Simply Jonathan

Archive for 2011

Conditional Loading for Responsive Designs 

Very interesting technique by Jeremy Keith on 24 Ways from 2 December.

I don’t much care for content only available via JavaScript, but I suppose this sort of additional content could warrant such a technique, as long as the core content is always available.

(And of course, using an AJAX API would always require JS.)

Deconstructing and Putting Back Together Some Icons in Acorn 

Icon design isn’t part of my craft in any most ways you look at it, but I find it’s a fascinating subject.

What strikes me the most is that what I would have problems with isn’t so much the technical part, though I wouldn’t find it easy by any stretch, but that’s it’s the concept of breaking an icon down into geometric shapes that I probably would have a hard time at.

Finansiering

(This post is in Danish)

DKK 748. Fra 1 DKK/MDR.

Nelly.com tilbyder mig at jeg kan købe noget tøj fra [[1 DKK]] om måneden. Det ville være en afbetalingsordning der ville tage 62 år og lidt til. Jeg overvejer det.

Brian May on Freddie Mercury 

Permanent location of 'Brian May on Freddie Mercury'

Today would have been the 65th birthday of one of my greatest idols, Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury. Over on the Official Google Blog, Queen’s guitarist Brian May penned this beautiful eulogy about one of the greatest musicians ever.

Put This On Season Two Funding 

Permanent location of 'Put This On Season Two Funding'

What better way for me to try to return to regular posting than a link to the Kickstarter for Put This On’s second season.

Season one was great, and from the money they’re looking for, season two will probably be even better.

CAPTCHAs to keep idiots out of discussion threads 

That would be a remarkable tool for keeping people out. (Of course, people who don’t have English as their first language might not exactly be idiots for not having this down.) It would probably improve spelling too.

(Via Matt Haughey’s Delicious feed)

Top ten people who look good in a backwards kangol 

Hint: all of them played Jules in Pulp Fiction.

Farming vs Mining 

Permanent location of 'Farming vs Mining'

Wil Shipley on differences in the build to last and build to flip approaches to software development, coming out strongly in favour of the farming approach.

It’s hard to disagree with it; working hard with the modest goal of sustaining yourself is just intuitively a more likeable approach to software development, and to life in general.

On controlling your own email fate

Marco Arment in Let us pay for this service so it won’t go down:

For something as important as email, I’ve never trusted everything to a proprietary provider. My email address has never ended in someone else’s domain name, and has never been hosted in any way that would preclude me from easily switching to another provider.

I can’t exactly say I’ve followed this practice; for the first few years of my Internet existence I had a hotmail account, and I still have a gmail account, though I don’t really use it. But I have since early 2003 essentially controlled the domain name that my email address has been on. (I say controlled, because you never really own a domain name; it’s merely a glorified rent system, but that’s beyond the scope of this writing.)

Aside from the obvious benefit that one can usually land an address that’s infinitely better than what one can get at Gmail (or Windows Live or whatever), it gives one the possibility of switching hosting providers, without people contacting me knowing. I have done so, as of this writing, on three occasions, and I have never had to send out a mass-email telling that my address has changed.

Sometimes people get an email address from their ISP, which is even worse, because while Gmail deciding to close their doors might not be highly probable, your switching ISP probably isn’t a foreign concept.

Likewise, if the only email address you give out is your work email, not only are you mixing the types of messages you get there, which your employer might not appreciate, but when your employment eventually ends, people can’t contact you anymore.

One very basic piece of advice that everyone really should follow: register your name as a domain, and get email hosting for it. I use WebFaction (affiliate link), and like them, but they might not be for you, or too expensive, or what have you. But get a domain that you control, and worry about the rest afterwards; you can always change providers, that’s the beauty of it.

Not enough free space

Screenshot of a dialogue saying the iPhone is 2.3 MB short of required space

This is Simply Jonathan, a blog written by Jonathan Holst. It's mostly about technical topics (and mainly the Web at that), but an occasional post on clothing, sports, and general personal life topics can be found.

Jonathan Holst is a programmer, language enthusiast, sports fan, and appreciator of good design, living in Copenhagen, Denmark, Europe. He is also someone pretentious enough to call himself the 'author' of a blog. And talk about himself in the third person.