06.09.10
Making Client Sites Faster
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Chicago. The topic I presented, “Making WordPress Faster: Front-end Performance Tips,” was a introduction on how to analyze and speed up websites built with WordPress. Though, the talk itself was WordPress-specific, the underlying concepts are applicable to any client site, whether it be coded in WordPress, Expression Engine, MovableType or none-of-the-above. At Weightshift, we have made performance tweaking a standard part of our development cycle on all projects. I’d like to take a moment to share our process, and some of the tools that we use.
06.08.10
On rdio
“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.” — Plato. Music is a huge part of many people’s lives. It seems odd that music is essentially sounds and noises put together to form something that transcends its individual parts. Music, even in its simplest form is a whole, made of parts — be it notes, chords, instruments and layers — that simply are special. Let me just put music into my Magical™ column.
05.26.10
From the Book of Eli
Recently I watched The Book of Eli, a post-apocalyptic film starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman and Mila Kunis. I’d describe it as Mad Max meets Waterworld. Take a bit of the good bits of Mad Max but a lot of the plodding plot and uneven pace of Waterworld and you have a mediocre-at-best film.
The visuals however are stunning. Few films make me pause to take screen caps1 but this one did, mostly because I got bored here and there.
Here are a few that caught my eye.
05.03.10
A Graph Done Right
An infographic called Unboxing the iPad Data has been floating around since the iPad debuted in early April. It’s well done, for the most part, but one portion of it bugged me. Specifically, this:
This graph is, essentially, meaningless. According to the caption, the iPad sold an estimated 300,000 units “this weekend,” which is a vague timeframe (two days? three days? according to the graph it’s one) that includes preorders. Meanwhile, the iPhone sold 1 million units in “over 70 days.” Which means there’s no commonality between the variables. Which means it might as well be comparing apples to lightning strikes, let alone oranges, in terms of being able to draw any conclusions. I wondered if the size of the half-circles might indicate some sort of accurate info, but their scale (diameters 190 vs. 270) relative to each other is meaningless.* As it stands, it’s a pretty picture drawn to make a couple numbers more interesting to look at.
04.29.10
Blades
We own two knives in the household. We own more of course — kitchen knives, steak knives, butter knives. We own two tool knives. They are utility knives, not to be thought of as weapons or instruments of harm. They can do damage but not the kind of damage one would associate, or perhaps should associate with ill to another.
Knives are tools. At least two-and-a-half-million years ago, if not older, the knife was mankind’s first tool. We used it in many ways to further our worldview. It’s one of the oldest items we’ve ever designed. Born out of utility and a need to make things happen.
