erikzaadi.com

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1. Startup Weekend, Android, Vim, Razor and a bit of Chirpy

   Aug 01

   posted by erikzaadi In : Personal, General | Comments (1)

   Whoa, it's been a while since I've written.

   A lot of stuff has been going on lately, so this post will be a quick summary..

   1. Startup Weekend - Tel Aviv
      The second startup weekend in Israel took place in the Peres Peace House, in Yaffo, where Palestinian and Israeli joined forces for a lovely three day hack fest (http://tel-aviv.startupweekend.org/)
      
      I joined a brilliant idea called MovieOke (Karaoke with movies), and really enjoyed working on the project during the startup weekend..
      You can see the site in action at http://movieoke.tv
      
      We actually got to first place!
      
      I'm the one on the left, trying to tuck in my beer belly while being totally blinded by the sun on the beach, more details here.
      
       
   2. I've been hacking on an Android application lately (see post on java).
      This has been a great experience. It's a bit annoying to get used to writing in Java, and the android SDK's xml layouts are a bit rough to get into, but when you get use to the idea, it's a joy.
      Hopefully I'll get some time over to finish the app, so I can publish it here.
      
      
   3. I've been using (g)Vim a bit more lately. Can't really say I've gotten THE THING about it yet. But the more commands you remember, the more useful it gets..
      
      
   4. I've experimented a bit with asp.net mvc 3 preview 1, especially with the new Razor view engine. Simply brilliant, finally a more concise templating, ala spark / nhaml. 
      
      
   5. Last but not least, Chirpy is an awesome Visual Studio adding that compresses js and css for you when you save the file.
      Very powerful and useful.
      I forked it to add jQuery as reference when compressing with Google Closure compiler (similar to this post), but then I had some more ideas, hopefully I'll have some time for that as well soon.

   Well that's it, a small recap of that I've been about since the last time.

   Cheerios,

   Erik

   Tags: Personal, General

   
   

2. Trusting http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/

   Oct 06

   posted by erikzaadi In : General, Personal, Blog | Comments (0)

   Just reconnected to the blog after a small vacation only to see that the entire layout looked awful.

   For some unknown reason, not only did http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/ block my javascript, images and css files, they deleted my user as well.

   Oh well, back to the drawing board..

   Until I’ve resolved the issue, I’ve reverted the blog to the current simple theme..

   Erik

   

   Tags: General, Personal, Blog

   
   

3. Connecting to my very well hidden artistic side

   Aug 28

   posted by erikzaadi In : General, Personal | Comments (1)

   As a part of the redesign I’m doing for my github site, I wanted to add a comic image of myself (inspired by @addyosmani and @davidwalshblog’s great avatars)

   First, as always, lazy part of me tried some shortcuts.
   I googled “cartoonize me”, and spent some time with the Simpsonize me without any good results.
   After a while I found a rather cool site called befunky, which allows you to upload an image and do several sorts of effects on it, one being the cartoon effect, which I wanted..

   Here’s the result:

   

   Although I was rather pleased with the result, it didn’t satisfy me.

   Okies then, if you want something done right, do it yourself, right?

   I fired up Adobe Illustrator, and hooked up the Genius Tablet I got for my talented Fiancée and gave it a try.

   Here’s the result:

   

   There should be a law forbidding people with graphic “talents” like me to even attempt to draw.

   This is one of those “hmm.. it might be better to outsource this..” moments..

   :)

   

   Tags: General, Personal

   
   

4. Github Project Pages

   Aug 15

   posted by erikzaadi In : Github, General, Personal, jQuery Plugins, jQuery | Comments (0)

   Prelude (skip)

   About two weeks ago I found out about an amazing free service that github has called github pages.
   This service allows you to host a static web site per public project you have on github, in addition to a site for your account (E.g. http://accountname.github.com).

   Besides having wizards that create the site for you (although I haven’t used that yet), github offers another very nice feature:
   Github automatically process submits to the site via Jekyll, which is a simple yet amazingly efficient static site/blog creator.

   Jekyll allows you to create templates based with variables written in YAML, and using Liquid to parse the templates, enabling you to write logic such as conditions and loops, making the static site more flexible and somewhat dynamic.

   All you need to do is to commit to a project branch called gh-pages.
   In case it’s the main account site, you simply push to the master branch of a project called accountname.github.com.

   Being a curios person that I am, this was perfect for me,
   Creating my own project pages was a great excuse for me to learn new skills such as ruby, YAML and Liquid.

   here are the results:

   http://erikzaadi.github.com 

   I’m posting my public projects on the site, which BTW, you can see on the github badge on the right on this blog, which is a part of http://erikzaadi.github.com/jQueryPlugins that also includes the Print Element Plugin I posted about before.

