the classic start menu. The jokes about Windows 9 being Windows 7 with a different skin aren’t actually that far from the truth.
Right in the nostalgia.
The source code for what was a good portion of my childhood for the game Commander Keen has been released. The source code is available on Github right here
I am going to compile this and relive my childhood once more, because I absolutely loved this game. For a 2D side scrolling platformer it was pretty advanced for its time, nowadays we take get better game graphics on our smartphones.