nanovivid

It turns out that after freaking me out with the news that profiles were being removed, Netflix has changed their tune. It’s nice to know that they’re listening to their customers, and I’m glad that I’ll be able to keep all my ratings and my queue!

♫ MGMT - Electric Feel (Justice Remix)

I’m a little late on getting around to this, but whatever. The weekend before last, we took a trip to Pennsylvania for Bryan’s sister’s wedding. The wedding was lovely, the food was amazing, and the hotel was… odd. We stayed at the Golden Plough Inn in very country Peddler’s Village. Our room had a lovely farm animal theme, complete with a wood cutout of pigs suckling. Confusingly, even though we were in room 108, there were two flights of stairs required to reach the actual quarters. Even though the accommodations were a bit strange, it was a nice time. Since Bryan was in the wedding, I took a bunch of pictures with his fancy camera which he’s going to post at some point. However, the camera was apparently in the wrong autofocus mode, so a lot of them didn’t turn out so well. Here they are anyway. Oh, and there was a massive thunderstorm during the outdoor reception, so that was exciting.

After the wedding (and breakfast at the Cock ‘n Bull… no, seriously), we drove on to visit Dave and Olivia. They already posted a nice summary of our activities and some pictures, so be sure to check those out. It was great to see them again and to finally get to experience firsthand the amazing work they’ve done to their house (even if the fact that it’s a row house lead Bryan to remark that their neighborhood was “like The Wire”).

We also took the opportunity to visit IKEA, where I picked up some white DIODER lights for my desk, replacing the halogens I had previously. Even though the LEDs are a little flourescent-ish, they put out barely any heat and are wonderfully diminutive.

The trip was very enjoyable and I definitely want to get back to Philly at some point in the future. Due to poor planning and research, we missed out on all the museums, so that’s at least one reason arrange another visit. I could probably pass on a second Peddler’s Village experience though.

♫ Sigur Rós - Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur

• The Editing Room - Abridged Scripts
  Truly inspired abbreviated screenplays.

Tonight we got an email from Netflix saying that they’re eliminating account profiles so they can “continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.” How considerate of them. This means that I’m losing all my ratings that I’ve spent time building, and Bryan and I can no longer have our own separate queues. Up until today, I’ve always been very impressed with Netflix and pleased with their service, but I am not a happy camper right now.

Update: It’s hit Hacking Netflix now, and there’s a Netflix Community thread.

♫ Massivivid - God Away

While migrating my site to WordPress, I got annoyed that WordPress uses RSS feeds by default with no way to change to Atom. Not that there’s a big difference or anything, but if you’re anal-retentive like me and want WordPress to use Atom but still have pretty feed URLs (http://nanovivid.com/feed/ instead of http://nanovivid.com/feed/?feed=atom), you can do it with one .htaccess RewriteRule:

RewriteRule (.*)/feed/?$ $1?feed=atom [L]

This simply takes any URL ending in /feed and invisibly appends ?feed=atom to it. Instant Atom feeds for everything!Î

♫ Gotye - Heart's A Mess (Lull's Radio Edit)

• IKEA DIODER LED Lights
  I really want a set of these, but IKEA is being stupid and won't let you order them online.
• bomomo
  Fun little drawing toy that uses moving particles (Safari/Firefox only).

Geeky content warning: Feel free to skip this post if “JavaScript” makes you think of writing a play at a coffeehouse. Otherwise you may be confused and/or bored to tears.

Lately I’ve been using the jQuery JavaScript framework quite a bit, and I consistently find myself surprised by how close to magic it seems. Being able to simply write $("#id").hide(); and have the element disappear is a bit shocking if you’re used to writing “traditional” JavaScript. jQuery encourages a massive reduction in the amount of code required to do just about anything.

