jpcody
​P​H​P​ ​S​c​r​i​p​t​ ​T​o​ ​M​o​n​i​t​o​r​ ​F​T​P​ ​D​i​r​e​c​t​o​r​y​ ​C​h​a​n​g​e​s​ ​|​ ​f​r​a​n​z​o​n​e​.​c​o​m
I recently had the need to be able to monitor a directory on an FTP server for changes and to then be notified of those changes. I’ve been working a lot in PHP lately so I decided to use that to implement my script.
php  server 
9 hours ago
​W​h​y​ ​P​a​r​e​n​t​s​ ​H​a​t​e​ ​P​a​r​e​n​t​i​n​g​ ​-​-​ ​N​e​w​ ​Y​o​r​k​ ​M​a​g​a​z​i​n​e
children  parenting  happiness 
3 days ago
​T​h​e​ ​L​a​s​t​ ​P​s​y​c​h​i​a​t​r​i​s​t​:​ ​W​h​y​ ​P​a​r​e​n​t​s​ ​H​a​t​e​ ​P​a​r​e​n​t​i​n​g
New York Magazine's article, All Joy And No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting, has 19 million pages of quotes and examples, but no answer.   Too bad; the answer is right there.
children  parenting  psychology  happiness 
3 days ago
​W​o​r​r​y​ ​I​s​n​'​t​ ​W​o​r​k​ ​-​ ​D​a​n​ ​P​a​l​l​o​t​t​a​ ​-​ ​H​a​r​v​a​r​d​ ​B​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​ ​R​e​v​i​e​w
After all, who is likely to be the more productive contributor to the company, and to the world — the person who is healthy, rested, well-balanced, full of energy, and clear of mind, or the sleep-deprived, overweight, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen, psychologically unexamined, self-critical maniac? Who is more likely to be present enough to see the next breakthrough? Who is more likely to analyze problems clearly, for what they really are, instead of what they are assumed to be?
worry  working  business 
3 days ago
​J​a​v​a​S​c​r​i​p​t​M​V​C
JavaScriptMVC is an open-source framework containing the best ideas in enterprise JavaScript development. It guides you to successfully completed projects by promoting best practices, maintainability, and convention over configuration.
javascript 
4 days ago
Resolution Independent Mobile UI - Sencha - Blog
This is not an article on adaptive layouts or responsive web design. This article is specifically about pixel “density”, a relatively new concern to digital designers. In the mobile environment, screen resolution has been quickly advancing, resulting in larger and larger “pixels per inch” (ppi).
mobile  webdesign 
9 days ago
Scripting News: Proposal: A new kind of blog comment system
So all this has led me to an idea that comments could work quite a bit differently and remove the incentives to replay old arguments, and keep the comments focused on the ideas being responded to. 
comments  blogging  writing 
10 days ago
Learning Ruby with the EdgeCase Ruby Koans
The Koans walk you along the path to enlightenment in order to learn Ruby. The goal is to learn the Ruby language, syntax, structure, and some common functions and libraries. We also teach you culture. Testing is not just something we pay lip service to, but something we live. It is essential in your quest to learn and do great things in the language.
ruby  tutorials 
11 days ago
jQuery Book: Selecting Elements
Contains good advice on speed enhancements for JS.

If you've made a selection that you might need to make again, you should save the selection in a variable rather than making the selection repeatedly.
jquery  speed  selectors 
12 days ago
Explaining JavaScript scope and closures - Robert's talk
Therefore, my humble goal with this article is for everyone to finally grasp what scope and closures and self-executing functions are, how they works, and especially how you can benefit from them. You do need to understand the basic concepts of variables and functions before reading this.
javascript 
13 days ago
Accomplishing Common Tasks Using MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo III
My love of the JavaScript frameworks knows no bounds. Unfortunately too many developers stick to one framework without taking the time to learn the others. The more frameworks you know, the better a programmer you will be and the more money you'll make. Let me show you how to accomplish a few more tasks using three JavaScript frameworks: MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo.