   The Wiki and Issues sections will remain at the regular github pages, but samples, download pages and posts regarding project updates will be done on the new site.

   The layout is not yet final, but any feedback would still be greatly appreciated.
   The site includes a small ode to jQuery , in form of a jQuery UI Theme switcher that you may notice on the top left part.

   As a small side note, it’s amazing how easy it is to use the jQuery themes once you understand their genial simplicity.
   By following a small set of rules (explained here), you can create a site that’s fully theme-able and flexible for design changes.
   But that’s material for another post..

   Enjoy,

   Erik

   

   Tags: Github, General, Personal, jQuery Plugins, jQuery

   
   

5. Joy of writing utilities

   Jul 21

   posted by erikzaadi In : Utilities, General, Personal | Comments (1)

   Every now and then I get to a point where I need to do some repetitious and most likely boring task.
   This point usually leads to 3 possible options

   1. I Google for a utility that saves me the time for doing the task automatically.
   2. I can’t find any workaround, while banging my head, I slowly do the exhausting task.
   3. I write a small utility that does the task for me.

   Although option 1 is usually the fastest way to overcome the hideous task, writing the utility by myself is much more satisfying.

   Furthermore, it usually leads to the following scenario (in case it works of course)

   1. I used the newly created tool to finish the horrible task.
   2. I’m filled with childish satisfaction feeling of “this is so cool” and “this saves me so much time” (even if writing the tool took more that it would have to do the actual task).
   3. After the euphoric thrill is over, I start to ponder if this tool could be useful for someone else.
   4. I refactor the code, fix all the “quick-code smells”.
   5. I continue my pondering (recognize a pattern perhaps?), what more could this tool do?
   6. I add the “so needed” features (usually to fast, which get’s me to need to do step 4 again).
   7. Now comes the crucial point:
      Will I stop repeating 5,6,4 and be satisfied?
      If no, then the tool will never be shared/published, at some point I’ll have to focus on something else, and I’ll probably forget to come back and finish the tool.
      If yes, I’ll continue to 8.
   8. I’ll start wasting time on creating some kind of documentation and sample
      (which BTW is nowadays so much easier thanks to Github)
   9. Another crucial point like 7 will occur, and as before, if it doesn’t get out in a reasonable timeframe, it might be forgotten.
      Writing the documentation and sample might trigger some point 5 style pondering, thus adding the possibility to reenter some heavy pondering->repeating writing/refactoring loop action.

   After this tedious routine is done, the by far most exciting moment is to see someone actually use the tool and perhaps even see them get the point 2 feeling.

   There was a period when I was in Customer Support, that I encountered lots of “utililicous” opportunities that could need tools to solve problems, both for customers and for the supporters.
   The result was a line of a dozen or so utilities, some of them even used sometimes! :)

   Anyhuwze, this post is a prelude to YAUIHTW which I'll write about shortly.

   Cheers,
   Erik

   

   Tags: Utilities, General, Personal

   
   

6. Is it really worth it?

   May 31

   posted by erikzaadi In : General, Personal | Comments (0)

   Lately I've been having some serious set downs at my work, a certain chain of small and unfortunate events of the kind that really leaves you totally without any steam or motivation.

   A small prelude:
   I consider myself a very motivated person who puts a lot of effort and time into my professional life, and in most cases I enjoy giving more than is expected.
   I started as a technical support in the company I work in, and thanks to the open minded people at my company, I moved up to R&D after a while, which in my mind was totally amazing.
   Finally a chance to not only to do programming patches and "make it work"  fixes for customers, I now had the chance of not only writing software, but to do that for the users I personally knew, could enjoy and find useful.

   The projects I worked with were a joy for me, as they allowed me to improve applications that I've been using before for a rather long while. Furthermore, I was involved with creating new applications that solved problems that I used to solve for customers. As a special treat I was able to add features dedicated to support, solving and helping to solve the daily problems that usually arises and tackles our great support crew.
   Again, a really positive thing for me. Especially seeing the software in use.

   Not all went perfect, the were quite a few bugs and set backs, but it was a very good experience for me, and hopefully for the software users as well.

   Whoa, that was a long prelude!

   Anyhow, lately all my efforts to give more have kind of backfired at me.
   Lot's of what I had planned (and often also implemented) were cancelled over and over again.
   Each time it bothered me a bit, but I kept trying to get the most of the situation, and as I usually do, and see the bright side of things.

   For some reason today something simply broke.
   I had a small argument about a certain small feature that I thought was worth having to improve the user experience, which in my mind could be implemented in a matter of minutes.
   I got a negative response, and although I tried to explain what I thought was a simple ascan be solution, I kept getting negative answers.

