Its been a long time since I have updated this blog. Exams, work and other stuff have been taking my spare time away from me.

Me!

College

Exams are over and I am going out for my vacation. Thank god about that.

Work

I am making a map for cs 1.6

The color palette of this map is red/rusty red with white highlights. It looks pretty cool with its industrial style.

Other than that, I am working on a webapp on nodejs again. Its supposed to be a cross of forums and chat groups. Essentially, public chat groups.

Debate

The future of web apps

I honestly believe mozilla is going to lead the future of web apps. A future where you will only download the required files to be able to run apps, games, etc on your browsers. And as browsers get faster, webapps will get bigger and better.

The only problem which is my personal opinion is that this is going to take a lot of time, possibly four years for webapps to go mainsteam.

And also on the success rate of firefox os.

ios7

The buck won’t stop here. I know apple redesigned their mobile interface and every well known designer is screaming blood. But they need time to adjust their ui/ux. Give them a couple of months and they will polish their interface.

Skeuomorphism vs flat

This is not actually a debate. There was never any rivalry between the two groups. Both have their advantages.

Its just  that in this digital age where screen size is precious, people are ditching skeuomorphism in favor of flat design. But flat design is harder to make because you need to double the amount of work to guide the user.

Oh well, just when box shadow and radial gradient was getting compatible ….

College education sucks?
Well it does
Read on.

Class test

So I was giving a test online on java when a question popped up like this:

8) System.out.print(“finally”);

What will it print?

Options:

  1. “Final”
  2. Shows up compile error
  3. Runs successfully

My reaction : Dafuq!?

So I called the faculty to ask what the question means. She said it won’t print and exit because the you didn’t put that statement inside the main function.

I seriously wanted to bang my head on the desk that day.

Some people

At college, I help out quite a lot of people. Now, during our innovative assignment week, everyone had to make a simple login system.

They asked me from where to download templates. I told them html templates suck but they should try building sites from frameworks like bootstrap or zend.

A few days later, my friend asks me to help out with his code. And he shows me this:

<b class=“text_underline_white” >

Also, later on

<a style=“text-decoration:none”>

</a>

Keep in mind that all a tags in all the html pages were made like this.

AARRGGG.

I refer to the last three weeks of my semester as ‘assignment weeks’ and this week was one. Other than being boring, I also suffered from coder’s block.

But the one thing which doesn’t stop me is reading. Aside from playing games, that is.

Good reading resources

  1. Coding horror’s blog posts
    I love coding horror but this time, it looks like I am going to read all blog posts by the end of this week.

  2. The nature of code by daniel shiffman
    This e-book is free for online reading. The book starts off by teaching various game physics concepts but by the end of this book, you will learn topics like neural networks, cellular automata, etc.
    Really great stuff.

  3. Paul graham’s essays

  4. _Why'g poignant guide to ruby
    I never had the time to complete reading this wonderful book. Really, this should be the K&R book for ruby.

  5. Lurking on Dribbble

  6. Lurking on behance

Other than that, its a boring week :(

Sound is an underestimated medium in user experience. Think about it; your facebook tab is open and you are in the next room. Someone gives you a message and a sound plays signifying the message.

Now that’s sound user experience.

Where can I use it?

Most notable applications are webapps. You hear a delicious sounding click when you refresh tabs in summly. Tlk.io uses it to notify you of new messages.

The applications are everywhere but don’t go overboard. Place an option to decrease or better, mute the sound. Also, play quality notification sounds, not something like ringtones or such crap.

On the web, there are some interesting apis like the audio api and the new notifications api which can help you.

Some recommended uses.

Who says you can only use sounds in apps?
In battlefield 3, the game starts minimized because loading takes time. Till then you are free to browse. When the game loads, it automatically maximizes.

The developers could add a sound because you may have gone for a pee break or have to attend a phone call.

Even in dota 2, the game could detect if it is minimized and play a sound if the match starts telling the player to maximize the game.

Anyways, sound is an unexplored territory in user experience, especially on the web. It is interesting what the developers make of it now that we have powerful apis to play with.