mootools  jquery  dojo  comparison  javascript 
13 days ago
Don’t let jQuery’s $(document).ready() slow you down | Encosia
jQuery’s $(document).ready() event is something that you probably learned about in your earliest exposure to jQuery and then rarely thought about again. The way it abstracts away DOM timing issues is like a warm security blanket for code running in a variety of cold, harsh browser windows.
javascript  jquery  documentready  bestpractices 
13 days ago
Ryan Freitas - 35 Lessons in 35 Years
My father always told me that the day we stop learning is the day we die. I wrote this as a sort of preparation for my 35th birthday last week. Some of these are poignant, others are simply trite; I attribute the latter to my growing sense of sentimentality as I age. That, and I need an editor.
advice  inspiration 
14 days ago
PHP in templates: Pain or Pleasure
Slideshare of a deck on ExpressionEngine parse order.
expressionengine 
14 days ago
WebKit Keyframe Animation Syntax
snippets  css3  webkit 
14 days ago
ignore the code: Opinions vs. Data
Gmail’s recent update brought us a strange new UI element:1



Clicking on the checkbox selects all emails. The arrow, on the other hand, allows you to make more specific selections:
gmail  ui 
14 days ago
Pictos
Hand Crafted, Infinitely Scalable & Royalty-Free Icons for User Interface Designers
icons  resources  typography 
15 days ago
Git for the lazy - Spheriki
This guide is for people who want to jump to any point in time with their project/game/whatever, and want something to use for themselves.
git 
16 days ago
Google Gmail to Harness HTML5 - PCWorld Business Center
Currently, the Gmail program is comprised of 443,000 lines of JavaScript, with 978,000 lines if comments are included. All of it was written by hand, he said.
gmail  javascript  facts 
20 days ago
Richard Branson - Richard's Blog - In it for fun, not just money - Virgin
I don't think that many businesspeople start their business with the idea that they can make a lot of money. Most people feel that they can create something that is going to make a difference to other people's lives – that is how they start their businesses.
branson  virgin  business 
4 weeks ago
Joshua Blankenship | Blog » What People Like Me are Looking For in Designer/Developer Portfolios
My team currently has two openings, a Web Developer and Junior Designer, and we just hired a Project Manager. I’ve been spending ~15% of my workdays lately sorting through portfolios, reading and sending emails, and following up with potential applicants. I think most people in Director/Principle/HR-type roles are too busy to explain why an applicant gets rejected, but I want to throw some ideas out there that I think might help you if you’re a design/developer on the job hunt.
hiring  business 
4 weeks ago
JeffCroft.com: Why I’m a hybrid. (Like a Liger. Or a Tigon. Or a Prius.)
But for me? I want to feel like I have the potential to create the next world-changing web project. Like I have the power to see my wildest ideas through to fruition. Like I won’t ever be limited by what this CMS or that plugin can do and can’t do. Like my design work won’t ever have to scaled back in the face of some technical limitation.
webdesign  hybrid 
4 weeks ago
iPhone Pull to Refresh - Leah Culver's Blog
Ever since Tweetie 2, the pull-to-refresh paradigm has been a hot feature for iPhone applications. The idea is that you can pull down on a list of items to refresh them. This saves you from needing some sort of "refresh" or "reload" button. Nice!
iphone  iphonedev 
4 weeks ago
FAQ Pronunciation | Typophile
Following is a list of names and their correct pronunciations (using English orthography):
typography  fonts  pronunciation 
5 weeks ago
Regarding Foursquare and Please Rob Me - Waxy.org
foursquare  gowalla  geolocation 
5 weeks ago
Stubbornella » Blog Archive » Woman in technology
I would argue that there are female developers who are just as good as men, if not better, but despite that, they are less likely to stay in school, stick with engineering jobs, speak at or even attend conferences, and be recognized for their contributions. The problem compounds itself as women see no role-models for how to be a woman in this field, and only the very thick-skinned manage to stay in engineering and web development.
