Idiot Banter

Sick Ship - Songwriting - November 20 2008

Matt — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:47:33 +0000

Steve and I got together again and reworked a song we had written and recorded years ago. This time we used the same Micro POG octave pedal as last time but we ran the higher octave through a Little Big Muff and into it’s own channel in the mixer. The dry bass signal went through the Fulltone Bass Drive and the Sans Amp into another channel in the mixer. The high bass and low bass were panned to different sides and it was awesome and super heavy.

This song uses some weird time signatures and a lot of poly rhythms, it took me forever to figure it out, I’m an idiot.

[See post to listen to audio]

Sick Ship - Songwriting - November 11 2008

Matt — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:35:09 +0000

It’s been almost three and a half months and we have another song. This time it’s just me and Steve (drums and bass) but it sounds full thanks to the Fulltone Bass drive and the Micro POG. We really like this song, it’s a slow jam….

[See post to listen to audio]

jQuery Tic Tac Toe

Matt — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:17:16 +0000

A few months ago I decided I needed to get good at Javascript and I figured a good way to get good was to make a working Tic Tac Toe game. Some of my co-workers are much smarter than I am and they helped me out a lot along the way explaining fundamental principles and helping me understand the massive amounts of math involved in seemingly simple tasks. After a lot of frustration and a lot of learning I have a working Tic Tac Toe game. It’s not perfect, it’s only one player and the computer is not intelligent it just picks a random open square and doesn’t know if one of the open squares will win the game. The computer won’t block you either, I should probably get on that…

It’s based on jQuery because using a Javascript library that allows you to traverse the DOM using selectors similar to CSS seemed like a good idea to me. I was surprised at how much actual Javascript I had to write even tough I was using a library as robust as jQuery. I figured I’d put this up as a work in progress, I’m pretty proud of it since until now all I’ve ever done is straight, static CSS & XHTML.

Check it out and leave a comment if you like it because I like comments.

Play jQuery Tic Tac Toe

Ontario Should Ban Alcohol Before They Ban Cell Phones While Driving

Matt — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:10:39 +0000

Apparently Transport Minister Jim Bradley will introduce a bill next Tuesday to ban the use of all “distracting electronic devices” while driving in Ontario. I understand the dangers of being distracted while driving but I can’t think of anything more distracting than being under the influence of alcohol. You can legally drink and drive (yes, any blood alcohol level higher than 0 and you are under the influence) but you can’t use a GPS?! This is insane! Have a few drinks, read that old school paper map and deal with your children fighting in the back but don’t you dare touch that cell phone!

So disappointing….

Can everyone please put an end to drinking and driving and we’ll go from there?

Source article: CityNews: Ontario To Ban ‘Distracting’ Electronic Devices In Cars

Sunday Song Part One

Matt — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 02:22:24 +0000

I wanted to prove to myself that I could write a generic rock song and I think I did. I want to do more, I want to figure out how to make it sound better than Garage Band’s generic sounds, I want to figure out how to make it more interesting than generic pop chord progressions. To teach and motivate myself I’m going to keep working on this song and post the newest version every Sunday, hence the name “Sunday Song”.

[See post to listen to audio]

MIDI & Electronic Drum Experiment #1

Matt — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:14:34 +0000

I plugged my electronic drums into my computer with a MIDI - USB cable, picked a punchy grand piano sound in Garage Band and started playing piano on the drums. I duplicated that track twice, once using drum sounds and once using bass sounds. When it was all done I had created 1 minutes and 20 seconds of some sort of weird tech rock. I like it.

[See post to listen to audio]

Because it’s business not people….

Matt — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:37:24 +0000

The lyrics to one of my favourite Hot Water Music songs seem very relevant to me right now. Everyone should step back and think about others before they act.