My mom thinks hacking is illegal; you could go to jail for that.
My friends think hacking means hacking facebook or google (or any other social networking site)
And the world thinks hackers hack bank accounts, credit card systems, etc.

So is it just me who thinks hacking is something elegant like poetry?

My turn now

The first time I was enlightened by hacking was by reading the book hackers, heroes of the computer revolution

Then I read about Richard stallman and Edsger djistra.

Then as I learned about neural networks, digital art and design patterns, I saw that there was an entire generation of people who regarded hacking as something holy, something which is done together and alone, something just …. aarrggg, I can’t put it into words; it is overflowing me.

And then, in the real life, there are all these people who are misunderstanding hacking. Hacking is a skillset, something acquired over time when passion and hard work mix.

And the …

hackers are passionate people who care deeply about what they do. Its just that some people use their talents for causing destruction. Such people are known black hat hackers or simply, assholes.

Then we have a bunch of people who actively try to find out who the bad guys are using their skills. They are known as white hat hackers. I have seen young hackers getting recruited by the police for their IT and cyber crime department.

And then we have people like you and me, people who hack away just for the sake of it. Right now, I am coding a webapp with nirvana blasting in the background, oblivious to what is happening around me.

Ah.

Short answer :
No

But the fact that people are using different domain name extensions for branding tells a lot about where the current trend is going.

Example : save.me, call.me, meet.me, tlk.io, grove.io, etc.

But why are people taking such steps?
It seems that domain name squatters are the problem here.

Oh why me?

Last year, I was going to buy a domain. I had already checked out its availability and made a logo out of the name. Soon afterwards, when I went to purchase the domain, I found out that some squatter had already got the domain. The time period between me finding the domain and seeing it purchased was about one month.
And it redirected to godaddy.com (assholes)

What lesson did I learn?
Well, first of all, purchase the domain first. Second, go for something other than .com.
Why?

Because most of the good domains are already in the hands of the squatters. I fear all keyboard permutations upto three digits are already taken and all dictionary words upto at least four characters are taken as well.

And because all the good domain names are taken, good domain names combined with domain name extensions make up for good branding.
The only problem is that google doesn’t give other domain extensions the same level of importance it gives to .com

Closing thoughts

The problem of domain name squatters is already is a real one . ICANN, the body behind domain name extensions proposes releasing more extensions which will only elevate the problem.
It seems that only by taking some strict actions against the hoarders will solve this problem. Until then, other domain extensions like .io, .er, .me, etc seem like good choice.

.io seems like a good extension. I have seen it in a lot of webapps and it does look cool. Now all we need is a .js extension :P

Edit : it seems there are some people who don’t know what grief domain hoarding causes.

I am an avid reader of webcomics. I have been reading some of these since the last three years. Here is a list of them:

  • Smbc

    image

    This is probably the best comic ever made. You will love this if you have an appetite for geeky humor.

  • XKCD

    image

    One of the most popular webcomics, xkcd has been running strong for years. Also, check out the what if section.

  • Cyanide and happiness

    image

    This one is pretty nsfw. Just remember to put your brains aside and you will be fine. Also, check out the shorts section, they are pretty rad, especially, sad larry.

  • Ctrl + alt + del (CAD)

    image

    I used to read this one before. Cad follows the story of a young geek who plays video games and during the 6+ years of its existence, opens up his own video game shop, marries his girlfriend and makes a robot out of his xbox.

That’s all folks! Tell me if you read any interesting webcomics or make your own.

As a web developer, perfection can mean many things. Is the code perfectly valid or semantically correct?
Is any link broken. Or does this sidebar break in ie6 ?

After a long coding session, my stomach started growling

I decided to get some biting so I headed outside I went to my local food stall to get some pulav

Now I know this pulav guy for more than 10 years. He makes fantastic pulav and bhajipav. Refined by years of making the same stuff, he adds only the required ingredients and makes near perfect pulav.

Then it suddenly hit me. The pulav wasn’t perfect, it was perfect for me.

Conclusions

So does making perfectly valid sites indicate perfection. Perfection is based on perception which is different for everyone. Design a site and refine it until ‘you’ find it perfect.