gender  discrimination  women 
5 weeks ago
Three minute philosophy
YouTube user CollegeBinary does a video series called Three Minute Philosophy. Each episode describes the views and beliefs of a noted philosopher: Galileo, Kant, Descartes, Locke, and more.
philosophy 
5 weeks ago
Laver's Law of Fashion - (37signals)
James Laver was a museum curator for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from the ‘30s through the ‘50s. He was also a fashion theorist and historian who conceived Laver’s Law — an attempt to make sense of the fashion trend lifecycle.

Here is Laver’s Law:
design  37signals  laverslaw 
5 weeks ago
How Do I Win Rock Paper Scissors Every Time? | ChaCha Answers
6 weeks ago
Coding Horror: Groundhog Day, or, the Problem with A/B Testing
Which, naturally, brings me to A/B testing. That's what Phil spends most of those thirty years doing. He spends it pursuing a woman, technically, but it's how he does it that is interesting:
groundhogday  abtesting  ux 
6 weeks ago
Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories: Round Rects Are Everywhere!
The history of the beginning of round rectangles on the Mac.
apple  design  ux 
6 weeks ago
Defend PHP; convince me it isn't horrible - Stack Overflow
I made a tongue-in-cheek comment in another question thread calling PHP a terrible language and it got down-voted like crazy. Apparently there are lots of people here who love PHP.

So I'm genuinely curious. What am I missing? What makes PHP a good language?
php  stackoverflow 
7 weeks ago
LukeW | Gradual Engagement Boosts Twitter Sign-Ups by 29%
Twitter recently redesigned their sign-up process to boost new user engagement. Though the new sign-up process added one more screen, conversions went up 29%. How? Gradual engagement.
login  ux  twitter 
7 weeks ago
The id attribute just got more classy in HTML5 · Mathias Bynens
The HTML 4.01 spec states that ID tokens must begin with a letter ([A-Za-z]) and may be followed by any number of letters, digits ([0-9]), hyphens (-), underscores (_), colons (:), and periods (.). For the class attribute, there is no such limitation. Classnames can contain any character, and they don’t have to start with a letter to be valid.
html5 
7 weeks ago
Icon Reference | Hicksdesign
The Icon Reference Chart is one of Hicksdesign's Goodies
design  icons 
7 weeks ago
Making Sense of Color Codes | Nettuts+
HTML color codes are a common and crucial piece of modern web design. While most sites nowadays are designed largely in part with images, colors are particularly important when you need to come up with a color hex value on the fly while coding. In this guide, we will learn the fundamentals behind color coding, ultimately providing you the power to come up with colors without the use of a color picker.
color 
7 weeks ago
Object-Oriented PHP for Beginners | Nettuts+
At this point, you should feel comfortable with the object-oriented programming style. Learning OOP is a great way to take your programming to that next level. When implemented properly, OOP will help you produce easy-to-read, easy-to-maintain, portable code that will save you (and the developers who work with you) hours of extra work. Are you stuck on something that wasn’t covered in this article? Are you already using OOP and have some tips for beginners? Share them in the comments!
php  oop 
7 weeks ago
Getting Real: Wordsmiths (by 37signals)
If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer.
hiring  management  writing  37signals 
8 weeks ago
Web Design Concepts For Non Web Designers
Great introduction to html and css for newcomers.
html  css  presentation  introduction 
8 weeks ago
Kill The Settings, Build Opinionated Software ~ Flyosity by Mike Rundle
Your app has too many settings, too many things to tweak. API endpoints? Colors of the rainbow? 100 different fonts and font sizes? Temperature in Kelvin? Switch the app to use Esperanto?
webapp  ux  settings 
8 weeks ago
I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.
typography  humor  comicsans  mcsweeneys 
8 weeks ago
Basecamp home page redesign
A few weeks ago we decided to take a stab at redesigning the Basecamp home page. We liked the current design, but we wanted to see if we could do better. Specifically we were interested in more visuals, less text, and a generally simpler and less dense presentation.
ux  37signals 
8 weeks ago
Adobe - Fonts : Type topics: Use the right character
The difference between an amateur document and a professional one can be a matter of details. The following topics cover some of the most commonly overlooked or incorrectly handled details of typography.
typography 
8 weeks ago
Nick Patrick - Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?