Hot Water Music - At The End Of A Gun

We can waste we can come and go
We can act like we don’t know about suffering and pain
We can live our lives in shame for never helping anyone we know, or don’t
But we need to recognize that we are dying if we live alone
Let’s send our energy out with what we know and unify today
Because our freedom sits at the end of a gun
We’re all here getting beat up and held back
We’re all here digging knives from our backs
We’ve all been betrayed
Because it’s business not people
It’s always take and it is never give and that’s not the way I want to live
Because that’s nothing but dying and we’re nothing if we sell ourselves
Close your eyes never hear never cry for living an empty life

Free Band iPhone Wallpaper

Matt — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:15:09 +0000

I was getting bored of my current iPhone wallpaper so I decided to make my own. I like music so I made a a few of my favourite album covers into wallpaper. I didn’t really do too much, I mostly just resized the covers. Use them if you like them. There you go, free iPhone wallpaper and free iPod Touch wallpaper.

To install them just visit this page with your iPhone or iPod Touch and hold your finger on the image you want. It will ask if you’d like to save the image. Open settings and change your wallpaper.

For some awesome iPhone wallpaper check out Adam Finley’s iPhone wallpaper.

100% Fluid Layouts - More Effort Than They’re Worth

Matt — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:43:11 +0000

One of my main goals while re-designing this website was to create a 100% fluid layout. 100% fluid layouts aren’t something you see very often and I wanted the experience of having created one. I also figured that, as with doing anything for the first time, I might learn something new, and I did. I learned that 100% fluid layouts are more effort than they are worth.

100% Fluid Layout?

There are fixed width layouts (everything specified in pixels), and there are elastic layouts (most things specified in pixels but one main fluid column), but I’m talking about a 100% fluid layout. All widths, margins and padding specified in percentages and all text sizes specified in em. The entire site grows and shrinks with the browser and when the text size is increased and decreased everything flows to accommodate. When calculating percentages I left as many decimal places as possible in the style sheet so that the browser could interpret it to the best of it’s ability. It’s 100% fluid and it’s beautiful, until you start using it.

Paragraphs And Images

The biggest problem with fluid layouts is that they’re fluid, when the browser is wide the site is wide and when the browser is squished the site is squished, obviously. But what happens when the browser is so wide an entire paragraph fits on one line? Suddenly your site is a little less usable than it used to be. Maybe width isn’t something that should be left up to the end user.

When my new design was done I started adding my portfolio which includes screen shots of some of the work I’ve done. The images are 700px wide and jpgs do not scale, so when the browser width drops below a certain amount of pixels the images start falling out of their containers. My only option was to add a min-width declaration to the entire site. The second I added min-width my site was no longer 100% fluid.

Fluid Layouts In A Professional Setting

I work for a media company as a Front-End Web Developer where I cut everything from full websites and micro sites to video players, email newsletters and everything in between. I have never even considered using anything but 100% fixed width layouts when cutting anything at work, it’s just not practical.

When I am asked to cut a Photoshop mock it is expected that I make it pixel for pixel exactly the same as the mock. I’ve never worked on a project that wasn’t short for time and when the clock is ticking it isn’t worth it to try to figure out “what happens when the user expands their browser window” or “what if the guy with the 30 inch monitor has his browser maximized?”. We go out of our way to make sure every site has a sweet scalable background image so the site doesn’t look broken in those situations but there are too many variables and too much hacking older browsers involved to make a 100% fluid layout a viable business option.

I Did Learn A Few Things

Despite all of my complaining I am still glad I got the chance to attempt a 100% fluid layout. The math involved to figure out the margins was the hardest math I’ve done in the past few years and it was a little exciting to see the entire site scale on a huge monitor at work. If the ability to scale images was easier than it currently is fluid layouts would be the norm but as it stands fixed width wins every time.

Margins In EMs?

I was under the impression that margins should be in percentages but doesn’t it make more sense for them to be in ems so they scale with the text? Someone please explain this to me.

I’m Not The First

A lot of people, all smarter than me, have already written about this subject. See what they have to say.

Check Out Those Backgrounds…

Matt — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:15:05 +0000

My new design should have launched with the ability to temporarily hide the content so you can see the backgrounds that I spend so much time crafting for your enjoyment (just kidding, I spend as little time as possible… always). I didn’t realize how needed this feature would be until I started adding the backgrounds and realized a bunch of them were useless when they were all covered by content (stupid, boring content). So I added a little button in the top right of the page, click it and the content becomes 90% transparent, click it again and the content comes back. Simple. Enjoy it.