Way Out Of Here
A fairly recent discovery for me, Porcupine Tree, is a band fast becoming one of my very favourites. And this video shows why:
Fantastic (if somewhat gloomy!) songwriting, beautifully nuanced performances, and sublime production values. This song, Way Out Of Here is taken from their 2007 release, Fear Of A Blank Planet.
(P.S.: lots of Gavin Harrison shots for drum geeks :-) )
Posted 06:22 PST on 06 Mar 2010 | Categories: |
porcupine tree
music
youtube | 5 comments
Of mixins and marvels
Today’s post, gentle reader, is about CSS shenanigans. We start gently by pointing you to a timely post from m’colleague:
Mark Myers: Sticky footers in Domino.
Worth a read, even if the chump took far too long to figure out what the problem was (grin). It bears repeating: well-formed mark-up will make your CSS development and testing a lot easier especially if you use a stricter-than-is-really-necessary doctype (although of course Domino doesn’t make that especially easy).
Anyway, here’s another wee nugget of information—actually, a full-fledged tool—set to make CSS development much much easier: LESS, a Ruby gem which lets you use this sort of syntax in a *.less file, which then cross-compiles to standard CSS thus:
@main_branding: #4d926f;
@sub_branding: #4f921d;
@highlight: #f7db46;
body {background-color: @sub_branding}
#header {background-color: @main_branding}
h2{color: @highlight}
Yes! Variables! (Note that less files are backwards-compatible, so normal CSS syntax can be used in them).
What is more, if you are on OS X like what I am, you can use a nifty wee GUI for this tool, called less.app, funnily enough.
But that is not all. What makes LESS really exciting is that in addition to bog-standard variables, one can extend these to full-on mixins: a whole “class-worth” of properties for the price of one variable. huzzah! And this mixin can act as a function too. Oh the flexibility! How’s about that then? But wait! That’s still not all! LESS also gives us nested rules and operations in CSS. Worth a look wouldn’t you say?
Posted 07:05 PST on 02 Mar 2010 | Categories: |
css
lesscss | 3 comments
This is why you need to know more than “straight Domino”
I use two indicators for a technology’s relative importance / resurgence / glorious rise. The first is how many jobs are in the offing for said technology or platform. The second, surely, has to be that technology’s importance on stack overflow. So let’s do the inevitable:
531,035 questions as of this afternoon (1425 GMT, 25 Feb 2010)
Of those questions:
Other tags for comparison:
Just sayin’. Now, it’s not all grim news: on the plus side, if you know your Domino development, chances are you do @formula, Lotusscript / Visual Basic, Java, Javascript, XML, web services and now, Java Server Faces (JSF). It’s also highly probable that you are results-oriented, business-focussed, and committed to actually delivering stuff—ooh, I used management buzzwords!
In all seriousness, none of those are skills that should be under-valued. When you look out at the bigger world of IT, far too many people find it very difficult (apparently) to deliver timely business solutions.
Posted 06:51 PST on 25 Feb 2010 | Categories:
| 13 comments
DominoWiki update
Chris Miller talks about choosing a wiki template, which is pretty timely—I don’t imagine this is much of a surprise, but for now, DominoWiki is dead. No-one appears inclined to commit code to the project, and I certainly don’t have the time at the moment (i.e. for fixes, features or OpenNTF clearance).
This dovetails with the recent discussions around Domino templates, and the whole open-source thing, I know. It’s all about how to reinvigorate interest in committing over at OpenNTF: I sincerely hope we get somewhere with that.
The current stable release of DominoWiki is 1.2.2, and there it will stay for the foreseeable future. I’m interested in doing some stuff with SSJS and the wiki—the Lotusscript parser easily is the weakest link in DominoWiki—a smattering of RegEx magic would make life a lot simpler. Now, whether this (vapourware) initiative will form part of the DominoWiki project is another question entirely…
In the meantime, OpenNTF plays host to a very capable wiki-like CMS: XPages wiki.
Posted 00:19 PST on 25 Feb 2010 | Categories: |
dominowiki
openntf | No comments yet
Is there value in Domino as a ’blogging platform?
You may well have seen Mitch Cohen’s post, What is the Future of Domino as a Blogging Platform? It’s worth a read, because it articulates something that has been on a few keen minds for quite a while (I’ve been gving it some thought too).
Take, for example, this very site. It is way overdue a refresh, both in terms of design and content, and I have been dithering: should I keep it on Domino or move it to a standard ’blogging platform. The decision is significant, because this site is “hand-rolled”, rather than being based on a common template like Dominoblog or Blogsphere. But then, perhaps any Domino site move is significant, because neither of those templates are especially active either.
I put together a site based on the Dominoblog template recently, and I found it reasonably straightforward to use. That said, it would be fabulous to have some proper theme management, quick-start documentation and the like, and it’s in areas like that the real value of an open-source template comes into play: given enough enthusiasm and interest, someone will write the necessary.
Aye, there’s the rub: the Domino open-source community is somewhat lacking in committers at the moment, beyond each individual’s “pet project” (early days though? IBM only announced open-sourcing in October last year).
So I suppose it’s down to the individual: what would you consider in determining the future of your Domino-hosted site? Is it important to your business that you’re seen to be hosting on Domino? Do you like writing and using your own Domino code? Is the local replica aspect important to you?
Posted 06:31 PST on 24 Feb 2010 | Categories:
|
dominoblog | 16 comments
XPages101: early bird ends soon!
A couple of weeks back I helped out Mr. White with his inaugural XPages 101 classroom course, and it went over pretty well. As you probably know, Matt has made this course—and more—available on-line too. Not only that, but there’s a considerable early-bird discount to be had.
This discount expires on Friday this week. So if you want tip-top technical training in XPages, I urge you to sign up and take advantage: you know you want to.
Posted 04:45 PST on 22 Feb 2010 | Categories: |
xpages | No comments yet
Watch out for these two tomorrow
Tomorrow, the evil Dr. XPages,
… will be giving an “XPages 101” session in London. He will be “assisted” by his nefarious side-kick, the Milky Bar Kid:
And, if you’re around in the evening, drinkies at The Founders Arms. Huzzah!
Big thanks to Mr. Steve McDonagh for the Photoshopping!
Posted 14:15 PST on 08 Feb 2010 | Categories:
|
xpages
ldc | 2 comments
» More? Hit the archive.