Reading David McCullough’s 1776, I found myself wondering: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? If so, when did American accents diverge from British accents?
language  accents  british 
8 weeks ago
I assume I'm below average | Derek Sivers
96% of cancer patients in a hospital claim to be in better health than the average cancer patient.

93% of motorists consider themselves to be safer-than-average drivers.

90% students see themselves as more intelligent than the average student.

94% of college professors said they are better-than-average teachers.

Ironically, 92% said they are less biased than average, too.
average  psychology 
8 weeks ago
Woot : Amazon, Woot, and You: But Mostly Woot
To be uncharacteristically serious for half a nanosecond, yes, Woot has signed an agreement to be acquired by Amazon. It shouldn't change anything much for us or you after the deal closes, we just figured you’d like to know a few details. You see, when two companies meet over drinks and some light jazz and decide they'd like to get to know each other better… You know what? Our CEO said it best in his letter to us employees...
humor  amazon  business  copywriting 
9 weeks ago
"Login" is not a verb
Despite what many people --mostly in the computer field-- think, "login" is not a verb. It's simply not. Whether or not "login" is a word at all may spark a debate in some circles, but assuming it is then it may act as many parts of speech, but not as a verb.
I will repeat the important part for clarity: "login" is not a verb. It's simply not.
language  humor  grammar  login 
9 weeks ago
Cheat Sheets - Added Bytes
A selection of free, printable quick references for a variety of languages and web technologies.
cheatsheetcs  programming 
9 weeks ago
Logical Fallacies and the Art of Debate
This is a guide to using logical fallacies in debate. And when I say "using," I don't mean just pointing them out when opposing debaters commit them -- I mean deliberately committing them oneself, or finding ways to transform fallacious arguments into perfectly good ones.
logic  reason  fallacies 
9 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #20: If it works for Amazon, it will work for you
Though Amazon has excellent and proven features, these won’t necessarily work on any e-commerce website. Let’s take their customer reviews for example. Target.com bought Amazon’s customer review software. Though the software and the interface are exactly the same, Target.com basically doesn’t receive any reviews at all: in the first month after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, Amazon got 1 805 reviews whereas Target got only 3 (both retailers sold about 2 million copies).
ux  amazon  target 
10 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #19: You don’t need the content to design a website
Many designers create wireframes and comps with “lorem ipsum” filler text. Using dummy text often results in an aesthetically pleasing but unrealistic design. What’s worse, it creates the illusion that content is secondary.
ux 
10 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #11: You need to redesign your website periodically
For many, a redesign means to refresh the look of a website in the hope that it will increase conversions and attract new customers. In fact, such projects are often counterproductive as user feedbacks on numerous redesigns proved that users hate change, even if the new design is clearly superior to the original.
ux 
10 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #13: Icons enhance usability
Many researches have shown that icons are hard to memorize and are often highly inefficient. The Microsoft Outlook toolbar is a good example: the former icon-only toolbar had a poor usability and changing the images and their positioning didn’t help much. With the introduction of text labels next to the icons however, everyone quickly understood the buttons’ function and started using them. In another study, the team of UIE observed that people remember a button’s actual position instead of the graphic interpretation of the function.
ux 
10 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #10: If your design is good, small details don’t matter
“The details are not the details. They make the design.” said Charles Eames. Fine details like an informative error message, a reassuring piece of microcopy on a sign up form, or rearranging the products on a category page strongly impacts the user experience.
