tnypxl

Making the web better, one tiny pixel at a time.

Month: May, 2009

My Weekend App: Restart

While building Kindmanage I realized something. There are tons of apps just like it floating out in the wild all with happy paying customers. What value could my app possibly bring to an already fulfilled space? That answer was, well, none.

Just the other day I realized that Goplan and yes, even Basecamp already solved a [...]

Changes in scenery

Tonight I moved my “office” from the basement of my home to the dining room upstairs where my wife’s computer desk also resides. I’m finding it more important to be closer to “action” of my home. But the open door for distractions is ever so greater as I’m now pitted against a television, people coming [...]

Story behind My Weekend App

It’s essentially a small hobby project I like to work on in my free time (hence Kindmange). My Weekend App was an excuse to really sit down and learn the finer aspects of Ruby and Rails. In past job and project experiences, my knowledge of Ruby and Rails only went as far as my design [...]

Workspaces in Kindmanage

If you don’t know, Kindmanage is a light-weight project management app I’m building in my free time. One of the more prominent features I’ve been spending loads of time on is workspaces. Workspaces in kindmanage is essentially a love child between twitter @replies/#hashtags and Gmail labels. The inspiration of those web apps coupled with the [...]

Designer on Rails: The `gsub` method

Building web applications with Ruby on Rails is a great experience. As a designer I have my ups and downs understanding even the most basic aspects of programming. Eventually I came to the realization that knowing how something works is 80% of the battle, the rest comes by growthin, trial and error. That brings me [...]

Working remotely versus on location

Luckily, I have been fortunate enough to experience both worlds in the context of web development. Each environment brings it’s own problems and comforts, but in my earnest opinion, I’d take remote collaboration over on-site any day of the week.

Why developers can’t admit they’re wrong

If you haven’t noticed, Twitter has been tits up after removing the ability to see other peoples conversations regardless of whether or not you follow those people’s followers. This sort of eaves-dropping has become the sweet spot for users to discover and connect with new and interesting people. But Twitter ignored the voice of the [...]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Just got home from watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If you’re not into the x-men comic or cartoon series, then you should probably ignore this post. Okay, now thats out of the way. This newest installment in the x-men series specifically logs the story and history behind Logan (aka: Wolverine). He’s the guy with the metal [...]

Constraints and beauties of writing

Writing for me is enjoyable. It’s one of the few things, that if I don’t do it enough, everything in my life just seems off and unfamiliar. Writing is my vice. But what I love about writing is it’s constraints.

Being able to paint a picture with words is a beautiful process of elimination, engineering and [...]

Where Rails and Drupal intersect

I’ll be honest here and say that they don’t intersect at all. Comparing Drupal to Rails is about as rewarding as comparing Apple (a hardware company who happens to make software as well) to Microsoft (who solely makes software). Sure, on some fronts you can maybe draw a few comparisons, but at the end of [...]