Does ExpressionEngine rely too heavily on paid addons to provide basic functionality that should come out-of-the-box with a commercial content management system worth $300? What is the base-level of functionality that you should expect from a commercial CMS?
This javascript NES emulator (ported from vNES) is pretty amazing. It runs full speed in Chrome on a modern PC. Try it out, but make sure you have nothing else important to do this afternoon. 
I’ve always been a bit wary about “The Secret“, the same way I’m wary about psychics and mediums. Many people are sold on the idea based on some kind of silver-bullet or magic-wand notion that it’s going to make them feel good or change their lives forever.
While I personally believe that psychics and the supernatural like are a load of old bunk, I can understand the reasons and the value placed on them by those that who do believe, such as grieving relatives looking for closure after the passing of a loved one. What makes me angry are those that prey on the weak minded, giving false hope instead of comfort and closure with the aim of extracting more money, but that is a rant for anther day.
Unlike psychics, I have no doubt that “The Secret” can work, but not in the way that the author and her publisher would have you believe. While it may work, that doesn’t mean it will work. It’s not like some kind of magic switch, in fact, there’s nothing spiritual, mystical or phantasmagorical about it. There’s no Jedi force, glowing auras, harmonic resonance or any phoney “Law of Attraction” at work here. It basically boils down to one basic truth.
Your chance at being successful at something increases exponentially the more passionate you are about it.
I’m not talking about a casual hobby or a passing interest. I mean an all-consuming passion for the subject where you can work so hard on achieving your goals but you’re so focussed that it doesn’t feel like work. Take a look at successful people throughout history. They weren’t bestowed with phenomenal cosmic powers or share some ancient powerful secret. Their success came from their passion, their will to see it through, and the hard work that went along with it.
I’m a web guy. It’s not just what I do; it’s who I am. I’m always being approached by people with the idea for the “next big thing”, even having to sign the odd NDA or no-compete clause. You know how it always ends?
I swear, it’s like South Park’s Underpants Gnomes every time.
Of course I have my own “big ideas”, and maybe one day I’ll work hard and make something of them, but the point I wanted to make was that you can have the best idea in the world, the best plan and even the best execution, but I guarantee you will be beaten by someone who wants it more and will work harder. I can also guarantee you will fail without the correctly channelled enthusiasm required to see your plan through to success.
That’s not magic. It’s what’s called “applying yourself”.
I’m not up on a soap-box here. I’m not entertaining any ideas of becoming a motivational speaker and I’m certainly not telling people anything they don’t already know.
I just think it’s worth reminding ourselves that you don’t need to spend your hard-earned money to have Oprah or anyone else tell you what you already know about life and living.
Mad web scientist, David Desandro (who you may remember as the creator of the fantastic jQuery plugin, Masonry and the Opera logo in CSS among other wonderful things), has done it again, this time crafting an entire typeface out of CSS3.
Dubbed “Curtis” the typeface is entirely rendered in the browser, comprised of spans, background colour, borders, border radius and absolute positioning.
All we need now is a jQuery plugin to apply this typeface to our own elements.
Just read this over on ReadWriteWeb and found it particularly poignant.
“One of the reasons social media can be so challenging is that it often challenges hierarchies… and people at the top of those hierarchies have grown comfortable there.
“Some see the potential advantages of an engaging, open online presence, but others feel threatened and vulnerable. They have a wide range of hostile responses at their disposal: from the passive-aggressive to the outright belligerent.”
Apparently I’m now a jQuery ninja. Who knew?
My Day One Workshop for Web Directions South 09 was run by Earle Castledine (with a little help from Craig Sharkey) and aimed to teach me a bit about jQuery. I’ve been looking for the right excuse to make the switch from MooTools to jQuery for a while now. The MooTools community tries hard, and while I think that it is technically a better library, jQuery just wins hands down when it comes to real-world usage, available plugins and general community support and adoption. But this is not a jQuery vs MooTools post; there are enough of them out there already.
Earle did a great job of simplifying the concepts for the javascript noobs in the room without alienating the more advanced peeps who already have an understanding of jQuery and what it can do. True, it started off a bit slow, but before too long we were using jQuery to do most of the cool stuff that jQuery works best for: traversing the DOM and turning up the Ajax-o-meter. A few choice dairy-related phrases emerged from the session too, which can only be defined as “had to be there” moments, such as “it all made sense when I saw the cheese” and “they go together like cheese and… and stuff.”
I already have a few projects that are half-finished, requiring just a bit of progressive enhancement to make them a bit more awesome, so I’ll definitely be playing with jQuery a bit more this week to bed-down a few concepts. Thanks Earle.