Small details make a big difference. This is what Apple is all about: obsessive attention to the details down to the smallest bits.
ux  links 
10 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #8: Ornamental graphics improves the users’ experience
Usability researches and eye-tracking studies show that stock photos and other decorative graphic elements rarely add value to a website and more often harm than improve the users’ experience.
Such images aren’t related to the website’s topic and don’t hold useful information. Users usually overlook stock images or even get frustrated by them.
ux 
10 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #3: People don’t scroll
Though people weren’t used to scrolling in the mid-nineties, nowadays it’s absolutely natural for users to use the browser’s scrollbar. For a continuous long content, like an article or a tutorial, scrolling provides even better usability than slicing up the text to several pages.
ux 
10 weeks ago
UX Myths - Myth #1: People read on the web
They simply don’t. Usability studies proved long ago that people don’t read web content word-by-word. Instead, they scan the pages looking for highlighted keywords, meaningful headings, short paragraphs and scannable lists. 
ux 
10 weeks ago
House Aesthetic
From Blankenship.
decoration 
10 weeks ago
Lifework - Herman Miller
decoration 
10 weeks ago
Web application development guide - Salford City Council
The following document is a style guide to assist in the production, implementation and continuing development of all Salford City Council websites and web applications. This document outlines the overall file structure, naming conventions, design and coding guidelines, styles and resources used in the construction of this site. To ensure design continuity and maintain the lifespan of sites, it is important that everybody involved in the development, maintenance and updating of sites read, understand and adhere to this guide.
styleguide  code  webapp 
10 weeks ago
Batteries Feel Included: 309
So, you're in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn't have sex with you anyway.
humor  time-travel 
10 weeks ago
Iphone Tutorial: Creating a RSS Feed Reader
Creating an RSS reader for iphone is a great way to learn about the language. In this tutorial we’re going to create a rss reader that can also play podcasts. Such application will require us to download and parse a rss feed, display the data in a table and play a remote podcast. In this article I assume a minimal knowledge of cocoa programming, but you should be able to follow even if this is the first time you’re coding an iphone application.
iphonedev  iphone  application 
10 weeks ago
Instruments icons on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Icons from Instruments, a developer tool by Apple. Some of the greatest icons are the ones you hadn't seen yet. 
icons  inspiration 
10 weeks ago
Maxvoltar - What does 320dpi mean to designers? (2)
The past couple of days I’ve been turning the internet upside down in search for screenshots of the new interface to see how Apple “solved” the problems you get when you need to design an interface that has the same DPI as paper (here’s the best screenshot gallery I could find). Here’s a list of tricks and techniques I learned so far. Over time we’ll see more design conventions, but for now it’s just a lot of guesswork.
iphone  iphone4 
11 weeks ago
Eyes And Feet and more: Turbo-boost your WiFi signal - in 15 minutes
wifi  signal  boost 
11 weeks ago
You couldn't pay me to work for Ballmer - (37signals)
Jobs is lucid and reasoned. Ballmer is… Hell, I don’t even know how to describe it. He’s all over the place. No clear definitions, just randomly running his mouth. Compared to Jobs, I think it’s charitable to call him pathetic.

Jobs needs worthy opponents and Ballmer isn’t it. Look at this chart of Microsoft’s market value from the Gates to Ballmer hand-over:
apple  microsoft  ballmer  37signals 
12 weeks ago
UX Engagement Metrics - 52 Weeks of UX
Here follows a list of engagement metrics that have been used over the years. As you go down the list the metrics go from almost meaningless (hits) to very meaningful (daily active users). This is a spectrum of engagement metrics that you can use for your own projects.
ux  metrics 
12 weeks ago
Human Body in a Vacuum
How would the unprotected human body react to the vacuum of outer space? Would it inflate to bursting? or would it not? or would just the interior gases hyperinflate? We are also relating this to short-term exposure only. This question primarily relates to the pressure differential problems. Temperature or radiation considerations would be interesting as well.