For example, the collapsable yearly archive in the footer of the site is based on the Flexo Archives Widget. The original JavaScript is about 220 lines of code, including comments and whitespace. Here’s the code ported to jQuery:

jQuery(function(){
    jQuery(".flexo-link").each(function() {
        // Add a hint to each expandable link
        jQuery(this).attr("title", jQuery(this).attr("title") + " (Click to expand)");

        // Hide each list of months
        jQuery(this).parents("li:first").children("ul").hide();

    }).bind("click", function() {
        // Show or hide a list when the user clicks
        jQuery(this).parents("li:first").children("ul").slideToggle("fast");
        return false;
    });
});

That took the code from ~220 lines to ~15, which I’d say is pretty magical. Now, to be fair, jQuery is a 14 kb framework (when compressed), while the original Flexo code is only 4 kb compressed. In my case, I was already using jQuery for other functionality, so it made sense to go ahead and shrink the JavaScript for the archives. I also added scrolling to make sure the content stays on screen as it’s expanded and a few other tweaks. Even with those new features, my code only reached about 35 lines.

This is only a small taste of what jQuery can do. In addition to the core functionality, there’s the very impressive jQuery UI and all kinds of plugins. If you’re writing JavaScript, I’d highly recommend taking a look at jQuery. Then you can feel like a wizard too.

♫ Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook

The other day, John Gruber posted some nice code for converting text to title case. It was quickly ported to Python and JavaScript. I decided it would be useful to have a PHP version as well, so here’s my contribution.

I’ve already added one edge case that the original ignores, just because I had a title that needed the fix. One of my old posts is titled “More Scaper-ing.” Before the fix, it would get converted to “More Scaper-Ing,” which just looks wrong. So I dropped in a special case for it.

Let me know if you find the plugin useful or find any bugs.

Comments closed on this post. Please leave any bug reports or comments on the plugin’s page.

♫ Lykke Li - I'm Good, I'm Gone (Fred Falke Remix)

• Flugtag
  "We're going to figure this out eventually!"

As I’ve alluded to previously, I have a bit of a weakness for droning, repetitive music. I’m not sure how it happens, but I sometimes have an almost physical reaction to it that feels as if I’m being wrapped in a comforting blanket. No other artist that I’ve discovered can do this to me quite like Tim Hecker.

I discovered Hecker’s music quite by accident. I think I stumbled across Harmony In Ultraviolet while checking out From Here We Go Sublime by The Field on Amazon. Harmony was listed in the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section, and for some reason, it caught my eye. I clicked on over and was presented with this brilliant review (seriously, go read it). That right there was reason enough (well, along with checking out the samples) for me to stick the album on my wishlist.

Fast forward to January. I had gotten From Here We Go Sublime the previous fall and was thoroughly enjoying it. For those of you who don’t know, The Field makes amazingly ear-wormy minimal techno. His songs don’t bother with verses, choruses, breakdowns, or builds because they don’t need to. Instead of having a couple hooks in the song, he chooses exactly the right hooks and then loops them. Even though it’s completely repetitive, there are all kinds of tiny alterations and changes happening throughout each song, keeping it from becoming boring. I listened to the album quite a lot and The Field is currently at #17 on my Last.fm profile.

Then I finally bought Harmony In Ultraviolet and, well, here’s what happened to my music listening (courtesy of LastGraph):

Harmony is a massive album. I think the term “ambient” gets close, but it’s also very droning, sometimes very dark, and often noisy and full of static. The first time I played it, I simply sat in shock of the incredible, almost overwhelming beauty. Whether it’s the time-worn loops of Chimeras, the calming fuzz of Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight, or the massive synths of by Radio Spiricom, the music is not quite like anything I’ve ever heard before. I think it was also custom-tailored for my drone-loving brain.

I’ve also purchased the (oddly punctuated) Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again, which is a fantastic album in its own right. Where Harmony can be imposing and almost overwhelming, Haunt Me is warm and calm.

Tim Hecker’s music is in some ways the polar opposite of The Field’s. There are almost no beats and the hooks, such as they are, are drawn out over minutes. However, they both make use of minimalism in their own ways, and I’m powerless to resist either.

♫ Tim Hecker - Boreal Kiss (Part 1)