   It was something I simply couldn't understand, why not improve something when you have the chance to do that? I do understand time constrains and risk managements, but I simply couldn't get it with this case due to the simplicity of the matter.

   For some reason it totally got to me. it sort of pissed me off in a way that caused all the latest set backs to come back to my mind again.

   I started thinking if it's really worth it, all this effort and "do good wanting", perhaps it's simply something naive about me that will change as I get more experience.
   Should I just become a bolt small in the system? Do only as I've been told? Where's the joy in that?
   Will the people that don't use the software really be able to design something that the actual users will find useful? Is it really my place to question things like that?

   Anyhow, to summarize things:
   I still think it's worth it to invest that extra time to make things better, and although I might rant about it and write #bah tweets (and way too long posts as this),
   Getting crappy feelings about set backs is really nothing compared to the feeling when someone that actually uses the software tells you it's a joy to use it.

   

   Tags: General, Personal

   
   

7. Personal Web Nostalgy

   May 16

   posted by erikzaadi In : General | Comments (1)

   My fiance happened to googlestubmle upon this site:

   http://my.ort.org.il/rehovot/thing/
   

   
   

   It's the first "official" web site I created back in high school, using FrontPage (!).

   
   

   I find it rather ironic that the "It will be ready in a week." status is still there :)

   
   

   Viewing the (hideous) source, you see plenty of unneeded tables, countless in-line styling and javascript..

   Well, needless to say, IE4 was targeted as the default browser..

   
   

   Here's a small snipped used for achieving a mouseover image swap:

   
   <a onmouseover="document['fpAnimswapImgFP1'].imgRolln=document['fpAnimswapImgFP1'].src;
document['fpAnimswapImgFP1'].src=document['fpAnimswapImgFP1'].lowsrc;"
onmouseout="document['fpAnimswapImgFP1'].src=document['fpAnimswapImgFP1'].imgRolln" href="javascript:void(0)"><img border="0" src="images/amazulika.GIF"
id="fpAnimswapImgFP1" name="fpAnimswapImgFP1" dynamicanimation="fpAnimswapImgFP1"
lowsrc="images/amazulika2.GIF" width="143" height="192"></a>
   

   
   

   That's even worse in-line junk than "modern" asp.net controls...

   
   

   Anyhow, there's nothing amazing to learn from this post, except perhaps appreciate the tools at hand and the maturity of the browsers that we have nowadays.

   
   

   Cheers,

   
   

   Erik

   

   Tags: General

   
   

8. New Blog Layout

   May 14

   posted by erikzaadi In : General | Comments (0)

   Finally got my custom template up and running..

   Went from this :

   

   To the one you are[no longer] seeing now..

   
   There are a lot of good resources out there about how to customize your blog.
   

   Furthermore, there are plenty of nice widgets and templates, saving you both time and effort.

   
   

   Instead of using these prebuilt resources, I wanted to learn a bit more,
   

   mainly about the Blogger API's and capabilities, and of course enjoy some jQuery action.

   
   

   I embarked upon on a small RTFM on the Blogger advanced help, fired up Boks and here's the result..
   

   
   Here's a short list of the tools I've used to customize this blog:

   I'll post more about each tool later on..

   BluePrintCSS

   An excellent CSS framework that saves SO MUCH cross browser tests

   Boks

   A suberb tool created in Adobe Air, which allows you to visually build up the layout
   of your page using the BluePrintCSS framework
   

   
   

   jQuery

   A javascript framework which is very easy to use, and incredibly extendible
   

   
   

   jQuery Tooltip plugin

   
   

   A Tooltip plugin for jQuery, hover over the twitter icon below to see in action..
   

    

   jQuery UI

   CSS Themes and some really sweet javascript UI tools based on jQuery
   

   
   

   Free RSS Icons by Matthew Inman

   
   

   Great free kit of rss icons (and a rather cool site)
   

   
   

    

   That's it for now,
   

   
   Erik
   

   
   

   

   Tags: General

   
   

9. First post

   May 06

   posted by erikzaadi In : General | Comments (6)

   Ok, here goes the first post..
   
   My name is Erik, and I'll be blogging about ... well I don't know yet.
   I guess most of my posts will be about programming, and my attempts to becoming a better programmer..
   
   One of the thing's I enjoy the most is learning new things that I find helpful.
   Through this blog I hope to be able to share such useful information with you...
   
   So, here's my TODO list for now:
   

   1. Add more info on my profile
      
      
      • My fiance found it funny that I wrote "with a vast appetite for new technologies",
      
      
      • I wonder if that has anything to do with my ever growing ubersexy beer belly...
      
      
   
   
   2. Learn interesting stuff worth blogging about..
   
   
   
   3. Perhaps pimp up my blog template
   
   

   
   
   Cheers for now,
   
   Erik

   

   Tags: General