science  space  nasa 
12 weeks ago
The Walled Garden - Neven Mrgan's tumbl
But you see why they run things they way they do. And no one is forced to live in the Japanese Garden, just as no one is forced to commit fully to the App Store and refrain from exploring the rest of the world. Sure, this is Portland’s nicest garden - maybe they have a sort of monopoly on gardens. Maybe it’s because people like it, because it is so walled off.
apple  portland  technology 
12 weeks ago
Coding Horror: The Vast and Endless Sea
I don't care how much you pay me, you'll never be able to recreate the incredibly satisfying feeling I get when demonstrating mastery within my community of peers. That's what we do on Stack Overflow: have fun, while making the internet one infinitesimally tiny bit better every day.
master  business  motivation 
12 weeks ago
Scrolling and Attention (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.
ux  scrolling  usability 
12 weeks ago
Lightweight lifestyle
When Ann and I return from a long hike, we immediately start getting rid of stuff. Since completing our hike of the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, we’ve given away a 14-foot aluminum jon boat with trailer, a slalom ski, a windsurfer, two North Face down sleeping bags, a toboggan, a 35 mm camera with telephoto lens, an artist’s set of oil paints, a set of weights with bench, and four old tires. We’ve hauled two loads of clothing and miscellaneous junk to thrift shops.
minimalism 
12 weeks ago
National Journal Magazine - Do 'Family Values' Weaken Families?
Rather, it is the natural consequence of a cultural divide that has opened wide over the past few decades and shows no sign of closing. To define the divide in a sentence: In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.
family  politics 
12 weeks ago
LukeW | Web App Masters: Backstage at 37signals
At the UIE Web App Masters Tour in Minneapolis MN, 37signals founder, Jason Fried described how 37signals solves design problems and collaborates by showing four days worth of chat transcripts about an ongoing redesign project at the company.
37signals  process  webapp 
12 weeks ago
Experience Precedes Branding - 52 Weeks of UX
Our first contact with a logo, if for a brand we aren’t familiar with, has little associated context. Therefore, we have no associated feelings with the logo and we won’t react strongly. We probably won’t notice it, we may react a little bit, but whatever our feelings about it will soon be overwhelmed by any direct experience. As our context changes over time, as we use the products and associate our experiences with the brand, then our feelings about it change as well. Bierut says:
ux  branding 
12 weeks ago
How to Dominate Your Niche Without Apology | Copyblogger
When I think about great, response-focused copywriting, I think about a writer reaching out, grabbing her audience by the collar, and snarling, “Buy my stuff or leave, but make a decision.”
copywriting  inspiration 
12 weeks ago
Kyle Conroy's Personal Blog and Portfolio - Should I have bought that Apple Product?
Currently, Apple's stock is at an all time high. A share today is worth over 40 times its value seven years ago. So, how much would you have today if you purchased stock instead of an Apple product? See for yourself in the table below. A huge thanks to everymac.com for the original prices and release dates. All values are calculated using Apple's current stock price according to http://brivierestockquotes.appspot.com.
apple  business  stock 
may 2010
Getting Real: From Idea to Implementation (by 37signals)
Go from brainstorm to sketches to HTML to coding
Here's the process we use to Get Real:
37signals  design  process  sketching 
may 2010
Lightbox_me - Stupidly Simple Lightboxing
Have you ever had a DOM element that you wanted lightboxed, but didn't want all the fanciness of all the lightbox-related plug-ins out there? Lightbox_me is for you.

Lightbox_me is an essential tool for the jQuery developer's toolbox. Feed it a DOM element wrapped in a jQuery object and it will lightbox it for you, no muss no fuss.
jquery  lightbox  plugin 
may 2010
Enabling the Back Button | jQuery for Designers - Tutorials and screencasts
As we build more and more Ajaxy applications, and our apps reside on a single page, the browser’s native back button can get more and more broken. This episode will show you how to re-enable the back button on your apps.
ajax  jquery  back-button  tutorials  ux 
may 2010
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